Q&A with Dustin Clingman

[Havard]

Dustin! Thanks for taking the time to share all this very interesting information with us!

Since then, I've been working on alot of different game projects (electronic) as part of IMI and occasionally blogging on my own site.

Any plans for any Pen&Paper RPG products (independently of a Blackmoor lisence)? I know there's not that much money to be made in this industry now, but still it would be fun.

How about fantasy-type electronic products?

Havard

[TheMystic]

We're working on a bunch of different elements. RPGs always have a place in my heart and I really wish that I could have gone on earning a living just making those kinds of games.

Any projects of this sort for me in the future would really need to be inspired. Right now, there's not much coming to me. I'm sure that something will make it's way along at some point.

[Havard]

We're working on a bunch of different elements. RPGs always have a place in my heart and I really wish that I could have gone on earning a living just making those kinds of games.

I see your point. Looking at other companies it certainly seems hard to make a living from that.

I remember reading about how Steve Jackson Games really made all their money from Board Games, but since Steve liked GURPS so much he would channel some of the profits from the board games into supporting GURPS

Any projects of this sort for me in the future would really need to be inspired. Right now, there's not much coming to me. I'm sure that something will make it's way along at some point.

Good luck!

By the way, do you have any idea what Code Monkey is up to these days?

Havard

[Rafael]

Hey Dustin,

Good to see you're still somehow involved and sorry for my irregular postings.

I would wonder about one thing: The AoW manuscript, is there any chance for it to be released, even as an unedited freeby? -This would surely be enormously interesting for all fans of BM, from the MMRPG and elsewhere!

[Big Mac]

Thanks for volunteering to take questions.

Well, I've been very busy. At the end of 2008, the folks behind ZG decided to sell the company to IMI Labs. I took over as CEO of the new company and we worked out a co publishing agreement with CMP.

Hmm. I found that change a bit confusing when I observed it (same as I found the change from Sovereign Press to Margaret Weis Productions a bit confusing, until I found out what the deal was over there).

To be honest, I never knew that ZG had been bought, until I read your thread. They just seemed to vanish one day. The new website makes no reference to the tabletop stuff and it looked so different to the old website, that I actually thought it had been hijacked by cybersquatters* for a while.

* = In the last 8-10 years I have seen dozens of RPG websites (mostly fansites) get abandoned and then taken over by cybersquatters. The cybersquatters check to see when the domain name expires and then buy it the second it becomes available. They then make a page that looks (to a search engine) like it is about the original topic, but which tries to direct people towards some sort of commercial thing they are creating spamsites about.

Is the ZG/CMP agreement something that specifically applied to Blackmoor, or are we likely to see Code Monkey putting out other ideas from IMI Labs?

Is there a chance that the new Zeitgeist website might get some sort of "history" section, that can document its Blackmoor products (and any other out of print/out of production) ZG stuff?

Oh, and who is that greyish guy with glowing eyes and the sword on the homepage of the website? What is his story?

Since then, I've been working on alot of different game projects (electronic) as part of IMI and occasionally blogging on my own site.

With tabletop games not seeming to make as much money as other types of gaming (or other types of fantasy entertainment), I've been quite interested in companies and individuals that take things from one format and put them into another format.

Over at The Piazza, I've been talking to people about the Warcraft RPG and have recently been looking at the viability of using the WoW Atlases (there have been several) as RPG atlases. (I do think it is a shame that nobody ever got to make a World of Blackmoor atlas.)

I also find the Lord of the Rings miniatures (made by Games Workshop for a wargame) very interesting. It seems to me that more money is made selling wargaming figures, so an RPG with a wargamming tie in would seem to allow for a larger range of RPG miniatures. (Has anyone ever tried to do a Blackmoor wargame? The Egg of the Coot would seem to be a good excuse for mass battles.)

Elsewhere, I've been talking about a Forgotten Realms movie (something that could either be epic or a giant turkey, depending on how much love was put into it). (A lot of people have blasted the animation of the Dragonlance movie, but if a Blackmoor movie had cameo roles of real BM players, that would be fantastic - or should I say nerdtastic. )

From a capitalistic point of view, multi-format games would seem to be a way to spread the research and development costs of the tabletop version into more commercially viable formats. Multi-format also seems to be a way to capitalise on the giant amount of nerd-level detail that an imaginary world might need, but which a single computer game or novel might not be able to show as well as an RPG sourcebook.

