Dave Arneson's Blackmoor: The Redwood Scar (almost final)

Dave Arneson's Blackmoor:
The Redwood Scar

The Redwood Scar is an adventure module for Dave Arneson's Blackmoor, indeed, the first module published for that setting in something like 20 years (or so the cover says). Blackmoor, as you may or may not know, was the first fantasy setting for a RPG, developed by the co-creator of D&D, Dave Arneson, while he was creating D&D (or perhaps a bit before that). While it was the first, it's had something of an odd history as a published setting.

As far as I know, it was first mentioned in the D&D supplement "Blackmoor" (which was mostly rules and such, but I think had a thing about the "Temple of the Frog). Then due to the Gygax/Arneson falling out, Blackmoor was published by the Judges Guild as the "First Fantasy Campaign". This was not quite a setting as we know it today, there was map of the area, but the book was largely a compilation of various facts and data about Blackmoor. Famous NPCs. Wars. Maps of various dungeons. Etc.

Then, after Gary Gygax had a falling out with TSR in the mid 80s, Blackmoor was brought back into D&D (aka, Basic Dungeons and Dragons), literally retrofitted into the "Known World" (which would later be called "Mystara), basically set in the past (about 3-4000 years before the various D&D modules, like Isle of Dread or Castle Amber, if I remember correctly).

There were 4 modules for Blackmoor for Mystara. These were sort of weird, as most of them involved time travel and in some cases, high technology (most notably the Temple of the Frog and the City of the Gods).

Things were pretty dormant until the advent of D&D 3e, when it was brought back by Zeitgeist Games and published in 2004 (via Goodman Games, famous for the Dungeon Crawl Classics series of modules) pretty much for the first time as a coherent, fully fleshed out and complete setting for d20.

Or at least, I think that's how things are. I really don't know much about Blackmoor first hand, I am really just a big Mystara fan, and so learned about Blackmoor as part of that. In fact, I don't own any of the Blackmoor books, not even the newest one, though I did play through one of the 80s D&D adventures, the Temple of the Frog one, and flipped through the Judge's Guild version (though that was 20 years ago, so I don't remember much).

The Redwood Scar

While most people probably think Blackmoor adventures are weird, full of frogs, lasers and hard to leave inns, this adventure, the Redwood Scar, is actually quite normal. It could be used in any D&D setting pretty much as is, just with some name changes. Which is a good thing for me, since as mentioned, I don't own the new Blackmoor (though I am on the email list for it), and the only Blackmoor I am really familiar with is the Mystara one.


The adventure itself is perhaps not the most original in terms of plot (reminds me of a lot of survival horror video games), but is an excellent implementation of the plot, and a good module, period. And is generally my favorite sort of adventure (one based around a small town with a problem).

Basically, the PCs stumble across a village that is suffering from some sort of magical blight or plague. Obviously, they must find the source of the blight and save the village. But there are some added complications (or side quests).

The first part of the adventure really consists of the PCs going around the village and trying to figure out just what is going on. This is done by interacting with various NPCs.

While the village is nowhere near as detailed as the "Hamlet of Thumble", for the most part, it's detailed pretty well. The NPCs that are detailed are given very distinct and memorable personalities.

In fact, the first time I read this module, I actually dreamt about the village that night. I usually read something (often a gaming book I plan on reviewing) before I go to sleep, but I've never had something like this happen before. Sometimes when I read a Call of Cthulhu book I'll have a horror-tinged dream (or occasionally about this girl I knew in college that had the "Innsmouth Look" and used to scare me because she also had this habit of groping me. Which probably would have been enjoyable if I weren't an HPL fan), but never actually visiting a fictional place like that. Both a bit weird and fascinating at the same time

Anyway, once the PCs get the basic gist of what's going on, they basically have to simply find the source of the blight and destroy it. This essentially involves a great deal of wilderness exploration. There's a good mix of random encounters, keyed encounters, and timed encounters.

As mentioned, there are a number of side quests. These can be done parallel to the main adventure (ideally), or after that is done (with some minimal changes). The first is almost a "haunted house" sort of scenario. There are strange noises coming from an abandoned tavern.

Secondly, the PCs must retrieve an evil tome (not quite Necronomicon-ish, but on par with David Hasselhoff's autobiography) from it's hiding place in an evil hedge maze. If your players hate mazes, they probably won't like this, but it's not too heinous. There is a puzzle involved in this, too, but not too difficult of one.

