03-09-2010, 01:14 PM
chirine ba kal Wrote:To the best of my knowledge, Phil hadn't played any D&D before he wrote EPT; he had watched a few sessions run by Dave at the old University of Minnesota wargame club, as he was the faculty advisor of the club. Dave and quite a few of the original Blackmoor players were members and regularly ran games. Neither Phil or Dave ever said to me that they'd played together until the time in Phil's Tekumel sessions where we wound up in Blackmoor, which is why it was such a big event. Phil had done 'proto-role-playing' with college friends in the 1950s, so what dave was doing would have been familiar to him.
The two did have very similar gaming styles, though. Neither one was what we used to call a 'rules lawyer', and were much more interested in the flow of the game then looking up chapter and verse in the rules. Both Gary and Dave told me that Phil's rules for EPT were faster and cleaner then what they had done, and were both very impressed by them. Both Phil's and Dave's gaming styles were typical of the way we gamed here in the Twin Cities at that time, and I still game that way.
Great! That just cleared up a lot of fog. So its safe to say that Arneson and the Blackmoor players would have had some influence on how Mr. Barker saw the game and he would have had ample opportunity to quize them on how things were done if he had any question. EPT no doubt reflects that influence to some degree.