According to the article "Hey Dave, What's with the Castle - A Biography" by Dave Arneson in Space Gamer/Fantasy Gamer #85, TSR had published 2 DA modules in 1986 "6 more were planned". Only a total of 4 were published. We know that DA5 - City of Blackmoor was in the works. Rumours say it was even written, but never published. This still leaves a possible 3 unwritten modules in the series.

Dave Arneson also mentions a novel that was planned and then dropped in the same context, but it is not clear that he is talking about a Blackmoor novel. That does seem logical however.

Now, Aldarron did mention talk of a manuscript by Dave Arneson. I have speculated that this was what formed the basis of the 4 DA modules that were published and co-written by David J. Ritchie in 1986-87. Could the Blackmoor Chronicles have included material enough for another four modules? Could any of this be found in the sold on ebay last year?

In any case, what would have been their focus?

-Havard

I think the Iron Duke would need to be dealt with, more so than he was in DA1.

The Skandaharians hadn't been touched on, nor was any sort of clash with the Egg.

With the levels spread of the published modules reaching into Expert/Companion, I can imagine the last half reaching Master...dare I say even maybe Immortal level? (Maybe it was a n00b Immortal that dropped the ball in allowing Blackmoor to go ka-blooey!) :wink:

Those where, most likely, publication slots, not full concepts. That's the way TSR managed their publishing schedule.

Now, that Arneson had handed TSR way more material than got published, we know from the lawsuit papers.

I had a searchable PDF document a few years ago, but I don't seem to find it any more.
I think it said something about a few entire boxes of manuscripts that were delivered. ...Or do I have that from another source? Raaah.

I'll check over Christmas, and then send you what I have. ...If I have something. :x
Our secret project, we abandoned it two years ago, already, and my memory about its details grows dim. :oops:

Now, to give a more coherent answer than that one, what we all know anyway is that David Ritchie worked with different material than what he published.
We also know that Arneson handed several manuscripts to Tim Kask, which that one today classifies as unreadable, etc. and possibly everything he had concerning the BM campaign.

So, there should be more than enough machine-written draft papers, like the Thonia manuscript you pointed to that was sold on ebay.


I think, the next step would be to contact the collectors at the Acaeum, and to see what they own. My personal estimation, for several reasons,
is that there might be up to 10,000 manuscript pages on Blackmoor alone.

- BUT that doesn't mean that there were novel drafts, and on. The story about the production slots, a different animal. Goes into the entire Lorraine Williams debate,
and my view on that is that I concur with her reasoning about restructuring the product lineups.

:twisted: