Margaret Weis is a bestselling author known for co-authoring TSR's Dragonlance saga as well as the Star of the Guardians series and numerous other works. Larry Elmore is a legendary artist whose pieces helped define the look of Dungeons & Dragons, Shadowrim, and other ground-breaking RPGs. The two were part of the team who developed Dragonlance, and they have recently begun work on a new project entitled Sovereign Stone. They graciously took time out of their schedules to talk with SHADIS about their early work, about the state of the industry today, and about their plans for the future The conversation was conducted by teleconference call on June 10. Also present was Weis's husband, Don Perrin.

SHADIS (To Weis): Most gamers know you from Dragonlance and from your subsequent work. What did you do before Dragonlance?

Weis: Actually I worked for a very small publishing company in Independence, Missouri. I was hired on at TSR as a book editor, and one of the first projects I was hired on to do was the Dragonlance project. Not to write it, but to edit it. Since nobody had ever done anything like this, I was supposed to coordinate the books with the games, I was going to be the liaison between the authors -- whoever they might be -- and the game design team.

S: And they hadn't determined who the author was going to be at that point?

MW: Oh no. They were asking for samples from various authors. They finally chose one, but he didn't happen to work out. By that time, Tracy [Hickman] and I were knee deep in the project, and had fallen in love with the characters. So we submitted some sample chapters and everything just seemed to click into place.

S: Were vu familiar with gaming before you came to TSR?

MW: Yes, I had played [Dungeons & Dragons] a couple of times with some friends back in Missouri. I was really interested in getting my kids involved in it but I thought it was extremely complicated, so the thought of running a game myself was just beyond me.

(Laughs.)

S: Did you do any gaming in preparation for writing the Dragonlance books?

MW: Actually, no. The entire plot for the book had already been developed, the plot for all three books, actually. Because the plot had to go with the game, and the games were already underway. So it wasn't as the popular legend has grown up that this came out of a game we played. That just isn't true. We playtested DLI [the first Dragonlance adventure module) at the very beginning, and then after that, we had no time to playtest anything more, because everything was happening so fast. It had been such a success and they wanted more books and more games and more this and more that, and we were under terrific deadlines.

The only thing that ever came out of playtesting, that first playtest of DLI was Bupu the gully dwarf and Raistlin's whispering voice. Tracy made up Bupu during the game, and she was just so much fun that I put her in the book.

S: So the modules were being written almost ahead of the book.

MW: Yes, the plots had to match. Actually, I think the first three modules at least were out before the books were. Plus the first calender was also out, and that was one reason why everyone was so excited to get the books, because they were really intrigued by the modules. The modules created a lot of controversy, too, because they were the first ones that included pregenerated characters. There were people at TSR who were adamant that this was going to fail, that people wouldn't want to play pre-generated characters *

After it hit and became so big, we would get lots of stories about how the players handled the pregenerated characters. There were some people who wouldn't let their players read the books because they were afraid that it would give away the game. We would get letters from kids all the time who said "Dear Ms. Weiswould you please write to my DM and tell him that it's okay if I read the books." (Laughs.)

But at the beginning, we thought the book had to follow along the modules very closely. Then we realized later after talking to people that they were enjoying the books for themselves, and then playing the modules separate from them. They liked playing the characters, but they liked developing their own storyline. So that gave us a lot more freedom to let the modules go their way and the books go their way.

S: Your partnership with Tracy Hickman has extended past the Dragonlance series into other books. You've also worked alone since then. What's working with Hickman like, and how do you approach a project differently when you're working alone?

MW: Well, when Tracy and I work together, we sit down at the very beginning and develop the plot. The world, the story, all the characters. Because we have to have a synopsis to give to the publishers. Then at that point, I start the writing and he develops the magic system and other specifics like that. Which is how we've worked up until Starshield, which Tracy decided he wanted to write himself So our roles were reversed, and I got to do all the stuff he had done before. That was a lot of fun.

S: When you're working alone, how much do you feel the difference?

MW: When you're working alone, you don't have a person to talk to about things. When Don and I work on a plot together and it's not working out, I can always go to Don or to Tracy and say "Look, we need to sit down and discuss this." It's always helpful to bounce ideas off people. Whereas when you're alone, you really don't have anyone to talk to and you have to work it out yourself. There are advantages and disadvantages. I enjoy working with co,authors; I really think it's fun.

S: You've recently returned to the Dragonlance books after a fairly long absence, with Dragons of Summer Flame. What prompted you to come back?

