Elizabeth Danforth on Her Wasteland Involvement

Considering that she worked as a designer on the original Wasteland (and Tunnels & Trolls: Crusaders of Khazan for those of us keeping CRPG score), it was welcome news when we learned that Elizabeth Danforth had joined the Wasteland 2 team. And it’s this re-involvement that has prompted her to pen a blog entry about her career, one of the areas that she was responsible for on Wasteland, and what her plans are for us in Wasteland 2:

A lot of powerful, creative, intelligent minds worked on the first Wasteland. Brian is assembling the core personalities who drove that game, including my old friends from Flying Buffalo and T&T days, Mike Stackpole and Ken St Andre. I met Alan Pavlish while working on Wasteland and worked with him many times thereafter, writing large chunks of subsequent Interplay projects like the two Star Trek titles (25th Anniversary and Judgment Rites) and other works. I was delighted to learn that another creative friend from that time, Steve Peterson, once of HERO Games and co-designer of Champions, is evidently also getting involved. [ETA: I may have misunderstood something Steve said, but it would be cool if it’s true!]

Right now, it looks like I’ll be doing just a little in the new game, but at least one map. Expect a worthy successor to Highpool. Expect me to jack around with your emotions and expect your decisions to have consequences. I know more about games and game design than I did then, and I’d like to think I’m at least as creative today as I was then, if not more so.

That’s one advantage to being a Maker. Doing so many different things, I don’t get too set in my ways about any one thing I do, whether art or writing or game design. I may not be as well known as some who specialize that’s the downside to being a jack of all trades but I’ve worked steadily as a creative Maker for almost four decades. I still get as excited by challenging new projects as I did when I was twenty. And I’m really stoked about some of the ideas and evil plans growing in my notes for when I get the green light to start on my part of Wasteland 2.