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<blockquote data-quote="Seramus" data-source="post: 7734561" data-attributes="member: 6812658"><p>This quote was mostly meant as comedy, but it has several grains of truth.</p><p></p><p><em>"As a game designer, Monte Cook is known for four major things: being a genuinely brilliant and insightful setting designer who crafts fun and imaginative systems and games, having a profusion of "cool" ideas that need the assistance of partners to help filter out the good one from the bad, regularly quitting and re-joining the industry every few years over disputes with the management, and for having an insane, out of control spellcaster fetish beyond all expectation or reason. In fact, he once infamously said that the biggest tweak 3rd Ed. needed was a hard nerf to all martial classes, particularly the fighter, and an across the board buff to all spellcasters. Yes, we are talking about the same 3rd Edition in which half the classes in the game were better fighters than the fighter, and spellcasters could pull [stuff] like this. (While theoretically he has a point, since at level 1 the spellcaster classes are a bit suck, most would argue that a stabler power curve where magicals start higher and martials suck less later would be the ideal solution, rather than ensuring the wizard dominates at all levels of play.)</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>One thing people like to hold his feet to the fire over is the "Ivory Tower" school of game design: since he was working for a company that literally made its name with card games, why not put in systems to mimic card games? The "Ivory Tower," or "system mastery" for those that don't hate it, involves deliberately sowing weak "newb traps" into your game as character advancement options (explicitly compared to "Timmy cards"), to punish new players for the crime of inexperience and offer veterans an inflated sense of self-worth that comes from attaining a wholly artificial sense of "mastery." To his credit, he has since apologized for the whole thing and admitted it was a terrible idea from start to finish, but here we are, still scrubbing through the aftermath years after the fact."</em></p><p></p><p>The Ivory Tower situation and associated links can be found <a href="http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/2498/roleplaying-games/thought-of-the-day-ivory-tower-design" target="_blank"><strong>HERE</strong></a>. There is more to the context than what is written there, but it's a decent primer.</p><p></p><p>Then there were the cultural appropriation controversy <a href="https://lastrealindians.com/a-critical-look-at-native-appropriation-by-monte-cook-games-by-morning-star-angeline/" target="_blank"><strong>HERE</strong></a>. He was literally warned by his own native american consultant that this was a bad idea, and went ahead with it anyway.</p><p></p><p>And the Nibovian Wife controversy <a href="https://forum.rpg.net/archive/index.php/t-697888.html" target="_blank"><strong>HERE</strong></a>.</p><p></p><p>And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Any one of those might be forgiven, but Monte Cook has a laundry list of weird things. I don't think he's a bad guy, but when he messes up can get really stubborn and stick to his guns.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Seramus, post: 7734561, member: 6812658"] This quote was mostly meant as comedy, but it has several grains of truth. [I]"As a game designer, Monte Cook is known for four major things: being a genuinely brilliant and insightful setting designer who crafts fun and imaginative systems and games, having a profusion of "cool" ideas that need the assistance of partners to help filter out the good one from the bad, regularly quitting and re-joining the industry every few years over disputes with the management, and for having an insane, out of control spellcaster fetish beyond all expectation or reason. In fact, he once infamously said that the biggest tweak 3rd Ed. needed was a hard nerf to all martial classes, particularly the fighter, and an across the board buff to all spellcasters. Yes, we are talking about the same 3rd Edition in which half the classes in the game were better fighters than the fighter, and spellcasters could pull [stuff] like this. (While theoretically he has a point, since at level 1 the spellcaster classes are a bit suck, most would argue that a stabler power curve where magicals start higher and martials suck less later would be the ideal solution, rather than ensuring the wizard dominates at all levels of play.) One thing people like to hold his feet to the fire over is the "Ivory Tower" school of game design: since he was working for a company that literally made its name with card games, why not put in systems to mimic card games? The "Ivory Tower," or "system mastery" for those that don't hate it, involves deliberately sowing weak "newb traps" into your game as character advancement options (explicitly compared to "Timmy cards"), to punish new players for the crime of inexperience and offer veterans an inflated sense of self-worth that comes from attaining a wholly artificial sense of "mastery." To his credit, he has since apologized for the whole thing and admitted it was a terrible idea from start to finish, but here we are, still scrubbing through the aftermath years after the fact."[/I] The Ivory Tower situation and associated links can be found [URL="http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/2498/roleplaying-games/thought-of-the-day-ivory-tower-design"][B]HERE[/B][/URL]. There is more to the context than what is written there, but it's a decent primer. Then there were the cultural appropriation controversy [URL="https://lastrealindians.com/a-critical-look-at-native-appropriation-by-monte-cook-games-by-morning-star-angeline/"][B]HERE[/B][/URL]. He was literally warned by his own native american consultant that this was a bad idea, and went ahead with it anyway. And the Nibovian Wife controversy [URL="https://forum.rpg.net/archive/index.php/t-697888.html"][B]HERE[/B][/URL]. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Any one of those might be forgiven, but Monte Cook has a laundry list of weird things. I don't think he's a bad guy, but when he messes up can get really stubborn and stick to his guns. [/QUOTE]
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