The Gaming Den

So it's kind of lost in a thread that Shadzar crapped all over, but Monte Cook is back to work at Wizards of the Coast. They say they are bringing him in for R&D, but his first assignment is taking over the weekly column where Mike Mearls ruminates on design and hands out deepities to try to convince people that he knows what he is doing. There are a lot of things that could mean.

It could mean that they are preparing to give Mike Mearls the boot, as they are grooming Monte Cook to be the face they are presenting to the world. It could mean that they are trying to buy themselves 3rd and 2nd edition legitimacy by giving Monte Cook a meaningless position for a few ducats . It could mean that they are trying to fight back against Paizo by rehiring free agents that got name recognition on Pathfinder products. It could be that Mike Mearls was simply running out of profound sounding bullshit to say and wanted to hand the task over to someone else. We don't know, and we won't know until some time in the medium future because Monte Cook hasn't actually released any of those stupid columns yet.

But let's talk a bit about Monte Cook. He was integral to the development of 3rd edition Dungeons & Dragons, the best edition the game has ever seen. His 2nd edition work was also pretty good for the time. He is obviously capable of writing stuff that is stone cold awesome. He has done it before. But honestly: what has he done for me lately? And by lately: I mean the last ten fucking years.

From Monte Cook's World of Darkness to Monte Cook Presents Incomprehensible and Unbalanced Options, Monte Cook hasn't shown that he can put out a supplement that is playable or even coherent in some time. Furthermore: from his discussions of being angry that 3.5 dropped the shitastic rule that losing prereqs made you lose a prestige class benefits (despite you know, having personally written the Ur Priest and Dragon Disciple) to his meandering thoughts on "rewarding system mastery" (by purposefully including trap options) to his public support of Sean K Reynolds, the man has basically been a non-stop gaff machine since shortly after Clinton was president.

So speculate away. Monte Cook is going back to work for Wizards after a nine year absence. What the fuck do we think that means? I think it makes me more hopeful about 5e. But I am not sure.

-Username17

it means paizo wasn't paying him enough

Well;

Monte Cook as a "BIG IDEAS" guy is pretty good. Its only when he gets to start doing things like determining how edge cases should be handeled that he turns into a bastard (i.e. the prestige class thing).

On the other hand, he is not particularly visionary.

Cook doesn't do anything for me until I start seeing products. Then again, as a person who likes 4E I am mostly interested to see if 5E is a game that tries to build on things that were good in 3E and 4E, or if hiring cook is the first step towards reverting the game to a fighters suck wizards rule version of the game.

I don't think that WotC are paying him more than Paizo just for writing those useless columns. They are saying that:

Monte has an unmatched design pedigree in the RPG field, and for that reason we've brought him on board to work with R&Din making D&D the greatest RPG the world has seen.

Emphasis mine. But then, checked the WotC forums and the 4rries say that WotC said that they weren't gearing for 5th edition 6 weeks ago. So take that as you will.

Psychic Robot wrote:it means paizo wasn't paying him enough

He barely did anything with the Pathfinder RPG; they just ran a few ideas by him (and presumably he responded with sage beard-stroking or whatever). Here's Erik Mona's comment.

I assume he'll fill a similar role at WotC.

If Cook were replacing Mearls, I might reluctantly indulge myself in small quantities of hesitant optimism. Cook would be an improvement over Mearls, hands down. Not that that's saying much.

So far, though, all we've got is that there might be a change that might be worth getting excited about.

A new, Essentials specific campaign setting? Maybe they'll just rape the shit out of Planescape or Birthright and repackage it as a boxed set...

Hard to say what he is up to, really. I'm personally going to be setting the bar pretty high for the standard of his editorial. Unless he can consistantly provide some meaningful insights into his specific role and the future of D&D, I'll be writing his efforts off as a cash grab*.

*I don't have a problem with people whoring themselves out. People gotta pay the bills. It does make me suspicious of their sincerity and motivations though.

If there is an Essentials campaign setting, it will be based on the Jungle Book and called, "Bear Necessities"

hogarth wrote:He barely did anything with the Pathfinder RPG; they just ran a few ideas by him (and presumably he responded with sage beard-stroking or whatever). Here's Erik Mona's comment.

Cook also wrote some PF adventures for Paizo.

A Man In Black wrote:

hogarth wrote:He barely did anything with the Pathfinder RPG; they just ran a few ideas by him (and presumably he responded with sage beard-stroking or whatever). Here's Erik Mona's comment.

Cook also wrote some PF adventures for Paizo.

I know he wrote "Curse of the Riven Sky". Were there other ones, too?

If nothing else I think it shows what an abject failure 4e was.

Monte had his name on some books with wonkier mechanics back in his ICE days. He is not on the very short list of designers who would restore my confidence just by (re)hiring.

But I won't argue that D&D has been run by folks who seem to have had notably less confidence since Mr. Cook left the 3e line.

So, sign me up for cautious optimism.

Who is on that short list?

BTW, the WotC forums are so cute right now, "Wizards said that they weren't writing 5th 6 MONTHS AGO, so they couldn't have lied, right?"

Denial, not just a river on Egypt.

