Mr Welch's Video on DA4 Duchy of Ten

[Havard]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOBkLC__xaY


The last of Mr Welch's videos detailing the DA series. Mr Welch says Zeb Cook got the credits for the monsters, but it is only the Soul Eater while the other monsters were taken from the Creature Crucible and credited to those authors. Sadly, no specific credits on which designers designed which monsters which I don't believe the Creature Crucible go into either.

-Havard

[Havard]

A bit of discussion between me and Mr Welch at his youtube channel:

Havard:
Another great video! Although Dave Arneson wasn't consulted on this module, I think the "sourcebook" bits of these lands were based on Dave's notes. The Afridhi did appear in his campaign according to his players as did the Afridhi Queen, Toska Rusa. Zeb Cook was only credited with creating the Soul Eater monster for this module, while other monsters were snatched from the Creature Catalog (Various designers).

Mr Welch:
Going off the sources I had they indicated that Dave had been forced out before the module was started. They took the names from his notes but it wasn't what he had in vision. Granted there's a lot of contradictory information regarding what was going on in TSR in the mid-80s and a lot of the people that were there look back at that time through the filter of hating Lorraine Williams. Finding an unbiased source of what was going on in that timeline is extremely difficult

Havard:
@Mr. Welch Dave Arneson left TSR in 1977. I think the DA modules came out at a "detente" period between TSR and Dave. Gary had left TSR in 1985 and the Blumes were also gone. Some sources say Gary was the one who had reached out to Dave in order to release the modules, but I think this happened on Harold Johnson's watch. Bruce Heard was not yet Product Manager of the Classic D&D line. I found some material suggesting that Lorraine Williams ended the cooperation with Dave before DA4 was finalized: http://blackmoormystara.blogspot.com/20 ... -line.html

But yes, it is difficult to evaluate sources. Dave Arneson had previously talked about releasing 12 modules for Blackmoor via Mayfair Games, but he may have realized that TSR had claim to the Blackmoor IP.

Exactly what Dave would have had in mind for the Duchy of Ten is difficult to say, but if you look at the FFC, the Duchy of Ten is controlled by someone called the Ran of Ah'Foo (puns galore!) who was a former servant of the Egg of Coot. I think a true Dave Arneson variant of the Duchy of Ten might have included those elements

-Havard