MW: Well, Tracy and I always stayed interested in the world. We had felt that the original story had been told and we really didn't want to go back and do anything much with that. We had an idea for what might have happened twenty, twenty-five years later with some of the children. So we wanted to explore what might have happened with the second generation. Since then, I've finished a book on Raistlin called The Soulforge which will be kind of his biography: his childhood, his teenage years, and the test of the Tower of High Sorcery. We can find out what exactly happened in the Tower of High Sorcery, which is really neat, because I didn't even know 'til I got there.

S: When you come back to characters like Raistlin, who you've already written so much about, how do you keep them fresh? It seems like a real challenge to find something new to say about them.

MW: Actually, it was really easy with this book, because we're going back to Raistlin as a child and as a teenager. I found out what happened to make him grow up the way he did. To see Tanis and Kitiara. and Sturm and the rest as younger people and how they met - and again to see what happened to Raistlin in the Tower which I hadn't really known until I sat down to write it. It was a really interesting experience for me to learn all about that, and it delivered a new facet of the characters that I hadn't seen before.

At this point, Larry Elmore fights his way past the phone company to reach our teleconference. Hails of greeting are exchanged, AT&T operators are cursed, and the interview is well and truly joined.

S (To Elmore): How did you get started in fantasy artwork instead of, say, advertising, or more "conventional" artwork?

Elmore: That's some ancient history. When I was in college, I was trying to find out who lived in Europe, Central-Western Europe and the Celts in England, back before there was history. At that time, I didn't know what I was looking for and there wasn't much published about it -- this was in the late 60's. I stumbled across Caesar's letters when he conquered Gaul, and they mentioned some specific things about the Celts. Once I had a couple of key names, I kept trying to do more research, but I still didn't have a lot of material, so I started doing paintings. Since there weren't many guides to tell me what was historically correct, I would do my best and called it "fantasy." It wasn't truly historically correct. At that point I was presented with doing some book covers, and those inspired me to move away from the historical.

But I always had a pulling towards it, when I was a kid and in high school. Every time I saw anything about Vikings or something like that, I got excited. I don't know why, but I wanted to know who the people were who lived in England and France while Rome was going on.

S (To Weis): Is it safe to assume that you also had an interest in fantasy or history as a youngster?

MW: Mine was more literature than history. I had read Tolkien, but that was about it, because after Tolkien I didn't find any other fantasy that I enjoyed.

LE: Sort of done it for you, didn't it?

MW: (Laughs.) I was a big history buff, too, but my interest was more along the lines'Of World War 11, and more of the military history.

LE: I think what added to mine was that I lived in a rural area, with a lot of woods and such. My father had a great imagination, and he'd talk about fairies living in the woods, and foxfire and lightning bugs and whatnot. He'd make up stories about them. That's part of my interest: just having a good imagination. I didn't really try to connect it with history, but it was there. It really came from a storytelling background; a lot of people around me told a lot of stories, scary stories about the woods. That influenced me, too.

MW: My people were big Civil War buffs.

LE: I got into that too. The only trouble is, I can't paint it, because if you don't have every button right and the time of day right and the clouds right, then you'll hear about it. You just can't even paint it. They're fanatics.

S: (Laughs.) How did you get involved in Dragonlance? We've asked Margaret about her background. How did you get attached to the project?

LE: Well, Tracy had this idea, and he wanted to present it to the board at TSR. And at that time at TSR, everything came from above and nothing much came from the creative people. So Tracy says "I don't know if this stands a chance of being accepted, but I believe it's a good story." Mainly, he was thinking about putting out twelve modules for the game, and have a story to sort of back it up.

So he came over to my house one night, he and Harold Johnson. They said "we're going to tell you a story, and if you would, on your own time, do three or four little mock-ups, some kind of quick paintings to present to the board of directors." And so they told me the rough story of Dragonlance. It was so good, I got really excited about it; so I volunteered to do some stuff on my own. Then we had the big meeting, and they decided to actually do something from the creative department. So we were Off, and the rest sort of followed itself.

S: Are there any particular subjects or characters the two of you like to focus on when you work?

LE: I like characters with humor, but also characters with inner turmoil. I like Raistlin in Dragonlance. Those kinds of characters always seem to be more interesting, and the fans seem to love them too.

MW: Yeah, I always liked the darker characters. It's always "there but for the grace of God go I'll and I think that's why people are fascinated with them.

LE: The really goody-good people seem to get boring.

MW: Yeah, Elistan. God, what a pain. (Laughs.)

LE: If you give everybody problems, like we all have, it makes them more relatable I think.

