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+--- Thread: City of the Gods 1979 Edition? (/showthread.php?tid=1581)
City of the Gods 1979 Edition? - Havard - 09-29-2013
In his interview in Space Gamer #21, Dave Arneson mentions several products he is currently working on, including the Island of the Wolf, which is being discussed elsewhere.
Another RPG adventure Arneson mentions in the same interview is the City of the Gods, another D&D "playing aid" that is intended to be published by the Judges Guild. The City of the Gods was of course published much later, in 1987 with the module DA3. Still, I find it interesting that Arneson was working on this module as early as the 1970s. Having already published the Temple of the Frog (Supplement II version) and the First Fantasy Campaign, it seems like he always considered the City of the Gods to be the third installment of the Blackmoor line.
The City of the Gods was already mentioned in the FFC, but it appeared late in the original campaign, a place where many PCs lost their lives.
This IMO goes further to suggest that Dave Ritchie had quite a bit of material to work on when he was adapting Arneson's notes into the final version of the City of the Gods. Arneson did express reservations towards the DA4 The Duchy of Ten, but made no such objections towards the previous three modules. This suggests that the final version would not be very different from how Arneson had envisioned it. Still, it would have been interesting to see what the 1970s version of the City of the Gods may have looked like. Some possible hints might be found in Rob Kuntz' accounts of the game that Arneson refreed for him and Gary Gygax back in 1976.
-Havard
Re: City of the Gods 1979 Edition? - Falconer - 07-02-2014
Havard Wrote:Arneson did express reservations towards the DA4 The Duchy of Ten, but made no such objections towards the previous three modules.Here is an old discussion we had of the City of the Gods, and Arneson chimed in with:
Quote:Well he didn't consult me a lot. Ae least it was beter than Duchy Of Tehn (See the Zeigisit one for a better treatment there.) We had passkeys, robots, ray gun, holographs and the ;ile. As far as the building go they were from the World's Fair in Seattle, I got a bunch, were futurist looking soo....Any idea what it means, “he [David J. Ritchie] didn't consult me a lot”? At best, Ritchie had an Arneson manuscript to work from, and just didn’t ask any questions and fleshed it out as he saw fit; at worst, he wrote it from whole cloth, knowing only the basic premise.
The whole idea of a spaceship craft was pretty well known in the Sci-Fantasy world so I really cannot point at one inspiration.
As an aside, did you notice the spelling Tehn — reminiscent of Greyhawk’s Tenh? And, was a Zeitgeist equivalent of DA4 indeed ever published?
Re: City of the Gods 1979 Edition? - Havard - 07-08-2014
Falconer Wrote:Havard Wrote:Arneson did express reservations towards the DA4 The Duchy of Ten, but made no such objections towards the previous three modules.Here is an old discussion we had of the City of the Gods, and Arneson chimed in with:
Quote:Well he didn't consult me a lot. Ae least it was beter than Duchy Of Tehn (See the Zeigisit one for a better treatment there.) We had passkeys, robots, ray gun, holographs and the ;ile. As far as the building go they were from the World's Fair in Seattle, I got a bunch, were futurist looking soo....Any idea what it means, “he [David J. Ritchie] didn't consult me a lot”? At best, Ritchie had an Arneson manuscript to work from, and just didn’t ask any questions and fleshed it out as he saw fit; at worst, he wrote it from whole cloth, knowing only the basic premise.
The whole idea of a spaceship craft was pretty well known in the Sci-Fantasy world so I really cannot point at one inspiration.
I'm not really sure what to make of that quote. There was definitely a big difference between DA4 Duchy of Ten and the previous three.
Note that DA3 City of the Gods not only features the Valley of the Ancients and the City of the Gods itself, but also the journey across Eastern Hak, bordering onto Thonian territory and introducing various Peshwah, Brother Richard, Bozero and others.
Looking at Supp II, it seems that Dave Arneson originally had St Stephen working with the Aliens from the City of the Gods, but whether he changed this himself (possibly in game with Rocheford) or whether this was something done by Ritchie we will never know.
Quote:As an aside, did you notice the spelling Tehn — reminiscent of Greyhawk’s Tenh? And, was a Zeitgeist equivalent of DA4 indeed ever published?
I always belived that Ten/Tehn/Tenh came from the Castles & Crusades Society somehow, but OTOH it is not featured on the maps recently revealed of the Great Kingdom so perhaps it was Dave Arneson's invention afterall?
ZGG never published a separate book detailing the Duchy of Ten or the events of DA4, but much information from DA4 did find its way into the hardback campaign book. Here are some of my speculations on what a true Dave Arneson version of the Duchy of Ten may have looked like.
-Havard