Meet Lawrence Schick the “Loremaster” – ingles

He began his career as writer at a company named TSR Hobbies in late 70´s and got involved in the development and early popularity of the role-playing game named Dungeons & Dragons that become a bestselling worldwide.  In the early 80´s he started working as a game designer and project manager for video and computer game companies, a period that included high-profile positions at Coleco and MicroProse.

 

Did you play Smurf: Rescue in Atari 2600? Tarzan or Dukes of Hazzard in your ColecoVision? Airborne Ranger in your C-64 computer? Yes all are his original masterwork. A lot of arcade ports as Zaxxon, Mr. Do and Venture for consoles, also Sword of The Samurai for IBM PC and even the classic Icebreaker for the 3DO Multimedia System. Kingdoms of Amalur and Elder Scrolls Online for modern consoles? Yes! The list of his works are endless and touched the born of internet as a responsible for America Online Games Channel and executive producer at Magnet Interactive Studios for the development of CD-ROM titles. In 2007 Schick returned to role-playing games as one of the early designers on what would become “Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning”. He then put his extensive experience with online games to service at ZeniMax Online Studios where he served as Loremaster on The Elder Scrolls Online MMO RPG.

We´re talking about Sir Lawrence Schick, brilliant writer and author of an extensive list of background books for several of his historical computer games and close to 200 in-game books around The Elder Scrolls universe. If you’ve played any of that old systems, table tops board games Dungeon & Dragons or modern games as Elder Scrolls and Kingdoms of Amalur, then you had a lot of fun immersed in one of the complex and astonishing stories he designed. He now works in Ireland at Larian Studios as a Narrative Design Expert on Baldur’s Gate 3. Recognized as “lead loremaster” in the world of RPGs he has vast experience in rich and multicultural universes and agreed to share a bit of his wisdom with Sidequest readers.

 

SIDEQUEST – Hello Mr. Schick, thank you for your life’s work on behalf of the world of classic games and role playing games. Let´s start this way: did you ever liked RPGs or how did you first become involved in it?

LAWRENCE SCHICK – I started in the early days as a player of original or “white box” D&D, co-creating a fantasy campaign world with my friend Tom Moldvay in northeast Ohio in the U.S.A. RPGs combined my interest in storytelling with my interest in games, and we put a lot of time and design effort into D&D when we should have been going to class at Kent State University.

 

SQ – You contributed to the revision of “AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide” and also are the author of “White Plume Mountain” which remains one of the most famous and of all AD&D modules ever produced. What were your inspirations in editing the guide and later creating the best adventure ever? What motivates you to design so nice worlds?

LS – TSR was advertising to hire their first outside game designer and requested a D&D scenario along with the application for the job. “White Plume Mountain” was my job application scenario. Gary Gygax decided TSR would publish it without changing a word and I got the job. As my first task, Gary handed me his manuscript for the 1E “Dungeon Masters Guide” and told me to edit it, organize it, and finish a few parts. I couldn’t have asked for anything better.

 

SQ – Do you still play RPGs, board games, computer or console games too? If you had to choose a system, retro or current, and a game franchise to play exclusively, which would it be?

LS – I still play all those things, and design for them too. I’m currently working on Baldur’s Gate 3, a video game that uses the D&D 5th Edition rules, and I’m delighted to be working on D&D again after 40 years. Especially since, when I run the game myself, I use the 5^th Edition rules.

 

SQ – MicroProse still is an amazing company and have a great games catalogue. Can you tell us how amazing was to work with such company and close to legendary persons like Sid Meier?

LS – Working with Sid was great because he’s such a deep thinker about the principles of game design. I learned a lot. I also taught him about RPGs, which led to his designing “Sid Meier’s Pirates!”

 

SQ – Kingdoms of Amalur was initially thought to be an MMORPG but later was released “single player” with an “offline cooperative” system, by the work of other incredible artists such as Ken Rolston and Todd McFarlane via other companies. Did you like the final result or do you think the game could have been much better if it kept the original MMORPG aspect? Could you tell us more details about the whole myth surrounding this cool game?

LS – This isn’t exactly correct: Big Huge Games was working on a single-player RPG with the working title of “Ascendant” when the studio was bought by 38 Studios, which was working on an MMO RPG set in the world of Amalur. The Big Huge RPG was retitled Kingdoms of Amalur and set in the same fantasy world as the MMO RPG, but ultimately only the single-player game was completed and released. Ken Rolston, who was also the lead designer on Morrowind and Oblivion, is actually one of my oldest friends in the games business, and I was delighted to work with him on Kingdoms of Amalur.

 

SQ – Icebreaker is an amazing game for the ancient 3DO multimedia system, a revolutionary device that poped up in the early 90´s. Had any more titles planned to that system? How is to develop a game for a so advanced machine at that time?

