10-04-2010, 02:56 PM
Havard Wrote:I would also have loved to see the original manuscript that Dave submitted for Supp II. My personal theory is that the reason for the TSR staff's negative reaction to this manuscript was not just due to the quality of the manuscript, but also the fact that they were interested in rules (aka Crunch), whereas much of Arneson's material would have been background material, which was something TSR did not begin to focus on until after 1981.
-Havard
Yeah, I think (and I've got a reason for thinking so) that the material Arneson submitted was probably not so disorganized and scattered. I think Blume's "editing" was largely responsible for the disorganized "basketfull of papers" (who else would have put them there in the first place?). The character classes, NPC and some of the monsters were definetely reworked and re "crunched", but I personally think there probably wasn't a whole lot of mystery material left out. I don't think TSR purposfully cut out any of Arnesons fluff. Might be an interesting question for Kask.* I suspect they would have kept it to pad the page count if they had it. But Arneson was asked to submit certain kinds of material for the supplement to match the style of Greyhawk, so that's what we got. RJK's Khalibrun looks like it was meant to be much the same - new classes, combat rules, etc. rather than setting info per se.
EDIT: Changed my thinking on that. I suspect that the "Special Interests" and "Investments" sections of the FFC, may have been intended for Supp II. They seem to have been written around that time.