Achan hiArusa
Explorer
You wrote:
The BoVD was a superior product, written by perhaps the most well known and well respected author amongst the D&D community. The BoED does not share that distinction, so it is only natural people view it with more skepticism.
My reply:
Shall we do a point for point comparison of Monte Cook and James Wyatt, lets:
James Wyatt was a contributor to Dragon Magazine before he joined the Wizards staff (starting in 1996). His articles showed his amazing storytelling skill with his ability to turn dry mechanics into a living, breathing game world. Just go back and look for "Seeds of Evil" or any of his other articles to see.
Now, granted his mechanics suffer as anyone can see from Defenders of the Faith, but his skill has improved as can be seen from Dieties & Demigods.
It doesn't hurt that he is also a nice guy.
Monte Cook is the polar opposite of James Wyatt (and started working on D&D in 1994). While an incredibly good game mechanic (almost as good as I am,
), his storytelling skills are still developing as anyone can see from the Diamond Throne stuff. He took basically a mechanics viewpoint of what he could do to make a variant d20 Fantasy game and then wrote the storyline in.
For even more of a contrast compare their websites:
www.aquela.com/roleplaying/index.html
www.montecook.com
Monte Cook's website is bursting with new and interesting rules and opinion pieces,whereas James Wyatt's is bursting with new and interesting game worlds and stories about his life, he just doesn't have time to develop them all (and I lament a few that he never finished and just took off his site).
Sincerely,
Sammy Grimes
The BoVD was a superior product, written by perhaps the most well known and well respected author amongst the D&D community. The BoED does not share that distinction, so it is only natural people view it with more skepticism.
My reply:
Shall we do a point for point comparison of Monte Cook and James Wyatt, lets:
James Wyatt was a contributor to Dragon Magazine before he joined the Wizards staff (starting in 1996). His articles showed his amazing storytelling skill with his ability to turn dry mechanics into a living, breathing game world. Just go back and look for "Seeds of Evil" or any of his other articles to see.
Now, granted his mechanics suffer as anyone can see from Defenders of the Faith, but his skill has improved as can be seen from Dieties & Demigods.
It doesn't hurt that he is also a nice guy.
Monte Cook is the polar opposite of James Wyatt (and started working on D&D in 1994). While an incredibly good game mechanic (almost as good as I am,
), his storytelling skills are still developing as anyone can see from the Diamond Throne stuff. He took basically a mechanics viewpoint of what he could do to make a variant d20 Fantasy game and then wrote the storyline in.For even more of a contrast compare their websites:
www.aquela.com/roleplaying/index.html
www.montecook.com
Monte Cook's website is bursting with new and interesting rules and opinion pieces,whereas James Wyatt's is bursting with new and interesting game worlds and stories about his life, he just doesn't have time to develop them all (and I lament a few that he never finished and just took off his site).
Sincerely,
Sammy Grimes
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