Monte Cook Presents the Year's best D20

[Faraer]

Of course, this is a local kind of 'best' that applies to small out-takes rather than the best that's an overall property of a longer work. Monte using his status (which seems to me considerably earned, but somewhat out of proportion) to move the design focus of d20 products further towards little rules bits and away from overall vision, context, and cumulative depth would be destructive. Monte's comparisons to Spectrum and Year's Best Fantasy and Horror are misleading because those compile entire works.

 

[OregonGM]

I worry that Monte's audience-- call them fanboys if you like

Slick. Pretending you didn't dismiss them as hero worshippers?

but at any rate they are the target audience of this product-- are more likely to simply buy the Best of d20 book to be given "the best" than to seek out the original source.
Wulf

That whole paragraph. "Monte's readers are less discriminating and will not read the original source."

Thank you for your worry.
Thank god you are here to save us from ourselves.

 

[Jaws]

Perhaps you missed the point.

I'm upset as well that I can't buy Malhavoc PDFs at RPGNow.com.

But some that I'm interested in that are available at RPGNow.com, I can't purchase because they cost less than $6.40.

Hopefully some of these might be in Monte Cook Presents: The Year's Best d20.


Peace and smiles

j.

 

[mearls]

Perhaps you missed the point.

No, I didn't.

The point is, I (and Malhavoc) can only do so much to make people happy. There comes a time when you are faced with making a decision that might not make everyone happy, and when you face a situation like that you need to weigh the positive and negative factors.

Realistically, it's your right to insist that you won't purchase a PDF from anyone but RPGnow. But it's also my right to think that's an unreasonable demand and, in the grand scheme of things, to decide that the negatives of meeting that demand outweigh the positives.

To take an extreme example, I'm sure there are people out there who would buy more Malhavoc books if we sold them for $1 each, but that isn't something we're going to do. It might make people happy, but at some point you have to ask "Does this make *us* happy?" Again, it's all a balancing act.

In the end, we can only try to make as many people happy as is reasonably possible. With 7 or so months behind us on this issue, I'm certain we've made the right choice. I'm not happy that there are people who don't like the situation, but in the end we can only do so much to make everyone happy.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

I'm not certain that everything is. I am certain that this particular comment was. And that is simply uncool. I thought Wulf was better than that.

Well, no, honestly it wasn't meant to be aimed specifically at you. In an argument, folks often attack the argument without any ill-will towards the argumentee.

But I wouldn't want to accuse you of divining my motives through the aether or anything.

Wulf

 

[JoeGKushner]

Wow. Lot of head on this debate.

I've got some concerns I've shared over at Monte's boards and a few other places.

1. This is a contest in a way unlike the Ennies where we judged a bunch of stuff and let the public pick after we narrowed it down. Didn't sit well with everyone but we weren't publishing a book or anything afterwards so I see them as different beasts.

2. Monte excluding his Malhavoc stuff is a good idea but does cut a lot of great material out like Iron Might and Hyperconscious. Sorry but they're among some of the best stuff I've seen in a while so already the "best of" is wrong.

3. In terms of rules, not every rule is appropriate for every campaign. Grim Tales is a whole subset of the d20 system as are Conan, Midnight, Black Company and others. Is Monte judging how useful this material is to the standard d20 fantasy campaign, some of which he's already publiclly disagred with and come out with his alternative PHB with it's own subset of rules?

4. Bruce, Sean, and Mike have written for different companies, including Malhavoc. If Monte is cutting his own company off, why not those people who've worked for him? We've heard that they won't get any special treatment but it's almost like "A Good Old Boys" club. Sorry but the writers move in a small circle. Most of them have worked for most of the companies out. How do you seperate the quality from the company? I know for Mongoose that there are certain writer's I'll look for and others I'm more leery of.

5. How much time is this going to take away from Monte's own work. No offense to the reprinting, but let Mongoose take care of it. I'm still waiting on Dark Space, Chaositech 2, and Ptolus.

6. In a similiar vein to #4, how is Monte going to 'fairly' judge stuff from Sword & Sorcery, the company he's an imprint of? I see a conflict of interest there once again.

7. Some publishers seem worried by the use of IP and the non-payment thing. Hey, if Monte went through the OGC out there on his own, it probably would be better but more difficult as he'd have to read everything and get the context of the mechanics as well as the good bits. This gets back to #3.

 

[Turjan]

At the community level, Wulf's "hero worship" comment was dead on.

To be fair, you can find this "hero worship" basically on each and every company board, be it WotC, Green Ronin, or White Wolf (I was told that the fact that you find so many Exalted fans on rpg.net came from the fact that lots of Exalted fans could not stand this anymore ). If you look closer, you can even find this species here, although in most of the cases, the worship is directed on a special product or company. Okay, Monte Cook is one of the few people in the RPG industry who actively promote their own personality cult (there are others, like Gary Gygax, Steve Jackson or Kevin Siembieda), but I see this as a valid business model, and in this case it works.

I suppose he is aware of the fact that this kind of business model always produces strong antipathies in a number of people, so it's some kind of gamble whether the number of "worshippers" significantly exceeds that of "slanderers" or not. As his business seems to grow constantly, the outcome of this gamble seems clear.

 

[Tav_Behemoth]

Monte's comparisons to Spectrum and Year's Best Fantasy and Horror are misleading because those compile entire works.

The Hugo and Nebula award anthologies have often excerpted parts of the novel that won that year's award; it's quite common for an author to publish part of their work as a short story, then develop it into a complete novel, even as the original story is reprinted in a Year's Best anthology.

The analogy between fiction and gaming writing is not exact, but neither do I think it's misleading, and I don't see any reason why one or more Year's Best collections shouldn't serve the same worthy purpose in both fields: giving the opinions of a few editors about what writing is most deserving of attention and most representative of what they think is the state of the art.

 

[GMSkarka]

Wow. I've seen the error of my ways.

I'll be sure to submit material for "The Year's Best D20 Material (Not Of Everything That Was Published, Only The Stuff That Was Submitted) Which Malhavoc Gets to Reprint For Free (As Would Be Possible Under the OGL, But We're Also Putting in Product Identity, And Because We're Not Just Grabbing the Open Content, We're Trying To Make It Sound Like We're Somehow Doing 'The Right Thing'), Thereby Issuing the ExtraSpecialNiftyCool Game Designer Seal of OFFICIAL Approval" collection.

I mean, gee....what was I thinking?

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Slick. Pretending you didn't dismiss them as hero worshippers?

[sigh] No, I dismissed the notion that Monte is more qualified to judge the quality of d20 mechanics based on his involvment with the original 3e than the ENworld staff reviewers, as hero worship-- cause that's what it is.

It makes as much sense as letting Gary Gygax release the Year's Best d20, cause, after all, he's got those original D&D creds going for him. That makes him doubleplus qualified compared to Monte!

Monte is certainly qualified, and his work on the original 3e is certainly one criteria of those qualifications, but it doesn't outweigh the individual, let alone combined, experience of the ENworld staff reviewers with respect to 2004.

That whole paragraph. "Monte's readers are less discriminating and will not read the original source."

Worrying about whether folks are going to buy the original product a year after the original is released, when they already have "The Best" in print, in their hands, has nothing to do with the discriminatory powers of Monte's audience.

Guys, get the chip off your shoulder already. If I want to call you a fanboy, trust me, I'll say it. Until then, unless the shoe fits, feel free to stop cramming your toes into it and crying about it.

Wulf