It's hard for me to guess the length of the module - it seems like it could be fairly short, if you have smart players that figure things out quickly or ones that want to rush into things. On the other hand, they could spend a lot of time talking with the NPCs in town. I would guess about 3-4 playing sessions. (One for the haunted house, one for the village, and one or two for the woods/maze/final showdown)

The book itself...

Physically, it's a fairly impressive book. At first glance, I thought it was bigger than its 64 pages, because the paper used is very heavy stock.

It has a lot of artwork, around 20 pieces in 64 pages, which is a pretty good ratio. Also very interesting is that there is a hedge maze illustration, and it actually is the hedge maze. That is, the maze plan in the artwork is the same as that of the map.

All the artwork is very good, some of it is excellent. You can view some of the pieces online on the company's home page.

I especially love the picture of the town of Cicatri Down itself (the one in the top right of the gallery).

The only real downside, at least for me, is that while all the maps are clear, some are obviously generated with Campaign Cartographer 2, which isn't terrible, but are very computer-ish looking. I've never understood why that program apparently only has 1 sprite (or whatever) for each sized house. Why not several dozens for each house size, so a village doesn't look like it's comprised of identical houses? (I also think having someone just trace over the map would still look good and get rid of the computer generated look)

A less artistic criticism is that some of the keys to the maps are a little off, I think. The map of the area seems to be missing one label, and I think they are mislabeled in one instance. Though because the cartographer happened to use CC2 you can tell which is supposed to be what, because the areas have the same shape on the big map as on the large scale map, just the size is changed. (That's the only nice thing about CC2, it scales up or down, being vector based, like Oprah Winfrey).

Also, the scale for the town map is off. I hope so, anyway, otherwise most houses are 10 feet by 10 feet. Which is pretty much the size of my bedroom, which is annoyingly small. For an actual house, it would be like that Geico commercial...(the one about the really small house, not the one with the Gecko doing the robot).

The layout of the module is pretty nice. It's divided up into sections, one for the town, one for the wilderness, with stats for the major NPCs and monsters in the back, but for the lesser ones in the text itself. That's generally the best way to do it in an adventure.

Furthermore, there are charts of all the encounters, giving you information on where they are in the book, where the encounter happens, the type of encounter. This is very useful.

Pretty much all of the combat encounters in the book are with new monsters, though many of them are created by taking normal animals and applying a template to them. There's also a few new minor spells and a couple minor magic items.

Final thoughts...


It's a well crafted adventure, with memorable NPCs and rather gruesome major villain (look closely at the cover art to see what I mean. Ick). There are some minor problems with the maps, and you could probably find a few nitpicks, but I enjoyed it a lot, and plan on running it as soon as I can. A-



As mentioned, while nominally set in Blackmoor, it can be used pretty much anywhere with only changing the names of the type of elves, so if you are in the need for a module, it's worth picking up. It's also a pretty good advertisement for the Blackmoor book itself. Because while it doesn't directly reference that book much, it does have a lot of minor things from it when are sort of tantalizing.

While it says it's for levels 2-4, I suspect that level 4 is probably the real baseline. There are several encounters which are EL5 or 6, which in my experience, are generally too much for 2nd level characters, and a few monsters that have a fairly high hardness, which will probably be tricky for really low characters to get past.

Also, I don't know if this is true for Blackmoor in general, but the names of the NPCs in the book are really good. On the one hand, quite alien, they don't seem like names from Earth or slightly goofy Star Wars style names. But on the other, they do seem like actual names, not made up gibberish.

Dave Arneson's Blackmooor: The Redwoord Scar (first rough draft)

The Redwood Scar is an adventure module for Dave Areneson's Blackmoor.

Blackmoor, as you may or may not know, was the first fantasy setting for a RPG. It's had something of an odd history as a published setting.

As far as I know, it was first mentioned in the D&D supplement "Blackmoor" (which was mostly rules and such, but I think had a thing about the "Temple of the Frog). Then due to the Gygax/Arneson falling out, Blackmoor was published by the Judges Guild as the "First Fantasy Campaign". This was not quite a setting as we know it today, there was map of the area, but it was largely a compilation of various facts and data about Blackmoor. Famous NPCs. Wars. Maps of various dungeons.

Then, after Gary Gygax had a falling out with TSR in the mid 80s, Blackmoor was brought back into D&D (aka, Basic Dungeons and Dragons), literally retrofitted into the "Known World" (which would later be called "Mystara), basically set in the past (about 3-4000 years before the various D&D modules, like Isle of Dread or Castle Amber, if I remember correctly).

