[Vince]

Thanks. As for McCarthy, I assume the latter. I think it was a beautiful dream, but it would be nice if I was wrong.

[Starwars]

It's really to bad that Bethesda (except for Ziets, but that's different) couldn't be at the show as well. While I'm also not a fan of their games, some of the devs (as seen in that developer thread on the Fallout 3 forums) are pretty cool people and could've probably added some worthwhile stuff. The beauty of this is to see the different viewpoints on things.

[MountainWest]

Thanks. As for McCarthy, I assume the latter. I think it was a beautiful dream, but it would be nice if I was wrong.

Fuck. I was hoping it wasn't true. Oh well, what's an eagle in a land full of dodos...

[Brother None]

Yes. I've talked to a few guys over there, they agreed, but Pete said no.

"Thanks for the offer but we're way backed up on interviews we need to get to so I think we'll have to pass on this one."

Typical Pete-speak

Any possibility of getting the Soldak guys or more Troika alums (one of the big three, maybe)?

Anderson always hated interviews, Cain is hiding in the bowels of Carbine Studios and not even talking about what he's doing there, let alone what he's done for Troika. Boyarsky has always been the most talkative of the lot, anyway.

What'd be really fascinating would be if you could get Boyarsky and Scott Campbell. People often forget this, but after Tim Cain started project GURPS and they were tossing about for a setting (medieval? Cain wanted time-travelling, but it would've been to expensive), Campbell was the one who came up with making it post-apocalyptic, and Boyarsky came up with the '50s atmosphere. Boyarsky is responsible for a lot of the art-style afterwards, and Campbell for oh so many of Fallout 1's character.

Sadly, Campbell is - last time I spoke with him - way, way too busy for interviews.

[Mnemon]

I really appreciate these and will forward them to some.

If you feel inclined, however, I'd love to see the same questions given to people that worked on narrrative based games in other genres, too. I am thinking of adventure games and story driven action/first & third person shooters here. Simply because - while not everything is transferable from one genre to another their thoughts on setting, story and characters might contain useful ideas as well. Plus - I've only rarely seen attempts to look at cross-genre design decisions .

-Mnemon

[Pastel]

So, VD, what is your opinion on creating a setting? How did you go about creating AoD's? What purpose do you think the setting serves, how do you employ it in the gameplay, and what elements do you consider essential for a good setting?

[Vince]

I'd rate setting as the second or third most important RPG element. Depends on what kind of sub-genre we are talking about. To illustrate, I would have enjoyed Planescape: Torment even if the story and dialogues weren't as good, simply because the setting was interesting to explore. Now, Baldur's Gate, in comparison, was far less interesting because the setting was generic. Or look at Morrowind vs Oblivion. Exploring Morrowind's strange, "alien" world with its medusa-like flying creatures, truly giant bugs used for transportation, dwemer ruins filled steam-powered technology, alien daedra spires, and all those very different, unique, and unlike-anything-you've-ever seen towns was a much more enjoyable and interesting experience than exploring vanilla fantasy Oblivion.

As for how AoD setting was designed....

We started with the main quest. It required a "fall of an empire" setting where the past is more advanced (technologically and magically) than the present. The fall of the Roman Empire was the first thing that came to mind. It fit what we needed perfectly, including even the Dark Ages period (which is where AoD takes place, basically) between the fall of the Roman Empire - which was also the fall of the Western civilization (frequent wars, population decline, limited written history, exodus from urban centers, loss of knowledge, technological and cultural), and 1000 AD when mankind decided to crawl out of the gutter and start playing civilization again.

While our game has very few things in common with the actual Roman Empire and the post-fall history, it's very helpful to have such a great reference material allowing you to trace and understand the fall and the period that followed. Not for realism as that was never our goal, but for the in-game logic.

We've also decided to go without the traditional RPG selection of monsters and give this important job to humans. We do have few non-human characters, but while they can be killed, they are not monsters to be slaughtered for loot and xp. These characters fit the setting and have reasonable explanations.

So, the low magic, mostly human, roman-inspired, "dark ages". That was the overall concept. Then we started fleshing it out and setting up conflicts. Once again, it was dictated by the main quest. As I mentioned before, we wanted to provide different motivations for the player, give the player different reasons to seek the temple. So, we've created 3 main factions: an underdog badly needing an ace up its sleeve, a king-of-the-hill protecting the hill and keeping others at bay, and a religious zealot seeking the divine. To spice things up we've also added "professional" factions: traders, guards, thieves, and assassins, and tweaked them to keep things less vanilla and more interesting. So, the merchant guild became a mix of a ruthless Star Wars Trade Federation-like organization and Venetian-style bankers; the guards became a nazi-like "the end justify the means" army remnant trying to restore the Empire; the assassins became an honest business helping people handle disputes and disagreements, to keep small conflicts from growing into wars and large-scale confrontations, etc.

This setup already creates great conflicts and unlikely alliances, but it won't be complete without people with different personalities, strengths and weaknesses, and of course, agendas. We usually introduce our characters with descriptions:

"Dellar looked like a tired, old scribe, proving that appearances are often misleading. At seventeen he signed up as a caravan guard. It took him three years to realize that his father was wrong about honest work. Dellar switched sides and started raiding the same caravans he guarded yesterday. Four years later the Merchants Guild recognized Dellar's efforts by paying the Imperial Guards a king's ransom, which quickly solved the "raiders problem". Hundreds of dead raiders were nailed to Maadoran walls and a few lucky survivors were sent to the mines to work off their debt to the guild. For almost a decade Dellar mined iron ore, fighting for food scraps and his life, until he managed to escape to Teron where Antidas took him under his wing."

Throw in dialogues and reactions to different things and you have a well defined character with the past, enemies, and personality. Not a quest giver, but an actual character. You may hate his guts and take every opportunity to get rid of him (I doubt you can best him in combat, but there are other ways and the pen, as they say, is sometimes mightier than the sword), but in another playthrough where things may develop differently, you'll like him and be happy that he's watching your back.

The final setting-defining element is quests, but that's a long story.

[Vince]

Added Michal Madej, lead designer on The Witcher.

[Vince]

Added Leonard Boyarsky, who, I believe, requires no introduction. Special thanks to NMA's Brother None for making the magic happen.

[Kingston]

What.the.fuck.

Vince, you are truly an hero.

[VonVentrue]

Vince, you are truly an hero.

That's an understatement.
Thank You for everything Vince, it must be a wonderful feeling to make contact with the living legend.

[Brother None]

Thank You for everything Vince, it must be a wonderful feeling to make contact with the living legend.

I hate being facetious/glorymongering, but that wasn't Vince, 't was me.

In fact, to my everlasting shame and detriment I did not manage to get more of the Fallout/Troika lot for him. Ah well.

[Vince]

Thank You for everything Vince, it must be a wonderful feeling to make contact with the living legend.

I hate being facetious/glorymongering, but that wasn't Vince, 't was me.

http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php?topic=330.msg10692#msg10692

"Special thanks to NMA's Brother None for making the magic happen."

[Brother None]

Thank You for everything Vince, it must be a wonderful feeling to make contact with the living legend.

I hate being facetious/glorymongering, but that wasn't Vince, 't was me.

http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php?topic=330.msg10692#msg10692

"Special thanks to NMA's Brother None for making the magic happen."

Yeah I know dude. Just clarifying it.

[Mehler]

Great article! More please!