TTH:
MMOs in general have a scope that's particularly large. When creating a
novel, at least in my experience, you often explore aspects of your
world through the eyes of your main character rather than putting
everything down on paper all at once. In the MMO realm, the vision is
just the opposite, with every aspect of the world needing to be created
all at once. Is this a difficulty that you're experiencing?

style="font-weight: bold;">Bob: You've hit the
challenge right on the nose. I've said this from the beginning: In a
novel I give you a group of characters and let you walk along on the
adventure, but in a game like this, I'm trying to give the players the
groundwork for them to write their own stories. People don't play
MMORGs to be herded in one direction or another; they play to live
their own stories about their own characters. A good dungeon master is
nimble. He or she can allow his game campaign to flow where the players
want it to go. A horrible dungeon master gets that deer-in-headlights
look whenever players do something he didn't expect. MMORGs are all
about players doing what you don't expect. Some will run through 50
levels in a few days, while others won't be near that point in six
months. Some want to collect forty people together and go raid a
dragon's lair, while others would rather just putter along, mostly
solo, and explore the world at their leisurely pace.

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MMOs are much larger in scope than a novel,
like The
Thousand Orcs.

I'm
trying to write a great backstory for our game, one that gives all the
people designing and drawing it an understanding of how the place
should feel. I'm hoping that backstory will create a living and
breathing world for the players to explore, however they choose to
explore it. I'm trying to write a story arc for the game itself that
will allow players to work in harmony on the bigger issues of the
world, whether that becomes the focus of their gaming or whether it's
no more than a short diversion from the things they'd rather do.

It is
a huge challenge, and I don't know that I've ever had this much fun.

TTH:
How is creating the story for this MMO different than what you did
previously for Stormfront Studios with Demon Stone?

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Bob previously worked on the story for the
single-player game, Demon Stone.

style="font-weight: bold;">Bob: Mostly the
scope of it. Demon Stone was an important step for me, because the
folks at Atari and Stormfront allowed me behind the scenes. Working on
that game taught me the complexities of creating a video game IP. That
said, my role was minor – it had to be. I simply wasn't
familiar enough with the tools to try any micromanaging, especially not
with the seasoned and talented team at Stormfront. So with Demon Stone,
I gave them some character background information and a plot that would
allow them to make the game feel non-linear (as opposed to "Go to the
first level and get the first piece of the seven-piece artifact. Go to
the second level and get piece two, etc.).

Multiply
what I did for Demon Stone by about a hundred and you're still not
close to the level of detail and sheer amount of material needed for
this game. In addition, with Demon Stone, the story and non-player
characters were small enough for one brain, and the player characters
were also fairly straightforward. That is not the case with an MMORG,
obviously, and the player characters are strictly the dominion of the
players. They're not going to follow any script; I'd be disappointed in
them if they did!


Click here for the conclusion of the R.A. Salvatore interview!

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Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

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