Golden Dragon Interview: Savant

[BenWH]

Savant has been a regular contributor to NWN for many years, and won the recognition award: Veteran Author Award for NWN for 2006. His Aielund Saga is highly aclaimed and now finished (bar a few face lifts!). We asked him about the Saga, and about his future plans, plus of course his views on the Golden Dragons!

What made you start building modules for NWN?

I used to DM a lot of D&D games back in the '90s, but I also like playing the old gold box D&D computer games too. And then came along Unlimited Adventures, which brought those two hobbies together. At least it would have, if I had a computer that could have run it... Fast forward a few years, and out comes NWN, which had me drooling over the possibilities. I like telling compelling stories, basically.

Is the Aielund Saga done for good, or will you be revisiting it?

I've been waiting for the 1.69 patch to come out with the extra tilesets and other features, so I most likely will give the saga another going-over. I like using a lot of the available custom content to spice things up. But as for extending the story or writing more of it, I had thought of doing an epilogue module to wrap up a few things, but after talking with friends and family, I've decided to turn the saga into a series of novels. Prior to beginning work on NWN when it first came out, I had completed a fantasy adventure novel which was never published. I took elements from that and folded them into the Aielund saga in NWN, and expanded upon the story a great deal. And now I'd like to put Aielund into book form.

Do you think it was a risk or a benefit to invest so much in one series, rather than in several stand-alone modules

Most of the stories I come up with keep growing and adding to themselves. I'm a big-picture kind of writer I guess! Act 2 was far bigger and more plot-heavy than act 1, and I definetly bit off more than I could chew. I had to downsize a lot of it, and leave out sub-plots and the like in order to get it completed in a reasonable amount of time. But I learned from that, and moved on. There was never any risk of me not finishing the saga through boredom or anything like that, it was just a question of time.

Have you considered switching to NWN2?

I had been looking forward to NWN2 when I saw what it was going to look like, but was bitterly disappointed when it came out. I've heard from people that the expansion fixed a lot of issues that I had, such as the toolset, but by then I'd decided to avoid it anyway. Now that I'll be writing the books I won't be trying to do NWN2 at the same time.

What did you think when you first heard about the Golden Dragon Awards?

I thought it was a great idea, considering the amount of talented people working within NWN that toil away for no money and little recognition. I'm honoured to have won the veteran author award, and offer congratulations to the other winners!

Baldecaran and thegeorge were also on the shortlist for the Veteran Author award. Have you tried any of their work?

Alas, I haven't played any other modules that I wasn't also working on in years. I just didn't have the time.

What are you up to currently?

Creatively, I've been recharging for the past few months. After BlackDiamond pulled out of Fall of Aielund part 3, I had a much bigger workload, and I struggled to get it done. At the end of it I just kinda went brain dead for a while! However, lately I can't stop thinking about the novel, which means I'm about to get writing (its the only way I'll get to sleep!)

Thanks for taking the time to do an interview, and good luck with those books!

[kookoo]

congratulations on the award and good luck with the books.  The hardest part about writing is sitting down and doing it.

[Tybae]

Yet another great read.  Congratulations Savant.  Good luck on the novels.  I might actually read them as I haven't read a book that wasn't a homework assignment, or required for work, since College.  I'm too much of a type A personality. 

[sirchet]

Congratulations! Please keep us vaulters appraised on your book(s) status.

[Savant]

Thanks guys! I do plan on posting news about my progress on my website, so you'll be able to follow my slow yet inevitable creative process 

[Estelindis]

Thanks for the interview and for all your hard work!  I adore Aielund and hope succeed at turning your vision into a novel - or, maybe, a series of novels!  You'll have a fan base to start with. 

[sirchet]

I second Estelindis's comment.

[DopeFishhh]

On the topic of NWN 2 I have been discussing with Savant the possibility of a port of the NWN version to NWN 2 (with creative freedoms) by another modder who is independant and skilled in NWN 2.

If you are experienced in the NWN 2 toolset (10-20 hours of good gameplay and story spread over any number of modules) we'd like to hear from you.

If you are interested in participating in this project email me DopeFishhh at DopeFishhh@hotmail.com with "Aielund Port to NWN 2" as the subject, give yourself a brief introduction and tell me about your previous work.