| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Charles Phipps |
Posted - 10 Mar 2022 : 23:56:08
Hey,
This is probably an old-old question and may have no answer but did Ed ever say why he chose to end the Spellfire books the way he did? I seem to recall finally reading the third and final volume before being genuinely surprised at the tonal shift.
I mean OOMPH.
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| 5 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Wooly Rupert |
Posted - 12 Mar 2022 : 17:43:46
quote:
Originally posted by Lord Karsus
quote:
Originally posted by Charles Phipps
Damn, that's disappointing.
I was hoping that Wizards of the Coast was friendlier to Ed in terms of artistic control given 3rd Edition had seemed like it allowed more of "his" Realms and a re-release of the Saga in their larger form. It seems like they were even worse in some ways than TSR.
Thank you for sharing that.
-I have no clue about that particular relationship, and no insight into this in general, but as an outsider looking in, a consumer, the 3e era books definitely seemed like authors had more creative control and/or fewer WotC-imposed restrictions. Not that 2e era books were corny or cartoonish, but 3e era books definitely felt more serious with fewer things no-nos.
A lot of the 2E stuff was written under TSR's ridiculous Code of Ethics. With the Satanic Panic of the 80's and a lot of other negative PR directed at D&D, TSR was overly sensitive to anything that could feed into that. So a lot of stuff was sanitized and Disneyfied, and directives such as "evil can't win, even temporarily" got in the way of proper story-telling. I've read, even, that the 2E renaming of devils to baatezu and demons to tanar'ri was a part of this.
(I personally liked that renaming; among other things, I think it makes them sound more exotic, and it made it easier to keep them straight in my head.) |
| Charles Phipps |
Posted - 12 Mar 2022 : 15:50:39
Mostly, I know from second hand and the Foreword to the re-release that Ed Greenwood's original vision for the Shandril Saga was badly beaten up by TSR.
* Having to cut huge sections of the novel out, like a third.
* Toning down how menacing and awful the Zhents were.
* His continued battle with censorship. |
| Lord Karsus |
Posted - 12 Mar 2022 : 15:06:11
quote:
Originally posted by Charles Phipps
Damn, that's disappointing.
I was hoping that Wizards of the Coast was friendlier to Ed in terms of artistic control given 3rd Edition had seemed like it allowed more of "his" Realms and a re-release of the Saga in their larger form. It seems like they were even worse in some ways than TSR.
Thank you for sharing that.
-I have no clue about that particular relationship, and no insight into this in general, but as an outsider looking in, a consumer, the 3e era books definitely seemed like authors had more creative control and/or fewer WotC-imposed restrictions. Not that 2e era books were corny or cartoonish, but 3e era books definitely felt more serious with fewer things no-nos. |
| Charles Phipps |
Posted - 11 Mar 2022 : 13:55:46
Damn, that's disappointing.
I was hoping that Wizards of the Coast was friendlier to Ed in terms of artistic control given 3rd Edition had seemed like it allowed more of "his" Realms and a re-release of the Saga in their larger form. It seems like they were even worse in some ways than TSR.
Thank you for sharing that. |
| George Krashos |
Posted - 11 Mar 2022 : 08:21:53
The original plan was for a 4 book series with the 3rd book to have Shandril safely arrive in Silverymoon and the 4th book deal with what happened to her there.
Then Ed was told that he was only going to get one more book to tell her story and that she needed to die (3E was coming and spellfire wasn't something they wanted to deal with straight away). When he questioned this he was told that he could write it or they would get someone else to. He wrote it.
-- George Krashos |
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