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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bacon Bits" data-source="post: 8120589" data-attributes="member: 6777737">Well, part of the point is that the timelines don't really make sense for that. 2e was published in 1989, yes, but development started in 1987. You've got to get the book printed. Before that you've got to do layout. Before that, you've got to write and edit the content. Before that, you need to finalize the designs. Before that, you need the playtesting done. Before that, you need the initial designs. Like TWF on the 2e ranger had to be in 1987 early in development. Yeah sure, maybe it was a late change, but Zeb Cook himself says it wasn't a change to accommodate Drizzt and that any changes went through an approval process.Meanwhile FR5 Savage Frontier and The Crystal Shard were published in 1988, but <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20080514045127/http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue393/interview.html" target="_blank">Salvatore has stated that Drizzt being a character at all was kind of a last minute change in the manuscript</a>:[excerpt]Tell me about Drizzt.Salvatore: The character first appeared in 1988, The Crystal Shard.Your first book.Salvatore: First published. And it was funny. I had sent the manuscript to TSR. They liked the manuscript. One of the characters [had to be changed]. The editor called me at work and said, "I've got to go to a marketing meeting to sell the book, and we can't use [that character], and I really need to be able to tell marketing." I said, "Give me a little while. I'll call you back." She said, "Oh, no. You don't understand. I'm two minutes away from where I have to be five minutes ago." And off the top of my head I said a Dark Elf. And there was this long pause. "Yeah, a Dark Elf Ranger, that's cool. Nobody's done that." And there was a long pause, and she said, "There's a reason why no one's done that." I said, "No. It will be all right. It will be all right. It's just a sidekick character." And another pause. "What's his name?" And off the top of my head I said, "Drizzt Do'Urden?" Then a long pause. "Can you spell it?" I said, "Not a chance." It came to me off the top of my head.[/excerpt]Salvatore had a completed manuscript for Crystal Shard and it was in TSR's hands before Drizzt as a main character was even a thing. That means swapping Drizzt for the other character happened late. That's going to be much closer to the 1988 publishing date.And nobody who worked on FR5 appears to have a credit in the 2e PHB that I can tell.Like these timelines just do not line up for Drizzt to have been a driving force here. He was a known character, but he was far, far, far removed from being an iconic ranger at the time he would have had to be in order to influence the design.</blockquote>

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