1. I believe it was a nod to Black Isle and our RPG roots, yes - although the original Black Isle name was a nod to our CEO’s roots as well (Feargus could speak to that).

While I don’t enjoy writing them, I do so because people like them (or the franchise demands it), and I’ve certainly done a lot of them. As long as I can balance them out with a “hate-mance” (like in Alphas Protocol), I can deal with it.

Thanks so much! We tried to strike a different tone in each DLC, and Dead Money and Lonesome Road were no exception.

Would love to. D&D’s a great license, and some of the most fun titles I’ve worked on have been D&D worlds (Mask of the Betrayer, Planescape, Icewind Dale).

Learn at home! Keep writing, keep publishing (paid or not), put it up so people can read it, get feedback, and rinse and repeat - just don’t give up, and over time, you’ll see your skills and body of work increase (and you’ll make a lot less errors and find your voice as well). The only thing that would stop you from…

I agree, and that is a design flaw in the morality system we went with - and arguably, hurts role-playing. In design, you should be rewarding the player (in different ways) for interacting with the game, not just “choose all the good options and you get all the good superpowers.” Middle of the road characters should…

That’s tough, and depends on publisher and developer (and the franchise). And I don’t have a preference on story styles as long as they are good (I enjoy Game of Thrones and Downton Abbey both). While you can chafe under parameters, parameters can make a story even better than you intended because of the constraints.

It was mostly internal pressure (well, except in the first few months when we were trying to generate a story when we didn’t have access to the first game - when that happened, LucasArts came back to us and said, “it needs to be more like K1” which we agreed with - I think the first iteration of the story was pretty…

It depends on the project, and the design position - as an example, system samples are much different than narrative samples, and even with narrative samples, those can vary widely depending on the position (say, writing for South Park vs. Tides of Numenera vs. FTL vs. well, you get the idea). The big issue for…

You can’t argue with a Bozar. Well, you can, but... well, you’ll lose.

Would love to, I believe we were there last year, and will likely go again. If so, see you there!

That’s a better answer. Approaching each NPC you write with “what do they want and how will they get it from the PC” is great. /Respectful Bow

Travis Stout (one of the designers) is great. (He worked on Dungeon Siege III, South Park, Old World Blues, New Vegas, and more.) He’s also a much, much better writer than me.

Probably not, unless it was delivered by a lawyer. :/ I can discuss the concepts in general, although that could be a long series of points (some major things: asynchronous intel sharing and disinformation to affect missions, hubs-within-hubs to solve core missions, and lots more colorful characters - more Heck and…

Choose high Wisdom Nameless One, and discuss with your antagonist at the end - the high Wisdom answer is mine. :)

I love doing area design (making dungeons and layouts is a lot of fun for me, and reminds me of my old college architecture days) and I dread writing dialogue, strangely enough. I feel like as soon as I start writing dialogue, the character and the intended audience are already judging me. :/

We were pretty surprised (or at least I was) that the narrative passed muster. I think we got only 5-6 comments on the story, and one was a misspelled name (Atton) and another comment was “the Devaronian’s horns are too long in the character model.” That said, while it was dark, I feel like all the designers had done…

You may want to ask the Lead Producer on Tides of Numenera, Kevin Saunders - he likely knows more than I (he was the area designer for it).

I... I... wait, are you offering this? Call me! Now.

JRPG narratives, while linear, are usually stronger for it (Final Fantasy III and VII and Chronotrigger all had brave choices in them). Also, I think JRPGs are better about introduction of companions and letting them shine without you getting too attached to one person at the outset to the detriment of anyone you meet…