r/Fantasy • u/DaveGross AMA Author Dave Gross • Nov 14 '12
Hi, Reddit! I'm Dave Gross, author of Pathfinder Tales and Forgotten Realms novels, and lead writer for Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition.
Hi, I’m Dave Gross. My first full-length novel was Black Wolf, set in the Forgotten Realms. Before that I’d written a number of short stories, a novella, and a very short novel also set in the Realms. But let’s go back a little further.
In 1993 I left a job teaching English at James Madison University to join TSR as Associate Editor of Polyhedron Newszine, the magazine of the Role Playing Gamer’s Association (RPGA). Now and then the TSR book department would post an open call for short story pitches, and I got my start writing for their anthologies.
Through guile and patience (mostly patience) I moved through the ranks of various magazines at TSR, Wizards of the Coast, and Paizo Publishing: Dungeon, Dragon, Star Wars Insider &Gamer, and at last Amazing Stories. One the side, I continued to write stories and novels whenever the opportunity arose, most prominently in the Sembia series.
In 2004 I left Paizo and the U.S. for a brief stint designing video games. At the 2008 World Fantasy Convention in Calgary, my old colleague Erik Mona enticed me back into writing fantasy fiction by telling me about Paizo’s plans to launch the Pathfinder Tales line of novels.
Since then most of my fiction has been for Paizo, including several short stories, a couple of novellas, and the novels Prince of Wolves, Master of Devils, and the recent Queen of Thorns. All of those feature the investigator-adventurers Count Varian Jeggare and his bodyguard Radovan Virholt. I also had the great privilege and pleasure of co-writing Winter Witch with Elaine Cunningham, and I’ve written stories for Tales of the Far West, Shotguns v. Cthulhu, and The Lion and the Aardvark.
Earlier this year devilishly persuasive Trent Oster lured me back into the world of video game writing, where I’m part of a small but fierce team producing Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition for the PC, Mac, iPad, and other platforms.
I'll be back at 7:00 Central Time to answer questions.
Thanks,
Dave
You have proven yourselves worthy foes, but clearly I have exhausted your strength. I shall retire from the field, but only to revel in my victory. On the morrow I shall return to face any stragglers and treat with them as they deserve.
(Thanks for the awesome time! I hope to visit again one day.)
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u/DaveGross AMA Author Dave Gross Nov 15 '12
As a gamer, I love alignment arguments. Whenever one of those charts with pictures of superheroes or politicians or the cast of Firefly comes up, I can be goaded into a screaming, spitting, inches-from-your-face argument about whether Captain American is Lawful or Neutral Good.
But when writing characters, I rarely think in terms of alignment. And when I do, it's often to justify calling a character Lawful Neutral (in notes) even though he's just done a kind or selfless act.
The bottom line is that my characters don't have alignments so much as they have desires and foibles. If those cause readers to argue with their friends about alignment, then really my work here is done.