Have IMI Labs been working on any projects that might one day be able to be converted into tabletop RPGs? (I know that dude with the sword and the glowing eyes on the ZG website looks like he would make a good miniature figure.)

[Big Mac]

Thanks for the compliments on WC. Blackmoor was a very rich environment before I ever came around. That being said, we wanted to include as much *new* into the world. We knew at the beginning that any license was only temporary and we had hoped to be able to use some of that new material on future projects outside of Blackmoor.

Hmm. This is interesting. Did ZG make any new material that (for any reason) didn't get into the product line?

I've heard of Age of the Wolf. Is that a ZG thing or a CMP thing?

Dave was also very keen on the idea of there being many permutations of Blackmoor. Consider that the guys time traveled to fight Nazis and then into prehistory to combat dinosaurs. Blackmoor really could mean alot of things depending on the night or the DMs mood.

Ive spoken (over at The Piazza) about different copies of Blackmoor for different worlds (with Mystara having "M-Blackmoor", Greyhawk having "G-Blackmoor" and Wilderlands having "W-Blackmoor"). But this seems like a different concept. Did Dave have any ideas of how the "grandfather paradox"* might come into play, or was that hand-waved away.

* = The "alternate Krynns" from MWP's Legends of the Twins dealt with changes in the Dragonlance timeline. I thought that some of them were fairly intersting.

[aldarron]

Hey Dustin, prolly I'm just not seeing it, but I don't see in Wizards Cabal what the rate of recovery of spell points is. Do you happen to remember that or know where it is?

Ive spoken (over at The Piazza) about different copies of Blackmoor for different worlds (with Mystara having "M-Blackmoor", Greyhawk having "G-Blackmoor" and Wilderlands having "W-Blackmoor"). But this seems like a different concept. Did Dave have any ideas of how the "grandfather paradox"* might come into play, or was that hand-waved away.

Off topic but I can't resist. The Grandfather paradox is absolutely sophomoric nonsense. I wrote a counterargument for that wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =339352174 but it was removed as original research - properly so since I was too lazy to site anybody but myself. :roll:

[TheMystic]

I'm about to travel for a couple of weeks so I wanted to drop by. Apologies for the brevity.

Spell points regenerate each day, just like spell preparation, but without the unrealistic time spent getting things ready in the morning. I found that most DM's glossed over this fact and that was a central reason for the change.

Age of the Wolf is a CMP project, but both Dave and I were involved in the early framing of the effort. CMP handled the oversight for the development.
AoW is not planned for release at this time in any format.

IMI has no business relationship with CMP at this time nor are there any immediate plans. IMI is really focused on making virtual worlds like Second Life, so it might be possible for a game in the future.

I'll be adding a history section to the ZeeGee Games site. It's being redesigned now and I'm excited to see it.

Re: The Blackmoor Wargame. YES! We have a system already done and in place that was never published. It was a big part of our production plan early on, but was not part of our licensing agreement with WoTC, so we couldn't make it work.

[Havard]

I'm about to travel for a couple of weeks so I wanted to drop by. Apologies for the brevity.

We are very happy to have you here Dustin, but of course we understand that you are busy. Hope to see you again when you get back

Age of the Wolf is a CMP project, but both Dave and I were involved in the early framing of the effort. CMP handled the oversight for the development.
AoW is not planned for release at this time in any format.

Although sad, it is good to get this confirmed. From what I understand from other sources CA Suleiman was a fairly central figure on the shaping of this project.

IMI has no business relationship with CMP at this time nor are there any immediate plans. IMI is really focused on making virtual worlds like Second Life, so it might be possible for a game in the future.

Again, thanks for getting some final confirmation on this. I guess that means a New Lands setting using some of ZG's properties will be very unlikely from CMP?

I'll be adding a history section to the ZeeGee Games site. It's being redesigned now and I'm excited to see it.

That will be interesting!

Re: The Blackmoor Wargame. YES! We have a system already done and in place that was never published. It was a big part of our production plan early on, but was not part of our licensing agreement with WoTC, so we couldn't make it work.

Wow! What else can you tell us about it?

By the way, another company which was associated with Blackmoor was Lance & Laser. Were there ever plans to expand on the miniatures line?

Havard

[TheMystic]

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

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.

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.

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.

D