"Monte Cook Presents" Iron Heroes?

[Plane Sailing]

Eric's grandma may be offended. Check your diction before a mod does, please.

Somebody called?

Ah, I see that it has already been handled perfectly by well-mannered posters. Most excellent.

Cheers,

 

[woodelf]

Why the "Monte Cook Presents" in the title?

Why not just call it "Iron Heroes"?

Isn't Mike Mearls the author?

This looks rather vain and crass, IMO.

I'm tempted to take a pass on this book for this reason alone, as this kind of needless self-promotion strikes me as exceedingly vulgar ...

:\

Actually, i'd say it's the exact antithesis of self-promotion. I took it as Cook lending the market-weight of his name to Mearls. The implication, IMHO, of a "So-and-so presents..." title is "if you like So-and-so's work, check this out", which is intended to get people to look at a book that they otherwise might not. It's not Cook trying to cash in on Mearls' success, it's Cook trying to make sure Mearls gets the success he deserves. Now, will it work that way? No idea. I do suspect that Monte has much more significant name recognition in the D20 System market than Mike does--but i doubt that Monte has any greater name recognition than Malhavoc Press does, so i'd think that simply having it published by Malhavoc would do the same thing. But it certainly doesn't hurt. And, the "presents" part of it makes it quite clear that Cook isn't the author, so i don't feel like he's trying to claim undue credit.

 

[woodelf]

This is a completely subjective argument. Others would say that Rein Hagen is no Gygax. By the same token, Gygax is no Tolkien, and Rein Hagen is certainly no Shakespeare. Does that mean their names have no marketing value? Certainly not.

WRT subjectivity--until about 2002, i had no idea who Monte Cook was, and was really surprised to see all these people talking like i was supposed to know who he was. See, he'd always worked on stuff i had no interest in: Champions, Planescape, [i thought someone said RMSS?--nothing like that in pen&paper's database]. And, all the advance press on D&D3E said "hey, look, we hired Jonathon Tweet to write the new game" not "we hired Jonathon Tweet and Monte Cook and Skip Williams", so, while i assumed other people helped out with the new edition, it was marketed like Tweet was the big deal and primary creative force.

OTOH, RPG people that i tend to assume have instant name recognition: Tweet, Laws, Gygax, Arneson, Stolze, Snead, Rein•Hagen, Stafford, Ron Edwards, Jeff Grubb, Ed Greenwood, Roger Moore, Trampier, Holloway, Tynes, Steffan O'Sullivan, Sandy Petersen--a fair few of which i'll bet actually aren't familiar names around here.

 

[woodelf]

Personally, I would by the game if it said "Jerry Bruckheimer presents Iron Heroes", based on what I have seen so far of it.

Only so long as i knew Bruckheimer didn't have any creative input...

 

[DaveMage]

OTOH, RPG people that i tend to assume have instant name recognition: Stolze, Snead, Rein•Hagen, Stafford, Ron Edwards, Holloway, Tynes, Steffan O'Sullivan, Sandy Petersen--a fair few of which i'll bet actually aren't familiar names around here.

Nope - I haven't a clue who any of these people are (though I suspect I will have heard of their works).

 

[Voadam]

I'd prefer the titles without the "Monte Cook's" or "Monte Cook Presents". There is too much advertising as it is. Including it in the title, while accurate, is extraneous extra verbage that is annoying. I already know Malhavok is Monte, and I can see he authored AU, including the phrase in the title just seems like a cheap advertising manipulation that is annoying. Nobody says "Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed" when referring to the product in casual or technical use, they say "Arcana Unearthed" unless they are promoting the company and branding in an advertising sense such as other companies making tie-in products.

This annoyance was not enough to stop me from purchasing, using, and liking AU, but it does annoy me.

 

[glass]

OTOH, RPG people that i tend to assume have instant name recognition: Tweet, Laws, Gygax, Arneson, Stolze, Snead, Rein•Hagen, Stafford, Ron Edwards, Jeff Grubb, Ed Greenwood, Roger Moore, Trampier, Holloway, Tynes, Steffan O'Sullivan, Sandy Petersen--a fair few of which i'll bet actually aren't familiar names around here.

Lets see if I can have a stab:

Gygax, Arneson, Tweet -I think we all know this these.

Robin Laws -wrote Robin's Laws of Good Gamemastering, HeroQuest, and (I think) Feng Shui.

Greg Stoltze -heard of him, but can't remember why.

Snead -no idea.

Mark Rein•Hagen -creater of Vampire: the Masquerade and the Storyteller system.

Greg Stafford -creator of Glorantha.

Ron Edwards -coiner of the phrase 'Fantasy Heartbreaker'.

Ed Greenwood, Jeff Grubb -FR creator and expert.

Roger Moore -former Dragon editor and author of the Living Galaxy column old Poly.

Trampier, Holloway, Tynes -these are artists, right?

Steffan O'Sullivan -heard of him, but again can't remember why.

Sandy Petersen -co-creator of Call of Cthulhu.

How'd I do?


glass.

 

[Campbell]

Tynes co-created Unknown Armies and was involved in the d20 conversion of CoC. He has also been involved with some documentary work.

 

[Bladesong]

If this was already covered I apologize, but after reading the first 15 or so messages I got very bored. Anyway, regardless of the title, has anyone bothered to check out the contents? There has not been a lot of info about it, but from my understanding it is an alternate PHB which believes characters are all about what they can do rather than what they HAVE which means it probably deals more with abilities and skills than magic and items. I saw the Archer and Hunter classes and they look fairly good at first glance.
As a parting comment I will say that you should never judge anything by its title. There are plenty of good books and movies out there with lousy titles.
Have a good one.

 

[Psion]

Actually, in person he was extremely civil, considerate, and polite. You would never have guessed that from his writing, of course!

A modest forecast of many internet posters, perhaps?