12-14-2020, 12:17 PM
Havard Wrote:BTW, do we know who Veslo was based on? Don't have my notes right now, but not sure if I ever pinned that one down.
Oh yeah, took me forever to figure it out. See this https://blackmoor.mystara.net/forums/vie...f=22&t=945
In short it's Wesely (Veslo). Back in 2010, Wesely told me the story of rescuing Lotsa the Elf maid and being rewaraded with a 24 hour marriage. The result of which was a female half-elf character he played later. The Half Elf is mentioned in the d20 books. I asked what the half elf's name was and he said (paraphrasing) "Martan Vessaloy or something like that." I took me forever to realiize what he told me was Veslo Meridan backwards and slightly garbled.
Havard Wrote:The basis of my theory is exactly this. Arneson complained that he wasn't consulted by Ritchie on DA4. I don't have the exact quote, but this lead me to believe that he did give final approval of DA1-3 or that he was at least happy with how these turned out.
Alright. My read on Arneson comments is that much like the Supp II Blackmoor edit with it's changes and added material, he accepted DA 1-3 as "okay but not exactly what he wanted".
Havard Wrote:If we read the DA modules (including DA4) next to the ZGG books, the similarities in terms of background content are stunning. ZGG added material, but with a few explicit exceptions generally kept things very close to what we learn in the DA modules.
Yeah, mostly so, and somewhere there is a discussion, (was it with Dustin Clingman?) where Zeitgeist games made the conscious decision not to rewrite/fix Blackmoor but to build on the DA material because of the ready made fan base and their expectations. It was a business decision.
-Havard[/quote]