Monte Cook on publishing a successful d20 product

[Pramas]

I am also curious why WOTC has not or will not come up with a similar product as Ptolus.

The way WotC is organized, doing such a product would be hugely expensive and thus almost certainly too risky for them.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Eh. The article overestimates the quality of the PR campaign and underestimates the value of the name "Monte Cooke", IMO. As other posters have said, the "advice" in the article is pretty useless to someone without Monte's name recognition.

Y'know.....Monte Cook's name recognition would be pretty low without the PR campaign.

Let me ask you a question: Who wrote the Babylon 5 or Conan RPGs? Maybe Castles and Crusades? How about True20 or Firefly? Those are all pretty well known game systems within this community and yet their designers are not exactly high profile. Well, Margaret Weis is pretty high profile and Steve Kenson is not a faceless entity but the question is how many people remember Weis is co-author of Serenity and Kenson is True20?

The only reason most people know Monte was hip deep in 3e is that his PR campaign made sure you heard that he was hip deep in 3e. He self-promoted, managed to do it in a way that doesn't appear to have burned any bridges or earned him any significant ill will within the community, and then played on that name recognition to hit that next tier. Essentially, Monte turned himself into a brand.

 

[buzz]

The way WotC is organized, doing such a product would be hugely expensive and thus almost certainly too risky for them.

The special-edition leatherbound core books they've released is sort of a step in this direction, though. I.e., the "prestige" RPG product.

 

[Christoph the Magus]

Y'know.....Monte Cook's name recognition would be pretty low without the PR campaign.

The fact that he was the sage in "ask the sage" for awhile (not to mention other appearances on WOTCs site), his involvement with high profile assignments while a WOTC employee (Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, Call of Cthulu D20, etc) built up his rep before he decided to go solo. I don't buy the premise that his name recognition was created by his PR campaign.

 

[Storm Raven]

Eh. The article overestimates the quality of the PR campaign and underestimates the value of the name "Monte Cooke", IMO. As other posters have said, the "advice" in the article is pretty useless to someone without Monte's name recognition. I mean, a product of similar size, scope, and quality could follow the marketing pattern and easily be a huge flop, simply because the author was "John Smith" instead of Monte Cooke.

On the other hand, a large portion of his name recognition stems from the fact that he has consistently turned out products that people want to buy, and made sure that he had his name attached to those products in the mind of his customers. When he left WotC, he was just one of a pile of guys with decent name recognition leaving the company. Most of them didn't do nearly as much in the game industry afterwards, because they didn't produce material.

Not that he worked for WotC, but do you remember John Wick? Remember how he screamed about how he would make a game product and show those dunderheads at WotC what a really good gaming product was like? And then he followed up his hype with What's That Smell?. And everyone realized that he was just a big windbag? Compare that to Monte's Ptolus.

Where is John Tweet's highly successful d20 company? How about Skip Williams? Or Sean Reynolds? Sure, Monte started with some recognition, but he built on it, and others didn't. And, of course, he had to garner that recognition in the first place. How do you do that? By publishing products that people want to buy. If the general public had thought Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil was drek, then they would not have tried out his Malhavoc offerings.

 

[Henry]

How about his name being the sole name on the cover of the 3.0 DMG? (IIRC) I'd say he was pretty well known beforehand, BUT his efforts in the fan community is what gave it an extra oomph. I still lament the day when WotC regulars used to visit this and other sites quite frequently. Nowadays, the only people who do seem to be the freelancers.

 

[Piratecat]

Essentially, Monte turned himself into a brand.

You can be sure that was deliberate, and an extremely clever strategy.

 

[Christoph the Magus]

On the other hand, a large portion of his name recognition stems from the fact that he has consistently turned out products that people want to buy..

Nobody is denying that he has put out products that are reviewed favorably and that people like. However, the article that we're discussing tells how he put out a successful product, and was written in a "here's my advice for other publishers" type of tone that completey ignored the fact that he started out in the d20 market with a HUGE advantage due to his key role/position in WOTCs 3E rollout.

Quality is a matter of opionion, but other authors that turn out quality work have been mentioned by you (and others) in this thread. Monte has/had an advantage over them due to his job at WOTC and some of the key products he worked on before going solo. Nobody else even comes close. Kudos to Monte for not dropping the ball and wasting the good will/recognition that he had earned, but he was in a unique position to do what he did, and to not admit/mention that it played a huge factor in is business/marketing campaign seems intellecutally dishonest. Others can't follow his example because things fell into place for him in a very special way that I doubt anyone else can duplicate.

 

[Michael Dean]

and to not admit/mention that it played a huge factor in is business/marketing campaign intellecutally dishonest. Others can't follow his example because things fell into place for him in a very special way that I doubt anyone else can duplicate.

Ah, I wouldn't be that hard on him. I think he is sincere in his belief that the marketing over the last year for Ptolus paid huge dividends in sales. At the same time, I agree that having such a high name recognition factor was the fuel for that fire. I think it's kind of a chicken or the egg question, though, as far as using his name recognition to fuel the pr machine, and using good pr to fuel his recognition in the community.

Whether you like Ptolus or not, it was a pretty impressive undertaking, and I have a feeling that if another publisher had done it, there would at least have been a high interest factor in how it would turn out, even if it hadn't been Monte. Whether that would have translated into high sales I don't know, but I don't think there would have been the sound of crickets at its announcement.

 

[Pramas]

The special-edition leatherbound core books they've released is sort of a step in this direction, though. I.e., the "prestige" RPG product.

The difference is that all the costs for those books except printing have already been paid for by the original releases. When you put together a book from scratch, you have to budget for writing, art, editing, layout, etc. Monte wrote Ptolus himself and Sue edited it. Convervatively speaking, WotC would spend $50,000 to design and edit a similar product. Now add in art costs, layout, printing, marketing, and so on and that's a big risk for WotC.