People News Neal Hallford (Betrayal at Krondor) Kickstarts His New Novel - a CRPG is Next!

[Crooked Bee]

Tags: Betrayal at Krondor; Neal Hallford; Thief of Dreams

Neal Hallford, the person who wrote Betrayal at Krondor as well as Dungeon Siege, has turned to Kickstarter to fund a novel, Thief of Dreams:

From the writer behind the hit computer games Betrayal at Krondor and Dungeon Siege comes The Thief of Dreams, a new fantasy novel set in a world where magic is forbidden, where sorcerers are spies, and where a force beyond imagination threatens to transform the long simmering cold war between the nine kingdoms into a cataclysmic, world-shattering conflict.

[...] THE THIEF OF DREAMS will be the kind of sprawling fantasy adventure for which my computer gaming fans already know me. The one thing that people have consistently said about whatever I've worked on over the years is that I know how to tell a damned good story. The games I've created have been translated into a dozen different languages, and have won all kinds of awards. BETRAYAL AT KRONDOR was inducted into the Computer Gaming World Hall of Fame. I've had over a million people read the stories I've written for games -- which is kind of a strange position to be in for a first-time novelist. I've had my work adapted into a New York Times bestselling novelization, and also a movie starring Jason Statham, which is again, something of an aberration for someone trying to peddle their first book of fiction.

I'm not telling you all this because I'm terribly impressed with myself -- honestly I'm continually flabbergasted that anyone wants to hear anything I have to say -- but mainly to let you know that this isn't something I just woke up yesterday and decided I wanted to try on a whim. I'm good at this. I know how to do it. I want to write this novel. But in order to make this a possibility, I need to be able to clear off a few months from my calendar so that I can concentrate on this -- and only this -- so that I can do the concept justice, and so that you will get a novel that doesn't read as though it's been bashed out in the author's spare time.​

Check out the Kickstarter page here.

Incidentally, Thief of Dreams was the title of Neal Hallford's actual sequel to Betrayal at Krondor, supposedly set in Kesh, which unfortunately failed to see the light of day.

Why should this matter to us on the Codex? Not just because Neal has been posting on the Codex since 2011 and not just because Betrayal at Krondor is one of the most well-regarded CRPGs around here -- but also because, as Neal Hallford has stated multiple times in our forums, this Kickstarter campaign for a novel is but a stepping stone to a future campaign for a CRPG -- a spiritual successor to Betrayal at Krondor. As Neal himself puts it in one of his posts here,

This is a smaller project that plays to what I'm best known for --- i.e. storytelling --- and it doesn't require a team of people wrangling up sketches, unity demos, and play mechanics before a campaign. People get a fun fantasy novel out of it, and I can keep the lights on, the roof over my family's head, and food on the table as I both work on the book and on the design needed for Betrayal. (And I know you're thinking a book and a game at the same time? Madness! But I've done it before. I created all the narrative assets for Dungeon Siege while I was also writing "Swords & Circuitry: A Designer's Guide to Computer Role-Playing Games". And I simutaneously did the writing/design for Lords of Everquest while also writing for Champions of Norrath. So this is familiar territory.)​

So see for yourself if Neal's next novel is your thing. And of course, we'll keep you updated as soon as Neal reveals more about his next CRPG.

Thanks Charles-cgr!

 

[Jasede]

You need money to write a novel?

 

[Kosmonaut]

Pledged!

 

[DeepOcean]

You need money to write a novel?

The guy needs to eat somehow, working on a sausage factory during the day and writing something on spare time can take a LONG time.

 

[Rhuantavan]

 

[MightyHoax]

Hmm, only $150 for a hardcover edition. Seems reasonable.

 

[evdk]

Hmm, only $150 for a hardcover edition. Seems reasonable.

You are not paying for anything, strictly speaking. I know a lot of people are treating KS as such, but it is not a pre-order service.

 

[MightyHoax]

You are not paying for anything, strictly speaking. I know a lot of people are treating KS as such, but it is not a pre-order service.

