A pat on the back to Necromancer

[Monte At Home]

This compliment is a bit overdue, actually.

As I was just flipping through a WotC product, and seeing things I knew designers other than those mentioned on the credits page had created, I was reminded of how each and every monster in the Tome of Horrors has its original creator listed.

That's just darn classy, in my mind.

(Amazing that Necromancer Games gives more credit to old TSR and WotC designers than WotC itself. Makes me feel guilty that I never tried harder to do something like that when we were putting, say, the Monster Manual together.)

 

[Darrin Drader]

Boy, you said it Monte. I think Necromancer does an outstanding job of giving credit where credit is due.

I am speaking as someone that didn't get credit in the Dragon article where the Death Knight template I put together was published, or in Monster Manual II where it was later reprinted. Not that I mind too much anymore; I've got something cool coming down the pike from WotC that I will be getting credit on. That was actually the one thing that helped open the door for me, and Dragon did retroactively give me credit.

While we're on about Necromancer Games, I might as well mention that I'm currently running the Tomb of Abysthor. The players are having an awesome time! I hit them with some darker subject matter right off the bat, and it came as a shock to some of them. I plan to make liberal use of the Book of Vile Darkness along with the adventure, just to add that extra touch of evil.

Thanks for "Going there."

 

[JeffB]

Agreed, Clark, Bill and crew are top notch!

When I won an item on one of the ENWORLD chats with Bill & Clark, the product ended up going out of print and they did not know if they were going to re-print. It took couple of weeks longer than expected to figure out what was going to happen, so Clark not only sent me one of his personal copies of the product (signed no less), but also some other Necro items for my "trouble".

Way cool.

And Monte, much thanx for the playing without mini's article, very nice!

 

[BOZ]

hearing stuff like this makes me wish i actually worked for necromancer games.

i can't say for sure, but i wouldn't be surprised if this originated from the Creature Catalog; every article on the site tried to contain the original source(s) of the monster, and i kept that up when i started converting monsters for the site.

 

[Grazzt]

Gosh. Thanks for all the great comments guys. As for credit where credit is due. That's how it should be.

I mean, without people like Gary, Dave, Rob, Lenard, Tom (Moldvay), Jeff (Grubb), Nigel (Findley), Ed (Greenwood), Roger Moore, Graeme Morris, etc (oh and some guy named Monte ). there wouldn't be a D&D (not as we know it today) and there wouldn't be a Creature Catalog or a Tome of Horrors.

Granted those mentioned above didnt do everything that involves D&D (and I know I left a TON of people off the list) but they sure did go a long way in making it what it is. And that is why we credit them...for being "pioneers", for coming up with the original ideas when no one else did, and for basically just being who they are.

And that is why we will ALWAYS credit the ones that did the work before we did it.

For me, doing the Tome, was my way of saying thanks to all those guys. Thanking them for all the stuff they have done in the past (and hopefully) all the stuff they do in the future.

 

[Grazzt]

Boy, you said it Monte. I think Necromancer does an outstanding job of giving credit where credit is due.

I am speaking as someone that didn't get credit in the Dragon article where the Death Knight template I put together was published, or in Monster Manual II where it was later reprinted. Not that I mind too much anymore; I've got something cool coming down the pike from WotC that I will be getting credit on. That was actually the one thing that helped open the door for me, and Dragon did retroactively give me credit.

While we're on about Necromancer Games, I might as well mention that I'm currently running the Tomb of Abysthor. The players are having an awesome time! I hit them with some darker subject matter right off the bat, and it came as a shock to some of them. I plan to make liberal use of the Book of Vile Darkness along with the adventure, just to add that extra touch of evil.

Thanks for "Going there."

Caught your article on the death knight Darrin. Very nicely done. I've used it once or twice...and I do believe it is about as faithful to the original as one can get..

 

[Darrin Drader]

Caught your article on the death knight Darrin. Very nicely done. I've used it once or twice...and I do believe it is about as faithful to the original as one can get..

Thanks! Glad to hear the work is appreciated. Speaking of work, The Tome of Horrors is one of my favorite sourcebooks to come out of the whole open gaming thing. I hope to see a volume II containing original monsters by you guys.

edit: As long as we're properly crediting people, the only portion of that article I was responsible for was the template itself. I had forwarded the template to Rich Redman, who saw fit to hang on to it for just the right project, and the rest of both of those excellent articles were written by Gary Holian.

 

[Orcus]

Thanks everyone. That really means a lot to Scott and I. Not only was it really important to credit people, we tried our best to come up with an ingenious way to keep the credits in the OGL desingations so that even if a monster is reused, the original author is credited.

As they say, we stand on the shoulders of giants. We couldnt have done this without the hard work of everyone who came before us. And for that they deserve a little love.

Clark