11-25-2018, 04:50 AM
EDIT: Sorry, Havard, had not seen your answer. 
This is actually why I am cautious with the frog references: "Tsathoggua", from Clark Ashton Smith's Hyperborean stories, is the same motif, but a different tradition.
The company Frog God Games is the successor to Necromancer Games, and the two head designers usually signed their works and posted on the internet as "Orcus" and "Tsathoggua". So, while they obviously know about Arneson, I don't think there is a relation, like, at all. Frog monsters have been among the stock of 20th century fantasy tropes, the same way, say, that elves, angels, and sinking landmasses are characteristic to Tolkien, but necessarily signs for a reception of his works.
With the adventures, it could be a different thing - but I have to confess that I don't know. For some reason, I have always been more of a DA3 and DA4 guy than a DA2 guy, so I couldn't spot all too many details when looking through those titles, one by one. Broad referefences, yes, but in-detail hommages, hmmm.
Another adventure that we could perhaps add to the Blackmoor apocrypha/hommages is Ari Marmell's "The Doom of Listonshire", which he released under the aforementioned Necromancer Games' banner. It's one of the very best adventures I've ever run, trumping even a couple of the classics, as far as I'm concerned. And the setting is very, very Blackmoor-ish - not so much "Blackmoor, the kingdom", as much as fitting for for MMRPG and the Thonian Rand.
- Yet, Ari, who even had written for the BM d20 line, back in the day, told me - I think on Facebook - that he had not consciously written the adventure as a fit for BM. So, it's probably a real coincidence: Dark, Anglo-Saxon, high medieval fantasy is kind of his genre, and he would have had no reason to lie. The same way that, say, much of Tad Williams' fantasy books share many elements with BM, without there being a connection.
Yaztromo Wrote:Just a passing mention about the fact that there is a (Old School) RPG publisher that is called Frog God Games!
https://froggodgames.com/frogs/frog-crew/
This is actually why I am cautious with the frog references: "Tsathoggua", from Clark Ashton Smith's Hyperborean stories, is the same motif, but a different tradition.
The company Frog God Games is the successor to Necromancer Games, and the two head designers usually signed their works and posted on the internet as "Orcus" and "Tsathoggua". So, while they obviously know about Arneson, I don't think there is a relation, like, at all. Frog monsters have been among the stock of 20th century fantasy tropes, the same way, say, that elves, angels, and sinking landmasses are characteristic to Tolkien, but necessarily signs for a reception of his works.
With the adventures, it could be a different thing - but I have to confess that I don't know. For some reason, I have always been more of a DA3 and DA4 guy than a DA2 guy, so I couldn't spot all too many details when looking through those titles, one by one.
Broad referefences, yes, but in-detail hommages, hmmm.Another adventure that we could perhaps add to the Blackmoor apocrypha/hommages is Ari Marmell's "The Doom of Listonshire", which he released under the aforementioned Necromancer Games' banner. It's one of the very best adventures I've ever run, trumping even a couple of the classics, as far as I'm concerned. And the setting is very, very Blackmoor-ish - not so much "Blackmoor, the kingdom", as much as fitting for for MMRPG and the Thonian Rand.
- Yet, Ari, who even had written for the BM d20 line, back in the day, told me - I think on Facebook - that he had not consciously written the adventure as a fit for BM. So, it's probably a real coincidence: Dark, Anglo-Saxon, high medieval fantasy is kind of his genre, and he would have had no reason to lie. The same way that, say, much of Tad Williams' fantasy books share many elements with BM, without there being a connection.