How much of the world of Blackmoor has been developed?

[Big Mac]

I've seen maps of the entire surface of Oerth (Gary Gygax's world) and Toril (Ed Greenwood's world), but when I see maps of Blackmoor, they are usually regional maps showing an area around the City of Blackmoor.

Are there any maps that show more of the world in commercial products? Did Dave Arneson have other parts of the planet developed, that never got published?

Is there any Blackmoor canon that hints at things that are off the map?

For example, Blackmoor is on the sea. Are there any descriptions of goods that are imported from far away lands? Are there any NPCs that are supposed to have arrived via ship?

[Havard]

I've seen maps of the entire surface of Oerth (Gary Gygax's world) and Toril (Ed Greenwood's world), but when I see maps of Blackmoor, they are usually regional maps showing an area around the City of Blackmoor.

Are there any maps that show more of the world in commercial products? Did Dave Arneson have other parts of the planet developed, that never got published?

Is there any Blackmoor canon that hints at things that are off the map?

For example, Blackmoor is on the sea. Are there any descriptions of goods that are imported from far away lands? Are there any NPCs that are supposed to have arrived via ship?

This is a huge topic!

Fairly early on, Dave Arneson placed Blackmoor on the map of Gary Gygax' Castles & Crusades Society World Map. This is the map that gradually grew into Greyhawk. However, Dave's information about this world was limited and he added his own interpretations of what little there was, so simply saying it the surrounding world is the same used by Gary could be a bit misleading. Of course, the FFC and the DA modules assume the existence of the Wilderlands and Pre-Cataclysmic Mystara respectively surrounding Blackmoor.

The DA Modules and the FFC do hint at several realms outside the regional map of "The North":

• The Skandaharian Jarldoms
• The Duchy of the Peaks (shown in the North-western corner)
• Frisia
• The Vales (The setting used in my campaign at the Comeback Inn)
• The Land of Thralls
• The Afridhi Empire
• The Thonian Empire
• Bleakwood (setting of Dave Arneson's Advetures in Fantasy RPG)
• The Docrae Homeland (d20 addition)
• The Island of Father Dragon
• Cirkhosia
• Land of the Bolgers
• Salik
• The Jungle Realm
• Lands of the Kurgans
• Lands of the Tarns
• Synobia
• Mirakos
• Lands of the Paynims

There are also the realms found on the map Dave Arneson gave to David Megarry with locations from Gary's map and Arneson locations added onto that.

-Havard

[Big Mac]

I've seen maps of the entire surface of Oerth (Gary Gygax's world) and Toril (Ed Greenwood's world), but when I see maps of Blackmoor, they are usually regional maps showing an area around the City of Blackmoor.

Are there any maps that show more of the world in commercial products? Did Dave Arneson have other parts of the planet developed, that never got published?

Is there any Blackmoor canon that hints at things that are off the map?

For example, Blackmoor is on the sea. Are there any descriptions of goods that are imported from far away lands? Are there any NPCs that are supposed to have arrived via ship?

This is a huge topic!

Fairly early on, Dave Arneson placed Blackmoor on the map of Gary Gygax' Castles & Crusades Society World Map. This is the map that gradually grew into Greyhawk. However, Dave's information about this world was limited and he added his own interpretations of what little there was, so simply saying it the surrounding world is the same used by Gary could be a bit misleading.

I've heard of that map. I don't believe that map belongs to TSR.

There must be other people who spun campaigns off of the Castles & Crusades map too. Do we know roughly how many people were in the Castles & Crusades Society and how many people were using that map? Were most of them doing things similar to Greyhawk, or were there other people doing things similar to Blackmoor?

Did Dave recruit players from the Castles & Crusades Society membership (and use the map to help pull their players backgrounds into his own game)?

Or did he mostly use it as handy premade artwork, so that he could avoid spending time making his own big map and concentrate on the local area of Blackmoor?

Of course, the FFC and the DA modules assume the existence of the Wilderlands and Pre-Cataclysmic Mystara respectively surrounding Blackmoor.

I'm not sure about the Wilderlands/Blackmoor relationshiip, but the Mystara/Blackmoor tie-in feels fairly similar to how 2nd Edition AD&D relocated "orphan" D&D products into Forgotten Realms. It feels like the TSR of that time was pushing Greyhawk for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and the Known World for BECMI and that products needed to be shoehorned into one place or the other.

I wonder what would have happened if the DA series had been published later (during the 2nd Edition AD&D Era). Would Blackmoor have been shoehorned into an area of Faerûn?

Is there any sort of indication that Dave Areneson saw the very early maps of what would eventually turn into the Known World (I think someone mentioned a pre-Menzer map somewhere) and decided to switch from using the Castles & Crusades map to the Known World map for his home game?