Anyway, there were 4 modules for Blackmoor for Mystara. These were sort of weird, as most of them involved time travel and in some cases, high technology.

Things were pretty dormant until the advent of D&D 3e, when it was brought back by Zeitgeist Games and published (via Goodman Games) pretty much for the first time as a coherent, fully fleshed out and complete setting.


Or at least, that's how things are. I really don't know much about Blackmoor first hand, I am really just a big Mystara fan, and so learned about Blackmoor as part of that. In fact, I don't own any of the Blackmoor books, not even the newest one, though I did play through one of the 80s D&D adventures, the Temple of the Frog one, and flipped through the Judge's Guild version (though that was 20 years ago, so I don't remember much). (Though I do own Mr. Arneson's early Shadowrun module, DOA/DNA)


This adventure, the Redwood Scar, is actually quite normal. It could be used in any D&D setting pretty much as is, just some name changes. Which is a good thing for me, since as mentioned, the only Blackmoor I am familiar with is the Mystara one.




The adventure itself is perhaps not the most original in terms of plot, but is an excellent implementation of the plot, and a good module, period.

Basically, the PCs stumble across a village that is suffering from some sort of magical blight or plague. Obviously, they must find the source of the blight and save the village. But there are some added complications (or side quests).

The first part of the adventure really consists of the PCs going around the village and trying to figure out just what is going on. This is done by interacting with various NPCs.

While the village is nowhere near as detailed as the "Hamlet of Thumble", for the most part, it's detailed pretty well. The NPCs that are detailed are given very distinct and memorable personalities.

In fact, the first time I read this module, I actually dreamt about the village that night. I usually read something (often a gaming book I plan on reviewing) before I go to sleep, but I've never had something like this happen before. Sometimes when I read a Call of Cthulhu book I'll have a horror-tinged dream (or occasionally about this girl I knew in college that had the "Innsmouth Look" and used to scare me because she also had this habit of groping me. Which probably would have been enjoyable if I weren't an HPL fan), but never actually visiting a fictional place like that.



Physically, it's a fairly impressive book. At first glance, I thought it was bigger than its 64 pages, because the paper used is very heavy stock.

It has a lot of artwork, around 20 pieces in 64 pages, which is a pretty good ratio. Also very interesting is that there is a hedge maze illustration, and it actually is the hedge maze. That is, the maze plan in the artwork is the same as that of the map.

The only real downside, at least for me, is that while all the maps are clear, some are obviously generated with Campaign Cartographer 2, which isn't terrible, but are very computer-ish looking. I've never understood why that program apparently only has 1 sprite (or whatever) for each sized house. Why not several dozens for each house size, so a village doesn't look like it's comprised of identical houses?




So anyway, it's a very good adventure. As mentioned, while nominally set in Blackmoor, it can be used pretty much anywhere, so if you are in the need for a module, it's worth picking up. It's also a pretty good advertisement for the Blackmoor book itself. Because while it doesn't directly reference that book much, it does have a lot of minor things from it when are sort of tantalizing.


While it says it's for levels 2-4, I suspect that level 4 is probably the real baseline. There are several encounters which are EL5 or 6, which in my experience, are generally too much for 2nd level characters.

The Book of Immortals (Final Draft)

The Book of Immortals

"I am Immortal, I have inside me blood of kings! I have no rival, no man can be my equal!"


So, you want to be an Immortal? Well, you could try the method Master Shake suggests, and jump off a magic cliff, like they did in that movie, Highlander (which was actually a documentary and shot in real time). Or buy the "Book of Immortals" from Mongoose. Just which option is less painful is hard to say.

Let me say that a as a slight disclaimer, that I really am not a fan of Mongoose products (though they have occasionally put out some gems). I had sworn off them after buying two extremely poorly edited products from them, the original OGL Conan (seemingly with 100s of editing errors) and OGL Horror (similarly poorly edited, missing chunks of key rules). But then I heard in a thread on a message board about how they had changed, and blah blah blah, I should give them a second chance. So I did, with the Book of Immortals, a subject I had been very interested in.


I was a very big fan of Basic Dungeons and Dragons. This was set in a place called the "Known World", which was later called "Mystara" (along with some additions like the Hollow World). It was sort of an odd fantasy world, with a fair amount of strange stuff. One of the quirks about the world was that it had no "gods" per se. But it did have "Immortals". Immortals were essentially gods, but they had once been mortals. But through their actions, generally great deeds, they achieved godhood.

