4th Edition Almost Broke Me — R.A. Salvatore on D&D’s Rule Shakeups and Saving Drizzt

R.A. Salvatore says changing Dungeons & Dragons rules over the years made writing his Drizzt novels harder, and he talked about several big shifts — including 4th Edition, the Sundering events, and how he balances game mechanics with storytelling. He also named a couple of adventures he likes and explained why he still prefers plug-and-play modules for his gaming group.

1. Edition changes and the challenge they posed
2. The Sundering events and Drizzt’s fate
3. How Salvatore treats game mechanics in his books
4. Favorite modules and his hopes for adventures

Edition changes and the challenge they posed

Salvatore said that keeping up with D&D mechanics has been difficult across editions. For example, a passage in his upcoming novel notes that “teleporting,” “dimension stepping,” and “misty stepping” are all different terms for quickly moving by traveling between planes. This line reflects how the rules have used many names for similar effects.

Moreover, Salvatore singled out 4th Edition as especially disruptive. “That’s been one of the toughest parts,” he said. He clarified that his reaction was about how sweeping the changes were, not necessarily a value judgment on the edition itself. The 2008 4th Edition redesign reorganized character classes, gave them powers usable per day or per encounter, and altered core mechanics in visible ways. As a result, those shifts affected how authors tied novels to the game world.

The Sundering events and Drizzt’s fate

Wizards of the Coast moved the Forgotten Realms calendar ahead by 100 years between 3rd and 4th Edition in an event called The Sundering. Then, to transition from 4th Edition into 5th Edition, the company ran the Second Sundering.

Salvatore and fellow Forgotten Realms creator Ed Greenwood were surprised by the first Sundering. According to Salvatore, “Ed looked at me and says, ‘Bob, what are we going to do?’ I said, we’re going to figure out how we’re going to fix it because in about five years they’re going to come to us and say, ‘Bob, we got to fix this,’”

Ahead of the 5th Edition changes, Salvatore set up a story arc that mortally wounded Drizzt and then allowed a route to bring him back. He wounded Drizzt in the 2013 novel The Last Threshold, and then used reincarnation and rebirth in The Companions to rejoin the character to the game’s new timeline.

How Salvatore treats game mechanics in his books

Salvatore says he makes judgement calls about when to use current edition mechanics in his fiction. For instance, he still uses the term ki for the energy that powers a monk’s abilities, instead of the 2024 ruleset’s term focus. In addition, his new book mainly follows a half-elf, a species that did not appear in the latest Player’s Handbook.

He explained that game designers and authors don’t always have to match terms exactly. “They don’t argue with me because they know I’m doing something different than playing the game when I’m writing the books, and as long as the two things feed off each other, everybody’s happy,” Salvatore said.

Arguments with TSR

Going further back, Salvatore described clashes with TSR during the 2nd Edition era. He warned them that adding many supplemental rulebooks and expanding player options could make the game harder to learn for newcomers. As he put it, “The beauty of D&D, when you’re bringing someone into it, is all they have to do is read a few pages of the player’s handbook and they can play. Like five pages, and they’re in. Now you’re adding all these things to the players instead of giving the dungeon masters the tools they need. […] I don’t think they listened to me. They also went bankrupt, so maybe that was their fault.”

Favorite modules and his hopes for adventures

Outside of writing, Salvatore still plays regularly. He and his friends run a Sunday night D&D 2024 game, and he plays with his kids and grandkids as well. Because of that, he says he wants easy-to-run adventures.

Salvatore called Gary Gygax’s “The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth” his favorite module, and noted its revised appearance in the 2024 anthology Quests from the Infinite Staircase. He also said he enjoyed Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden, even though that adventure didn’t borrow much from his novel set in the same region. In his own words: “I just hope that all the gaming companies put out good games so that I have fun playing them.”