MW: One of the main characters in Sovereign Stone, maybe the main character, is a very, very dark figure. But he's supposed to be a good guy, so he's absolutely fascinating. I'm really looking forward to working with him, in particular. And of course, he's exceptionally good-looking.

S: When you work in a project like Sovereign Stone or Dragonlance, how much does the commerce side of it affect your work?

MW: It certainly has enhanced my work, because we got to go ahead and do more books, which at the beginning was a good thing. If Dragons of Autumn Twilight had failed, there weren't going to be any more books. In fact, they were expecting it to fail. That's why Twilight actually has an ending to it, because at that time they didn't think that there were going to be any more books. Who had ever heard of Tracy and I? They thought it was going to go out there and flop.

LE: It was too good a story. And that's the way I look at it. I think of it commercially, because when I in doing illustrations for books and such, I think about the salability of it. You have to. With the stories, my belief is if your story is good enough, and you know your market, it'll go. It'll stand alone. If it's good, it's good, and people know it's good, then you don't have to do a lot of changing for the audience.

MW: We were very lucky with Dragonlance, because upper management basically left us alone. They were preoccupied with financial problems, so we got to do what we wanted.

LE: And Dragonlance basically saved the company. If they'd have fooled with it, it probably would have been a flop. That hurts a lot of creative companies. Management -- the nuts-and-bolts people, the bean counters think that this looks easy. Usually they don't know their market, they're not consumers, and they decide to reshape it to make it look more Disney-like or whatever. "Something for the kids, something for grandma."

They try to reach everyone, and pretty soon, they've got a product that reaches no one. It's a shame, but that's what happens. You get a good product that does well, it tends to come from the creative side. Then management comes in, and you've got to have management if it's big enough. Then they start dictating  things and it reverses itself. Products don't meet expectations, the creative people don't get to do what they were hired to do, and trouble begins. That was the great thing about Dragonlance and now with Sovereign Stone, it's coming from the opposite direction, just like most successful products I've seen. They come creatively first, and the people in control are a part of the creative process.

S: The creative process was shaken up quite severely a few years ago with the release of Magic. How do you two see the CCG phenomenon, and what impact do you think it's going to have on the hobby?

LE: I was afraid to play, I was afraid I'd get hooked.

MW: I play bridge, so I've already picked my poison. (Laughs.) What I really would like to see, and I hope to see is that the kids who are playing the card game will expand into role-playing games...

LE: Yeah, you can't top role-playing.

MW: ... and we're starting to see now some of the old days, where war-gamers would sneer at the fantasy gainers. I really hate to see role-players sneer at card gainers. We should be working together; I don't see why the two should be mutually exclusive.

Perrin: The market is very much WotC-oriented. They own eighty percent of the market with Magic. It really doesn't leave a lot of room for anyone else in the marketplace. Even in D&D's hey- day, there was always room for more role-playing. We had Traveller come up when D&D was still around. Then FASA got on the wagon and so on. I just don't see that in the card game industry; WotC's success may eventually kill them. It's not that they're not allowing anyone else in the market, it's just that the market doesn't want to allow anyone else.

S: That brings up the question of genres, and working in different generic systems. How do you approach, say, science fiction (either art or writing) that differentiates it from a fantasy piece?

MW: Mainly, the magic becomes technology. Different terminology, I think.

LE: Everything to me is based on what is logically relatable to human beings: love and emotions and such. It's the same approach, no matter what you do. Only the details change: the equipment, the clothing, and such.

MW: When you're writ, ing fantasy, you have to make your magic believable, as believable as you have to make you science. That's one reason that I enjoy doing both, and that's probably the main difference. Like Larry said, human nature is going to be the same whether you're on a spaceship or in a detective's office or flying on the back of a dragon.

S: Sovereign Stone has come up in a couple of points during the interview, but we haven't talked about it directly yet. What is it, how did it come about, and how are the two of you involved?

MW: It's Larry's baby, I'll let him start it.

LE: Well, years ago, two or three people approached me about some some calenders. I thought "Well, I'd love to do some landscapes, twelve big fantasy landscapes." I thought it'd be neat if you had a story to connect these landscapes - like you're travelling on a road, and every turn there's something new going on. So I came up with a little story to connect these twelve paintings. I never did do the calender, but the story started developing, and it kept growing and growing and got exciting. I didn't write much down; it was mainly in my head. I took a few notes, and I did a few little paintings along the way, sort of hinting towards it. I eventually ended up with the whole big story in my head.

