AMA with Monte Cook (Numenera, D&D, Monte Cook Games, Malhavoc Press)

[Maginomicon]

Hello Mr Cook.

I have an expansive custom D&D 3.5e campaign setting that I think has serious potential to become a published product. What would be involved in trying to get such a book approved without getting the pants sued off of me?

I'm very serious about this, as the setting document even now is nearly 200 pages long and I haven't even finished hammering out half of the fluff material yet!

What makes this setting different is that it puts D&D 3.5e 3000 years in the future with space travel, nanotechnology, cyberspace, alien cultures, and even guns making appearances. All D&D 3.5e content is inherently compatible with the setting. It uses a lot of variants from the SRD material, and modifies them to interconnect and be far more fair (such as by rewriting the Spell Points system to be completely unambiguous, balanced, and most-of-all extensible). The setting references a lot of material from various official D&D 3.5e products but doesn't copy from them wholesale (or at least not without changing them as a setting-specific rule so much that they become almost unrecognizable).

There are also a myriad of new variants that change the nature of how the game is played and run. For example, it insists that stories done in this setting have to be run on very short timetables (akin to an action movie) once the players are comfortable with the game, and then adds new variants that support that kind of play style. It also states that everyone growing up in this setting has learned that "caster archetypes" are extremely dangerous (much like someone carrying around a loaded assault rifle in public) and should be feared and dealt with first in a fight. I've also introduced variants that are backwards-compatible with standard D&D 3.5e to "fix" some of the flaws that really irked me as a game designer, such as my "Item Rarity" system which prevents players from going on "shopping sprees", or my "Real Alignments" variant which makes alignment be about motives instead of acts.

While I personally would love your direct assistance in making this setting a published book, I understand that you're very busy and probably won't ever have that kind of time. Is there anyone that you know that you'd want to put me in contact with because they might be interested in assisting me? Please PM me if you'd need to give me information that's private or doesn't fit an AMA format.

Thank you for your time. I look forward to your reply. Please let me know if you'd like me to send you my contact information or my LinkedIn profile (I'm a professional game designer).

 

[Andugus]

Dear Mr. Cook,

I've independently published adventures for OGL 3.5 and Savage Worlds since 2008 through my game company, White Haired Man. In 2013 I closed the doors because the returns per product were averaging about $200 or so over two years of sales. Our reviews were great, but at that time I simply could not find a way to generate more per book.

This brings me to my question. Assuming the work White Haired Man put out for Cypher System Rules passed muster with Monte Cook Games, why does the licensing fee need to be so high at $50? I could understand a royalty cut per sale sooner than such a large amount of what an independent studio will make per unit.

Thank you for considering my question.

 

[Madmaxneo]

Hail and well met Monte!

I am a fan of your work and use a lot of that older Rolemaster stuff for inspiration. I have been looking for a copy of the Darkspace book you wrote for Spacemaster since mine disappeared in a fire years ago. Some time ago I asked if you minded me doing a conversion of Darkspace for HARP which I never got around to doing. I still want to do that but just have so many other projects on my list.

Outside of ICE, is there anything you miss about working on (and playing) Rolemaster?

Bruce

 

[Monte At Home]

Hello everyone!

Wow. Lots of questions. I don't know how many I'm going to be able to get through at a time, but I'm here all week!

Hi, Monte!

Love you guys, love the Cypher System.

While it was initially billed as a standalone product, is there now a chance we'll see support books for the Cypher System Rulebook? It seems like there would be room for the equivalents of Numenera and The Strange's key sourcebooks: a bestiary, a techbook, and perhaps an expanded genre book instead of the worldbooks.

And now the hard hitting question: do you expect any Nibovian Wife/Thunder Plains-like resistance to the witch creature in the CSR?

1. Yes, there's a very good chance of at least a couple of support products. I don't know exactly what form they'll take, though.

2. Nope.

 

[Monte At Home]

What's one tabletop project you dream of doing, but haven't been able to do?

I know it maybe sounds like a copout, but I don't really have anyone to tell me that I can't do what I want, so there isn't anything in this category. There's still plenty I want to do, but I'm currently working on them or planning for them in the future.

 

[Monte At Home]

Hi Monte,

1. If you were tasked with building your most bad-ass character ever, what would it be and what music would you have on (Artist and Album) while you were writing it up?
2. Can we count on Into The Night being a return to the ideas/paradigms of Planescape?
3. What question do you get asked most often at conventions?
4. What question do you wish someone would ask?
5. Do you get spotted as a gaming celebrity much outside of conventions?
6. Do you ever wrestle with fans desires to be actual friends with you vs your personal need for privacy?
7. I'm still a proud owner of the autographed version of Ptolus. I cant help but notice the inside cover symbol leeks very much like the cover symbol on the Deluxe Leatherbound Edition of Numenera (which is also the shape of the super-continent). Where does this symbol come from and can you talk about its importance to you.

