Not sure if anyone will read this since it's an old thread but..
I got Betrayal at Krondor from Good Old Games and am currently playing throught it. While looking at reviews before I got it, I came across this post on Amazon.com that I think some of you may find interesting.
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"Hi folks. I'm very glad that you've all enjoyed Betrayal at Krondor, but I want to clear up a long-standing misconception that lots of folks have about this game. Neither the main story for this game nor the dialogue for it was written by Raymond E. Feist. Nor did he design the game or the systems in it. All of those things were handled by the lead designers John Cutter and Neal Hallford (namely myself).
If you want more direct proof of what I'm saying, simply turn your paperback copies of "Krondor: the Betrayal" to Ray's afterword on page 389. "Neal Hallford and John Cutter wrote the game. I got to review things, but they wrote it. I talked with them about story, gave them ideas, listened to their ideas, and the game took form. But even I had no idea what it would look like, or play like, until it was finished."
This isn't to say Ray had no significant impact on the game. He absolutely, positively did. He wrote a whole set of magnificent novels that gave me a lot of meat to play with. I had some really fun characters to threaten, beat up, and send off on weird adventures. I had the priviledge of having the personal phone number of a New York Times best-selling author whenever I wanted to bounce a story idea around. But Ray did not write the story. That burden, and that priviledge, fell to me.
Ray made a mint off the game. I never got royalties from one of the best-selling RPGs of the early 1990s. Ray made another mint off the novelization. I never received a single red penny for that, or for any of the characters I created that he later used in his other books (Lysle Rigger, Abbot Graves, or Cat (called "Kitty" in his books)).
If you wish to praise Ray for his phenomenal books, go right ahead. It is praise well deserved. But when it comes to Betrayal at Krondor, give credit where credit is due.
Thanks,
Neal Hallford "3