The shitstorm is brewing. Brace yourselves for when they hammer falls and they announce D&D 5th edition. The Internet will explode.

Also, I'm totally enjoying this.

The one thing I really remember Monte Cook for is putting variant rules on his website to make giant bugs actually bugs (giving them tremorsense, resistance or immunity to crits, etc.)

Also... I think it's his name that's on BoVD, which is mechanically useful, if awful flavourwise, so I suppose I'm cautiously optimistic as well.

Why is Monte in WoTC again? Rent was due.

Monty Cook however IS on the very short list of (one) designers who I totally said WOTC would dig out of a hole and prop up in front of 5E for some name recognition.

edit: Here we go...

Me back in March wrote:Hell has someone dug Monty Cook up from his shallow grave and smuggled him to an undisclosed location for a secret project of some form just for the name recognition lately.

It's not just a matter of them finding the best designer, it's a matter of finding a designer people recognize, associate with better times, and who they actually can drag out of his hole. Monty is like, very nearly the only guy who fits that bill.

And as such it means almost nothing that they've dragged him out and propped him in front of the upcoming 5E. Because regardless of what they intend to do with 5E they were always going to tie Monty Cook onto the front of that train.

watching wotc fanboys chimp over this is amusing to say the least.

HE'S GONNA TURN 4E INTO 3E

Psychic Robot wrote:HE'S GONNA TURN 4E INTO 3E

Is this statement followed immediately by something along the lines of, "Praise the Lord!"?

RadiantPhoenix wrote:

Psychic Robot wrote:HE'S GONNA TURN 4E INTO 3E

Is this statement followed immediately by something along the lines of, "Praise the Lord!"?

3rd edition, FUCK YEAH!

Well, if I was stuck with one old WotC designer to do 5e, I'd pick Monte because he seems to be the only one who comes up with functional ideas at all.

I mean, he comes up with a lot of shitty ideas too, but with enough playtesters and an iron-fisted editor you can weed out the shitty ones.

His own indie stuff is probably the only thing that ever got close to improving DnD from 3e, even if he doesn't seem to understand presentation, art, theme, branding, or how to tell a story or attract players.

Chain him to a chair and make him pump out rules, then hire a novelist for the fluff and an art director for the presentation. I mean, Paizo's success is entirely because of a great art director (Erik Mona), and it has less than nothing to do with rules.

K wrote:Well, if I was stuck with one old WotC designer to do 5e, I'd pick Monte because he seems to be the only one who comes up with functional ideas at all.

I mean, he comes up with a lot of shitty ideas too, but with enough playtesters and an iron-fisted editor you can weed out the shitty ones.

His own indie stuff is probably the only thing that ever got close to improving DnD from 3e, even if he doesn't seem to understand presentation, art, theme, branding, or how to tell a story or attract players.

Chain him to a chair and make him pump out rules, then hire a novelist for the fluff and an art director for the presentation. I mean, Paizo's success is entirely because of a great art director (Erik Mona), and it has less than nothing to do with rules.

Oh, definitely. Monte's biggest problem seems to be a philosophy of MOAR!!! More complex, more rules, more pages, etc. I mean, he's the guy that wrote Ptolus, isn't he? And PF's success and appeal is definitely in the artistic break away from the stuffy old shit, and presenting the magepunk style that D&D was supposed to be doing, and sorta did, but PF does much better.

Do you think Monte Cook would have done a better job on Tomes than you did?
Do you think Monte Cook has ideas that you would've never thought up of, or execute them better than you possibly can?
I only found out about this board because you guys spent so much effort on trying to fix 3rd edition, so what makes you so happy to see a 3e designer coming back to WotC?


I doubt there's going to be a real system overhaul though like what 2e->3e was. Probably more likely you get more 'variants-that-are-actually-replacements-but-the-old-stuff-is-still-usable' like Essentials. Or how M:tG is in edition... something, the game has changed quite a lot, but all the cards are still the same format.

OgreBattle wrote:I only found out about this board because you guys spent so much effort on trying to fix 3rd edition, so what makes you so happy to see a 3e designer coming back to WotC?

Who here has given the impression that they are "so happy"? The best I've heard is very guarded optimism, and most people's praise of Monte is "he isn't as big a dumbass as everyone else who worked on 3E".

Seriously, no one is clicking their heels about this as far as I can tell.

No matter what you do with a set of house rules, when you grab a pickup game you won't be using them. The better a set of rules are in the actual books (and I literally mean in the books, not whatever the fuck is on page 63 of the online errata document), the more fun I will have if I sit down at a random table in a convention or game store back room. And due to the amount of traveling I do, that's most of my gaming these days.

So if 5e D&D is interesting, whether or not it is balanced or stable, that's great news. Fuck, I don't even really care that much if it's even playable past level 4, since any game that goes on longer than that can be thoroughly house ruled. But the first couple of levels need to be playable and interesting out of the box, because a very large chunk of my personal gaming is going to be exactly that.

4e is boring as fuck. I can't actually stand playing it out of the box. If they make 5e interesting, then I'll be happy. Monte has succeeded in that minimal design goal before, so I am personally cautiously optimistic.

-Username17