Community

Steve Townshend will be available for a live chat on Wednesday, November 30, from 1 to 2 pm Pacific time. Steve's writing has been featured in  numerous D&D projects, most recently Heroes of the Feywild and the current D&D Encounters season adventure, Beyond the Crystal Cave.

If you have questions that you'd like Steve to answer, you can ask them here and get them into the queue ahead of time.  

Steve (Winter) 

Any heroes of... Books coming after elemental chaos? What is the name (or at least initals) of the products you are working on, if any?

Q: Gardmore Abbey is my favorite 4e adventure. A large part of its charm is its ability to be replayed differently due to the mechanics of the card distribution throughout the abbey and the NPC's. How did you decide on this mechanism and was their much debate on if you should use such a randomised system?

Q: The Deck of Many Things was originally released as a paragon tier artifact through DDI. Was Gardmore Abbey originally intended to be a paragon tier adventure? If you were to write it as a paragon tier adventure, what would you change?

Q: Heroes of the Feywild contains some elements new to 4e which created countless pages of discussion on the forums (ex. Pixie flight, racial gender restrictions). Was there as much debate amongst the design team on these issues?

Q: Creating a book like Heroes of Feywild requires a strong unified vision of the world you are describing. How does a group of different designers and writers create a book that appears so unified around that vision?

Q: You've done a lot of different things when it comes to D&D. What style of D&D product is your favorite to work on? Encounters? Super Adventure? Player books? Do prefer to write story or mechanics?

Is a REAL new setting, or at least a new adaptation of a pas one, in the long range work at least? keep details hidden if needed.

Yes to ubergeek, a thousand times yes. Is there going to be a new setting for fourth? Like, a new one, and not just an adoption of an old setting..

Nov 23, 2011 -- 5:43PM, Zelkon wrote:

Yes to ubergeek, a thousand times yes. Is there going to be a new setting for fourth? Like, a new one, and not just an adoption of an old setting..

It is maybe what is REALLY needed for 4th ed to stand out and go on a quick drive for more gound and beat pathfinder maybe.. an Eberron 2,0, a setting MADE, tailored around 4th ed, creative and unique.

As you toss around ideas for books, do you start general and work to specifics, or do you work cohessively from the ground up? 


Our group loves the new classes from Feywild.  Were there other classes that didn't quite make it to print? Or other class ideas you might explore in the future? 

 

Quick clarification: Drammattex is a freelance contributor. As such, he's not privy to R&D's long-range plans. He certainly can offer his opinions on what he'd like to see, but he has no specific knowledge of things like unannounced campaign settings. Even if he did--which he doesn't--but if he did, he'd be foolish to spill the beans if he wanted to keep writing for WotC. So bear that in mind when posing questions.

Steve
 

This is very true!

Also, it just so happens that my current knowledge of future products is ZERO!

I'm offered work on a project by project basis, so my knowledge of all things WotC rarely extends beyond the product I'm working on, or have worked on. 

I can tell you what settings I'll be playing next year, but I'm afraid I may disappoint.
The answers are: homebrew, homebrew, homebrew, and maybe some classic TSR Marvel Superheroes. We'll see about that. 

Talk to you soon,

-Steve (the other one) 

Is there going to be a transcript for his posted somewhere?

The transcript is up. And there might be something in it for ya, if you get there quick.

Steve