1/31/2024 0 Comments Betrayal at krondor chapter tests![]() Since that was the central McGuffin on which I was planning to hang our plot, I needed to make sure we weren’t narratively venturing into territory for which Ray had conflicting plans. One dangling thread in particular - that Murmandamus’ death hadn’t been witnessed by his troops at the end of A Darkness of Sethanon and further, that heavy guards had been left to watch the Lifestone - seemed like exactly the sort of thing I’d have been leaving as a setup for a later novel. I had no delusions that I was catching everything going on in his books, and I was even more concerned that I might be stepping on the toes of other plots he might have been developing for future works. There was also the fiddling little matter of getting something off to the person whose universe we were playing in - fantasy author Raymond E. This, even more than the game design document, was our highest priority because it would determine not only who the player would be controlling, but also the overall scale and scope of the project. Our first big deliverable was a summary of the game’s central plot. I had to reinforce the faith that so many had placed in me, and more than anything else, I wanted not to disappoint my boss. I had to adjust my thinking that I could be - that I would be - the writer that everyone around me seemed to believe I was. My only way of getting through was to earn it. Who the hell was I? I knew a lot of writers who had worked very long and very hard to accomplish less lofty positions, and I felt like a bit of an impostor. To have come from relative anonymity, and then be elevated to work on such a high-profile game was daunting enough, but to step convincingly and undetectably into the shoes of a New York Times Bestselling Author - regardless of who that author was - it smacked of hubris. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that accepting the writing job on Betrayal at Krondor had terrified me at first. ![]() I didn’t have an extensive list of published short stories, and most of the writing I’d done prior to entering the computer gaming industry had been an aborted novel from my college years called This Realm Alone, along with a fistful of radio dramas from a Twilight Zone -like series called Uncharted Regions I’d co-produced with my good friend Ron Bolinger (a series which I’m in the process of rebooting, but that’s for another blog series.) Although I was writer, and I’d worked on three projects at New World Computing, I wasn’t a name. For me, however, the knowledge that the expectations were so high were both a boon and a bane (and something which would later have extreme consequences for me towards the end of the project.)īefore Betrayal at Krondor, nobody had ever heard of me. He was never shy about getting off into the weeds and experimenting. For him, it always spurred him to take greater risks and try new things. If he ever felt it, he never showed it, which is why he’s always been my role-model not only as a great designer, but also as a superb team leader. Dynamix was like the Bioware or Blizzard of its day, a legendary upstart with a history of solid work, and every wannabe game developer was looking for an in there. It meant we would have access to some of the best people working in the computer gaming industry. From day one, at least as far I could tell, there was a great deal of enthusiasm for the Riftwar project.Īt one level, knowing our employers were fully committed and on board was comforting. Add in the fact that we’d be leveraging Dynamix’s already enormously successful 3-Space game engine, and it seemed like an absolute no-brainer on paper that we’d knock it out of the ballpark. Sierra Online, Dynamix’s parent company, was flush with cash they’d milked from the adventure game market, so they instantly got the appeal of mixing a popular narrative IP with immersive gameplay. Titles like Wizardry, Might & Magic, and the Dungeons & Dragons Gold Box games dominated the shelves of every software store in America. At the time, role-playing and adventure games were in a golden age. We had a lot of theories, of course, and a fairly solid case to make for the potential success of our new project. At the beginning, neither John Cutter nor I knew what we were in for.
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