10-03-2016, 09:18 PM
Havard Wrote:Officialness aside, do you have any further ideas for adapting N3 to Blackmoor? Are any of the other modules in the N series suitable for our favorite setting?
Yes, but weren't there contractual disputes between then-new head of TSR, Lorraine Williams, and Arneson - the same that then hindered the release of DA 5?
It's not unreasonable to assume a scenario where the DA series would have been discontinued after DA 3. Also, wasn't 1986 the year Mr Arneson and MAR Barker teamed up to create another gaming-related company (whose name now escapes me)?
The reason why I first got interested in the module was, of course, the rather elaborated backstory - in my German edition, it's three letter-sized (larger than DIN A4) pages taking great care in introducing a setting... That just kind of sounds like Blackmoor. Either that's a really uncanny amount of coincidences... Or, this was somehow based around Blackmoor, whether based on an in-house outline for a later DA module, or simply as a piece that was inspired by it.
You might know that I classify the different stages of Arneson's home game as the Svenny Campaign (-1974), the Robilar Campaign (-1976), the Ungulian Campaign (-1982), and the later Sol Campaign ( until ~1994). I could perfectly see that one be part of the Ungulian campaign, perhaps set in the South-Eastern kingdom, near the Abbeys, or the Stormkillers, with the emphasis on courtly intrigue, and the renewed importance of the clergy.
At the same time, I am completely aware that this happened in 1986. This means bascially two things: First, chivalric fantasy was at its height within the roleplaying genre; so, certain topics were quite common, from DragonWarriors, to Dragonlance. Bourne's own first RPG credit is for "Throne of Evil", a Mayfair adventure set in medieval England. - Second, this is the year that many regular writers left TSR, and that many second-level tier guys stepped up - and being a second-level, in that context, meant that knew D&D a whole lot, and, in your writing, didn't wander away too much from the known formula. So, to assume that Stephen Bourne knew and liked the works of Dave Arneson, perhaps even knew DA in person, and had played with him - not entirely out of the plausible. It might be fully possible that he was just a fan, or unconsciously copied the same basics. - Mind you, too, the similarity of the generic X-series modules was wanted by the publisher!
Now, what makes me somewhat suspicious that these similarities are entirely coincidental is this other module Bourne wrote, his last RPG credit for TSR:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_of_Ancient_Glory
Again, a slightly Blackmoor-y story in a slightly Blackmoor-y environment. Many, many coincidences, truly...