Hi Kent, i spread the news of the vol." among my friends and this is a first result:

Beyond this point be dragons «  La tana dello sciamano

(sorry it's in italian)

ciaooo

Just finished book 2 and thoroughly enjoyed it. (Left a positive review on Amazon fwiw!!)

Thanks again,
Carl

Hi everybody, after several grueling attempts and six drafts I have finally managed to create a final draft for HAWK & MOOR Book III:  Lands and Worlds Afar.  

This one covers 1973-1975, and has lots of details on:  the Tomb of Horrors, the Temple of Elemental Evil, Castle Greyhawk, Dungeonland, the Temple of the Frog, and other settings; lots of details on the origins of monsters such as the otyugh, roper, ixitxachitl, umber hulk and owlbear; fun dungeon stories concerning Robilar, Tenser, Terik, Mordenkainen, Bigby, Erac's Cousin, Ayelerach, Lidabmob etc.; the saga of the development and publication of Supplement I (Greyhawk) and Supplement II (Blackmoor), and much more.  422 footnotes at the moment and more to come.

As an ebook it will be up on Amazon later tonight or tomorrow, for $3.99.  If you would like a free .pdf review copy as an Acaeum member, please PM me here or e-mail me at shadowed (underscore) sky (at) hotmail (dot) com before June 13th.  I will post the Amazon link later when it's up.

Also, now that the planned trilogy is complete at about 600 pages, I'm going to be taking a breather before moving on to Book IV (1976-1977).  Let me know if you're interested in seeing these in a particular format outside of Amazon ... Lulu, CreateSpace, drivethrurpg, epub or what-have-you.  I'm gauging relative interest on alternate formats and would like to know where to go next.

Thanks in advance for any comments, edits, info or reviews, hope you're all enjoying the series  

rredmond wrote in Hawk & Moor: A new D&D book and request for beta readers:Hey Kent,

Great stuff!! Do you need help with editing and proofing any more?
You sound like you are cooking along just fine, but wanted to check.

Be well! And keep up the excellent work!!
--Ron--

Hi there Ron, good to hear from you     I don't think I need much of an edit on this one, as the scarcity of sources plaguing Books I & II isn't quite so bad for this time period.  Anyone who has extra info or clarifications for Greyhawk or Blackmoor stories however is more than welcome to correct my sources or to provide more info.  This is mostly just a read for fun.  Glad you're enjoying so far!

Here's the Amazon link:
Amazon.com: HAWK & MOOR - The Golden Age of Fantasy Role-Playing Games: Book 3 - Lands and Worlds Afar eBook: Kent David Kelly: Kindle Store



I'll try to offer Books I-III free from time to time when I can.  Also, to those who don't have e-readers remember that you can install Kindle software on your home computer too.

Enjoy!

gyg wrote in Hawk & Moor: A new D&D book and request for beta readers:Excellent, just picked it up from Amazon on the kindle.

Guess I could have got it for free from Kent but what can I say, I think I probably owe you four bucks for the reading pleasure I've had thus far!
Carl

Thank you Carl, I appreciate it!  I'm probably going to put up some more free content in the form of a blog, but that's still being worked out.  Stay tuned.

darkseraphim wrote in Hawk & Moor: A new D&D book and request for beta readers:Last but not least, I've started a dual-purpose blog entitled Hawk & Moor.  The blog will be split between DM workshop materials for OSR game masters in support of my Castle Oldskull D&D supplements, and H&M history updates, particularly highly visual stories that are hard to share effectively in text.  Click here for the first history bit, which shows some materials relating to the movie The Strangler of Blackmoor Castle, which appears to be one of Dave Arneson's inspirations for the castle and dungeons.

HAWK & MOOR - Swords & Sorcery and Old School RPGs: The Strangler of Blackmoor Castle

Personally, I'm always glad to see people doing more to promote the history of the game, so thanks!

I'm a bit curious though about how this particular movie "appears to be" one of the inspirations for Arneson's castle and dungeons. This comes up periodically, e.g.:

The Piazza • View topic - [movie] Strangler of Blackmoor Castle
Havards Blackmoor Blog: Strangler of Blackmoor Castle

You can read a few assesments there from people who have watched the film and compared it to Blackmoor. But I'm not aware that there is actually any evidence that Arneson knew this 1960s German slasher film. Is there in fact such evidence, or is this just a "who knows but maybe..."?

Hi all, the rough draft for Hawk & Moor Book IV is coming along nicely.  I'm currently exploring a few interesting events in 1976 and 1977, such as the Saul Zaentz / Tolkien Enterprises cease and desist letter timing seeming to coincide with the delays in the release of the Monster Manual.  (Did they need to scrub Hobbits and Nazgul out of the MM draft, or were the delays solely caused by printing and binding and order volume issues?)

I'm also tentatively developing a theme where Wee Warriors and Judges Guild basically showed TSR what DMs really wanted in 1976 and into 1977, with Palace of the Vampire Queen and Invincible Overlord representing pre-packaged settings while TSR was pushing do-it-yourself products such as the Monster & Treasure Assortments and Dungeon Geomorphs.  Gygax would then be compelled by the market preference to experiment with dungeon modules in the spring and summer of 1978, and the success of the G series meant that TSR never really looked back at the less-marketable DIY approach very seriously again.

Into all of that I'll be weaving stories of Dave Arneson's arrival, conflicts and departure; Arneson's advocating non-TSR product licensing; the Judges Guild saga; the planning and rise of The Dragon; the "science fantasy" trio of Metamorphosis Alpha, Barrier Peaks and City of the Gods; the curious similarities between Robilar's "orb of clerics" and the yellow skull artifact in T1-4; Sutherland, Wham and Trampier; the writing of the Monster Manual; Tsojconth; more Ultraman and Japanese movie links to the rust monster-type toys which turned into D&D monsters; the Advanced-Basic split and lapsing of OD&D; and of course the story of Dr. Holmes and the creation of the Basic Set.  All of that is taking a long time, and I may end up writing two 200-ish page books detailing 1976 and 1977 separately.

I've also published extensive updates to Books I, II and III, featuring more research focused on things like Blackmoor, Tekumel, Star Probe, and the video interviews conducted by Tim Kask, Rob Kuntz and others.  I did a lot of research on the true history of the "Crazy House" Sanitarium and its educational program under Doctor Mary E. Pogue, which revealed some interesting tangents.  And of course I added some more dungeon exploration stories for 1972-1975.  As a result of these improvements and a dozen other mini-research projects, the book footnote counts have been upped to 280 for Book I (formerly 210), 275 for Book II (formerly 205) and 465 for Book III (formerly 420).  I think the current trilogy word count is about 179,000 up from 160,000.  Thank you to those who have suggested additional research!  I'm sure the finalization of Book IV will result in more refinements to Books I-III which will make them even bigger.

Print versions for I-III will probably be available around October depending on how busy life and career are.  I need to travel for work this fall but I don't yet know how much.

Another interesting bit:  I've been poking around in copyright records looking for copyright registration dates for various things.  Please note that registration dates can vary significantly from publication and/or widespread distribution dates, but I thought collectors and researchers might find some of these interesting:

May 15, 1971:  Lowry's copyright registration for Alexander the Great, Dunkirk and Chainmail (which was released a couple months prior).
January 30, 1974:  Date retroactively applied to original Dungeons & Dragons boxed set (registration A760448) which appears in the Library of Congress July-December 1976 Catalog of Copyright Entries.  A fair reason to call January 30, 2014 the 40th Anniversary of D&D?
June 1, 1974:  Tricolor.
January 15, 1975:  Supplement I, Greyhawk.
February 10, 1975:  3rd Edition (TSR version) of Chainmail.
July 1, 1975:  War of Wizards.
July 1, 1975:  Boot Hill.
August 1, 1975:  Empire of the Petal Throne.
August 15, 1975:  Supplement II, Blackmoor.  Very optimistic early-on registration, since the editing challenges resulted in it being published toward the end of the year.
January 15, 1976:  Supplement III, Eldritch Wizardry.  Probably very early registration while the contents were first being conceived?  Later entries show April 27, which may coincide with getting the first prints back from the printers.  April 27 was during the work week.
March 31, 1976:  Little Big Horn (delayed).
July 21, 1976:  Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes.
July 31, 1976:  William the Conqueror, 1066.
August 15 & August 31, 1976:  Swords & Spells.
August 31, 1976:  Lankhmar (boardgame).
December 1, 1976:  Metamorphosis Alpha.
February 15, 1977:  Monster & Treasure Assortment Set One.  Also Set Two.
April 25, 1977:  TSR-brand Character Record Sheets.
April 30, 1977:  Tegel Manor (Judges Guild).
July 10, 1977:  The Basic Set.  Zenopus reported on this quite some time ago!
July 12, 1977:  Outdoor Geomorphs Set One, Walled City.
July 20, 1977:  Traveller.
September 1, 1977:  Wilderlands of High Fantasy (Judges Guild).
September 21, 1977:  Dungeon Geomorphs Set Two.  Also Set Three.  I'm speculating that Set Three was available in September and Set Two earlier, but still looking into it.  There's also the Lizard Man / Wizard logo thing to consider.
November 1, 1977:  Campaign Hexagon System (Judges Guild).
January 24, 1978:  Gamma World.
(Also, the 1976 Strategic Reviews and all 1976-1977 issues of The Dragon correspond to dates for the first day of each respective month of release, although as periodicals that is not surprising.)

