Greyhawk Q&A

Next week, Infogrames will announce a new Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition role-playing game set in the world of Greyhawk, which was extensively documented in pen-and-paper modules released years ago. To produce Greyhawk: The Temple of Elemental Evil, Infogrames called upon an established RPG developer: Troika. Based in Irvine, California, the studio completed Arcanum last year, and several of Troika's core team members were central to creating Fallout, the classic postapocalyptic RPG released in 1997.

We jumped at an early opportunity to speak with Troika's Tim Cain about the new Greyhawk game. He told us in great detail about how the idea for the game came together, about how Troika has adapted Greyhawk to 3rd Edition rules, about the nonlinear story structure, and more. Look for the first images of the game in the coming weeks.

GameSpot: How long has Greyhawk been in the works? Tell us how the project got started.

Tim Cain: We started almost exactly one year ago. We had independently started making a new isometric game engine that used 3D characters and rendered backgrounds, which gave us a great combination of beautiful detail and lots of animations, and we had a demo of the engine when Infogrames contacted us about D&D.

GS: Did Troika approach Infogrames about making a game based on the 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons rules?

TC: Actually, Infogrames called us, and we told them we had an engine ready to go. They came down and liked what they saw, and I told them how big a fan I was of D&D. In fact, I was playing in a D&D campaign at the time, and I thought 3rd Edition was a huge improvement in the mechanics of the game. It was perfect timing.

GS: How did you settle on the Greyhawk setting? What's appealing about it?

TC: I feel nostalgic about some of the original 1st Edition modules, especially The Temple of Elemental Evil (T1-4). We settled on that module because it was epic in scope and supported characters starting at the first level. I debated going with the Against the Giant series (G1-3) since G1 was the first TSR module and because it leads into the whole Drow series as an obvious sequel, but the Giant series required characters to start at level 8.

GS: Describe the story as the game starts out.

TC: The original module has the players arriving at the small village of Hommlet to deal with some unspecified evil. We have decided to run with this a little and make separate starting points (which we call vignettes) depending on the alignment of the player-character party. Each vignette is quite different. Some have the party meeting with a powerful NPC who is sending them on a specific mission, while others have the party roaming through a dungeon and discovering a treasure map. I think making the vignettes for evil parties was the most fun, since we can start the evil parties in very nasty situations.

GS: The original Greyhawk: The Temple of Elemental Evil module was released quite a while ago and was based on the 1st Edition rules. Was it difficult to even find copies of the module?

TC: Yes, it was very difficult. I had the only copy at the office, and it was a mint-condition 1985 printing of T1-4 bound as one module. I had to make the difficult decision to cut it up and rebind it in a spiral binding to use as source material for our team. We eventually found more copies on eBay, and most of the team members now have a personal copy.

GS: What's been involved in converting Greyhawk to the 3rd Edition system? Are there particular elements of the module that have made it into the game and work well in a computer RPG and not others?

TC: We have to convert all of the monsters, spells, items, and NPCs to the new system. Fortunately, most of the spells are the same, but skills and feats have had to be selected by hand for each NPC. But the nice part about 3rd Edition is its ability to individualize NPCs and monsters, so many of the exceptional characters in the module who were extending or even breaking rules of 1st Edition were not difficult to translate into 3rd Edition rules.

I'd say the best part of 3rd Edition as translated into a computer RPG is the extensive use we make of the noncombat skills and feats. The dialogue skills such as diplomacy, bluff, and intimidate were easy to incorporate into Troika's dialogue system, which already made use of stats and skills to offer different dialogue options to the player. It feels good to spend skill points in noncombat skills that actually matter during gameplay.

GS: There are a number of Greyhawk modules. Would it interest Troika to base new products on other modules in the setting?

TC: Certainly! I am still eyeing the Against the Giants series as something to tackle next.

GS: Both Fallout and Arcanum are known for letting players choose multiple paths through the main quests of the game. Is this a goal for the new game as well? What are some specific ways that you're working this in?

TC: Yes, Greyhawk is no exception. Every quest has multiple solutions, some through combat and some through dialogue using the various skills you can buy in the game. And in addition to multiple endings based on how you acted throughout the game, a feature we pioneered in Fallout, we have added the concept of multiple-start games, which we call vignettes. Depending on your alignment, your starting location changes, and your ultimate reason for coming to Hommlet and eventually to the Temple of Elemental Evil is different. I think this feature will make replayability of the game even higher, since you can see the difference in the game's plot from the very start of the game.