Doomsday Rod and Egg of Coot

[Havard]

I got a little more info from Bruce regarding these. He said it never got to the stage where the developers would have gotten any materials and he is unaware of any documents floating around. I think he just had meant that the only thing that exists for these were campaign notes that Dave Arneson may or may not have had for his own campaign. He did say he had asked Dave about the Egg of Coot at one point, and got a typical evasive DM non-answer, e.g. "You know, it's one of those things..." So basically the outline we got reflects ideas that Dave had and there is no content out there from TSR that was written in preparation of publication.

Very cool! Thanks for sharing this Aldarron. Bruce also talks about this in his podcast interview.

I know why Dave didn't want to give answers about the exact nature of the Egg of Coot. We know from other tales that Dave only developed in detail the parts of his campaign world that the players were interested in exploring. We also know that besides a few unsuccessful adventures, the players tended to want to stay away from the lands of the Egg.

I dont think you could neccessarily derive from this that there was "no material by Dave out there". Even if Dave had not yet decided on the exact nature of the Egg of Coot, that doesnt mean he could not have written out notes of ideas on the lands of the Egg of Coot, his servitors etc. DA1 Adventures in Blackmoor does give details of some of the Eggs servants. The BMa modules could have seen a return of Abler the Mage and his Balrog Servant (redressed for BECMI) and other things that Arneson already had developed as we know from Greg and the other players. There could easily be material there that we are missing. I also suspect that Ritchie had much more material from Dave than what appeared in the DA modules.



-Havard