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 Post subject: More specuations on the lisence
PostPosted: Feb 14, 2010 6:34 am 
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Lord of the Regency Council
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PostPosted: Feb 14, 2010 8:20 am 
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Maybe research into the Ravenloft licence can tell you why these elements were not included.

Ravenloft (like Spelljammer and Planescape) was a transitive campaign setting, with links to multiple other campaign settings. I don't know them all (having never played it), but I do know there was a major link to Dragonlance via Lord Soth and recently found out (via The Piazza) that they have a Mystara-connected NPC there.

So if you licence Ravenloft "as is" you give people secondary access to other settings. I think that the non-RL stuff might well have been pulled in the 3e RL licence.

If I am correct, and I might not be, the elements "missing" from the Blackmoor licence might be elements of Mystara and/or Greyhawk. (You would probably know this better than me.)

I know that you, personally, think of Blackmoor as "Mystara's past", but if a company wanted to buy Blackmoor under that basis, they really should be paying to use both settings.

I think the same applies to any Blackmoor/Wilderlands connnections. If Blackmoor was actually owned by Dave Arneson, I'm sure he would have sat down and thrashed out some sort of cross-setting licenece that allowed both Blackmoor and Wilderlands to make limited use of each other's intellectual property. But with a big company on one end - one that was not especially keen to bring back Blackmoor - and a tiny company on the other end, I can see why this cross-setting licence never happened. And I can't see anyone wanting to do it in the future. (Not unless Wizards of the Coast bought out Judges Guild and wanted to make a grognoid-friendly setting for 4e. Even then, I think the non-WotC Blackmoor means that it would need to wait for 5e.)

I've got to say that I think that the politics behind Blackmoor really seem to have held the setting back. If things had been different, the First Fantasy Campaign and something like the ZGG line, would have been published as OD&D or perhaps AD&D products by TSR and the 3e product line would have been an evolution of earlier work, rather than the first chance to get some of the stuff out there.

If there was an OD&D Blackmoor, folllowed by a 1e Blackmoor, 2e Blackmoor, 3e Blackmoor and 4e Blackmoor, it would be really interesting to see how the world fitted in with those different rules.

And if the breaks had been taken off of Blackmoor before the ZGG licence, there might have been more time for Dave Arneson to do world building and make something of the same magnitude as Oerth.

I really do not like all these legal twists and turns because, while they make commercial publishing posible, they really do seem to hold back a number of "inactive" D&D settings.

I'll be interested to see what your thoughts on Ravenloft crossover elements are.

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PostPosted: Feb 14, 2010 11:22 am 
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Lord of the Regency Council
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PostPosted: Feb 14, 2010 12:02 pm 
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PostPosted: Feb 14, 2010 12:53 pm 
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