Siege of Avalon Game

Editor's nook...

Writing

A couple weeks ago, I got to interview Tucker Latham, one of the new writers for Siege of Avalon. Tucker started out as a play tester and then he moved into writing. He's responsible for some of the soldier dialogue in Chapter 1, but he's much more involved now and over the past month he's been striving to make the characters you'll meet in Chapter 2 more interesting and enjoyable.

Tucker wants everyone to know that the writers do read the discussion boards and most ideas and critiques from there are taken into consideration. A lot of the changes that have been implemented came as a direct result of player feedback.

For instance, in Chapter 2, there will be more choices in dialogue selection. The text box is bigger. You can be sarcastic or polite, however you want. You'll find that the NPC's will have more personality and they will acknowledge you if you've met them before. Likewise, there will be more interrelationships among the people. If you roam around and talk to people, you may find out interesting tidbits about your fellow residents. Or some NPC's may be especially knowledgeable about politics or the history of the realms. In addition, you can look forward to more foreshadowing and more comic relief.

In general, the writing is done in parallel development. This means that everything is getting done at the same time and so, the writers don't always (i.e. never) have the luxury of seeing the game in working order before adding their input. As a writer, Tucker gets the chapter outline and then from that, he concocts the dialogue, the item descriptions and the journal entries. Usually the Art Team is way ahead of the writers, so at least there's something to look at. That's pretty useful, especially when doing the item descriptions.

Of course, if you want to try your hand at writing or drawing, fan fiction and fan art is always welcome. Check out www.orderofavalon.com for more info.

Sande