Fans following the development of Star Wars: The Old Republic are probably already familiar with Threat of Peace, the weekly web-comic written by BioWare's Rob Chestney and drawn by Alex Sanchez. Dark Horse Comics will be publishing the first portion of the series as a 96-page trade paperback in April. Dark Horse also delves into the Old Republic universe on a monthly basis with its Knights of the Old Republic comic series, in publication since 2006.

Fans of words without pictures are in for a treat as well. In July, Del Rey Books will be publishing Star Wars: The Old Republic: Fatal Alliance, a hardcover novel by bestselling author Sean Williams, and there's another book already in the early planning stages from Paul Kemp. know for his work on the Forgotten Realms series of AD&D novels.

That's two novels. The Old Republic's script alone has enough text for forty. Looks like someone has a lot of writing to do to catch up!

The Expanded Universe of The Old Republic [Star Wars: The Old Republic]

In Forged By Chaos, the third novel based on Warhammer Online, author C.L. Werner takes on Dark Elves. Greenskins, and the forces of Chaos as they explore the Bastion Stair in search of the Spear of Myrmidia, a relic that could ensure their victory over the Empire of Man.

"FORGED BY CHAOS provides readers with a horrific look into the warped minds of the soldiers of Destruction – the megalomania of the Dark Elves, the destructive single-mindedness of the Greenskins, and the unholy obsessions of Chaos", said Jeff Hickman, Studio Executive Producer for Mythic Entertainment. "C.L. Werner provides a never-before-seen look at a single side of the Realm vs. Realm conflict, and shows just how fragile, and deadly, this alliance of dark powers can be."

I've always been a huge fan of fantasy novels from the bad guys' point-of-view, at least when they don't simply portray the villains as uglier heroes. Hopefully Werner gets it right! Forged By Chaos is now available at fine booksellers everywhere.

Then again, since it's based entirely around the events of the first game in the series, it may well be. Page after page of "I WILL STAB YOU IN THE FACE" followed by "AARRGGHH!!" broken up only by a few moments of "OH NO MY WIFE WHAT HAVE I DONE I AM A MONSTER".

Written by Matt Stover, God of War (the book) will be out in March 2010, with further novelizations of the series to follow.

Few though have had to tell a story in a universe almost completely controlled by the gamers themselves, the very people most likely to read those novels.

That's what confront the authors of Eve Online's novelized fiction. And the way the deal with it can have some surprising consequences.

The virtual universe of online computer game Eve Online is a thriving, thrilling place of starship fights, rampant piracy, militant corporations and financial espionage.

The game's hundreds of thousands of players assume the roles of characters who fill every need in the game, controlling miner, trader, pirate and CEO. More interesting, though, the players have almost total control over the lifeblood of the game: Its economy.

The result is a sometimes vicious environment of intrigue, racketeering and politics. And it's up to the developer's creative writing team to at times turn this unordered chaos into a living space opera. Two among the team have also used it to craft novels.

Tony Gonzales' Eve Online: The Empyrean Age was released in 2008 and Hjalti Danielsson's Eve Online: The Burning Life is due out this fall. And the authors took very different approaches to their work.

The Empyrean Age was used to tell the story of major events that took place in the game's universe as part of an update released for the game at the same time.

"My task was to tell the story about how this great war comes to pass-describing what was happening behind the scenes, and the choices that leaders of nations faced before committing to such a grave undertaking," Gonzales told Kotaku.

Gonzales said that early on publisher CCP Games decided not to include any of the many influential players or their character creations in the novel.

"Though tempting, the fact is that doing so would have been an unnecessary risk and thus inappropriate for the (game's) first foray beyond gaming into the greater science fiction community.," he said. "The main reason is because EVE Online has incredibly competitive gameplay. Player actions of a scale considered momentous enough to build a novel plot around tend to happen at a direct and often unpleasant cost to other players. "

And the history of conflict, in both the real world and the fictional, always has at least two sides: The victor's is the one most commonly told, he said.

So instead, The Empyrean Age took the "golden path."

"We can, for example, speak of aggregate player actions in broad strokes.," he said. "We just need to find a way to tell that story accurately and fairly, and more importantly establish that there's an audience eager to read about it."

Gonzeles' The Empyrean Age used broad strokes to tell a game-changing story that launched a war between the game's two main empires. But Danielsson's The Burning Life strives to convey a sense of what it's like to be a regular inhabitant in the universe of Eve Online

Danielsson said that to narrow the focus of the book he made lists of everything he wanted to use from the game and prioritized them.

"There was no way I could pick just one setting and one story to tell," he told Kotaku. "Instead, I had my characters go on a journey through the EVE cluster, encountering people with very different backgrounds and attitudes along the way, and chronicling the life in all those places."

And while Danielsson, like Gonzales, didn't overtly use any player history or actions in his book, he said it's hard to avoid.

