Ed Stark Dungeons and Dragons Interview at Game Informer

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Game Informer have posted a great interview with Ed Stark of Wizards of the Coast, the creative director for the 3rd edition and 3.5 edition. They start from Mr Stark's work for TSR and Wizards, move on to D&D video games, also considering the legendary early titles from long before Baldur's Gate era and end up discussing how video roleplaying games based on D&D reflect the core rules or the brand. They bring up several interesting topics, the questions are well-thought and up to the point, while comprehensive answers exhaust the matter thoroughly. Definitely a must read. Here's a bit of what they say:

GI: So now you’ve obviously been with Dungeons & Dragons for a long time and there’s been video games throughout the decades, on all the different systems. What’s it been like from your perspective, and have you had any involvement with it?

Stark: Well, it’s been pretty cool because my first experience with video games was probably like a lot of people playing old Atari and Midway games. You know, Asteroids and Space Invaders and all that sort of thing. And then my first computer game when I finally got an old 8088 computer was Wizardry, which of course was essentially one of the first D&D games. And then of course when Stormfront did their gold box games I got involved in those. So I’ve kind of grown with D&D or D&D-like computer games. They always appealed to me because, even though I had a very regular gaming group, we got together a couple of times a week usually, there were certainly times when I wanted to play and nobody was around. So it’s like, “Oh, throw the disc in the drive and play.” When I wasn’t playing Pirates, which was just huge in my home too. And when, one of the things that happened, remember I said TSR started looking very inward? That happened with computer game licenses too.

After the gold box games were done, which had been very good, very true to D&D - Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, and the Eye of the Beholder series - after those came out there was kind of a lull, and something happened at TSR, and I wasn’t involved in it so I can’t say exactly why it happened so it soon became that TSR was willing to take a check from a computer licensee, but didn’t really want to do anything. They didn’t want to be involved. So they would say, “Yes, you have the rights to do this video game, and we don’t want to hear from you.” And so games would come out that weren’t very good. They weren’t real strong representations of the D&D brand, and may have been good games in and of themselves, but had no business having the Dungeons and Dragons logo on them because they weren’t reflections. And every once in awhile somebody would come out with something that was very cool and very D&D, but it was completely by accident as far as TSR was concerned.

Well, when Wizards of the Coast took over TSR, Peter Adkison said, “Look, computer gaming is the future of roleplaying. We’ve got to get involved in this.” And that’s when Neverwinter Nights was coming out. So I got involved in the original Neverwinter Nights, kind of at a late date. But I mean I flew up to Edmonton with Bioware and we spent several days going over their design document and looking at what they had already built and trying to say, “This is really not the way things work in D&D.” Or, “Could you do this instead?” And we got it so that Neverwinter Nights was pretty darn close to where we wanted things for D&D to be. Since then Atari has been so communicative and set up so many meetings and things between the development houses and our own staff in Seattle that we feel often like partners when we’re working on this game. I mean, my entire job is really about working with Atari. And so when they come in and say, “Look, we want to do something different. We want to do an action based game that really isn’t a strong representation of the rules, but we feel is a really strong representation of the brand.” I say, “Well, show me what you’ve got.” And we work it out and we end up with something like Demon Stone, which is completely their idea, but we were able to look at it and go, “What’s important about the D&D brand?” Well, socialization, heroic fantasy, high action, and a good story. Well it has all those things. Do you get to see the dice roll? No. Do you even know what the main character’s strength is? No. But he gets to buy feats, he gets to buy equipment, he gets to work with party. No problem.

GI: I’m curious. We got to see D&D Online and that seems to be, well, it wasn’t what I was expecting at first, but it seems to be a much truer conversion of D&D than even Neverwinter has done to some extent. I’m just kind of curious what your thoughts are on that.

Stark: Well, and see I think D&D Online hits the other end of the spectrum than Demon Stone because Demon Stone is a console game. It’s supposed to be finite. It’s supposed to tell a good story. It’s supposed to get across this great brand message of what D&D and Forgotten Realms are. D&D Online is of course set in the new Eberron campaign setting. But that’s going to be a game where you’re going to be playing continuously. The rules have to stack up. I mean, if I’m going to sit there and tell an online player that they’re playing D&D Online, they have to be able to sit there with the player’s handbook and go, “Okay, I should pick this class or skill because I’m going to be able to do that later because if it turns out that the fifth level wizard can’t cast fireball they’re going to go, “Wait a minute. This isn’t D&D.” So we feel it’s important that D&D Online really reflect the rules of Dungeons and Dragons. Now, we are going to have certain places, I’m sure, we haven’t gotten far enough for me to give a specific example, but where things are going to be compromised. Like where we’re going to say, “Look, it’s important in an online game that you’re able to do X.” I don’t know what X is right now, but in D&D you have to be able to do it this way. Who knows if attacks of opportunity are going to work the same way? Are they going to be reflected in the game? Almost certainly. I think the end user’s going to look at it and go, “Wow, this is such a great translation of D&D.” And we’ll of course, knowing the background, go, “But, oh, the code works a little bit differently.”

Personally, I tend to agree with Ed Stark that the rules aren't everything and a D&D video game that focuses on a certain adventure first of all needs to have that special touch of D&D roleplaying, while it's the very task of such a complete system as Dungeons and Dragons Online to stick to the rules closely. After all, on one hand pen and paper DMs also make up house rules and it's the fun from playing an involving adventure in a captivating setting that matters and on the other hand, if we make it a goal to create an online D&D system implementation we need to make it as much D&D as pen and paper. The key is telling which is which. What's your view?

Read the whole interview at Game Informer.