Saturday, December 12, 2020

The First Fantasy Campaign: Bleakwood

Dave Arneson includes a brief description of a region called Bleakwood in JG 37 "The First Fantasy Campaign".  It is described as being next to Bramwald, which is east of Blackmoor.

The first mention of Bleakwood appears to have been in a piece written by Arneson for the Bel-Ran Rumormonger in 1974, the fanzine for a Midgard Limited play-by-mail game, as described by Jon Peterson in this post on his blog.

Bleakwood was "marked on huge hexes and used plastic and clay models to represent everything." for special convention demonstrations, although was only used at Gen Con VIII in 1975, where Rob Kuntz also ran The Sunken City.

Bleakwood reappeared, this time as a fief in Arneson and Snider's "Adventures in Fantasy" game, first published in 1978.


Bleakwood Fief, from "Adventures in Fantasy" (1979) by Dave Arneson and Richard Snider.  Note the "Shrine of St. Cuth".


Many of the geographical features on the map of Bleakwood Fief are present in the description for the Bleakwood "medieval demographic area" given in "The First Fantasy Campaign".

As a final note, The Comeback Inn released the excellent, fan-made Province of Bleakwood Sourcebook as part of Dave Arneson game day, this past year.

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