seankreynolds said:
I guess you didn't hear how TSR laid off a bunch of people in December 1996, just a couple of weeks before Xmas. That was great fun. The same day they had the "holiday party," which was taking the remaining employees out to lunch. "Your bonus this year is that you get to keep your job."
:/
In any case, this still sucks.
MOTM was approved at the last minute and they needed to grab designers in a big hurry (our deadline was only about 5 weeks after it was assigned to us, and Gen Con was smack in the middle of it). Plus, the book isn't a pure sourcebook like your book was (I can't go into details because WotC hasn't really released info about it yet). And you have to admit that you don't exactly have a lot of d20 credits to your name, if the Pen & Paper Database is any indicator. WotC also may not have known if you were available. I don't think your book was bad (though it suffers some of the problems common to most 2E FR products) and we used it as a reference for MOTM. I wouldn't take it personally.
Ahhh...just back from lunch. Yum. Deep dish pizza. Ok, now to the buisness at hand.
Sean:
No, I didn't hear about that 1996 layoff. That's horrendous! Was that around the same time as the whole "everything's going to heck and we can't pay anyone to print the stuff?" Because, yeah, towards the end there, things did seem to get pretty bad. All I know is, things seemed like a total mess at the end, but years before that (late 80's to early 90's), things seemed cool. People there seemed to actually remember me (even though I wasn't the best nor most prolific freelancer they had), and actually kept in contact with me, remembering me for assignments, without me having to bug them often or do the phone equivalent of waving my arms frantically and clucking like a chicken
I'm intrigued about MOTM being "not a pure sourcebook" thing. I know that, for the 2nd ED AD&D Moonsea book, I didn't like the idea of the Players Guide, since it left me with less room to put in more nifty crunchy bits for the DM. But hey...you write what you're asked to write....right? ;-)
Yeah, I know my list of credits for d20 aren't amazing. But hey, I assumed that the fact that I DID do some writing for WotC in a high-profile lline (d20 Star Wars) was at least a step in the right direction, coupled with doing WotC web enhancements for the Unapproachable East, and the fact that I DID write a bunch of Realms products for 2nd Ed, and let's face it, the Realms is the Realms regardless of what dice you're using. I'm also apparently on some freelancer list of Chris Perkins'. So yeah, I'm a writer, and that means I have an ego of some sort, so yeah, I felt a bit snubbed. Not a huge deal though.
But thanks for the response, Sean! It did answer some questions I had. I appreciate it! Thanks again! And I'm looking forward to seeing the book when it comes out! :-D
