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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fireinthedust" data-source="post: 5688609" data-attributes="member: 51930">I like some of what Cook has done, and frankly my experience with him is that he's a supportive kind of developer and a nice guy.  I've emailed him for advice about using his products in an OGL way, and he not only responded but gave good advice, so that was nice.I like a lot of his crunchy stuff, like his d20 World of Darkness, and Call of Cthulhu d20, and I like a lot of what he did between 2e and 3e.  Remember, 2e had a system but it was a bit of a mess and incohesive.  The structure of 3e was there, but changing it from percentile dice et al, to the d20+modifier we have now simplified it immensely.  No complaints about that.Cook gave Mearls a great review on his early work, iirc, something about how Mearls was the first designer who noticed that you could add a Prestige class to a monster that met the pre-reqs without needing standard class levels (a medusa assassin), and then Mearls' name started popping up on Malhavoc product, including UA.  UA, btw, did things like make a 25 level progression instead of 20-level (before the epic-level handbook came out, btw, so that was revolutionary), and was the first re-write of the d20 system from the ground up that I can think of, and was a pretty interesting game imho.Other than certain early 3e habits, like gaps in spellcaster levels for prcs in place of powers, or some empty levels (which I don't think he'd do now), his stuff is at least interesting.  And I liked his campaign event books, like When the Sky Falls, and Cry Havoc!, though I don't know that he penned them directly.Not surprised, given that Mearls and Cordell had numerous books published by Cook.  Those books being genuinely why Mearls was snatched up by WOTC in the first place.  I think Cook is used to rubber stamp a lot fo industry stuff.  Paizo got him to write the introduction to Pathfinder, remember, and be a consultant for them.  I don't know that this has stopped, however likely due to contracts.  Still, he's moving towards being an elder statesman of the rpg industry, an ambassador of sorts.  Sort of the Bill Clinton of RPGs, maybe.  Does anyone else remember fanfare about Cook retiring from RPGs?  I remember him retiring from RPGs!   I'm broke, so a 5e will have to wait until I'm not broke (un-broke?  fixed?  spade?!  yipe!) in a year or two or so.  Might as well wait for the next wave of fantasy enthusiasm from the Hobbit, or Diablo 3, or what have you.I don't know that the industry giants (paizo and wotc) hate each other in the backroom the way it's supposed.  Designers, at least, seem to be the only ones who don't have the same issues fans do about editions, and I've heard they have bbq together.</blockquote>

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