Hello. New to Blackmoor.

[Havard]

To make it Blackmoor in feel, I'd advise you not to import a lot of monsters and race types. There is already a ton of stuff, and elves in particular, with thier Westryn Cumasti split have a certian history. What you are suggesting is kinda like wanting to play a middle earth campaingn but replacing all the hobbits with Kender or all the orcs with slestak or something. Might be interesting, but wouldn't be Middle earth.
Just my 2 cents.

In general I agree with this. However, I might actually consider allowing Warforged in certain types of Blackmoor campaign.

Ya know... If you are really after a '70's era nostalgia kind of experience you might look into Dragons at Dawn.

Seconded. Dragons at Dawn is a great game. Even if you decide to use a different ruleset, it is a good resource for ideas and inspiration.

Seems some hokey time traveling scheme was used in the DA modules to bring people back and forth but I can worry about that later. Does the old DA series and new d20 material use the same in-game calenders?

Yeah very Hokey, one of the first things I ditched back when I bought Temple of the Frog when it was newly released. You can thank TSR for that marketing brainstorm.

Allow me to completely disagree here. While the DA modules can easily be played without the "Time Travelling prelude", I think the idea that Mystara and Blackmoor exist in the same world, but in completely different eras can add alot to certain types of campaign. While I would not recommend it to everyone, players who are fans of both settings will really appreciate it, and there are certain ideas that can be shared between the settings. Also, the fact that the two settings are divided by such an immense period of time means that for the most part you wont really have to worry too much about the kind of problems that usually occur in time travelling campaigns.

Calenders, No, Havard may have better info, but to my knowledge there is no calendar in the DA series. Go with what's in DAB d20

Not really sure what the question was about. The d20 line is pretty much consistant with what's in the DA modules. However the D20 line doesnt continue the timeline into the future. That is left for the PCs to discover. The main difference between the D20 line and the DA series is that the D20 line advances the timeline by 5 years. This part is a little odd actually, since nothing really happens during those five years, and the DA module events are not assumed to have been resolved either.

Its official anyway, in ways that the DA series is not.

Lets just say we disagree here. My own take is that I am willing to consider every published source. Contradictions are rare anyway.

-Havard