"There is the lore that we create and the lore the players create, and a myriad of overlaps between the two," he said. "There is a feed there, back and forth, that the novel plugs into. "

Creating fiction in a fictional world not totally controlled by the author can have its challenges, Danielsson said.

"It's immensely challenging," he said. "A novel is static and can only reflect the game world at a certain specific point - and parts of EVE go through some pretty big changes at times, but it must nonetheless be timeless enough that it can be enjoyed a year later, three years later, and so on."

With the emergent storytelling that naturally sprouts from games like Eve Online it begs the question, when will game-based novels write themselves?

"Novelizing direct player actions would be almost exclusively historical and investigative reporting," Gonzales points out. "In fact, a novel probably isn't the best way to tell their story. But a dedicated history of player actions, especially if it included all the interesting externalities and accompanying social dynamics, might be a compelling tale on its own without any author-added role-playing elements to turn it into space opera. "

"If we can prove that the audience for this is there, we're definitely willing to pursue it."

Well Played is a weekly news and opinion column about the big stories of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come. Feel free to join in the discussion.

Despite spending much of their time in London last week talking about Fallout, Rogue Warrior and WET, Bethesda's Pete Hines couldn't help but bring up the role-playing game as well.

"We're not talking about the next Elder Scrolls, but that doesn't mean we're not doing anything with the franchise," Hines said.

What they're doing is working with Del Rey Books on a new series of novels based on the video game series.

Penned by New York Times bestselling author Greg Keyes, the novels will be original stories based in The Elder Scrolls universe, Hines said. The first novel, The Infernal City, will be published this fall.

The Infernal City is set after the events of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and finds the citizens of Tamriel facing an uncertain future.

"Floating high above the land is a strange and mysterious city that is casting a horrifying shadow – wherever it falls, people die and rise again as undead. It is up to an unlikely duo – a seventeen-year-old girl named Annaig and the Emperor's young son, Prince Attrebus – to rescue the kingdom from doom."

Keyes wrote the Age of Unreason Tetrology, three New York Times bestselling Star Wars novels and the Kingdom of Thorn and Bone.

Hines said that Bethesda has already been given the first half of the first novel's manuscript. And that Keyes is working with Bruce Nesmith and Kurt Kuhlmann, both of whom worked on The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall back in the day and on Oblivion.

"We felt this was a good opportunity for us to do something with a great new author," Hines said.

"We've been big fans of Greg's work for a long time, and we're thrilled he agreed to bring his talents to The Elder Scrolls. We see these books as a natural extension of the franchise and think fans will love the stories and characters Greg has created."

See, books do not contain pictures, which some would say is part of their charm. This particular book, written by veteran video game writer David Gaider, has many words, generally pertaining to Prince Maric gathering a rebel army to take back the throne after his mother is murdered, which is good, because this is what the novel is supposed to be about.

What it doesn't contain are pictures. You have to make those with your mind. Luckily for you, BioWare has sent some along to use as reference. Dragon Age: The Stolen Throne is available now in trade paperback form for $14.95. Might want to write that down before the pretty pictures mesmerize you.

“We’ve got a huge running start with this property,” Selvage said. “We expect to have a game based on every movie, and we expect no less than three movies, though that depends on how well each does.”

In addition to the movie tie-ins, Red Eagle is also planning a massively multiplayer online game based in the Wheel of Time universe. At this point it's far too early to tell if fans of the series should be delighted or terrified. As for who is going to be working on the games, Selvage sets his sights high. "We want to hire the rock stars." Personally I'd hire game developers instead, but that's just me.

Red Eagle to make multiple films and games based on Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time books [Venture Beat via GI.biz]

I'm not familiar with Buckell's work, but he was a Nebula award nominee and a Prometheus Award finalist, so he's sure to be nearly excellent.

HALO: THE COLE PROTOCOL TO LAUNCH ON NOVEMBER 25th

NEW YORK, NY – October 7, 2008. Tor Books today announced Halo: The Cole Protocol will be released on November 25 – just in time for the holidays! The cover image for the new novel has been officially revealed to coincide with the announcement (see attached).

Halo: The Cole Protocol is the sixth in the New York Times bestselling literary series based on the blockbuster Microsoft and Bungie Studios' Halo® video games. An unabridged audiobook edition will publish simultaneously with the new novel.

Written by Nebula nominee and Prometheus Award finalist, Tobias Buckell, Halo: The Cole Protocol unveils the location of the Spartan Gray Team and takes readers into an unexplored conflict of the Human-Covenant War, where unlikely alliances are formed and shattered, altering the course of the humanity's epic struggle for survival. The Halo novels, Halo: Ghosts of Onyx (Tor 2006) and Halo: Contact Harvest (Tor 2007) became instant bestsellers and they, along with the three previous novels, have helped establish Halo® as one of today's greatest science fiction franchises.

