Rulers of Blackmoor

[Havard]

I think you are probably not far off the mark Havard but untill I'm able to really parse the mss. its hard to say.  My guess might be that Arneson was given an outline of the DA series as TSR was planning to publish it and asked to provide material for DA5 without being told much else about the changes TSR had made to what he has already submitted.  What I mean is that TSR initially used Arneson's chronicles of Blackmoor material for DA 1-3, and while Ritchie was writing DA4, Arneson may have been preparing, perhaps revising, the mss for DA5.  If we had more information on the Blackmoor Chronicles material it would be helpful - for instance, could the adventures being labeled DA 1-5 actually have been from the Chronicles?

One thing I can say with certainty is that David Ritchie said the time travel idea for DA1 was his.

As you say, there are a lot of things we don't know about this process so it is hard to speculate. 

A few things to consider:

• Arneson was talking about the Blackmoor Chronicles before the deal with TSR was made to publish the DA modules. Unless we any outlines sent to Arneson from TSR I am going to assume that Arneson sent TSR his ideas and concepts and then Ritchie was tasked to modify, tweak and revise acccording to TSR's needs. Arneson was then given the final draft for approval. 
  
• Arneson said on many occasions that he was not given a chance to approve DA4 and that he was unhappy with this module. This makes it unlikely that Arneson sent TSR a DA5 manuscript after DA4 was published. To me it seems more likely that he submitted DA5 along with DA4 or even earlier.  
  
• The DA4 situation is interesting to me because so much of DA4 involves repeating information that was already established in DA1 which Arneson had already approved. But I understand that Arneson was miffed about not being consulted on the final product. 
  
• Bruce Heard told me that he had attempted to contact Arneson as he wanted to work with him to flesh out more details etc, but Bruce felt that Arneson was not very interested in talking to him. Bruce was a relative newcomer to TSR ad the time and had just been promoted to product manager of the classic D&D line, but it is possible that Arneson's strained relationship with TSR made him see Bruce as just another TSR exec. I believe it was Bruce who contacted Ritchie and we know that Bruce gave Ritchie some guidelines. I find it interesitng that Ritchie says it was his idea to include Time Travel. I have no reason to doubt that, but I could see this idea being a result of the timeline Bruce Heard sent to his freelancers placing Blackmoor in the past as well as Arneson's descriptions of the Comeback Inn. I do think the main plot in each adventure was largely Ritche's work with Arneson's outlines being more in the line of the Temple of the Frog and the FFC, more focus on background, NPCs, events etc.
  

I agree with you that it would be extremely useful to know more about the Blackmoor Chronicles.

-Havard