Monte Cook Games Announced Numenera 2: Discovery & Destiny!

Monte Cook Games has just announced - live at Gen Con in their first panel of the convention - it's latest Kickstarter, set to launch next month. And it's a big one - Numenera 2, consisting of two core books called Discovery (which revises player character options) and Destiny (which has systems for base building). It will be fully back-compatible with the original (2013) Numenera. More info as I hear it!

Photo courtesy Jon Smejkal
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Facts coming through on social media:

• "Numenera 2 is meant to replace the existing Core Book, but not the whole Numenera line. Feels like Numenera 1.5, but the Destiny book is new" - TPT's Shane on Twitter.

[video=youtube;NTa7jA98ClU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTa7jA98ClU[/video]
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[Mistwell]

The wording of your post hints at a lot of prejudices against Cook.

It does not. I am a HUGE cook fan. Anyone who was on the old Monte Cook message boards knows that about me. I mean, I remembered something he wrote 14 years ago because I've followed him that whole time. This may well be the first negative thing I've posted about him in 20 years. And it's pretty half-way on the negatives, since I am more questioning and unsure than anything else.

It does not read as someone giving him the benefit of doubt, but as someone with a predetermined judgment looking for the chance to cast their scathing verdict of indictment.

So when I say, repeatedly, that I am waiting to hear more and maybe my doubts are wrong, you read that as me not giving him any benefit of the doubt?

I think if you're looking for someone who has pre-judged the topic, you might check the mirror.

 

[Mistwell]

I was trying to gently prod Mistveil into considering just where their conversation is leading and what path they are walking

Fair enough, that's definitely not my intent. I never blamed Monte Cook for any portion of the edition wars and never thought of him that way. If mentioning his old articles on this topic is fomenting that, well I hope that stops now. Definitely not my intent, and not worth it anyway as we're talking about stuff from 14 years ago that's not relevant to any current D&D edition anyway.

I also think your explanation that he simply changed his mind over time about these issues, based on age and experience and switching from 100% creative working for someone else to running his own company and his own game for many years now. My guess is with that perspective change came a change in view. But I would like to hear that from him. I doubt we will - he hasn't really said much about Numenera in a long time, much less these kinds of topics.

 

[Gwen Howarth]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTa7jA98ClU

 

[Aldarc]

It does not. I am a HUGE cook fan. Anyone who was on the old Monte Cook message boards knows that about me. I mean, I remembered something he wrote 14 years ago because I've followed him that whole time. This may well be the first negative thing I've posted about him in 20 years. And it's pretty half-way on the negatives, since I am more questioning and unsure than anything else.

So the tone of your post was indeed negative? If you have been following him for 14 years, then why do you seem to doubt his character or integrity with Numenera 2?

So when I say, repeatedly, that I am waiting to hear more and maybe my doubts are wrong, you read that as me not giving him any benefit of the doubt?

It's in the rest of your rhetoric. I read you not giving him the benefit of the doubt when you throw out the possibility that he did plan on this revision from the start and then back away from the soft assertion without any support for it. That does not sound like giving him the benefit of the doubt, but, rather, creating doubt with an implicit negative judgment.

 

[Uchawi]

I would rather they reboot the system, i.e. release a new edition, versus the incremental nonsense. Which means they should wait. Otherwise, it appears to me to be a quick method to generate revenue.

 

[Mistwell]

So the tone of your post was indeed negative? If you have been following him for 14 years, then why do you seem to doubt his character or integrity with Numenera 2?

I've been following for 20 years, his comment was 14 years ago. And yes, it's the first negative comment I've made. If you think I cannot follow a writer for 20 years and somehow not be allowed to have a single negative comment in that whole time, might I say I think your accusation that I am the one biased here should be examined.

