In a brand new interview with Polygon, fantasy (and sci-fi, and videogame) author R.A. Salvatore dished on a number of the distinctive challenges of writing tales which have to remain in keeping with an ever evolving tabletop ruleset and world state.
Salvatore has notably contributed to the Star Wars Expanded Universe (RIP), however is most well-known for his novels set within the Forgotten Realms, a world shared with basic PC video games together with Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights, and many of the Gold Field RPGs.
Like Realms creator Ed Greenwood’s Elminster, Salvatore’s characters have gotten cameos in Baldur’s Gate. Heroic cleric Cadderly pops in to say hello close to the top of Baldur’s Gate 1, whereas Salvatore’s signature Drow Ranger and memetic Greatest Swordsman Ever, Drizzt Do’Urden, might be befriended or fought in each Baldur’s Gate 1 and a pair of.
Based on Salvatore, ensuring the motion in his books hews shut sufficient to the D&D guidelines of the day has been one of many job’s more difficult calls for. “That is been one of many hardest elements,” mentioned Salvatore. “4th Version D&D virtually broke me, not as a result of I did not like 4th version D&D. I am not making any judgements—constructive or detrimental—on any of the editions, however the adjustments had been so sweeping.”
Even with the addition of feats and status lessons, in addition to basic reworks of methods like AC and assault bonus (goodbye THAC0) when shifting from AD&D to third Version, it nonetheless felt extra mutually intelligible with earlier rulesets than the controversial 4th Version. I’ve all the time discovered it telling that the explosively in style fifth Version—which Baldur’s Gate 3 relies on—performs like a extra approachable riff on D&D 3.5.
However mechanics aren’t the one 4th Version zag Salvatore had hassle adapting to: He and Greenwood each objected to The Forgotten Realms’ world state shakeup. Earlier new editions moved the timeline ahead a decade every, whereas 4th Version skipped a century and launched The Spellplague, which altered Faerûn’s geography, politics, and cosmology. Drizzt would nonetheless solely be a spry 180 years outdated or so (of a 700-year lifespan), however his human buddy, Wulfgar, and spouse, Catti-Brie, weren’t so fortunate.
“Ed checked out me and says, ‘Bob, what are we going to do?'” Salvatore recalled from the second when the 2 came upon in regards to the adjustments. “I mentioned, we will determine how we will repair it as a result of in about 5 years they are going to come to us and say ‘Bob we received to repair this.'”
That timeline was just about on the cash: Simply as fifth Version’s guidelines hewed nearer to third Version, The Forgotten Realms moved ahead one other decade or so, however underwent yet one more metaphysical calamity that made its politics, geography, and metaphysics look suspiciously much like how they did 120 years beforehand.
Salvatore even received a mulligan on Do’Urden’s useless associates, with Catti-Brie, Wulfgar, Bruenor Battlehammer, and Regis the Halfling all getting a second probability at life. Salvatore’s most up-to-date novel, the thirty ninth within the Legend of Drizzt saga, was Lolth’s Warrior in 2023.
