When I first started working at Interplay, my goal was always to move over to development, climb up the ranks, and work on Fallout 3. Though I had played RPGs and CRPGs all my life, Fallout was the first RPG since the original Pool of Radiance to really kick me in the ass and excite me (Darklands was more of a slow burn). Well, as fate had it, I wound up working on the original Icewind Dale. I wasn't particularly thrilled with how my work on it came out but hey -- one step closer to Fallout 3, man. I then did some work on Heart of Winter, and that managed to actually be worse than my Icewind Dale stuff. Icewind Dale II came out better than I expected, but still, not exactly awe-inspiring. Along the way, I designed the magic sub-system for Torn, gave worthless spell/feat implementation feedback on Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, and helped come up with some of the background story for Lionheart. All of this gave me a lot of time to think about the work I'm doing on our unannounced "Jefferson" project (which is not a Fallout title).