Q&A with Dustin Clingman

[Havard]

I decided to drop back by to see how things were going and realized I had missed some questions!

Always good to see you here Dustin!

CA Suleiman was a core contributor to the vision of Age of the Wolf. The concept was very cool, but a strong departure from the core of Blackmoor. Dave had always insisted on the framing of any stories set in the land be considered "A version of Blackmoor" as he strongly believed that the world belonged to those who played there. It really took me a while to fully understand that sentiment. On those grounds and without a sound of bias, Age of the Wolf would have been a different"version of Blackmoor" from those that had been seen before.

Thanks for confirming the rumours I had heard about Suleiman's role in all of this. I like Dave's thoughts on "versions of Blackmoor". Too bad we never got to see Age of the Wolf, but I am thankful for what we got from ZGG.

Regarding the Wargame. Our hopes were to generate miniatures to allow players to combat between the forces of the Afridhi, Blackmoor and the Egg. The system was derivative of the BATTLESTORM property that was produced by my friend Will Nesbitt. We had run Dave through a version of play and he enjoyed it. It was disappointing that we were not able to realize that as a product.

That would have been great

About the "Grandfather Paradox"... I don't recall specific insight from Dave regarding how time travel would influence the game aside from the obvious. I think a more telling thought is the "A version of Blackmoor" idea mentioned earlier. It would seem entirely possible if not required for Mystara Blackmoor to be it's own space. In general, anything that would have slowed the game down was largely hand waived. I strongly approved of this.

That certainly makes sense. As I see if, if the campaign's starting point is Blackmoor, then Mystara and Greyhawk could represent possible futures, but not predestined ones.

Another question: I see that the MMRPG forum has disappeared
hock: Is it permanently gone? Does this mean that the rest of the site will also disappear?

-Havard