undead ninja terrorize Blackmoor seas!

[aldarron]

Related to the tank story, two seperate quotes by Arneson suggest something very interesting...


"Then the raid on the French Island held by the Japanese. That's where Greg got his tank that rests in front of his castle, (Long out of fuel and ammo, but impressive!) Than there was the axis undead submarine, and a counter raid to knock out their transporter hmm we never finished that one, hmmm. Awwhh those were the days."
and
"Still have all those Japanese on the submarine somewhere. I must clean up that loose end someday. They knew about sword fighting and hand-t-hand combat. Not to mention that ninja stuff."

http://odd74.proboards.com/index.cgi?ac ... 988&page=1

[finarvyn]

Hmmm. I need to read my own boards more carefully. Nice find!

[Havard]

Dan, this is scary. Just a few days ago, I realized that there were many posts Arneson had made on Fin's forum that I had never read, especially those made outside the Blackmoor forum, and here you are posting tidbits!

I think I would change this considerably if I were to use it in a game today though. For instance, I might change them from WWII Japanese to some of St Stephen's agents in some submercile vessel.

-Havard

[aldarron]

Dan, this is scary. Just a few days ago, I realized that there were many posts Arneson had made on Fin's forum that I had never read, especially those made outside the Blackmoor forum, and here you are posting tidbits!

Those posts Dave made are really terrific, and taken together paint a very informative picture. I referred to them a lot when I was writing D@D. I had only been on Fins forum a couple months when Dave passed and was completely unaware that he was so ill or I would have been a bit bolder asking him questions. At the time I was reading AiF and was going to ask him if I could send it to him to have it signed....

For whatever reason, Dave had two accounts there "Blackmoor" and "Darneson"

I think I would change this considerably if I were to use it in a game today though. For instance, I might change them from WWII Japanese to some of St Stephen's agents in some submercile vessel.

-Havard

Myself, I'd leave it as Japanese but not give much in the way of clues to players. These guys would be speaking a completely foreign language and not have anything that the characters would recognize or know about.

[finarvyn]

For whatever reason, Dave had two accounts there "Blackmoor" and "Darneson"

I believe he told me at one point that he had forgotten his login. My admin powers on the proboards board used to be that I could go and look at passwords and edit them, but that ability had gone away and so I couldn't help him so he had to start over. I know that I did put in avatars and built a signature for him. 8)

[Havard]

Myself, I'd leave it as Japanese but not give much in the way of clues to players. These guys would be speaking a completely foreign language and not have anything that the characters would recognize or know about.

It depends on the groups tolerance for cheese elements. In my group, once the players started sensing something like this was up, they would stop taking the setting seriously. Which is why I tone down even the sci fi aspects of the setting and leave any R/W connections completely out of it. I remember that we did this kind of stuff in my first gaming group though, with a platoon of Vietnam Veterans, ripped from the movie Platoon, appearing in the Forgotten Realms, after a discussion we had about whether modern firearms would cause 1d20 in damage or something else *lol*.

OTOH my Blackmoor is part of the Mystara continuum which has a parallell world called LaTerre based on Clark Ashton Smith's visions, so not all RW elements need to be tossed out.

-Havard

[aldarron]

Cheesey? I'm thinking that depends on the presentation. Ever seen the "Heavy Metal" animated movie? There's a scene with undead WWII pilots that could be great inspiration for the Japanese sub.
OTOH, you name it from Blackmoor or any fantasy game, and it can be easily done as something cheesy. Elves for example - aren't they supposed to be Santas helpers?