I am not doubting his character or integrity. I am saying I am having a hard time reconciling his previous fairly intense and aggressive criticism of his former employer for doing something which now he appears to be doing for his own company. I want to know why the change in his thinking on the matter. I want to consider if his prior words on the topic are still applicable to his new product. Him changing his mind because he's the publisher doesn't mean a consumer should change their mind. After all, the consumer is in the position he was in when he first criticized these types of actions 14 years ago. The consumer isn't the publisher, and if it's the fact that Monte Cook is now the publisher than has changed his mind, that would tend to suggest the consumer might gain more wisdom from his words when he was also a consumer and not a publisher.

It's in the rest of your rhetoric. I read you not giving him the benefit of the doubt when you throw out the possibility that he did plan on this revision from the start and then back away from the soft assertion without any support for it. That does not sound like giving him the benefit of the doubt, but, rather, creating doubt with an implicit negative judgment.

That's on you. Once I clarified, your obligation is to adjust your assumptions about my thinking to meet the stated intent. If you continue to assume my intentions are different than what I've stated, I guess just call me a liar rather than beat around the bush? Otherwise, you have my stated intent and I'd ask you to believe me. I feel I am giving him plenty of benefit of the doubt. If you're reading a tone into my posts which runs contrary to that, then don't read that tone into my posts as it's not the intended tone.

As for planning a new version at the time the first is published, I don't see that as inherently wrong. Monte didn't agree with it 20 years ago, but he may have changed his mind (like he seems to have about many subjects - because he's human and 20 years have gone by and his entire life has changed in that span of time), and it may not have been that big an aspect of his objections to begin with. After all, he wrote 3.0 knowing that was the plan up front - he didn't like it but he still went ahead with it. So it doesn't seem it was a huge objection on his part even back then.

 

[Septhaka1]

MCG has been basically just money-grabbers for the past few years - rehashing content and charging too much for their product. Coming our with a second version of Numenera already is just more of the same. MCG added too many staff and now they are forced to gouge us to support them.

 

[Arilyn]

There are a lot of things done with Numenera that Monte Cook ranted against during his 3E days.

Honestly, I blame it on the environment back then. A lot of the bad apples of that era, which included Cook (he was basically a troll king during that era), have since gone on to become well-respected and to earn good reputations. Just put them all together in the same team, and you have a recipe for disaster.

Really, Cook is one of the people I expected to end up effectively sidelined and eventually fading from the limelight, like Skip Williams has. Like Williams, Cook kinda earned such a fate. I'm honestly impressed with how far he has come since then, and I suspect he would cringe if he had to go back and face his own past.

But, hey, we all make mistakes in our past. I'm seeing he's learning from his, so I'm willing to overlook them.

But, yeah... If I had a choice between Hasbro burning WotC down and never publishing DnD again or bringing the 3E team back together, I'd offer to light the match for them. Those people were not good for each other. And the game suffered for it in the long run.

Really? You are bashing Monte Cook, Skip Williams and Jonathan Tweet? You consider them a toxic combination? This team brought DnD back from the dead. You may not like 3e, but it was, and is, if you count PF, hugely successful.

These designers have been in the field before 3e came out. Tweet has been considered one of the top designers in the industry before and after DnD. Why would they have faded? What reputations needed salvaging? Cook is opinionated, sure, but he's no troll.

I think you should do more research on the history of the hobby, or at least approach it with a more objective eye.

 

[ArchfiendBobbie]

Really? You are bashing Monte Cook, Skip Williams and Jonathan Tweet? You consider them a toxic combination? This team brought DnD back from the dead. You may not like 3e, but it was, and is, if you count PF, hugely successful.

These designers have been in the field before 3e came out. Tweet has been considered one of the top designers in the industry before and after DnD. Why would they have faded? What reputations needed salvaging? Cook is opinionated, sure, but he's no troll.

I think you should do more research on the history of the hobby, or at least approach it with a more objective eye.

I find it ironic that you are criticizing me on objectivity while lacking it yourself. And that you criticize me for lack of history knowledge when perusing this very thread would reveal the comments Cook made that fueled those fights. Mayhap you should take your own advice on researching the history of the hobby.

