The NWFP Connection

[gsvenson]

I stand corrected. My comments were based upon second hand information.

[Havard]

Was just re reading this Ciro Allessandro Sacco interview with Dave http://www.thekyngdoms.com/forums/viewt ... ?f=23&t=35

He says the DA series was "heavily edited" and "For the first four modules he (Ritchie) was the editor. The work that he did was never passed back to me for my approval. Not to criticize David, but there were changes made that I did not like."

That still leaves a lot of questions regarding what Dave intended or what his ideas were for the series. For me, in some ways it doesn't matter because I'd prefer the FFC approach to Blackmoor regardless of who was behind the approach taken in later material.

I thought I had seen that somewhere. The changes made Arneson refers to can only be the removal of Ran as the leader of the Duchy and the Afridhi taking over that realm. As we know the Afridhi were not Ritchie's creation, so that is the only change I can think of that Dave would have had an opinion of. Dustin stated somewhere else that even though Arneson disliked this change, he decided to use that in the D20 version as well since this would have been established by the fans at this point.

-Havard

[aldarron]

depends on what material Dave had in mind/submitted for the project in the first place. Changes could refer to all kinds of things including added material.

[Havard]

depends on what material Dave had in mind/submitted for the project in the first place. Changes could refer to all kinds of things including added material.

Yeah, you are right. These are just speculations. The disappearance of Ran without any explanation to what happened to him is just the biggest change from any earlier material along with the fact that Ten is no longer an independent realm, but rather a conquered nation.

Beyond that surprisingly little information on the Duchy of Ten is provided in a module called The Duchy of Ten, as most of the background information deals with the Afridhi conquerors rather than the subjugated nation.

-Havard

[aldarron]

Just to thow a little more fuel on the fire, I just noticed thhis response Dave gave in Havards David Ritchie thread on ODD74:

He had copies of my books, with some notes. And we did talk a couple of times.

Dave Arneson
"Dark Lord of Gaming"

[Havard]

Arneson's books?

Supp II and the FFC, or something else? 8)

-Havard

[aldarron]

Good question. Could it mean "manuscritps" or drafts? Hadn't really thought about it, but "books" really does sound like a reference to Supp II and FFC. Well, that would leave only "some notes" and a couple (presumably in depth) conversations as Arneson's contribution to the DA series. Which would fit with what I was saying before but I would have hoped he had more say than that.

[Havard]

Some deeper analysis:

DA1 - Adventures in Blackmoor.
The section describing Mystara's history is Ritchie's work. Large parts of the rest can be derived from the FFC. However, the large NPC section includes characters based on original players, like Mello, Debelfry, Robert the Bald etc who were not included in the FFC. These must have come from somewhere. The NPC section is also a source of alot of setting info, actually.

DA2 - Temple of the Frog.
This module is based heavily on Supp II.

DA3 - City of the Gods.
Originally, I thought this was mainly Ritchie, deriving ideas from Temple of the Frog. However, it shows more similarities to RJK's descriptions of Arneson's original CotG to simply have been based on that. Some of the creatures, robots etc could also be from Arneson.

DA4 - Duchy of Ten
Much of this book focuses on the Afridhi, which we now know comes from Arneson's original campaign. Ritchie would have had to have manuscripts from Dave on this.

DA5 - City of Blackmoor
This book was never published, but from our previous discussions, it is easy to imagin that this book would have been based on information in the FFC, such as the Dungeons, Blackmoor Town and Blackmoor Castle.


I think Arneson's statement that Ritchie had access to his books and some notes could be a sign of Arneson's humble nature. Some notes must have been more extensive than that. Also, it is interesting that large parts of the FFC were not replicated in any of the DA modules. Why were characters like Ran, the Egg of Coot, the Gin of Salik etc not included? Could it be that Ritchie had such a large number of NPCs to choose between that he simply did not have the space to include all?

-Havard

[aldarron]

Nice Havard. It wouldn't surprise me if youferret out some more details along these lines.

I did finally buy DA1 a few months back, and read through it (mostly). My sense of it is about what you said. The characters, at least the ones based on Blackmoor PC's, really struck me most as coming from Arneson. I thought the Blackmoor comeback inn was probably mostly his too. I suspect that Ran of an Foo and some of the other FFC Characters didn't get featured because the people behind them didn't play with Dave anymore (or very long?) and his campaign had long since moved past them. Just guessing.

Haven't read duchy of Ten (I think I have the pdf) but Ritchie wouldn't necessarily have had to have vrey extensive notes on the Afridhi. I'm sure he could have expanded from a couple paragraphs. I don't know either way of course, just don't want to draw too strong a conclusion until we have more to go on.

[Havard]

Nice Havard. It wouldn't surprise me if youferret out some more details along these lines.

I did finally buy DA1 a few months back, and read through it (mostly). My sense of it is about what you said. The characters, at least the ones based on Blackmoor PC's, really struck me most as coming from Arneson. I thought the Blackmoor comeback inn was probably mostly his too. I suspect that Ran of an Foo and some of the other FFC Characters didn't get featured because the people behind them didn't play with Dave anymore (or very long?) and his campaign had long since moved past them. Just guessing.

Thanks! Some characters we know must have come from Arneson, even if they were not in the FFC. I have been able to identify some of them, but I suspect even more of the characters could be based on characters from the campaign, even if it is hard to confirm now.

The fact that Arneson ran multiple parallel campaigns means that no player can even have had a complete overview of the events that took place.

Haven't read duchy of Ten (I think I have the pdf) but Ritchie wouldn't necessarily have had to have vrey extensive notes on the Afridhi. I'm sure he could have expanded from a couple paragraphs. I don't know either way of course, just don't want to draw too strong a conclusion until we have more to go on.

Ritchie probably elaborated, but as long as Arneson provided the essence of what the campaign elements were all about, that is what any good writer can do.

As you say, it would probably be a bad idea to draw too strong conclusions about any of these things at this point. My main point in the previous post though, is that Ritchie must have had rather extensive notes beyond what is found in the FFC and SuppII, since so much of the DA module material can be traced back to the original campaign without being mentioned in either of those books.

Specifics include:
Characters: Toska Rusa, Mello, Elven Prince, Robert the Bald, Iron Duke, Debelfry
City of the Gods
Afridhi

-Havard