Cerise Magazine

Industry Interview: Lori Ann Cole, The School for Heroes

This quarter I am delighted to bring you an interview with one of my personal game design heroes, Lori Ann Cole. She is best known for creating and designing the five games in the classic Sierra adventure-RPG series Quest for Glory. Now, she operates the online game The School for Heroes and blogs there regularly. Enjoy.

Alex Raymond: To start off, let’s have some background information. How did you get started doing game design?

Lori Cole: I’ve played games and made up stories all my life. So when I was first introduced to the concept of FRPGs [Fantasy Role Playing Games], it was like a dream come true. A good FRPG was a game that was not zero-sum, win-lose, but that everyone who played it would win.

I met my husband, Corey, over a Dungeons and Dragons game he was running at a Science Fiction Convention. He, too, was a game player. He really wanted to work for the computer game industry.

One of the reasons I went into designing Computer Games was because Computer Games that were supposed to be Role-playing Games pretty much stripped out the fun part of Fantasy Role-playing. Part of the thrill of RPGs was creating a believable, complex character and letting him or her develop through the course of experiencing a rich fantasy game full of tales of greatness. Computer RPGs were little more that “kill the monster, collect the treasure.” I wanted to create a game that I felt would be more like FRPGs.

Just after I met Corey, he got the game module he wrote published. At that time, he calculated that he would have to publish a module every two weeks to make a living. Considering that it took him months to create one game, he obviously couldn’t make a living at it.

I created a couple of scenarios which were worth printing, but I didn’t have the confidence to submit them for publication.

Then a job opened up at Sierra On-line, one of the major Adventure Game creators at the time. Adventure Games were more story-based than CRPGs, but they spread out the game play with arbitrary puzzles in the name of fun. I am not a fan of frustration, so Adventure Games just didn’t have enough story to compensate for the work it took to unravel it. But they were looking for a designer who could create a new CRPG series.

Corey jumped at the chance and applied for the job. However, when they found out he was a computer programmer, they hired him for his programming skills instead.

So I applied for the game design position. I came up with a game series that was more like a real FRPG, a cross between the story-based, visual Adventure Game that Sierra was making, and the action and character leveling style of the CRPG. Corey helped me design the game and was the lead programmer on the first game of the series. Quest for Glory was a success.

AR: The Quest for Glory series is clearly influenced by your experiences playing tabletop RPGs. Other than the stats, how did tabletop RPGs inform your computer game designs?

LC: This game series was designed with a complex story that traveled from one game to the next game. You could play the game in the role of a Fighter, Magic-user, or Thief. The game play style was different for each character type. The basic story line was a classic tale of a want-to-be Hero who travels throughout the different lands meeting people, making friends and enemies, and making a difference wherever he goes.

Adventure games were a “play once, and it’s all over”. In Quest for Glory, most of the players went on to play it at least three times to explore the roles of the different character types. When you finished with one game in the series, you could transfer your character over to the next game in the series. Later in the series, your character could become a Paladin if he chose that story path.

The characters you met in the story also were fully developed individuals. Some of them traveled with you from one game to the next. Others, like the Wizard Erasmus and his familiar Fenrus, were mentors and guides that you met with briefly in the games.

Like all good FRPGs, there was a chance for heroic actions, romance, and even tragedy. It was a five game series that spanned five different cultures and lands and lead to being offered a Crown to a kingdom and a chance to marry the woman of your dreams. Of course, which woman you dreamed about or whether or not you accepted the crown was up to you.

Yes, the hero was a guy. Originally, the series was designed with a choice of genders and characters, but this was too much for the limitations of computer systems. By concentrating on one main protagonist rather than many possible characters, the interactions between the characters in the world was much richer. We had huge scripts for the games listing just the conversations you could have with the characters in the game.

I’ve been playing FRPGs almost from the time they were first published. In the beginning, when you went to a Game Convention, the halls were filled with geeky, unwashed guys. Women were few and far apart. Most women were not ready to accept their inner geek when geek is defined as a social outcast and pariah in normal society. I didn’t care what other people thought of me. I enjoyed the game.

AR: You mentioned that you used to give talks at Dundracon about “Women in Gaming”. Can you give us an overview of what you covered?