Internet...sarcasm...does not compute...

 

[evdk]

You are not paying for anything, strictly speaking. I know a lot of people are treating KS as such, but it is not a pre-order service.

Internet...sarcasm...does not compute...

I am pretty bad at spotting that, sorry.

 

[MicoSelva]

Wow @ these reward tiers.
Anyway, good luck with the campaign, Mr Halford...

 

[Havoc]

If he is indeed a known quantity with successful works, why can't he do the same?

I think, so correct me if I'm wrong, but the book industry is like the other media industries. They want something that will definitely sell. They want another Twilight or 50 Shades of Gay.
This must be the same situation that Brian Fargo was in with Wasteland 2.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

I see he wrote "Dungeon Siege". I didn't know Dungeon Siege had writing.

 

[The Bishop]

Of course it did. Lots of writing compared to other screensavers.

 

[Infinitron]

I see he wrote "Dungeon Siege". I didn't know Dungeon Siege had writing.

Dungeon Siege's ingame books were actually pretty good.

 

[Rhuantavan]

Neal should publish the world bible for Dungeon Siege. It is supposed to be massive. Sadly all that work didn't translate very well into the game.

 

[Infinitron]

Neal should publish the world bible for Dungeon Siege. It is supposed to be massive. Sadly all that work didn't translate very well into the game.

The funny thing is G Ziets made his own Dungeon Siege bible for DS3. It would be interesting to compare the two.

 

[Kosmonaut]

Neal should publish the world bible for Dungeon Siege. It is supposed to be massive. Sadly all that work didn't translate very well into the game.

I think that there are fragments of it in Neil's Swords and Circuitry book.

 

[Rhuantavan]

The funny thing is G Ziets made his own Dungeon Siege bible for DS3. It would be interesting to compare the two.

Could it be based on Hallford's work? And yes, comparing them would be nice.

I think that there are fragments of it in Neil's Swords and Circuitry book.

Nope, he does mention it around, but there are no actual samples of it in the book.

 

[Kosmonaut]

Nope, he does mention it around, but there are no actual samples of it in the book.

Yeah, you are right.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

$24 for shipping to Canada is way too much.

 

[CappenVarra]

And this pledge concludes my Kickstarter contributions for 2013.

(unless Tim Cain does one...)

 

[ghostdog]

Tim Cain's cooking recipies book KS campaign will be coming up shortly.

Be sure to get the Premium Chef Tier where the finished book will be shipped along with Tim's carebear kitchen apron.

 

[Azrael the cat]

If he is indeed a known quantity with successful works, why can't he do the same?

I think, so correct me if I'm wrong, but the book industry is like the other media industries. They want something that will definitely sell. They want another Twilight or 50 Shades of Gay.
This must be the same situation that Brian Fargo was in with Wasteland 2.

If he is indeed a known quantity with successful works, why can't he do the same?

I think, so correct me if I'm wrong, but the book industry is like the other media industries. They want something that will definitely sell. They want another Twilight or 50 Shades of Gay.
This must be the same situation that Brian Fargo was in with Wasteland 2.

Wall of text coming up (hopefully with some answers strewn in...), and experienced posters know that when I give a 'wall of text' warning, we're talking the Berlin Wall at the least. I'm sure that in some of my older posts there are still refugee families trying to cross from one side to the other, only to die crawling up that impossibly large and bizarrely structured wall of text.




