R.A. Salvatore Interview
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Ten Ton Hammer: Moving on to your current project and projects you've done before, how different is it for you to create a world where people can actually visually make your characters, like when you worked on Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone for Stormfront? How different was that for you, writing for that game compared to any of your books where *you* have a visualization of your characters compared to Stormfront or 38 Studios making that visualization for you? Does it make it easier or harder for you?
Salvatore: I think both, in different ways. Stormfront was really more of a learning experience for me. I mean, I was connected to the game and I wrote the story, but it had to fit into their size requirements and all the rest of it. Really, my involvement was minimal. I mean, I helped them create the characters, the history of the characters, and the story, but as a console game, what controlled that was the A.I. that they used. You had the ability to switch on the fly between any of the three characters, get new skill sets, and the AI of the other two would keep them moving along. It was really quite brilliant.
With 38 Studios, it's a very different experience because I'm creating the world, the races, and the history. I have a team working with me, and for me, so to speak. This is a ground up project. Every bit of it has my stamp on it. The art team, when they come up with a new concept, they come up to me asking, "What do you think? Does this fit?" So it's a very, very different experience.
Now it's harder because when I'm writing, even though I write so many books in a shared world, I don't like to be bound by other people. I like to be able to do what I want to do; what the story tells me to do. On the other hand, it's easier because I don't have to imagine every building, every dragon, and every monster.
When you're standing on the shoulders of giants, whether it's Ed Greenwood in the Forgotten Realms, or the artists like [Keith] Parkinson, [Larry] Elmore, [Clyde] Caldwell, and [Todd] Lockwood or the artists we have here at 38 Studios, they're giving *you* things that inspire you.
The hardest thing for me in developing a new world is that because it's an MMO, and I'm an MMO player, I understand something. I'm also a pretty good dungeon master by the way.
