BioWare Writing Contest Winning Interview with Mat Jobe at NWVault

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NWVault has interviewed Mat Jobe, whose module entitled Myranni's Magic has won BioWare's Writing Contest. Here's a snip:

3) What was your inspiration for the module and how long did it take you to come up with the overall concept?
I can't remember the specific inspiration for it, but it's one of those ideas I've collected over the years and have tucked away in the back of my mind. At one time, I had the idea worked out as a full-length module where the player would actually own the magic shop and manage every aspect of its day-to-day operation. That would include hiring and firing employees, going on quests for items to add to the inventory, and of course, dealing with unusual requests from customers.
I liked the idea because it sort of played with the conventions of computer roleplaying games by putting the PC into a role normally played by an NPC. It also addresses some of those questions that randomly pop into my head as I'm playing these games, like: Why would a powerful wizard with all these wondrous magic items chose to stand behind a desk all day?

Obviously, I never got around to making this into a full-length module, but when I heard about the writing contest, this idea jumped out at me again. It seemed like a perfect fit. I just needed to scale it back a bit.

I started off by going with three customers ­ each posing a different logical or moral dilemma for the PC. However, I quickly found that I couldn't do justice to this scenario under the contest's 3500-word limit. So I ended up going with one customer, one logical dilemma, and one helper (Blaggo) to give the PC a limited number of clues.

Read the rest at NWVault.