Newsarama interviewed writer John Rogers on IDW’s new ongoing D&D series.
Some snippets:
John Rogers: The characters are Fell’s Five, a group of adventurers working as swords for hire and problem-solvers in the isolated mountain town of Fallcrest. Adric Fell is their leader — he’s a veteran of the last border war, brighter than he looks and not as charming as he thinks. He’s a skilled swordsman and a sharp strategist, but his main skill is keeping his fractious group of adventurers focused for longer than five minutes at a time.
They’re all a little rough around the edges. Khal the dwarf is a lovestruck paladin. Varis the elf has an … interesting and odd secret that means he doesn’t spend time with other elves. Tisha — well, tieflings are considered a cursed race that consorted with demons, so she spends a lot of time both complaining bitterly about that stereotype and then slinging dark energies around a moment later. A little tricky for her to keep the high ground there.
And Bree … ah, she’s just a murderous lout. But she’s our murderous lout.
Some people were a little surprised that I developed the most standard adventuring party I could come up with. But that was the point — I want it to be familiar. I want people who kinda sorta know fantasy to see it and go “Hey, dwarves and elves and swords. Sure, I’ll give it a try.”
And then they’re in for the weird bend we wind up putting on the characters. Just like — and again, this is intentional, part of the design — the way D&D players take character classes and make those PC’s their own. I wanted to play with the tropes.
I honestly think that one of the reasons fantasy comics have had a hard time is because they try to ape the epic scope of fantasy literature, and frankly, can’t. It’s a different medium. There’s atill a big world out there in the background, but we see it all through the eyes of five very scrappy, practical adventurers. A bit more of Erickson’s Bridgeburners or the Black Company than Lord of the Rings.
The first storyline begins when our guys are accused of murdering zombies (yeah, you heard that right), and leads us through shapeshifting assassins and interdimensional hijinks. All in, it’s about a year of plot for the first arc….
I’ve written a bit for the 4th Edition of D&D, and I’m pretty publicly known as an advocate and fan of role-playing games. So Denton (Tipton, the editor) and the IDW guys were nice enough to give me a call when they were developing the book.
Having written Blue Beetle, they knew I had monthly experience under my belt, and they wouldn’t have to educate me about the game or the world….
Khal Khalundurrin, the dwarf in the book, is named after a character I played for three years. I can tell you why I prefer 2d10 to d20 (but 3d6 is kinda harsh). I ran the game that introduced Andy Cosby, creator of the SyFy show Eureka to Third Edition. I used 3rd Ed and Spycraft, along with Wolfgang Bauer’s Dark Matter to cobble together my own modern gaming system.
When I was shooting the season finale of Leverage, I skyped into my biweekly D&D game. I can tell you who won the Ennies this year. I have a bag of dice in my car. I roll old school.
More: here.