The DA Modules and the FFC do hint at several realms outside the regional map of "The North":

• The Skandaharian Jarldoms
• The Duchy of the Peaks (shown in the North-western corner)
• Frisia
• The Vales (The setting used in my campaign at the Comeback Inn)
• The Land of Thralls
• The Afridhi Empire
• The Thonian Empire
• Bleakwood (setting of Dave Arneson's Advetures in Fantasy RPG)
• The Docrae Homeland (d20 addition)
• The Island of Father Dragon
• Cirkhosia
• Land of the Bolgers
• Salik
• The Jungle Realm
• Lands of the Kurgans
• Lands of the Tarns
• Synobia
• Mirakos
• Lands of the Paynims

There are also the realms found on the map Dave Arneson gave to David Megarry with locations from Gary's map and Arneson locations added onto that.

That's a lot of additions.

Some of them (especially the ones with Greyhawk names) seem like they were part of an effort to merge Blackmoor and something else (Greyhawk in that case) into a single unified campaign setting.

How many of them are totally unique to Blackmoor, with no tie-in to anything else?

I can imagine that people can raid from Greyhawk and Mystara sources for the locations that tie into those worlds, but the unique locations must be harder to create content for.

[Zeromaru X]

I guess that saying that Mystara geography is useful for Blackmoor is a bit misleading as well. I mean, didn't the Rain of Fire changed the whole the world (rearranging continents, shifting the planet's axis, etc)? That means that raiding Mystara stuff for Blackmoor would be tricky, as the geography isn't the same in both ages.

[Cthulhudrew]

I guess that saying that Mystara geography is useful for Blackmoor is a bit misleading as well. I mean, didn't the Rain of Fire changed the whole the world (rearranging continents, shifting the planet's axis, etc)?

At the time the Blackmoor modules were produced, the idea was that Blackmoor was located on/within the same general area as the "Known World." Blackmoor's location wasn't changed until some time after the gazetteer series came out, and was relocated at least twice (once in Hyboria, in Gaz10, and later on Skothar with the release of the Hollow World boxed set).

[Big Mac]

I guess that saying that Mystara geography is useful for Blackmoor is a bit misleading as well. I mean, didn't the Rain of Fire changed the whole the world (rearranging continents, shifting the planet's axis, etc)? That means that raiding Mystara stuff for Blackmoor would be tricky, as the geography isn't the same in both ages.

That's a good point.

I believe that the Mystara map is based on one of the past geological periods of the real-world.

Is there enough of the Blackmoor map to infer if Blackmoor is based on a real-world period of the Earth? (Didn't someone say it was an upside-down Scandanavian lake or somesuch?)

If you had enough of the two sources, perhaps it would be possible to infer possible locations of raided Mystara regions on an expanded Blackmoor map.

At the very least, it should be possible to translate across the regions in the map that shows the location of the Egg of Coot and other local nations.

Did Dave Arneson go into enough detail for people to be able to infer any continental plates, fault lines or areas of mountain building?

Are there any legendary Atlantas-like lands or islands that are said to have mysteriously vanished in Blackmoor's past?

[ripvanwormer]

I believe that the Mystara map is based on one of the past geological periods of the real-world.

Is there enough of the Blackmoor map to infer if Blackmoor is based on a real-world period of the Earth? (Didn't someone say it was an upside-down Scandanavian lake or somesuch?)

The Hollow World boxed set included a map of the outer world of Mystara as it was before the Great Rain of Fire shifted its continents. This is what the "World of Blackmoor" looks like in the Mystara setting. Here's Havard's version of it.

Note that this map is controversial among Mystara's fandom, since it contradicts earlier statements that the Gazetteer nations of modern Mystara were the North Pole before the cataclysm, and it switches Thonia and Blackmoor's positions. Here's a thread about the relative merits of the Hollow World map versus LoZompatore's version that shifts the position of the North Pole.

Here's LoZompatore's revised pre-Cataclysmic map, which incorporates many more references from Blackmoor sources, including obscure nations such as the Duchy of Rhun and Cirkoshia.

Personally, I do see the destruction wreaked by the Great Rain of Fire and ensuing cataclysms such as the sinking of Taymora and the Lesser Rain of Fire as sufficient justification to make pre-Cataclysmic Mystara look however you want. The continent of Skothar doesn't have to be remotely recognizable in that era to visitors from the present day.

Did Dave Arneson go into enough detail for people to be able to infer any continental plates, fault lines or areas of mountain building?

No.

Are there any legendary Atlantas-like lands or islands that are said to have mysteriously vanished in Blackmoor's past?

Perhaps, if you count the great flooding of the land from Supplement II: Blackmoor.