Let's take a look at the long-run results of that combination: Cook ended up bashing Hasbro massively, making comments that helped massively fuel the ongoing edition wars of that era between the two versions of 3E, and helped set the foundation for the rules revision, and resulting near-death of DnD, that was 4E. And in the end, Cook managed to regain a lot of the respect he lost during that era by publishing a ruleset that is pretty much nothing like the ruleset he fought for.

Skip Williams... Notice how he quickly faded from the limelight once his time at Wizards was done? Can you name the last thing you've seen him working on regularly in this industry? And there are people still arguing about some of the things he said in his Sage Advice columns, which was another source of nasty fights and only helped solidify the base of the RAW crowd.

Pathfinder is only a good argument for damning Cook. Cook opposed the 3.5 ruleset, which Pathfinder is a revision of. PF's success ultimately stands as a shining example of how wrong he was.

And, yes, I called them flawed people and suggested their working together was a mistake. Given the edition wars of the 3E era between the 3.0 and 3.5 factions, and the still-lingering wounds from that period plus the epic failure of the follow-up edition that tried to solve the problems... Yeah, it was a mistake. Not a mistake I'd change, but also not one they should repeat.

Objectivity doesn't mean seeing only the good in something. It means accepting the bad as well, and accepting that, sometimes, your heroes were terrible people or even outright monsters. It means looking at three people who did good things and recognizing that they also did quite a bit that wasn't good.

 

[Arilyn]

I find it ironic that you are criticizing me on objectivity while lacking it yourself. And that you criticize me for lack of history knowledge when perusing this very thread would reveal the comments Cook made that fueled those fights. Mayhap you should take your own advice on researching the history of the hobby.

Let's take a look at the long-run results of that combination: Cook ended up bashing Hasbro massively, making comments that helped massively fuel the ongoing edition wars of that era between the two versions of 3E, and helped set the foundation for the rules revision, and resulting near-death of DnD, that was 4E. And in the end, Cook managed to regain a lot of the respect he lost during that era by publishing a ruleset that is pretty much nothing like the ruleset he fought for.

Skip Williams... Notice how he quickly faded from the limelight once his time at Wizards was done? Can you name the last thing you've seen him working on regularly in this industry? And there are people still arguing about some of the things he said in his Sage Advice columns, which was another source of nasty fights and only helped solidify the base of the RAW crowd.

Pathfinder is only a good argument for damning Cook. Cook opposed the 3.5 ruleset, which Pathfinder is a revision of. PF's success ultimately stands as a shining example of how wrong he was.

And, yes, I called them flawed people and suggested their working together was a mistake. Given the edition wars of the 3E era between the 3.0 and 3.5 factions, and the still-lingering wounds from that period plus the epic failure of the follow-up edition that tried to solve the problems... Yeah, it was a mistake. Not a mistake I'd change, but also not one they should repeat.

Objectivity doesn't mean seeing only the good in something. It means accepting the bad as well, and accepting that, sometimes, your heroes were terrible people or even outright monsters. It means looking at three people who did good things and recognizing that they also did quite a bit that wasn't good.

First of all, I am not a fan of Monte Cook or Skip Williams. Jonathan Tweet? That's another matter...
My problem with your post is the idea that these well established designers were going to fade away, because they were vocal, about their opposition to what was going on at the time with DnD, WOTC and Hasbro. The mistakes made by WOTC with 4e, and the near death of DnD cannot possibly be put on the shoulders of one man's vehement unhappiness with the system.

Skip Williams continued to do freelance work, did some work for Kobold, and Dungeon a Day. Since he has been in the industry from the beginning I imagine he is retired, or partly?

Your proposal that you would help burn WOTC down rather than have those designers together again, and comments about them "redeeming" themselves later, seem to indicate that, yes, you are lacking objectivity.