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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jeffh" data-source="post: 2683758" data-attributes="member: 2642">Mike Mearls (mainly PH), Robin Laws (mainly DMG), Sean Reynolds (officially mainly MM, unofficially chief number-cruncher and ass-kicker for the other two). Lots of other people can do bits, especially of the MM.Lately I've noticed a few names I normally associate with M:tG working on D&D, and in that vein I nominate as one of the more important of the "lots of others"... Mark Rosewater.I would like to briefly discuss two other names that multiple people have mentioned. Both would violate RW's new rule but I'm going to discuss why NOT to include them.Gary Gygax's importance is strictly historical. Honestly, he's not a very talented game designer by current standards; he tends to show few signs of having a unified vision as a designer, and I find most of his stuff sketchy where it needs to be detailed and detailed where it could afford to be sketchy. That's not even mentioning his prose, which can sterilize frogs at 200 yards. What he deserves credit for - and none of us would be here without - is having the vision to oversee the creation of a whole new type of game, but honestly, once the idea for taking that first step was in the air, countless others have surpassed him in the execution of it. (And in any event, there are disputes over how much of the credit for this is his, and how much Dave Arneson's. There is no particular reason to assume Gygax was the more important of the two, he's just the one who had the good luck and/or sheer bloodymindedness to still be around ten years later).And as for Monte Cook, he is right where I want him (and, I rather suspect, where he wants himself). I would much rather see him pumping out his own stuff on his own terms with relatively little editorial oversight, outside of Hasbro's shadow. As long as he can make a living as the co-owner of and primary contributer to Malhavoc Press, I for one am quite happy to see him doing just that.</blockquote>

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