I told a few people. I told Jeff Grubb the story at a convention in Birmingham, and he got so excited we had a wreck. (Laughs.) I was driving, I was looking over my shoulder talking to him and we ran a red light and got hit. That sobered us up a bit, but we were really excited about the story. I presented it to TSR, and they were interested in it and liked it and were going to do it... until it got down to the rights, who owned it. They wanted to buy me out, but I wasn't interested in selling it for the price they offered. So it sat there awhile.

Ken [Whitman] knew I had a story, and I think Tracy and Margaret knew I had a story, but we could never get together. Finally Ken came out of left field and said "I've got a way to get you all together, and maybe we can do this project you've got. Margaret and Tracy would would write it, and you'd do the art." I said "Yes! Yes! Yes!" I told Margaret the story, and she liked it. Then it started growing, and everybody had a little more to put into it that made it better; every time we turned around somebody had something new that improved it. I think the time is right for it; it's a good, epic, high adventure role-playing fantasy.

S: Is it going to be a new role-playing system, or simply a series of books? Will it be under Dungeons & Dragons?

MW: No, it's a new system. Lester Smith right now is designing it. We're trying to gear the system towards the story and the whole feeling of the world.

DP: There's a series of products planned. Margaret and Tracy already have the book deal signed with Del Ray for a three-book trilogy on Sovereign Stone. From the game side, Archangel is doing... I hesitate to call it a Players' Handbook and a DMG, but effectively, those are the slots they'll fill. Followed by five race books; there are five different races in the story that we want to cover. So each one of those deserves a sourcebook. Plus a sourcebook on some of the main characters, some from the book, some not, known as the Dominion  Lords. Also the bad guy variant of those, the Vrykil. From there, we want to do a sourcebook on the geography, and of course a bestiary.

LE: You can feel the creativity in the air. What we tried to do with this project was give enough outline to where each person will have some creative freedom. With an overall guideline, each person can put in their two cents and develop the project along their own particular talents. I think that makes a better product all the way around. I know that if I'm working on a painting and they tell me exactly what to do, it's not as fun as if they give me an idea of what to do.

S: Do you know when it's coming out?

MW: Not yet. We've just started working on the first book; the deadline on the first novel is December. My guess would be that it will come out sometime next year, but that would be dependent on Del Rey.

DP: For the role-playing games, we're looking at some time next summer, and that's about as specific as we can get.

MW: We're going to try to coordinate the novels and the RPG, and work with Del Rey, who have expressed a great interest in working with us on this.

LE: If they hit at about the same time, it'd be great.

S: Who else is involved in the project?

MW: Well, we've got Doug Niles and Jeff Grubb from the original Dragonlance team. Steve Miller, who worked on Dragonlance: Fifth Age. Duane Maxwell, who also worked on Fifth Age. John Ratleth, who is a Tolkien scholar. Slate Hensen, another exdesigner: he did all the Encyclopediae for TSR. Bill Taylor, whose a new one to the group. We also have Tim Brown, who used to be the director of creative services at TSR. Lester Smith, who's doing the system.

LE: The feeling I get with Sovereign Stone is like Dragonlance all over again. I don't mean the story, but I mean the flavor, the feeling, the excitement.

MW: And a lot of the people are some of the same old people; it's just a great team.

LE: We get together and we get so fired up creatively. I haven't experienced anything like that for fifteen years - not since Dragonlance.

DP: I'll give you a little anecdote: Larry likes to go out every once in a while and smoke a cigar on the back porch. He got so excited while we were talking that he wants to go for a cigar, but he couldn't. We were talking for a couple of hours and all at once he says [in a choked up voice] "I gotta go get a smoke." He didn't want to leave the room because he didn't want to miss anything.

S: One final question: do you have a single favorite character or subject that you've worked on? Margaret mentioned Raistlin earlier.

MW: Actually, my favorite series that I wrote was the Star of the Guardians series, because that was something that I had wanted to write for about ten years. Dragonlance has its place in my heart, of course, because it was first, and because it had Raistlin, who's one of my favorite characters. Star of the Guardians is very close.

LE: As far as projects go, the one I had the most fun in developing was Dragonlance. The closest that's ever come to it is Sovereign Stone, I think. There's a character named Shadamir in Sovereign Stone who's fascinating. I put a series of prints together called Ancient Innocents. That was almost a forerunner to some of the ideas in these stories. I only did three prints, but one of them was titled Shadamir Encounters Bakshiva. The painting has sort of stuck with me, and even though I sold it to go on the cover to another system, in my mind, it's always been a part of this world.

SHADIS would like to thank Ken Whitman at Archangel, who set up the interview for us. You're really cool, Ken.