Editorial Josh Sawyer and The Black Hound

[Crooked Bee]

Tags: Black Isle Studios; J.E. Sawyer; Obsidian Entertainment; The Black Hound

Josh Sawyer has put up another blog post, this time on The Black Hound, that famous RPG project he was working on which never saw the light of day. Have a snippet:

In the course of following our countdown over at Obsidian, a lot of gamers have been discussing past IPs we've worked with. One of the common subjects is The Black Hound, a project some of us at OEI worked on at Black Isle. It's also something I worked on as a NWN2 mod in my spare time. There's a Wikipedia entry for it and a few lore sites kicking around. Some of the info on it is accurate and some isn't, but I think the details are less important than what we were trying to do with it. I can't speak for everyone who was on the project, of course, but TBH was important to me for a lot of reasons.

[...] I've been rambling here a bit but let me get back to the main point: The Black Hound wasn't really *~ sUbVeRsIvE ~* "this ain't your daddy's RPG!" fantasy. It had elven ruins and fire genasi and Ilmaterian paladins and Maztican sorcerers and crypts full of undead -- all the stuff that made the Forgotten Realms the crazy blend of hardass adventurer-heavy, gods-mess-with-things, cults-and-dracoliches-under-this-rock D&D fantasy it always has been. I, and I think we all, just tried to approach the world with open eyes, asking, "Okay, so let's suppose all of this stuff about the Realms is true. What does that really mean for how the people in it live their lives?" It made the world more dark and grim, and sometimes that consideration wound up bucking convention, be we didn't set out to invert fantasy conventions just for the sake of doing it.

I regret that the team wasn't able to complete The Black Hound, and not just because of the time and passion we all invested in it. Some of my best tabletop RPG (and CRPG) memories come out of the Forgotten Realms. Huge, crazy, "how many more Volo's Guides can there be?" Forgotten Realms. I think those scenarios were memorable because the DMs/designers made compelling scenarios and the players gave a damn about each other and what was going on. If you take fantasy for granted, yeah, no one's going to get much out of it. I don't think we took anything for granted. We had an opportunity to make something that celebrated high fantasy without being enslaved by its conventions. In retrospect, there are a bunch of personal design choices I look back on and cringe at, but I don't regret the time I spent on it at all. When you enjoy the process of making something that much, it's hard to consider it time wasted. We had a lot of fun while it lasted.​

I guess this means the upcoming announcement isn't about The Black Hound Kickstarter, then. Or...?

 

[skuphundaku]

It's not The Black Hound, it's Torn: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...obsidians-new-game.75947/page-15#post-2263707

 

[Stinger]

That was a great read. I always like reading Sawyer's writeups and how he goes into detail about the reasons behind certain design choices. Whether or not I agree with him, I certainly respect where he's coming from.

Shame it won't be Black Hound but that just makes things even more interesting cause now I genuinely have no clue.

It's not IWD3, it's not TBH, unless it's Defiance I've got no bloody idea.

Unless sea telling the truth when he said it was a Family Guy RPG. "What do the words mean?" "Boy that reminds me of the time I was stuck singing the Dirge of Eir Glanfath with Ray Charles at a Mexican restaurant."

 

[Lockkaliber]

Sucks that it's not TBH . I hope he gets to make it some day though.

 

[MicoSelva]

That was a nice read and it gives important clues about the new Obsidian project. Looks like it is going to be some high fantasy stuff. May not be D&D related (unless it actually is Torn), but I expect it to have at least dungeons, if not dragons too.

 

[skuphundaku]

That was a nice read and it gives important clues about the new Obsidian project. Looks like it is going to be some high fantasy stuff. May not be D&D related (unless it actually is Torn), but I expect it to have at least dungeons, if not dragons too.

TORN has nothing to do with D&D. To me, the setting looks like a combination of Planescape and Age of Decadence. Planescape because the whole eternity/trying to break out of a cyclical existence/etc. and Age of Decadence because of the "Two centuries ago, your divine champion told the people of Dyrwood to grovel at his feet. If you've come on pilgrimage to the blasted crater that was our reply, Godhammer Citadel is *that* way." hint. The whole "the blasted crater that was our reply" thing makes me think of the fact that, although, on the surface, it seems a low fantasy/fantasy setting, it is actually a post-apocalyptic setting of an advanced civilization, just like in Age of Decadence.

 

[MicoSelva]

Ok, I misunderstood something there. Thanks for the clarification.

 

[Zed]

That dude may still wind up casting chain lightning on townsfolk, but if we weave a compelling story around him, the player should feel that there's more to him than that.

Chain lightning on townsfolk... Now that's evil.