Q&A with Dustin Clingman

[Havard]

Thanks for posting about this Dustin!

Your first post about Blackmoor ownership was very useful in that it confirmed more or less my understanding of how things worked, probably based on things you and maybe some of the others working on d20 Blackmoor have told me. This confirmation should probably help put a lot of speculation to rest.

However, I had no idea that you had to negotiate for the rights to Blackmoor. I had always assumed that this was part of the settlement that Peter Adkinson negotiated with both Dave and Gary just after WotC bought TSR, so it is very interesting to learn that the real story was more complicated.

I mentioned in my clarifying comment that when the license was negotiated between ZG and WoTC, we identified all of the names and terms that we wanted to use for the 3rd edition setting. This included all the NPCs(The Great Svenny et al), Places of note and more. We further had to affirm that WoTC was the owner of those terms.

This is also interesting. It makes sense that WotC wanted to get any such unclarities out of the way so that deal would be beneficial for them as well. This also helps explain what the limitations of ZGG was when it came to the type of material you could cover in your books. Do you have this list of terms still available? I am sure many fans would be interested in seeing what items WotC claims the rights to

It would be very hard for me to say that there is anything distinctive such that it could be considered owned by Dave's family. Certainly, it could be said that they may lay claim to the copyright of the Judges Guild Materials, but were they to commercialize those documents again, I would expect it to result in an issue with Wizards.

Dave once mentioned that Bob Bledsaw Sr had reverted the rights of the FFC back to Dave. However, if this was just a gentleman's agreement with no written agreement, it would be hard to prove this.

It's also true to say that ZG owns our special contributions and NPCs (meaning me at this point).

That makes sense.

Some fans really wanted a very faithful rendition of Blackmoor for the 3rd Edition. Had we been even more faithful to the original setting, I'm convinced that we might have done just fine, but the plan that Dave and I had was different.

We both knew and agreed that Blackmoor could get us started and that we wanted to create a new world that would be free of Blackmoor. We had ideas/plans to transition many of the core unique elements of Blackmoor 3e into another world that Dave was ideating about all the while.

I for one am very happy with what we got!

Will we ever see more of that other world you mention? How much would we have to bribe you to get you back into the tabletop industry?

I asked Dave at one point - "Do you worry that we're tinkering too much with the formula? Will players like this iteration of Blackmoor?"

His response was to say - "This newest work we're doing in the world is just 'A Blackmoor'. There are many Blackmoor and infinite stories to tell within them..."
( Please note that I am paraphrasing from memory of something that happened almost 20 years ago at this point)

He then went on to remind me about the Blackmoor with dinosaurs and Nazis and how much fun they had in "that" Blackmoor.

That all sounds a lot like Dave for sure

This memory has warmed my day. Thanks for the question that prompted it back to front of mind.

Thanks for sharing! And thank you for continuing to visit us here and support this community

-Havard