Project Mercury/Copernicus Interview
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So, what is your role on the Copernicus and Mercury projects? Are you world-building? Are you getting down into the nitty-gritty of actually writing the script?
R. A. Salvatore: At this point I'm world-building. When I came in, I took the basic idea that Curt and his gang wanted to do an MMO, and I turned it into an MMO for them. I created a very detailed history of the world and created all the different regions with a team.
And then of course we hired in a bunch of people: Steve Danuser (EverQuest II), Ryan Shwayder (EverQuest II), and Mike Woods were the first three to come. And we built this world, race by race, and made everything make sense in the world.
My actual title was Creator of Worlds, which I thought was pretty cool. I was a COW. So, when Big Huge Games came along, my job, along with some of the other guys, was to show them what we were doing and give them a ton of information. Then Ken Rolston (The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion) and Mark Nelson (The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind) created a story that would fit within that world.
I went down and worked with them a little bit on the story but my job, right now, more than anything else, is making sure the world smells the same no matter which part of the world you're in, whether you're talking about the art, the music, whatever.
When they show me what they're doing, I always say, "Does this fit? Where does this fit? How does this fit?" Right now, I'm like a kind of den mother to all these creative people more than anything else.
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Are there any cultural or historical references that you find yourself going back to when you're creating these worlds?
RS: Yeah. Perfect example: After I wrote the first three books for TSR -- and I did the Crystal Shard, Streams of Silver, and Halfling's Gem -- they wanted me to go back and talk about where this Dark Elf character came from.
And so they wanted me to create this Dark Elf city. And that was quite a challenge because Dark Elves at that point were just these things in dungeons you run away from and I had to make a workable society out of that. So I actually went and got out my copy of Mario Puzo's The Godfather. That was actually the skeleton of the world I created.
Because I don't care whether you're writing about elves or dwarves; it has to make sense. And to make sense to people who are reading your books or playing your games -- they're not elves or halflings; they're people -- they have to have seen it in their experience. We all have an idea of how societies work, how civilizations work, whether it's a civilization like the Romans or Native American tribes.
We all have these images of how they work, and there are a lot of truths that we come to expect, things we take for granted. So, you want to draw on that. The races have to make sense within themselves. If the Dark Elves were just these killing machines, they wouldn't have a society. They wouldn't be powerful. They would all be dead.
Even when I wrote the orcs in the more recent books, I tried to do the same thing. There has to be some structure behind it. It can't just be pure evil people. People don't get up in the morning and say, "I'm gonna be evil today." So, for that, I used Mario Puzo.
The biggest influence on my DemonWars world was the Catholic Church. I'm a Catholic kid from New England. In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church, the schism of the church over money, the Franciscans, the Benedictines, that whole thing really resonated with me philosophically. So, when I was doing DemonWars, that was one of the structures I employed, except it was based on magic instead of money. I always go back to history.
When I was in college, I took a course called The Ascent of Man. It was based on the Jacob Bronowski documentary series that was on in the '70s. You know, one of those 13-part series on PBS, right? And what Bronowski did that I found really intriguing is he traced the history of man by inventions as opposed to by wars.
If you look at history, it's always about wars, right? We're going to pick the Civil War for these three months of American History. It's always about wars. Bronowski did it by inventions, and he talked about how these things changed society. So, when I was doing the history of Copernicus, that was one of the pieces that I used. In fact, I brought in my discs, and people would watch The Ascent of Man.
And then the other thing that I use a lot is a Time-Life series called The Enchanted World. It's a book series that I've gone back to a thousand times. If you read the book about giants, it shows you all the different giants, all the different fairy tales and myths of giants from all over Europe mostly, even the Far East sometimes. So, it really brings a flavor into it. You can understand how these myths formed, how folklore came to be. It's kind of fun to imagine what these people saw to make them think the elves took their babies to hollow hills or whatever.