There's lots more registrations for 1978 onward which I haven't gone through in detail yet.  I may also do this for 1973 novels like Changeling Earth to see if they were published early in the year (hinting Gary might have read them while working on the second draft of D&D), but that's a back-burner thing.

The H&M project continues, I'm not just sitting around but I'm very bogged down for now.  As always, thank you for your encouragement, well wishes, reviews and mentions!  It's all appreciated and keeps me going.

Best,
Kent

sauromatian wrote in Hawk & Moor: A new D&D book and request for beta readers:

increment wrote in Hawk & Moor: A new D&D book and request for beta readers: But I'm not aware that there is actually any evidence that Arneson knew this 1960s German slasher film. Is there in fact such evidence, or is this just a "who knows but maybe..."?

I'd have to take issue with that requirement. We're talking about historical analysis, yes, so it would be nice to have something fact-based to go on. But we're also talking about artistic inspiration, something for which concrete fact & authors' claims just aren't suitable. A few principles:

1. Authors have a profound disincentive to honestly describe their influences, as it may lead to accusations of unoriginality.
2. How is one supposed to keep track of creative inspiration? Some of it may be coming from your subconscious mind, & you just don't know all the inner workings of your own mind. In the example of Arneson, he may have had a conscious agenda to copy Blackmoor Castle from a movie, or he may have seen it & forgotten about it consciously & drew up the details later without realizing their source.
3. If an author is too direct in explaining influences, one of the principles of storytelling is violated: show, don't tell. When a joke is analyzed, it is no longer funny; when a magic trick is explained, it no longer seems magical. If I'm trying to create a mood by subtly introducing an element that pokes the audience in some way without their realizing it, I'm not going to blow the whole thing in an interview later.

In summation, beware the fate of Margaret Mead.

Requirement? Well, I think different strengths of claims have different requirements of proof, yes. If you make roughly the claim "Arneson drew on the film 'The Strangler of Castle Blackmoor' for his Blackmoor setting," that has a different requirement, let's say, than making the lesser claim, "the film 'The Strangler of Castle Blackmoor' preceded Blackmoor and it's possible Arneson saw it." And there are shades of grey between.

So what was said above? The post reads that the film "appears to be one of Dave Arneson's inspirations for the castle and dungeons." The blog post goes on to say that it "appears" to be "one of the two films that significantly inspired him." The blog post then says of the author of the movie script, "to my mind he is the true grandfather of the dungeons of Castle Blackmoor." I read those (especially the last) as a much stronger statement than "maybe," and yes in my own work I would require a greater level of proof before making such statements.

As I pointed out, this question has come up before, and people who have watched the film and looked at the Blackmoor setting in the past concluded there seems to be little tangible connection - beyond the name. Of course, as you say, he might have incorporated the name without even remembering the film - which he might have seen, or just seen an advertisement for, or whatever. And as you say, no one should rule out a possible connection along those lines. But the name itself is a complicated question. When Arneson first wrote about Blackmoor in May 1971, he called it "the Black Moors." It was not until later that we see the contraction "Blackmoor" - even the DB #13 article still calls it "Black Moor." Now does this rule out any connection with the name of this film? Of course not. But the fact that the name morphed into the same form as that of the film over time does not fill me with confidence in some direct initial inspiration. There are plenty of other, equally plausible ways that the term Blackmoor and the idea of dungeons could have ended up on Arneson's table. As far as I know, we lack any evidence to single out one for special favoritism.

I take your advice to heart, but please do take mine too - beware a return to the dark ages of conjecture, where we jump the rails of history and mix it up with all sorts of speculation. I think folklore and speculation are both valuable, but we need to be careful to keep them cordoned off from what we present as historical facts or even probabilities.

sauromatian wrote in Hawk & Moor: A new D&D book and request for beta readers:The choice is either to deal with the question of creative influences, or to not deal with creative influences at all. If the former, then we are inevitably in the realm of speculation.

I am fine with speculation, about creative influences or other subjects, provided it is identified as speculation. My question (and it was a question) above was whether or not new evidence had come to light that elevated this above the level of speculation, given the language seemed to express confidence in this influence. There are cases where influence is a certainty - we know how strongly Gor influenced the Blackmoor setting, say, from a great many pieces of contemporary evidence, and I'm not aware Arneson ever attempt to mislead us about it. From what I have heard to date, there are not comparable grounds to promote this film as anything but a "maybe." If all the blog post had said was "Arneson may have been influenced by..." I would not have poked into this thread. Stating that the screenwriter of the film was the grandfather of the dungeons of Blackmoor... well, that will provoke me to ask a question, and yes, on the basis of the answer, we can all draw our own conclusions.