There were two products with rules for these Immortals. That is, how they operated, and how PCs could become immortals. BD&D had a somewhat higher scope of play than AD&D. PCs were generally expected to become rulers of a stronghold in the Companion Boxed set (around 15th level), then planar travellers in the "Master Rules", which was I think from 24th to 36th.

In some regards, D&D 3rd edition has that higher scope of BD&D. Character in 3.x can go up to 20th level, then qualify for "Epic" levels. So, I've been hoping for a product that would let PCs become Immortals, or gods. Preferably an official one, but one from another company would also be cool. (Or so I thought).

"Find the Moon and reach for the stars!"

Enter Mongoose's "The Book of Immortals", which at first glance would be exactly what I was looking for. And in some ways it is, in some ways it really isn't.


First off, the Mongoose sort of Immortal is actually not really a god. They are somewhere between gods and epic level characters. Closer to the epic level end, though in some cases, not even that.

Immortals in BD&D were essentially just a really powerful character class (the Immortal) and had a range of levels from 1 to 36. Immortals gained levels by gaining more "Power Points", more or less like experience points, but which were also used to fuel their powers (in fact, using too many could drop them down a level). These points ranged from 300 for a starting Immortal to 6,000 for a top of the line one.

Mongoose Immortals have just 5 "steps", Aspirant, Wielder, Illuminated, Immortal, and Transcendent. Mongoose Immortals go up a step by achieving "Victories" and overcoming a "Great Challenge". Powers are basically powered by an Immortals "Aura", which is a number which is based on the Immortal's rank and the number of "victories" they have. The "Aura" ranges from 1 to about 50.

As near as I can tell from the 3 sample Immortals, each "victory" translates into a +1 challenge rating. So basically, one "victory" is about on par with just another level, epic or otherwise.

"No man can understand, my power is in my own hand!"

The powers that a Mongoose Immortal gains are called "Gifts". These are further broken down into 4 areas; Artifacts, Attributes, Numen, and Powers. An Immortal's "Aura" has to be invested in these. Also, most of these require the use of one of two new skills just for Immortals, Infusion and Channel.


Artifacts are just really powerful magic items. They are built with power points. They just use normal magical abilities in the DMG for the most part. Magical weapon and armor abilities cost 1 power point per +1 of the ability. So a +5 sword artifact would cost 5 power points be +5, then you could make it flaming for another power point (as flaming costs +1) or vorpal for another 5 power points. You can also imbue them with various other abilities, these generally cost a number of power points equal to the caster level, though some types of artifacts have a better ratio than others. (For instance, rings are easier to imbue with wondrous magical abilities than weapons or armor).

Each artifact starts off with 5 power points, and the Immortal can invest more of their Aura into the artifact. The aura to power point ratio isn't fixed, it depends on a roll of the Infusion skill. It can range from 2:1 to 8:1 power points to aura.

You can create some fairly impressive items with this method. However, it's heavily skewed towards the more capable Immortals (that have a high Infusion skill), and even then they have to spend a good chunk of their Aura points.


Attributes are kind of like feats or powers. They actually range from being able to cast 5 levels of a certain type of spell to gaining a +1 bonus to AC and attack roles defending a certain country, to becoming a plant.

These don't seem to be balanced very well. For instance, getting a +1 attack bonus and AC while defending a certain country seems about as powerful as a standard d20 Feat. Maybe not even that.

On the other end, you can gain flight. Or eternal youth. Some attributes really suck (why would anyone want to be a plant?), some are fairly powerful. None are especially earth-shaking. (I was kinda looking for Immortals that could create planes, create species, create worlds and planets and even suns)


Numen are basically flunkies or minions or allies. Not an especially powerful one, either. An evil Immortal might get a Succubus as a flunky. Which while nice, doesn't seem terribly high powered or unusual - in fact, nothing more than you might expect a higher level character to have as a cohort or minion...


Powers are kind of shape the fabric of reality stuff, though most of the things are pretty minor, result wise. For instance, an Immortal could heal himself or a colleague. Or create weapons out of wind (or some other element).

So really, Mongoose style Immortals are not really gods or near gods or even godlings. Because it uses a system parallel to that of the level system, it's hard to quantify their power, but it seems about as much as an epic level.


Now, not all Immortals can get all powers. Sort of a catch. An Immortal apparently needs a "Wellspring" or a "Covenant". The Wellspring is like a sacred area or something, while the Covenant is a pact with someone. These also give Immortals other powers, too. But these depend on another rating. It's a bit confusing, actually.