LC: DundraCon is a game convention that has been held annually for more than 20 years. They used to hold a panel for “Women in Gaming.” It was sort of a “war-stories” discussion about how guys treated women who played games. There will always be a few misogynists who take out their latent aggressions on the women players. Eventually, the conversations about these turkeys faded as more and more women came into the gaming community. Gaming was no longer a ghetto for socially inept males. They had to learn to get along with other people and even… women! After all, FRPGs are all about social interactions.

AR: Adventure games are traditionally understood to be gender-inclusive, appealing to both men and women, unlike other popular genres of games. Why do you think that is?

LC: There are many things about FRPGs that appeal to people. We all, in our hearts, want to be a Hero and make a difference in the world. Doesn’t matter what gender (or even what country we are born in) – most of us value life and other people in our lives. FRPGs give us a chance to get together with friends and use our creative imaginations to tell a story.

Social Experience. Creative. Heroic. Nobody loses.

The last is the best part of an FRPG – we all win. Practically every game out there is designed around the fact that someone has to lose the game. No one wants to lose. It takes away a lot of the fun to lose.

So I think one of the reasons that FRPGs appeal to women is that we aren’t as masochistic as men can be when they play chess or traditional games… when we play a game, we want to win.

I play FRPGs with a core of friends I have known for life. For us, it is all about the story and the characters, not about the rules. We’re also spread out across states and miles. We only meet several times a year to play together. So we’ve been playing with the same rules for years because it isn’t the rules that makes the game fun.

AR: What recent tabletop or video games have you played, and what do you think of them?

LC: The only two games I play regularly is an FRP by Email and World of Warcraft. WoW is such an open-ended sort of game. I have a Hunter who has the goal to tame every strange animal in the game. I have another who is working to bring peace between the alliance and the Horde. The different type of characters and races appeal to my role-playing style, and every character I create in the game has a distinct personality. So while WoW isn’t really a good place for role-playing, it’s a lot of fun in other ways.

AR: Can you tell us a bit about the School for Heroes and what your goals for it are? It seems like a very different and interesting roleplaying experience.

LC: The School for Heroes is a strange mixture of fantasy and reality. On one hand, it is a serious site dedicated to the idea that everyone can be a Hero and teaches people how to make heroism a part of their life.

On the other hand, it is a fantasy RPG where the school is set in the world of Glorianna (which was the world of the Quest for Glory games). People who come to the site take a quiz to see what sort of Hero they are – Warrior, Wizard, Paladin, Rogue, or Bard. They then enroll in the correspondence course to learn how to be that sort of hero.

It is a real school in many senses. Just because the teachers live in a fantasy world does not mean they can’t teach real world lessons and ideals.

Some of the classes focus more on real life Heroism. Wizards actually concentrate more on fantasy and creative writing exercises. Paladins work on doing things in the real world to make a difference in the lives of other people. Warriors work on leadership skills. Bards learn to use their creative talents to inspire and educate.

Note that the School does not admit that it even has Rogues.

AR: If you were to make a Quest for Glory game today (given plenty of resources), what would it be about? How would it be different from past games?

LC: In a sense, this is an extension of the Quest for Glory games stripped to their essence.

With enough resources, I would turn this school into a virtual world where people could create their avatars and interact with the other students and teachers at the school. Game play would be more like traditional fantasy role-playing with extended stories and adventures. But underneath, the message is still the same – You can make a difference. You can be a Hero.

It just takes personal responsibility, compassion, and action.

AR: What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced as a game designer?

LC: The greatest challenge I have had as a designer is that the games I design are heavy on the storytelling and character developing. No one is developing this sort of game any more – it is too labor intensive. So it’s impossible to find a job in the Game Industry with my skills, even though I have a lot of experience.

AR: What do you enjoy most about the work you currently do?

LC: At the School for Heroes, I have students from the world over. Since we have not actively promoted the School yet, all of these people found the School by themselves. Most of them played the original Quest for Glory games and wanted more.

Now mind you, the last game in that series was released ten years ago. That means that the game series made that much impact on their lives that they still care about it. More than that – the game touched the minds and hearts of people all over the world -we have students from Pakistan to Thailand to Romania to South Africa to Australia. That means that the ideals of Heroism really are universal. Every time I read the stories and writings of heroism that these students write, I am glad to know that we are all working for a better world – a better way of life – for everyone on this World.

And, we are having fun doing it.