The Power of Monte Cook

[HellHound]

It's stunning the amount of pull Monte has in the gaming community.

With the review of Darwin's World this week, sales of the core book and the Artifacts of the Ancients book have screamed up the sales charts at RPGNow. Kicked both my books down a notch on said charts.

Kudos to RPGObjects for the success, it's not like it was undeserved by any stretch of the imagination.

 

[Crothian]

Behold the Power of Cheese...or Monte

 

[jkantor]

I thought his review was a case of damnation by faint praise. I like Darwin's world much more than either BOEM. I think he completely missed the point.

 

[Erik Mona]

I thought it was interesting that he condemned post-apocalyptic roleplaying as passe in light of the end of the cold war. It's especially interesting that his review was posted about the same week that analysts announced a two-minute advance on the Doomsday Clock.

After September 11th and the growing influence of "rogue states," I think it's highly optimistic to say that no one thinks about the world ending, anymore.

--Erik

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Well, I imagine the folks in those rogue states worry about it on a regular basis.


Wulf

 

[2WS-Steve]

I think there's a significant difference between the risks we face now and the risks we faced 40 to 20 years ago. In 1963 we faced the constant threat of apparently minor conflicts escalating completely out of control. The U.S. plan for a Soviet invasion of Europe called for liberal nuclear strikes to blunt a Soviet offensive and recent documents indicate that the Soviet doctrine for an invasion of Europe had nuclear weapons as an inherent part of the strategy. Given that any substantive launch of intercontinental missiles required a rapid and probably poorly-informed retaliation otherwise we'd lose our retaliatory capabilities we were locked into a situation where you had to be pretty nervous about thinking that any war could be limited in scope.

Nowadays the situation is worse in some ways since proliferation puts weapons in the hands of nations or organizations who don't have much to lose. Moreover, without the concern that using one nuclear weapon entails seeing some 10,000 of the things flying through the air 30 minutes later, someone will be more inclined to resort to them. However, it will at least be limited. Some people will suffer terribly but I don't think you're looking at a global extinction event like you would have 20 years ago. And the post-holocaust games Monte is talking about generally operate on the global extinction event premise.

Still, we play wild west games even thought those days are long gone. The threat of nuclear extinction just created a new genre and I suspect it's one of the genres that will last.

 

[trancejeremy]

I dunno, there's a pretty plausible scenario for a world wide nuclear war...

Iran nukes Israel as soon as it gets a nuke (as a recent Iranian leader pretty much flat out said they will), Israel then retalliates by taking out the rest of the Middle East and the muslim world, which then causes Pakistan and India to lob them at each other, at which point North Korea will join in, thinking it's a US plot, and then in return, the US nukes North Korea, which then pisses off China, which nukes the US and Europe, which in return nukes China.


The US plan for defeating a massive soviet invasion of western europe mostly called for using tactical, or battlefield nukes against armored columns and such. After all, they don't want to leave the places they are defending uninhabitable. .

Plus, that would be pretty unlikely in the first place, as the Soviets long ago gave up the notion of invading Europe (I think since Krushev sp?), and there was a great deal of effort in making clear and immediate lines of communication between the US and USSR (the so called Red Phone or hotline between the two countries' leaders).

While there's not the two superpowers there used to be, a lot more countries have nukes todays, and the motivations are now completely different. It used to be just power, which both sides understood. Now it's more either religion, hatred, or just plain insanity...(though apparently, JFK was pretty nuts)

Anyway, back to the original subject, that Monte Cook is 'powerful', it shouldn't be that surprising. Look at how revered Gary Gygax is by many people. (Hey, he even made it on Futurama). Plus, WOTC has made something of an effort to sell it's authors/designers, or at least, tells more about them than most companies do. So, even a fairly lukewarm review can be influential...

 

[2WS-Steve]

Back on Topic

Yah, trancejeremy; I value Monte's opinion significantly more than most reviewers since I've read his work. I think WotC's done a good thing by pushing forward their writers. I think Atlas does the best job of putting their writers out front though. One problem with internet reviews is that it takes a long time before I figure out whether or not the reviewer has similar tastes as me. That's not so much an issue anymore with a lot of movie reviewers.

I'd be really interested in seeing what some other game designers liked. John Tweet would top my list then there'd be Robin Laws, John Tynes, Stolz and Dettweiler.

 

[jkantor]

Roleplaying supplements fall along a spectrum between Theme Book and Cookbook. The Cookbook approach is just to cram a lot of "things" in; the Theme Book approach is to design everything to fit together as a cohesive whole.

BOEM I and II are Cookbooks, and considering the rating that Monte gave Traps and Treachery, it's obvious that that is his ideal. (Personally, I got tired of that in the early 80s.) Darwin's World is a Theme Book and operates under a completely different set of assumptions.

And let's not forget, DnD is the ultimate in a Cookbook-centric gaming, and D20 and the OGL were actually designed as a way of institutionalizing that approach. But a side effect is that it leaves room for well-designed thematic works like Darwin's World, Wheel of Time, etc., that would have little chance if they depended on a unique system.

 

[Monte At Home]

I agree with your analysis about themebooks and cookbooks, but I don't agree with you that the Darwin's World books are themebooks. They are 100% cookbooks. The equipment book is just a list of different equipment. The other supplement is a long list of prestige classes and a scattershot of locations and adventure hooks with little tying them together. Even the rulebook is just a collection of races, classes and equipment.

You could easily "pick and choose" from these, using these two classes, these three prestige classes, and this subset of the equipment (or whatever). They're not all tied together in a tight and cohesive theme (except "post-apocalyptic gaming," which is not tighter a theme than "fantasy gaming")

Not that any of these statements are meant as criticism. I think that's a fine approach.

I'm a little amazed that some posters in this thread seem to think that I don't like Darwin's World. It's not without its flaws, but I like it very much. I'm planning on running it for some friends soon. My new 10-point rating scale is basically a bell curve--ratings of 6s and 7s are quite good.