See, this is one of those things I find a bit irksome about this book. It's complicated, and you get all these schemes to earn abilities that are outside the whole level system, which adds a lot of extra book keeping. You have to keep track of an Immortals victories, their "title", their wellsprings and covenants and the various "tap" levels of same.

"Fighting to survive in a world with the darkest power!"

As "Challenges" are so important to an Immortal, it gets a fairly hefty chapter devoted to them, 40 pages worth.

Basically, there are 18 different types of challenges, each with a fairly detailed (page or so) example. These range from creating or destroying artifacts (the whole Lord of the Rings plot, taking a ring to be destroyed in Mt. Doom would be a pretty good example of a Challenge), to tests of Will or Faith (the Last Temptation of Christ would be an example of one of those).

Some involve combat. Some involve self-reflection, sort of. There's one I like where an Immortal has to convert someone (one picked by the Gods, apparently) to a different alignment by convincing them to change. That seems like it could be a lot of fun in practice. There's a pretty wide range of things to do.

This part of the book I liked a lot. It provides a lot of help to the DM in actually implementing the Challenge part of the rules, and to a lesser extent, is very useful for just coming up with adventures, period.

There's also some brief comments on the politics of the Immortal world. And some pre-made paths to Immortality (that is, with fixed Challenges and such). There's only 3 sample Immortals, though, 1 of whom is a real wuss.

"Bring on the girls! C'mon, c'mon, c'mon!"

It's an okay looking book. Not particularly fancy, sort of no frills-ish, but not nearly as spartan as some splat books (notably the one word line from AEG or the Legends & Lairs line from FFG) . The font used is kinda big, so while it's 256 pages, it feels a lot shorter. (Until you try to read it while in bed, then it feels a lot longer.)

While I wouldn't say the layout is bad, exactly, again, it's sort of no frills-ish, and there are lots and lots of tables and such which are scattered all over the book. It would have been nice for these to have been reprinted at the back.

I guess they have improved the editing - I didn't notice too many glaring typos (other than one almost obligatory "looses" instead of "loses".). One weird thing, though, there are constant references to "Core Rulebook I" and "Core Rulebook II", which is a d20 license requirement that was changed a couple years ago (you can now refer to the PHB, DMG, MM, etc).

The art is okay, if a bit on the amateurish side. Some pieces are well done, but most are not remarkable one way or the other. Most art does in fact reflect things in the book ( as opposed to random clip art), but in some cases pieces apparently meant to illustrate a section or rule actually appear a couple pages later.

If 1 were a fanzine done by a drunken pirate and 10 were Freeport: City of Adventure (the best looking d20 book on the market), this would be about a 3.

"People talk about you, people say that you've had your day..."

While not a terrible book, it just isn't a very good one. The first time I read it, after finishing (and waking up), I thought to myself "D'oh! I just wasted $30". Which is unfortunately true - while it's got some okay ideas, it's just something that I would never actually use. While technically the rules are probably playable, they are just a mess.

Also, the writing in the book is kinda boring. Maybe it's just the subject, sorta, I know books on philosophy tend to make me sleepy. But it was a real struggle staying awake while reading this book. (Actually, like a philosophy book, this used a lot of jargon I couldn't keep straight)

Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, it's just not what I was looking for. At most, these Immortals are only slightly more epic than epic. Which wouldn't have been bad, but it pretty much promises Immortals on par with gods, both on the back cover of the book and in the flavor text all throughout the book. So it fails at what it says it tries to do.

To be fair, the original Immortals rules for D&D were by Frank Metzner, and the revised were by Aaron Allston. Both perhaps legendary designers (if not immortal). And they were aiming at a setting which didn't have "Gods" to begin with, so they didn't have to try to position something between a "God" and a really tough dude.

I think I'll probably just try to convert those rules for what I'm after and find another home for this book. D+

Also note, this is one of those cases where the RPG.net descriptors don't really fit the numerical rating. I gave it a "2", because that's what I think it is out of 5, but it's definitely not "Sparse". The descriptor for "1", "I wasted my money" is closer to my opinion, but it's really not a 1. Actually probably closer to a 2.5 for Substance and Style, but definitely both below average so I'm rounding down.

(All the quotes are from the song "Princes of the Universe" by Queen. Which is from Highlander. Which is a different sort of immortal, but eh, I like the song. The whole soundtrack is good, actually. And don't try jumping off a mountain, magic or not..)