Pondering RE: Monte Cook / Long-term roadmaps for both Wizards and Paizo

[Mark CMG]

Whenever I see a company--any company--start talking about "looking to the future" while simultaneously being very secretive about exactly what it is they're planning, I get a little suspicious.

Which is why at Creative Mountain Games, I have spent the last decade looking toward the past and being very open about all of the things I am not doing. Sure, I've stumbled into some success like having the SRD 3.5 Revised (Full) Bundle as one of the most popular titles on RPGNow in that decade. Completely my fault for seeing a niche and exploiting it. And, I guess the release last week of LURCH! The Zombie Chess Game does have zombies, which are very cool, but in my defense it is played on a chess board by two players and has that old school beer & pretzels game feel. I do understand the suspicion, though, even about small companies like Creative Mountain Games since I have recently been discussing the final playtesting campaign of Griffins & Grottos Medieval Fantasy Wargame and Roleplaying System (MF WARS). I can only hope to convince as many people as I can to keep it as secret as possible by spreading the word not to discuss it. So, please, tell everyone you know to remain hush-hush regarding its October release, during Marktoberfest, the final eights days of next month. Thank you in advance for everyone's collective confidentiality.

 

[Moorcrys]

I don't think you hire someone like Monte Cook if you're not looking to do something pretty 'game-changing' to the rules system - why bother hiring someone like him otherwise?

I don't really know what he was fully responsible for in terms of 3e - I don't know what constraints were placed on him, what Skip Williams and Jonathan Tweet came up with, which aspects of the system were demanded from on-high, etc. -- I look at the stuff Monte created after he left Wizards - his books of eldritch might, Arcana Evolved, Ptolus, etc... the things that he made with his own company, and I like them. That, combined with the pretty obvious fact that he and Mike Mearls have an excellent personal and professional relationship that goes back years and years, makes me feel positive about this step.

Other than that, I have a 'let's wait and see' attitude about the whole thing. Obviously something is coming down the pike...

 

[Thunderfoot]

I definitely think this is an interesting development. Unless Monte has been working with Wizards for longer than WotC is saying, it will be several months before we see something from him, which leads me to think this may have been in the works for some time.<SNIP>

Yeah, I agree. Monte has been very secretive about what he's been up to the past year and taking over an article just after being hired is kind of reaching...
The smart money is he's been there a while and has finally got enough ammunition to fire one down range. If they follow suit as I stated earlier in the thread, then this is a brilliant strategy.

I doubt we will see a back up combo of 3.5/4 simply because PF is already dubbed 3.75 and is already functioning in that role, no, it has to be forward progress, otherwise, this is a really dumb move.

 

[Ron]

I understand that Cook and Mearls are friends and that bringing Cook might attract some customers Wizards lost to Paizo. That said, I have an image of Cook as a crunch oriented designer, which is exactly the opposite direction Meatls have been talking in his column. As a matter of fact, Cook is one of the designers responsible for many of the design decisions that made D&D a very structured game and thus a poor fit to a more flee flow style Mearls would like to support.

It will be curious how this team up will work, but I confess I am now less excited by any further development of D&D.

 

[fireinthedust]

I like some of what Cook has done, and frankly my experience with him is that he's a supportive kind of developer and a nice guy. I've emailed him for advice about using his products in an OGL way, and he not only responded but gave good advice, so that was nice.

I like a lot of his crunchy stuff, like his d20 World of Darkness, and Call of Cthulhu d20, and I like a lot of what he did between 2e and 3e. Remember, 2e had a system but it was a bit of a mess and incohesive. The structure of 3e was there, but changing it from percentile dice et al, to the d20+modifier we have now simplified it immensely. No complaints about that.

Cook gave Mearls a great review on his early work, iirc, something about how Mearls was the first designer who noticed that you could add a Prestige class to a monster that met the pre-reqs without needing standard class levels (a medusa assassin), and then Mearls' name started popping up on Malhavoc product, including UA. UA, btw, did things like make a 25 level progression instead of 20-level (before the epic-level handbook came out, btw, so that was revolutionary), and was the first re-write of the d20 system from the ground up that I can think of, and was a pretty interesting game imho.

Other than certain early 3e habits, like gaps in spellcaster levels for prcs in place of powers, or some empty levels (which I don't think he'd do now), his stuff is at least interesting. And I liked his campaign event books, like When the Sky Falls, and Cry Havoc!, though I don't know that he penned them directly.

Not surprised, given that Mearls and Cordell had numerous books published by Cook. Those books being genuinely why Mearls was snatched up by WOTC in the first place.

I think Cook is used to rubber stamp a lot fo industry stuff. Paizo got him to write the introduction to Pathfinder, remember, and be a consultant for them. I don't know that this has stopped, however likely due to contracts. Still, he's moving towards being an elder statesman of the rpg industry, an ambassador of sorts. Sort of the Bill Clinton of RPGs, maybe.

Does anyone else remember fanfare about Cook retiring from RPGs? I remember him retiring from RPGs!

I'm broke, so a 5e will have to wait until I'm not broke (un-broke? fixed? spade?! yipe!) in a year or two or so. Might as well wait for the next wave of fantasy enthusiasm from the Hobbit, or Diablo 3, or what have you.

I don't know that the industry giants (paizo and wotc) hate each other in the backroom the way it's supposed. Designers, at least, seem to be the only ones who don't have the same issues fans do about editions, and I've heard they have bbq together.

 

[Sir Robilar]

If Monte and the R&D are working on 5E, I really hope they will be looking into fan-created systems for inspiration. There have been so many cool "fixes" for D&D´s problems in the last few years.

 

[wedgeski]

I don't know that the industry giants (paizo and wotc) hate each other in the backroom the way it's supposed.

By all accounts, they absolutely do not.

 

[Anselyn]

Unless Monte has been working with Wizards for longer than WotC is saying, it will be several months before we see something from him..

Well, I thought it looks like we'll see something from him next week - the Legends and Lore column, which he'll be writing sometime before then. I hope it's an interesting declaration of intent.

 

[AntiStateQuixote]

D&D 5e is coming. Two years or less from now is my prediction.

If you complain about the "video game" or "board game" aspects of D&D 4e, I think you're going to be very disappointed with 5e. There will absolutely be a near mandatory subscription model of some sort to "keep up with the changes." It will be simplified to the point that it can easily become a successful MMO.

As much as I love tabletop role playing, I know that the future of the hobby is fairly limited as a money making enterprise. Compare the number of subscribers to WoW and the number of players on any number of silly Facebook games to the total number of real players of tabletop RPGs. It's not even close.

WoW has revenue well over a one hundred million dollars a month. All of the tabletop RPG industry combined probably tops out at less than $10 million. That number is a wild ass guess that's probably high by as much as an order of magnitude.

In order to be commercially successful D&D (and tabletop RPGs generally) either becomes a labor of love, cottage industry or has a signficant MMO/subscription component.

Monte's presence at WotC won't change these facts, but he will influence how WotC adjusts to this reality. Here's hoping some good RPG supplements that I can use for my tabletop game come along with the video game.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

WoW has revenue well over a one hundred million dollars a month. All of the tabletop RPG industry combined probably tops out at less than $10 million. That number is a wild ass guess that's probably high by as much as an order of magnitude.

You think that the RPG industry might have revenues as low as $1 million? That really is a wild guess, or it uses odd definitions of "revenue" or "order or magnitude," or it has some strange assumptions about running small businesses.