Doomsday Rod and Egg of Coot

[aldarron]

From the revenant thread:

From: http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/ ... oor_Reborn


Blackmoor Reborn

Adventures in Blackmoor™ Boxed Set: This campaign set allows the return of the Blackmoor civilisation in the Known World. A bit of history: Blackmoor destroyed itself 1,000 years ago and was "cloned" inside the Hollow World sanctuary by the Immortals. The Blackmoorians' technological antics finally upset the Immortals who literally kick them out of the Hollow World. Blackmoor re-establishes itself on the Known World, after being copiously trashed by their Immortal (ex)- patrons. Blackmoor distinguishes itself from the traditional fantasy genre because of modern technology equipment that keeps showing up in their setting. These are rare, poorly understood items that become very dangerous in the wrong hands. In a nutshell, Blackmoor qualifies as "dark-age medieval fantasy with technology"!

BMa1 - Blackmoor #1 of 2, The Egg of Coot: This adventure takes traditional player characters from the usual Known World to the chaotic Land of Blackmoor. They discover the secret and dark wonders of Blackmoor and realise the risks they pose to their way of life. They must shut down one of the known sources of technology-the strange and mysterious Egg of Coot. But it is indeed a deadly place.

BMa2 - Blackmoor #2 of 2, The Doomsday Rod: An adventure for native Blackmoor characters. These adventurers hear of a secret weapons cache forgotten by the powerful entities of their land. Contrary to the wisdom of characters in the traditional Known World setting, these fellows want these lethal contraptions to fulfil their dreams of power! The player characters are allowed to get their hands on the deadly weapons, but in so doing trigger a doomsday machine. The characters must use (and hopefully deplete) their newly acquired equipment to destroy the frightening machine. A typical shoot'em up escapade for gun powder-crazed players!

I recently asked Bruce Heard about this and he responded:
“BMa1 & 2 were not published or even submitted to TSR since Blackmoor sales did not warrant a continuation of the series. Egg of Coot and Doomsday Rod were general ideas and notes written by Dave Arneson. Freelance developers Rice and Wheeler (IIRC) were supposed to have rewritten and repackaged the original material into publishable form, but never got to contract stages.”

[Havard]

Whoah!
I had never suspected this could be linked to more lost notes from Arneson... 8)

-Havard

[aldarron]

Yeah, its really interesting. Maybe the notes contained little more info than was put in the announcement but who knows. Unfortunetly, I'm sure Wm John Wheeler is one of the developers mentioned. http://odd74.proboards.com/index.cgi?bo ... hread=4525

[aldarron]

I got a little more info from Bruce regarding these. He said it never got to the stage where the developers would have gotten any materials and he is unaware of any documents floating around. I think he just had meant that the only thing that exists for these were campaign notes that Dave Arneson may or may not have had for his own campaign. He did say he had asked Dave about the Egg of Coot at one point, and got a typical evasive DM non-answer, e.g. "You know, it's one of those things..." So basically the outline we got reflects ideas that Dave had and there is no content out there from TSR that was written in preparation of publication.

[Havard]

I got a little more info from Bruce regarding these. He said it never got to the stage where the developers would have gotten any materials and he is unaware of any documents floating around. I think he just had meant that the only thing that exists for these were campaign notes that Dave Arneson may or may not have had for his own campaign. He did say he had asked Dave about the Egg of Coot at one point, and got a typical evasive DM non-answer, e.g. "You know, it's one of those things..." So basically the outline we got reflects ideas that Dave had and there is no content out there from TSR that was written in preparation of publication.

Very cool! Thanks for sharing this Aldarron. Bruce also talks about this in his podcast interview.

I know why Dave didn't want to give answers about the exact nature of the Egg of Coot. We know from other tales that Dave only developed in detail the parts of his campaign world that the players were interested in exploring. We also know that besides a few unsuccessful adventures, the players tended to want to stay away from the lands of the Egg.

I dont think you could neccessarily derive from this that there was "no material by Dave out there". Even if Dave had not yet decided on the exact nature of the Egg of Coot, that doesnt mean he could not have written out notes of ideas on the lands of the Egg of Coot, his servitors etc. DA1 Adventures in Blackmoor does give details of some of the Eggs servants. The BMa modules could have seen a return of Abler the Mage and his Balrog Servant (redressed for BECMI) and other things that Arneson already had developed as we know from Greg and the other players. There could easily be material there that we are missing. I also suspect that Ritchie had much more material from Dave than what appeared in the DA modules.



-Havard