~Desh-Rae-Halra

PS. I still insist you are this generations' Gygax!

1. Hmm. Maybe something using the Primal Order? Gods are pretty bad-ass. I'd probably put on Muse, Black Holes and Revelations.
2. I actually think all of Numenera is a return to the paradigms of Planescape.
3. Will you sign my book?
4. Would you like some cake?
5. This happens every now and again (maybe 5-6 times a year), but not often.
6. Not that much. Although I'm an intensely private and shy person, the vast, vast majority of people are cool.
7. Good eye. It's just one of those symbols that I've always liked--sketched in high school notebooks, and that sort of thing. If I really thought about it, it's probably related to some comic book character in some way. When I was much younger, I drew a lot, and basically taught myself by copying from comics.

 

[Monte At Home]

First, let me say I'm a big fan of your work.

1. It's touched on in the rulebooks, but how do you personally deal with players that don't simply roll with the "weird" in Numenera? In my Numenera game I had players that behaved more like Starfleet scientists and bristled at being told things were beyond their comprehension.
2. In "weird" games like Numenera, how do you allow for characters with complex backgrounds tied to the game world without giving the players too much information about all the oddities and secrets of the world?
3. Do you have an detailed story bible for Numenera's prior civs, or are they just painted in broad strokes?
4. Given that you had some input in 5e, is there any interest in MCG doing a product for 5e? (Also, where is my pipe dream University of Doors/City of Doors crossover? The Lady can't keep this going forever, some of the faculty have already noticed that the headmistress is playing hooky.)
5. Do you feel that people are more sensitive about how sexuality is portrayed in RPGs these days? Is it harder to put some of the bawdier elements into products now?

Thanks!

1. I don't ever force things on players that they don't want. If that was my group, I'd roll with it, and give them stuff to explore with their tricorders.
2. There's always more secrets. I'd default to the character the player wants to play, within reason. I mean, if someone said, "I want to play the character that knows all the secrets," that's a bit much, but if she did know a lot about one thing, one area, or something like that, that's cool. Particularly in Numenera's Ninth World, this wouldn't be a problem because the world is so intentionally disparate, disassociated, and isolated that knowing all about stuff on one side of the hill doesn't mean they know anything about the other side.
3. I don't have much more than what's actually in the corebook. Putting a lot of definition on them is exactly the opposite of the point.
4. Not really. (And that crossover would indeed be weird.)
5. I don't know if that's a general statement I could make either way, because I'm not sure what I'm actually comparing. I will say that we did a pdf-only supplement for Numenera called Love and Sex in the Ninth World and it was extremely well-received. I think that sex and romance are a part of life, and their absence in fiction (including games) is often glaring when it occurs. They're always going to be a part of anything I work on, if it's appropriate.

 

[Monte At Home]

First of all, I would like to express my appreciation to you for all of the amazing hours of truly wonderful gaming your products have brought to me and my friends. Your work is responsible for more hours of imaginative exploration than any other author.

Having recently moved to Mexico and finding myself in a difficult situation due to the fact that there are few here who speak English at the level to read through Numenera, I was curious if there will someday be a version released in Spanish? Perhaps another Kickstarter?

Thanks!

There is a Spanish version of Numenera published in Spain by Holocubierta Ediciones.

 

[Monte At Home]

Hypothetically, if the gaming industry utterly collapsed, what kind of job would you have instead?

Also, if you were to re-write Numenera today, would we still have Glaives, Jacks, and Nanos, or would it look more like the Cypher System Rulebook (with Speakers and Explorers instead of Jacks)?

1. If I could, I'd still be a fiction writer and/or work on video games (I guess it depends on what you mean by gaming industry). Way back when, though, I thought if I didn't work on games I would have got an advanced degree in psychology, specifically having to do with research, and specifically sleep research. Sleep and dreams have always fascinated me.

2. I would keep with the original three types, which I have a great fondness for.

 

[Speech]

Hi Monte,

I've been a big fan of Ptolus since your first blog posts about it. Out of curiosity-was there anything that you wanted to put into it after it was published? Another aspect of the city or un-fleshed out storyline/hook that you thought "Oh MAN-I forgot to put that in!!"

Thanks for taking the time to do this AMA.