Neal Hallford Interview Part III

RPGVault has posted up part 3 of their ongoing interview with Neal Hallford, creator of the storyline for the upcoming Dungeon Siege and author of the new book Swords & Circuitry: A Designer’s Guide to Computer Role-Playing Games. Here’s a snippet:

Jonric: A major RPG-oriented project you’ve just completed is your new book, Swords & Circuitry: A Designer’s Guide to Computer Role-Playing Games. What led you to be interested in doing it?

Neal Hallford: The idea for Swords & Circuitry actually dates back to my days at New World Computing. When I first came aboard with Jon Van Caneghem’s crew to work on Might & Magic III: Isles of Terra, I’d spent a good chunk of years playing pen and paper role-playing games, but I quickly discovered that designing RPGs for computers was a very different kind of experience. Unfortunately there weren’t any books that you could go buy on the subject, and there weren’t any universities out there teaching Game Design 101. The only way I had to learn was just to wade in, get wet, make lots of mistakes, and improve on everything I did the next time around. Luckily for me, I ended up doing more right than wrong, so I’ve managed to survive in this business.