Blackmoor Timeline Project

[Havard]

Heh, it is harsh with respect to DA4 in particular, but only in terms of it being "original" Blackmorian. Nothing wrong with it, or the others as adventures per se. Ritchie was a pretty good writer - no complaints there. And don't misunderstand me regarding Mystara. I think it is pretty cool how Mystara grew organically from the world of D&D. My old campaign was based out of Specularum. My issue with DA4 is two fold. First the image of the Duchy of Ten is radically different from the admittedly limited info present in the FFC, and second Arneson himself was less than happy with it and by his own admission, had virtually no input in it. If the DA series is the starting point, then it hardly matters who wrote what, but in trying to flesh out an FFC based Blackmoor with later material, well, I don't recognize Ritchie as having the same authority as Arneson, or any of the players, so I don't put any more or any less stock in his ideas than any other fan created material.

If you are talking about DA4 only, then I am more inclined to agree with you since Arneson clearly expressed some dislike about some of the decisions made there. Although he never said so, I am pretty sure that this was directed at the decision to make Ten occupied by the Afridhi and completely leaving out the character 'Ran of Ah Foo'.

I agree that if you are looking for pure Arnesonian content, then the FFC trumps the DA modules, but the elements included to connect Blackmoor to Mystara in the DA modules are really easy to identify. Beyond those elements, I believe that the description of Blackmoor is very true to Arneson's notes. Comparing the DA modules to the D20 line, you can see that the D20 line is pretty much an exact copy of DA content, with elements added to make Blackmoor fit with D&D 3.5 content. Alot of information from the DA modules was not brought over to 3E, but I believe much of that was due to lack of space rather than anything else. So the DA modules are a good way to get an understanding of what Blackmoor was like without the 3E baggage. DA1 in particular is a gold mine.

Comparing the FFC and the DA modules is also a matter of taste. I enjoy reading the FFC, but when using it for an actual campaign, I prefer filtering out many of the in-jokes, puns and references to players rather than characters. The DA modules pretty much did that for me, and also structured the Blackmoor content in a way I think Arneson would have liked Bill Owen/Judges Guild to do when he sent them his manuscripts for the FFC.

Absolutely. Ross work is really thorough and I hope he will join in the discussions here some day. Of course I worked off his timeline by double checking all his sources and comparing dates to TWC. That's why I'm quite sure he got those dates for Ra-All wrong. Even if he was working off a "present" of 1025 per the DA series "50 years ago" is 975 not 985 and there's no reason to think the "present" in the FFC is anything except 1000-1005. There's also no clear reason why the 2nd coot invasion forces other events from the real year 1973 into a new game year (998). There's no evidence for that in the FFC and he gives no other source.

I have been in some contact with Ross over the years, but havent been able to get him to come over here so far. Hopefully one day though. You make an interesting point about the second Coot invasion. Interestingly though, the D20 line chose to use Ross' version.

-Havard