[NEWS] Mark Rein-Hagen to revive Blackmoor?

[Rafael]

Any news on this, so far? - The backlash the idea got online was pretty impressive, of course, but now that the noise has passed, perhaps some more substantial info has been revealed?

[Havard]

Any news on this, so far? - The backlash the idea got online was pretty impressive, of course, but now that the noise has passed, perhaps some more substantial info has been revealed?

Not yet.
Either the reactions convinced them to prepare more carefully before making more announcements, or it was delayed due to CAS getting involved with this Kickstarter first.

It would be unfortunate if the negative reactions on other forums resulted in us never getting to see CAS' unpublished work for Blackmoor.

-Havard

[Rafael]

Ah, *never* is such a big word, especially concerning a writer's life. :wink: I am not going to say I would be terribly heartbroken if MRH, with his rather problematic track record in recent years, did NOT helm a Blackmoor remake - BUT, of course, it would be sweet to have in-print books out there, and soon. I guess, like in "The Count of Monte Cristo", all we can do is, to hope and pray... :wink:

[finarvyn]

I'm a little torn on the whole thing. The more folks who throw in their ideas, the farther "a Blackmoor setting" gets from "Dave's Blackmoor setting."

[Havard]

I'm a little torn on the whole thing. The more folks who throw in their ideas, the farther "a Blackmoor setting" gets from "Dave's Blackmoor setting."

I think that would depend entirely on how the project is realized. What would be really great is a book written by someone willing to sit down and do solid research on the original campaign and develop material based on the FFC, stories from the original players and whatever else might be left behind by Dave himself.

OTOH, I am also interested in all interpretations of Blackmoor

-Havard

[finarvyn]

I'm a little torn on the whole thing. The more folks who throw in their ideas, the farther "a Blackmoor setting" gets from "Dave's Blackmoor setting."

I think that would depend entirely on how the project is realized. What would be really great is a book written by someone willing to sit down and do solid research on the original campaign and develop material based on the FFC, stories from the original players and whatever else might be left behind by Dave himself.

This would be the ideal. I don't mind some extrapolation and such, as long as it has a solid foundation in the core stuff that Dave created. Somewhere along the line a game with too many house variants becomes "Bobby's based-on-Blackmoor Campaign" and not a true representation of the spirit of Blackmoor.

That is to say, I don't consider Blackmoor to be just a barony with certain place names kept intact. Blackmoor (to me) is a certain style or flavor of play, and my hope is that as much of that style can be preserved as possible. Blackmoor (to me) needs to have a certain level of random death and mayhem, a certain zainy mix of fantasy and scifi, a certain feel that players can always be surprised by an encounter or a rules interpretation... that kind of thing.

[Rafael]

I see Fin's point with this - because I had the same issues with the LFC. BM as a source is not very coherent, and often not very accessible. It just doesn't lend itself to endless exploitation, like, say, Greyhawk or FR, which are designed as worlds, rather than having evolved as campaign background.

At some point, every writer will have to add substantial parts, simply to fill some blank space that exist even in the core story. (Like, what is the Egg of Coot?! - Intriguing for a player, a nightmare if you have to write a coherent overview of the setting.) And that's when the great randomness starts.

That said, the MMRPG/ZGG crowd was generally at least trying to stay faithful to what they defined as "Arnesonian", so in Suleiman's case, I wouldn't be too worried. Overall, though, I'd like to have a Green-Ronin-esque (ugh, Engrish) approach to BM, and many of the older settings: Just release as many boks as are needed, folks, not as many as you think you can write. Both the "Thieves' World" and the "Black Company" books by GR are legitimately among the best RPG products ever released; something like that, I can see for BM, and other, older settings.

[finarvyn]

I don't mean to come off as a nay-sayer. It's just such a tricky thing to enhance someone else's universe. I remember when Star Wars first came out and a friend and I played "OD&D Star Wars" and made up all this cool stuff that "made sense" to us. We even added in some stuff from Splinter of the Mind's Eye because it seemed to fit the SW universe as we saw it. Then Empire Strikes Back came out and we had to scrap two thirds of our stuff if we wanted to "stay canon" with the SW universe.

Not that building onto someone else's stuff is a bad thing, but it can be a very different thing. There are days when I wish that SW had stopped with only one movie. I might have been a lot happier.

[Havard]

Not that building onto someone else's stuff is a bad thing, but it can be a very different thing. There are days when I wish that SW had stopped with only one movie. I might have been a lot happier.

World without Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi? hock:

Ah, you lost me there man

-Havard

[Rafael]