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

[Monte At Home]

I have been a huge fan since your work on 3rd edition D&D

I am a backer at the Reliquary level for the boxed set Kickstarter for Numenera. I never got my rewards because I failed to receive the email explaining the order process that occurs after paying. After getting no responses to my email inquiry 10 days ago about the missing coupon code - and seeing the posts recently about selling the leftovers at GenCon - let's just say I am very scared that I will never get my rewards. But I also know GenCon is a busy time for all of you over at MCG. Am I SOL/are the Numenera Reliquary boxed sets all gone?

I read before on the Numenera site that MCG was not interested in licensing the Cypher System for use with additional games at one time. However, the Cypher System is now licensed to new games. Has that stance changed?

1. Absolutely not. I'm sorry that we're so behind on dealing with customer requests. This is our #1 priority right now, and I assure you we'll get everything worked out. We always hold back enough copies of everything to ensure not only every Kickstarter backer gets what they originally backed but also to account for shipping loss or damage. As an aside, you might be surprised to learn how significant that latter category is. We always replace products lost or damaged in shipping (I think all good companies do), but that percentage can be as high as 10%. This is one of those mistakes I see new companies--particularly on Kickstarter--make. Post Office, FedEx UPS... doesn't matter the carrier. They destroy or lose an astonishing number of packages and the sender has to deal with it.

I don't know why I just went off on that little tangent, but there you go. Bonus content for the AMA! Monte even answers questions you didn't ask!

 

[Monte At Home]

I enjoyed your Geekseekers show with Jen Page. Do you have any plans to do more of that, or any other shows? Do you have a wish-list of stuff in that vein you'd like to do, or people you'd like to work with?

Thanks!

Jen and I talk about it from time to time, but we're both just so busy. At one point we got so far as to start talking to the manager of another investigation spot--there's a bar in Seattle that used to be a mortuary and supposedly is haunted--but it never came together.

I love film and like to be a part of it. I was in Gamers 2 and JourneyQuest with the Dead Gentlemen/ZOE and that was a lot of fun. (Jen and I wrote a script for a short film based on my character in Gamers 2 that was called Bill's Revenge but I'm sure that will never see the light of day.)

When you get the chance to see Numenera: Strand, I think you'll be as blown away as I was (and it's not even 100% finished). I'd love to work with those filmmakers again.

 

[Monte At Home]

In Ptolus--which I understand was the actual campaign you ran for a long time--the final dungeon at the end of the whole campaign contains a lot of basically numerically-intense monsters, like: x levels of fire resistance plus an amulet of lightning resistance plus immunity to necrotic damage plus...

...suggesting that the endgame for that era of your campaigns was basically players finding largely system-specifc (as opposed to genre-specific) ways to counter system-based problems. i.e. "We need to find something that gives us at least a +15 frost attack here...".

1. Is this an accurate view of how things went down at the end of your Ptolus campaign?

and

2. Is this still what you're into?

1. I can see why you'd say that, but no, not really. My view on high level 3E play (and really, high level D&D of any edition) is that the PCs have SOOO many options and resources that you can throw anything at that without compunction, and in fact the way to make it fun is to give them challenges that they can't beat in a conventional way. So if a foe has a bunch of resistances to damage the point isn't to cobble together numbers to overcome that resistance, it's to come up with some plan that involves dealing with it in a different way. I mean wishes, magic items, and all those weird things that characters gather over the course of a good campaign (the spear that phases through all metal after the fighter dipped the tip in the pool of the Iron God after the party spilled blood of the Cockatrice King into it on the Night of All Consumption... etc.). With all that, I think you can just sit back and figure they'll come up with some solution. However, at the same time, the 3E paradigm was to quantify things numerically. The reason was that blanket immunities trip up genre tropes, particularly high level ones. The idea was that rather than being immune to fire, you have fire resistance 50 or whatever. Meaning that while you can probably wade through lava like it was bathwater, if I pull out Shamala, the mystic blade so hot that it burns fire itself, there's some mechanical way of dealing with that.

2. After the various Ptolus campaigns I ran for a lot of years, I ran another D&D 3E campaign for a couple years but it never got super high level. Since then, I've played other things--obviously, mostly games I'm currently working on. The only D&D I play today is a very modified version of OD&D. But that could change, I suppose.

 

[Barantor]

Hopefully this hasn't been asked already.

What was the inspiration that gave you the idea to create Monte Cook Games? Was it a natural progression from what you have done previously or was it a sudden realization?

Do you ever do things that are outside your normal routine for the soul purpose of kick starting your creative process? If so, do any of those really stand out?

What advice would you give someone who is full of creativity but doesn't have as much formal schooling or training?

What do you think defines the folks that have worked with you and for you in gaming? What is their common element?

 

[Monte At Home]

Would MCG open to collaborate with WotC for a DnD5 book adventure campaign like "Prince of the Apocalypse". Would be great for something Far Realms or Planescapy!

To be honest, this seems really unlikely.

 

[Monte At Home]

Greetings,

Been a fan of yours for a long time and early supporter of Numenera. Congrats on the success of that line!! It is well deserved.

As a long time fan, I have noticed that the old Web files (Errata, extras, etc) for your older lines has gone away. Specifically, those for Malhavoc Press in my case. Are there any plans to return these items for download? I was looking for then for a while and have given up recently - so I may have missed something.

Thanks for your time!

chWolfgang

Thank you.

A lot of those Malhavoc Press promo files and whatnot went down when the old website bit the dust. I still have them somewhere on my machine, and would like to get them up again, but as that stuff's all like 12 years old, it's just not a high priority. If there's something you need and it's crucial, shoot me an email and I'll try to dig it up.

 

[Willie the Duck]

Hi Monte, big fan. Loving my current Numenera campaign.

I don't know if this is an appropriate question, and I'll let you frame it any way you want. On the subject of D&D 3rd edition--is there anything you wish you had done differently for that edition?

 

[Monte At Home]

1) Would you ever release a revised version of Ptolus for another system, like Pathfinder or 5e (assuming a licence was released)?

2) It's been asked before, but I'll ask as well: if WotC made the offer, would Monte Cooke Games do an adventure for 5th Edition?

3) Biggest regret in your RPG writing career?

4) Best moment or biggest triumph in your RPG writing career?

5) If you had to leave tabletop games, what field would you look for employment in?

1. Pretty doubtful. Ptolus was and still is awesome for what it is. Making it for a different system feels wrong. To me, it would be like playing Castle Greyhawk using GURPS or something.

2. Pretty doubtful.

3. Going back to WotC to work on 5e.

4. That's a really tough one. I've been fortunate to have a lot of them. I guess I'd probably say being inducted into the Hall of Fame. That's the kind of thing that doesn't mean much to most gamers, but to someone who's been in the industry a long time, it's pretty meaningful. Plus, the company it puts me in is overwhelmingly humbling.

5. Either fiction writing or computer games. Probably both.

 

[Monte At Home]

I really enjoyed the Cypher System Rulebook, are there any plans to expand that line? I'd love to see a companion book that expanded the genre chapter quite a bit.

We're still figuring out what this will look like, but it's likely that there will be some expansion.

 

[Monte At Home]

Second Question - There have been a lot of awesome RPG's that have come out this year, along with the Cypher System (You have caused me to lose Wife Faction personally ;p ). Anything new that you enjoyed?

I like FFG's Star Wars game(s). I'm looking forward to trying out Mindjammer. I'd like to play Night Witches, too.