Tell me about the Iron Duke

[Havard]

Lortz was employed at Adventure Games and that's when he was tapped to play the dwarf - that's apparently why we get the whole Uberstar is kidnapped and out of the picture and now Lortz Kharnundhrum is in charge of the dwarves, because Walter Oberstar wasn't there anymore and Lortz was.

Thanks, Aldy! Did Lortz not play with Arneson prior to his short stint with Chaosium? - That's the kind of stuff that I plainly don't keep track of any more, these days. This is important, though: Were the stories about Riza Aleford, St. Stephen, and so on, that we get to play in the DA modules perhaps simply where the campaign actually was, at this point? Or, are there documents/testimonies that firmly set them in the 1970s/pre-TSR days?

St. Stephen obviously goes way back to when Stephen Rocklin came back from the military. He is featured in the original Temple of the Frog. I am less sure about the kidnapping of Rissa Aleford. I am not sure how explicit this is set up, but my impression is that Rissa was a kind of romantic interest for Uther. Rissa however, is the daughter of Baron Han Aleford who seems to be a contemporary of the Original Players. Not sure if he is based on a player though. I always assumed that the town of Hanford was named after Han Aleford.

That, again, would perhaps explain some of the circumstances regarding the Iron Duke. If the DA modules are essentially campaign replays up to DA4, then that points into a certain direction. If the campaign stopped substantially before that, that points to another.

I am trying to think about what the design needs would be for the DA modules. It was useful for them to advance the timeline enough so that many of the events of the original campaign had already taken place. Basically, the DA modules were placed ca 30 years after the Coot Invasions. The Lord Fang storyline had been completed and the Castle was once again liberated. We don't know if the Uther storyline was something that had been played out or if it was a kind of logical conclusion to the events played by the Original Players, but the details about Steve Lortz are definitely interesting since they are very recent in the DA1 setup. As mentioned earlier, the Uther storyline also reads much like an analogy of Dave's relationship with TSR (Uther breaking with the Great Kingdom).

The design goals for the DA modules were probably as follows:
1) Introduce new D&D players to Blackmoor
2) Keep it away from Greyhawk (AD&D territory), but connect it to the Known World setting
3) Give the players stuff to do while exploring Blackmoor.

I think point 3) is the reason why the modules were built as they were. Allowing new players to explore classic Blackmoor locations. The players would need some basic story hooks to get them invovled, but the main part of the actual modules is exploration both of these locations and the wilderness surrounding them. The Original Players are presented as experienced and powerful NPCs with deep roots in the setting. This is not so different from how players at conventions joining a game run by Dave Arneson would experience Blackmoor. Remember how "Tindel" complained that he had to explore the dungeon with the powerful Svenny. Of course, the DA modules were written for Companion Level PCs (15+) so the PCs would still be on par with the NPCs.

For the ZGG books, I think they had a plan with moving the timeline, but looking back I think they might have forgotten that along the way. The disappearance of Oberstar meant that the 6th Orc-Dwarf War had just started at the onset of DA1, but in the ZGG books, it has dragged on for 5 years, yet has no bearing on the setting.

- Which is the point. Those plotlines canonically happen when Greg was already playing as Sol, in "The Garbage Pits of Despair", and when the Great Svenny as a main character had already been retired. Could be Ritchie and later ZGG just put them in the order that suited their respective plotlines best; or, could be that order came from Arneson.

From what I understand, Dave ran those games for Greg (Sol), Malia, her husband and others in 1999, but it is indeed possible that he had been planning for them to take place at this point in the timeline back in the mid 80s.



-Havard