Re last poster's comment about publishers. Correct, with the exception that there are still a number of publishers who will publish 'high literature' in the hope that they can collect a swag of literary awards, and the market is far more segmented than gaming (even if you walk into the most mainstream of book shops, you'll still see a fuckload of different sections with different styles of book), and then there's my field where you have academic publishers who can afford to go for pure prestige because they don't have to pay ANYTHING for the editing, peer review, writing and management (all done either on a voluntary basis, or as part of an academic's existing uni job) despite having a licence to print money because every university needs access to their journals/books for both their undergrads and their researchers/lecturers, allowing them to charge thousands of dollars for digital-only access (again, despite having basically all the work done by volunteers). There's breakaway attempts, 'open journals' where academics post their work online where everyone can read it, but the problem is that (a) uni employers look at your publishing record on a 'prestige' basis, and the 'elite' journal that extorts students and unis alike while paying nothing to its peer reviewers, editors and authors, are the ones that carry the 'elite' status, whereas open journal publications aren't even worth lisiting on your resume due to the assumption that they're less rigorous/choosy, and (b) in many countries (including where I work in Australia) the government has a rule where an academic automatically must be fired if they don't accrue enough 'publishing points' in a 3 year period, with the points per publication are determined by the journal's prestige (so the aforementioned extoritionist journals are the A-graders, and the open ones where most academics WANT to publish, so that anyone interested can read their work don't give any points at all, meaning you can only afford to publish in them once you're already well established (contradicting the assumption that they're necessarily of lower quality - given that it's mostly the guys who are so elite/secure in their jobs that they know they can get a chair in their field wherever they go, and hence don't give a shit about publishing prestige, some of those open journals are the exclusive domain of top-notch auithors).

Anyway, my point is that the whole industry is mercenary - nowhere near as bad as gaming in terms of variety (though academic publishing is much much worse in terms of exploitation) - but mercenary nonetheless. If Halford was pitching this novel either (a) during the late 80s/early 90s when the Krondor series was still likely to be a big-seller on name recognition alone and fantasy books were selling like made, or (b) during the 'Lord of the Rings' films, when fantasy novels had their brief revival before getting swallowed by the endless zombie swathes of F-grade Forgotten Realms pulp, he'd have a bunch of publishers throwing offers at him. Even in academia I've experienced this - I remember putting an article out to publishers a few years back and getting broadly rejected. Two years later, the suibject matter becomes fashionable both in academia and wider moral/legal/medical debate (I write on ethics, bio/medical-ethics (I don't get involved in medical disputes, just the social/legal/moral implications of the relevant science), legal philosophy and political philosophy, with the occasional 'philosophy of religion' article as a side-hobby) - so I send the exact same article out to the high-end publishers without changing a single thing (other than sending it to a different editorial office so they didn't know I was resubmitting the same article without invitation) and it gets approved by peer review near instantly and labelled 'article of the quarter' by the relevant journal. The same journal that didn't think it was worth publishing a few years earlier, when the ideas contained within it were far more original and philosophically interesting than they were by the time it was actually accepted.

It's STILL better than the gaming industry, but when even the 'prestige' journals are dominated by fashion (thankfully it on;y concerns your topic, not your conclusions about that topic - they've always given greater prestoge to those arguing against the mainstream view, e.g. Nietzche's amazing demolition job in reducing centuries of moral philosophy to rubble) you know there's a serious problem.

Given how mercenary academic publishers are, I can only imagine that the fiction publishers are many many times worse. Someone like Halford could have 10 times his current back catalogue and they'd still look at their stats and go 'there really doesn't seem to be much interest in fantasy these days compared to self-help and science-fantasy, Krondor doesn't carry heavy name recognition anymore, and genre books never EVER win literary awards even in years where there's a genre book so amazing, and the 'high literature' works are so weak, that the genre book should shit all over them in the literary awards (there ARE genre awards, but they carry no prestige for publishers, and there's an unwritten rule that genre books - even those that transcend their genre and smoothly integrate highbrow themes about politics, gender, personal identity and masculinity, like the very best 1 or 2 of Stephen King's works, never even make the 'long list' for literary awards).

Basically a guy like Halford has 3 choices:
(a) take another job and give up writing, and probably earn a really shitty wage because he lacks experience outside of writing fields and magazines/newspapers aren't interested in fantasy authors'
(b) try to make a book for purely cynical/mercenary reasons in an area that he doesn't like writing about, but nonetheless happens to be the 'big thing' right now (maybe a 50 shades of grey clone using a female pseudonym), and lose all self-respect in the process, until he completely loses his love for writing and gives it up for another job/
(c) do a Kickstarter.

In the circumstances, it makes sense to at least give (c) a go before you resign yourself to the grind and humiliation of (a) or (b).

I have to admit - I'm not likely to back or buy his book. Not because I don't like his writing - in many ways I actually preferred the BaK writing to the original books - it managed to drop the books' worst aspect (or maybe the game setting just made it more excusable), where there's too many characters in the books that look like D&D character archetypes, with predictable character arcs (gee, do you think Prince James' D&D-style thief skills from his time as Jimmy the Hand will regularly come in useful? Do you think the main character in magician won't become the greatest mage in the world?), with not enough world building. Don't get me wrong - I LOVED it as a kid, and I still remember some really neat sections that were atypical for the genre - e.g. sections in the first book showing the perspective of the invaders, and how (as a culture that lacks tame/trained military animals) they're shit-scared of how this enemy rides large aggressive animals into fucking combat (i.e. horses), and are even more terrified of the strange creatures that seem to be able to track them day or night, and then attack with alongside the warriors with amazing dexterity (war dogs) - wonderful exercise in taking things we'd consider mundane and showing how fucking terrifying they'd be to a culture who lacked any equivalent use of trained animals in war.

But I played BaK long after my childhood love of the Krondor series had been replaced with the shock valiue of Donaldson's 'chronicles of Thomas Covenant'. In the Krondor series it's always obvious who the good guys are, and that they'll go on to be the greatest masters of their respective fields. Going from that to a series (The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant) about a guy whose wife left him and took the kids due to her refusing to believe that his leprosy (while crippling him) is no longer contagious (as much as he wishes it was, so he could get revenge upon the world, and then having him alternate between the real world where he's a bitter loser on the point of suicide (from memory his first trip to the fantasy world comes via an overdose attempt, and he's crippled due to a previous attempt to commit suicide via lorry - he tends to go there when rendered unconscious, so it's kept ambiguous whether the world is even real, or just a fantasy where he's worshipped as a 'chosen one' and no longer crippled). I haven't read the Thomas Covenant series since I was a teenager, so it may fall within the 'grimdark in a bad way' category - for much of the first book he refuses to believe the fantasy world is anything but his delusion, and so he kills indiscriminately and rapes the girl who previously was his biggest sjupporter, in the belief that it's all just a delusion anyway - it also needed a lot more time spent with him in the real world, so that as he becomes a hero, you can get some idea of how this is affecting his 'real world' suicidality, as well as the dramatic aspect of going from being 'the chosen one' to the crippled guy who can't even get supervised visitation with his own kids.

If the TC series was as good as I remember (and it may well have been part of the whole 'jumping the shark with the grimdark' that was happening then - certainly I find it hard to sympathise these days with a main character who's a rapist, even though he only did it because he thought he was just in a coma/dream) it pointed out the greatest flaws in the Krondor series, as TC and his slow back-and-forth arc towards redemption in the fantasy world, and his journey from suicidal bitterness to dignified acceptance of his condition in the 'real' world, was infintely more interesting than any of the D&D archetypes that the Krondor series threw at us (again, I loved the Krondor series as a kid, but even then I could see its limitations - a series can be good and still have major room for improvement.)

Here's the kicker - I actually liked the story-telling in BaK MORE than I liked it in the books.

Halford's BaK eliiminated the worst aspects of the books. Sure you have one character that does the typical 'start as a novice, end up as one of the most powerful mages around', but it never falls into the trap of making each character the best mage/thief/fighter to ever cast spells/steal shit/fight like was common in the Krondor books. It kept the characters clearly mortal and fallible, and works to the series' strengths - the political intrigues, conspiracies, red herrings and forced alliances that were the best part of the Krondor novels, while dumping the novels' weaker elements. If intentional, it might favour Halford's book in the setting (I've never read his work outside of BaK so I can't comment).

 

[Kahlis]

You need money to write a novel?

Just need to cut a few corners with the publisher:

 

[nealiios]

Eeeeek!