LS – I was the producer on Magnet Studio’s Icebreaker, which was designed and programmed by the brilliant Andy Looney, later the originator of the famous Fluxx card games. We had planned a sequel, but the 3DO didn’t find a market and basically disappeared, and Magnet moved on to other lines of business.

 

SQ – The IBM-PC, Amiga and Macintosh platforms were computer systems with brands fighting for space in the taste of gamers, aside 8 bit and 16 bit computers of that time. Going back to those days where tech was still being born, if you had to bet on one of them, which one do you think would have won that race and become today’s standard, in this case the IBM-PC?

LS – I was a Macintosh fan, starting from its initial release back in 1983, but there was never any doubt that the superior market reach of the IBM PC was going to make it the standard platform for computer games, no matter what we Macintosh fans thought. Realistically, you had to design games for the IBM PC.

SQ – Your former company was called Warducks Studios maybe in obvious homage to the very well know character of D&D. Can we say this is your favourite?

LS – Surprise, Warducks isn’t named after an RPG character at all, it’s a small independent studio in Dublin designing free-to-play mobile games. I worked for Warducks for two years, had a lot of fun and learned a great deal about mobile games, but then I moved over to Larian and went back to fantasy RPGs. That’s still my first love.

 

SQ – There was a time, a long time ago, where America Online was massively present in the newborn internet for domestic users. What was it like to be part of such a big project and be responsible for the games area? What was it like, for example, setting trends for what people would or wouldn’t play next?

LS – It was an exciting period, my one diversion into a big-time management role. With my background in both RPGs and computer games, my experience as a producer, and my understanding of multiplayer games, I just happened to be the right person at the right time to help create the conditions in which online games could be born and then flourish. We popularized both casual and hardcore games, and cut a deal with EA that gave Ultima Online their first access to a really large audience, paving the way for Everquest and World of Warcraft to follow.

 

SQ – The Elders Scrolls Online. Could you tell us a little about what it’s like to be the “Loremaster” of a universe with this dimension? You are famous for appear sometimes in Elder Scrolls Online as one of your characters, is it for real?

LS – I worked on ESO for over nine years, from inception to its breakthrough popularity, and it was challenging and never less than fun. The designers at Bethesda Game Studios, who create the single-player Elder Scrolls games, learned that they could trust me with the lore of Tamriel, and over time ESO greatly expanded that world, showing many regions that haven’t appeared in the single-player games. I got to use all my experience with both fantasy and historical games to help craft a broad, deep, and rich world, which was very rewarding.

 

SQ – Imagine a newcomer to the world of Elder Scrolls games, how would you explain short version to this person the whole vast universe, how it was made, what to look for, how to start, how to finish and what to expect from this journey?

LS – Tamriel is a world with a broad range of people and cultures, and any experience you’re looking for is in there somewhere. Moreover, it’s a shared world that you help shape by your choices, and what you bring into it is as important as what you’ll find there. Everybody you meet in Tamriel is fully alive and has their own opinions about the world and its history, so the best thing you can do is just jump in and start talking to everyone. Soon you’ll be involved in their stories, and your adventures will make them your own.

 

SQ – It seems that you are also a bit of a fan of books (smile). In addition to the books based on the work of Alexandre Dumas that Sir Lawrence Ellsworth published, are there more classic books on the way that readers can look forward to?

LS – Currently five volumes of my translations of Alexandre Dumas’s Musketeers Cycle are in print, and there are still four more volumes to go. I’m also compiling a history and guide to swashbuckling movies from the Silent Era up through “The Princess Bride,” a book that will be published next year by Applause Books as “The Cinema of Swords.” After that, other things are in the works, but there’s nothing I can announce as yet. The best way to keep track of my book publications as Lawrence Ellsworth is by bookmarking my website, www.swashbucklingadventures.com.

 

SQ – For the next years can gamers wait for more huge universes or fantastic metaverses coming from Lawrence Schick´s mind? How do you think this new generation of computers and consoles, with technologies like raytracing and insanely fast loading times, can contribute to the development of even better RPGs?

LS – As mentioned above, I’m currently back working in the worlds of D&D again, but I never really know where the business of video games is going to take me next, it changes so quickly. Baldur’s Gate 3 is a very cinematic video game experience that’s built around player choice and broad interactivity, which makes for strong storytelling with very different results depending on the choice you make. I’m excited that the technology can finally support an experience that’s close to what happens in your imagination when you’re playing a tabletop RPG with your friends.

 

SQ – Please feel free to send a message for Portuguese and worldwide fans of your work.

LS – Nowadays I work for truly international developers – Larian has studios around the world – and it’s thrilling and stimulating to work with wildly creative people from so many different places. It brings home the importance of creating games that can be enjoyed by people from very different backgrounds, even while it emphasizes that people everywhere really enjoy the same things, especially when they can see people like themselves represented in games’ stories. And hello, Portugal! I haven’t yet had an opportunity to visit your beautiful country, but now that I’m in Ireland I’m pretty close, so I’m sure to be seeing you soon!