HALO: THE COLE PROTOCOL

Pricing: $14.95 Trade Paperback Original / $23.95 Macmillan Audio

Star Wars Book Tops NY Times Bestsellers List [GameDaily]

The Next Halo Novel: The Cole Protocol [Bungie.net]

When World of Warcraft came out, I lamented the fact that it wasn't Diablo 3. After all, Diablo 2 is probably still my favorite game of all time: I actually scratched a good chunk of flesh off my face when I missed the 90 day window for logging into B.net by a couple of days and lost three 90+ Hell characters and one 70+ Hard Core Necromancer.

I've been wondering forever when Blizzard would get around to making Diablo 3, simultaneously praying that they would not make it an MMORPG, which would really lose the visceral, quick thrill of Diablo 2. Well, we still don't know when they're doing it, but in a recent interview with Diablo novelist Richard Knaak, he dropped a bunch of strong hints that Diablo as a franchise wasn't dead and that his new novels were setting up the plot for Diablo 3.

Quivering! Florian Eckhardt

Diablo: The Sin War Trilogy - Public Q&A with Richard A. Knaak [Blizzplanet]

Bad news? It's a bunch of books. You know, Blizzard, I play games so I can avoid the crushing boredom of looking at black ink on paper, not so I can pretend to be literate. When I want to read something, it better be a game FAQ or an instruction manual.

In Birthright, the first book of the new Diablo trilogy, The Sin War, the eternal conflict between the angelic forces of the High Heavens and the demonic hordes of the Burning Hells has spilled over into Sanctuary — the world of men. Now, Sanctuary's destiny, and that of every mortal soul, lies in the balance.

A must-read for gamers and fiction fans alike, The Sin War trilogy, written by New York Times bestselling author Richard A. Knaak, lays out the basic foundation for the lore of the Diablo universe. The second novel in the trilogy, The Sin War, Book Two: Scales of the Serpent, is forthcoming from Blizzard and Pocket Books.

Okay, I'll admit to actually partaking in the occasional metaphysical detective novel or sociological non-fiction title. But please, I'm begging you, announce Diablo III so we can all move on with our lives! Michael McWhertor

Diablo: The Sin War: Book One: Birthright [Blizzard Online Store]

Depressed about Blizzard dragging Starcraft: Ghost behind the shed? Don't be: it was a Terry Schiavo style mercy euthanization.

Still, in case you're regretting that Starcraft: Ghost tattoo you perhaps prematurely tattooed into the meaty flesh above your nose, not all is lost. Bizarrely enough, a novel by Keith R.A. DeCandido called Starcraft: Ghost - Nova is coming out shortly, serving as a prequel for the cancelled game.

Here's a snip of the plot, from a Firing Squad interview:

The game was going to be a first-person shooter, in which you-the-gamer play Nova, a Ghost — basically a powerful telepathic and telekinetic assassin with excellent martial arts and weapons skills. What NOVA the novel does is tell the character's backstory and show how she got the point she's at in the game.

Nova Terra started out as a scion of the Old Families on Tarsonis. Because of her family's position, her telepathic talents have been kept a secret — both from the Confederacy of Man and from Nova herself. At least, it's kept secret until tragedy strikes the Terra family, and Nova finds herself in the worst part of Tarsonis City, being chased by a Wrangler, a special agent trained to seek out telepaths to be brought into the Ghost program. The novel follows Nova's tribulations in "the Gutter," and the Wrangler's attempts to track her down.

'Nova Terra'? Jeez. Florian Eckhardt

Starcraft: Ghost Novel Interview [Firing Squad]

We don't want to quote the entire Amazon.com description, so let's just say that Valentine's Exile by E.E. Knight is a novel about Space Draculas best read upon the toilet. But the novel's gaggle of vampire spacemen from beyond the moon aren't the only blood suckers connected with Valentine's Exile: the cover artist is also parasitically draining the Halo art team dry.

From Kotakuite Dylan C. (who was also responsible for this post's incredibly impenetrable subject wording):

On June 11th, a fan over at halo.bungie.org noticed a book in Barnes + Nobles (a sleazy vampire sci-fi novel to boot) with a cover picture that reminded him of something every Halo 2 player should recognize: a Battle Rifle. Long story short, someone contacted the author of the book, who contacted his publisher (I think) who has decided to change all future covers for fear of plagarism. It is very obvious that it was plagiarised, but it is good to see a fan community do something productive.

This is "something productive"? Granted, it is undeniably ripped wholesale from Halo... but, like, who cares? Even though I've played all the Halo games, I didn't even recognize it — I've never once seen the gun from that angle.

It's a fargin' generic looking sci-fi ray gun, man. Let the poor generic cover artist have it. Isn't shameless plagiarism what sci-fi is all about anyways? Florian Eckhardt

Valentine's Exile: A Novel of the Vampire Earth [Amazon]