Adventures in Fantasy as a Blackmoor Setting Resource?

[finarvyn]

wasn't AiF precisely Arneson's step away from Blackmoor, rather than an addition?

This is a tricky one, as we're trying to see inside Dave's head. I don't think he talked much about AiF and his intentions so we'd have to make guesses.

However, let's consider Gary as an example. When Gary was forced out of TSR, his first action was pretty much to create a "new D&D" that had many of the same design ideas but some new ones. TSR shot it down. Gary had to go even farther away from D&D before he could publish game stuff. (The exception here would be his novels, where he wrote about things which were closer to his own Greyhawk than the published material.)

It's possible that Dave had to move away from the traditional D&D rules becasue of TSR, but if his own campaign didn't quite match D&D anyway he might have drifted toward his own roots. So my speculation would be that AiF represents a trend toward what he really wanted D&D to be anyway, and the game that he might have written if done without Gary. (I seem to recall somewhere that Michael Mornard had commented about AiF being very similar to Dave's home game. I assume he meant in terms of rules, but it might have been setting as well.)

Anyway, great discussion. Sorry for not stirring the pot more; I'll try to get banned another time. :lol: