I know that it seems obvious why someone of Larian Studios should defend the novel but I'll try to leave the official opinion aside and just comment from a point of a fantasy game fan (who also read many fantasy series in the past twenty years)...
Yes, well, if the developers didn't like the novella, I imagine it wouldn't have been included.
If you have played <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/div.gif" alt="" /> you might have noticed that Rianna actually imho managed to hit the tone of exxaguerated clichès and our special kind of humor perfectly. The way we wanted it. Thats not such an easy thing to archieve.
I won't dispute that it fits. And since it's clearly intended to be that way, I'll say that I've always thought the setting of DD is extremely generic fantasy. Which is all fine and dandy: it was a fun game, and accomplishes precisely what it's supposed to do.
After all is it a supporting novel for a game where the characters, the gods and even the rough storyline had to be the way it is written now. It was probably not easy to struggle with the rest of the storyteam to get everything right and smooth. Any fanfic is way more free to write whatever they like as long they stick to some common background so i think its a little bit unfair to compare it.
Not always. Take, for instance, KotOR fanfiction. Good fanficcers not only have to research some Star Wars tidbits; they also have to work with the established characters with distinct personalities. And so on and so forth. (Bad ones will just do whatever the hell they feel like, setting and characterization be damned.) I'll concede that fanfiction writers don't have to follow a plot guideline unless they're retelling something, but then you also have authors working in shared worlds. Forgotten Realms has got, for instance,
War of the Spider Queen -- a series where various authors have to work together, using the same cast of characters and following a specific storyline. (And what amount of text on drow and other things they would have to read!) No small task, and IMO, what they've done so far is very, very good.
Of course, I don't know what restrictions exactly Ms. Pratchett (I'd feel rude to call her by her first name) had to work with, so...
You liked the novella; great. I've read a lot of fantasy fiction, too, and haunt various writing communities. I found far too many flaws with the novella to like it, so let's agree to disagree.
