Author Profile: Drew Karpyshyn

Remove all ads!

(Originally posted by Darien)

WotC has posted a profile of author Drew Karpyshyn, author of the Forgotten Realms book, Temple Hill and BioWare's Throne of Bhaal. He talks about some of his influences, his favorite authors, and about the challenge of creating a novel from a CRPG.

Novelizations of a computer game are always tough, especially the BioWare games. They're HUGE! There are 17 possible NPCs in the game who can join your party, but in a novel you really only have room for three or four characters, so somebody has to get left out. Players don't like it when you leave out their favorite character. Similarly, sub-plots and side quests from the game also have to go, which can make even more people angry. And of course, the game is constantly being changed and tweaked right up until the release date. I had the final draft of the Throne of Bhaal novel done by March, but we kept making revisions to the actual game right through May. Obviously, some of these later changes never made it into the novel. Again, there's that potential to anger devoted fans of the game.

I think it's dangerous for an author to try (and unrealistic for a reader to expect) to replicate the experience of playing a computer game in a novel. Both game and book can both be very rewarding experiences, but they're very different experiences. Watching a movie about baseball isn't going to be the same as playing baseball -- or watching a baseball game on TV. I'm not saying one is better than the other...just that they're all different.

I tried to put some things into the ThrOB novel that didn't make it into the game. There's some back story and history for a lot of the characters that never made it into the game, and I think Baldur's Gate fans will find the novel an interesting read. I wanted to give the readers something they hadn't seen before, but not tinker too much with the true spirit of the game.

Read the interview.