Malhavoc Press

GAMA Trade Show and The Banewarrens Chat Transcript

Interview With Monte Cook at EN World
March 27, 2002 -- 6 p.m. PST

Monte joined folks in the chat room at EN World to discuss his recent trip to the GAMA Trade Show, as well as his upcoming release The Banewarrens and many other topics. Thanks to all 150 people who attended, to all the folks at EN World for their hard work in making this chat happen, and to moderator Russell Morrissey for sharing this transcript* with us.

Morrus: For those who don't know, Monte was one of the main designers of D&D 3E; he also runs Malhavoc Press, his own d20 publishing company. Anyone who didn't know that should leave now! :)

Monte: No! Don't leave!

Morrus: Okay, here comes the first question... <Talath> Monte, can you tell us anything about your secret project for Wizards?

Monte: Sigh. I can't. Not because I don't want to, but because Wizards is very strict about these things.

Morrus: We understand. Honest. How was GAMA?

Monte: GAMA was great. We met a bunch of people, particularly people on the side of the industry that I don't normally get to meet very often -- retailers, distributors, etc. We also met a bunch of the WW/S&S people that we hadn't yet. They were great.

Morrus: Much gambling?

Monte: No, I'm not really a gambler. I love games, but I also like to hang on to my wallet.

Morrus: <THG_Hal> What did he see at GAMA that he felt was a good item d20 or not...

Monte: Well, Atlas' Occult Lore looks really cool. I picked up a bunch of stuff, like Bluffside, the Bastion products, and other things, but I haven't had the chance to read them yet.

Morrus: I'm looking forward to Bluffside.

Monte: The new Freeport book also looks great. And I saw a copy of If Thoughts Could Kill. We're excited about that coming out.

Morrus: What's coming up for Malhavoc Press?

Monte: Well, in print, If Thoughts Could Kill in April. Then Book of Eldritch Might II in May. Electronically, we're going to release The Banewarrens, a big mega-adventure in June. 128 pages. That will come out in print in August.

Morrus: Can you tell us a bit more about The Banewarrens? What sort of adventure is it?

Monte: It's a combination dungeon/urban adventure. About half is a series of delves into an ancient storehouse of evil "banes," and the other half is intrigue in the city surrounding the people (good and bad) that want to get their hands on the banes. I want to do something that pleases both the people who liked Return to the Temple of ELemental Evil as well as the players who liked my earlier work, such as in Dead Gods.

Morrus: What character level is it aimed at?

Monte: Characters will start at 6th level or so, but since this is a big adventure, it will take them to about 10th.

Morrus: <Shadeus> Does The Banewarrens use any material from Book of Eldritch Might II?

Monte: Yes. There are both alternate sorcerers and bards, plus I use some of the items, spells, and whatnot from the book. You don't have to have Book of Eldritch Might I and II, but it will make the adventure all the better.

Morrus: <Shamat> My question is: What's the lethality rate for The Banewarrens?

Monte: Well, I don't actually TRY to create killer adventures. It just happens, I guess. It's probably not as lethal as Return to the Temple of ELemental Evil, but it's challenging.

Morrus: <FDP_James> Here's my question for Monte: Can you tell us about Queen of Lies from FDP? (Never miss a promo opportunity)

Monte: Never heard of it. Who are you?

Morrus: [FDP = Funny Desktop Puppets. Terrible company. The arms fell off my puppet.]

Monte: Queen of Lies is an adventure I'm really proud of. It is an adventure set in deep underground, pitting characters against a fortress full of dark elves, much like 1st Edition's Vault of the Drow (which I love). I was just rereading my copy last night, and I'm really pleased with what FDP did with it. I'm beaming with pride.

Morrus: Are you doing any more freelance work, or is Malhavoc now pretty much taking up all of your time?

Monte: [I really am spending all my writing time] on Malhavoc stuff. That wasn't the original plan, but that's how it's worked out. And I'm perfectly happy about it.

Morrus: No more Wizards of the Coast stuff in the pipeline?

Monte: Well, there's Call of Cthulhu, which just came out, the "Secret Project" as everyone calls it, and a project I wrote with Sean Reynolds that is in limbo at the moment. That's it.

Morrus: <FunkBGR> What was it like to work on Call of Cthulhu d20 with people such as John Tynes?

Monte: It was really cool. Unfortunately, we didn't work very closely. Mostly I wrote my sections long before John worked on his, and then I came in at the end brought everything together. There were a lot of authors on that project, so the development was a real challenge. Not hard (because it was good), but challenging. John's a very nice guy, though. I like him a lot.

Morrus: What was the most challenging part of it?

Monte: Well, in the middle of the game's development, we went through three different creative directors. A lot of different writers had a lot of different directions. It took some doing to just bring it all together so it made sense: so that the adventure design section, for example, actually meshed with the sample adventures, and so forth.

Morrus: <BadMojo> Do you think the d20 version of Call of Cthulhu stays true to the "feel" of the BRP version? Are there areas where you feel the d20 version improves upon the original?

Monte: I do think it's very true to the feel. I think that overall, the d20 system allows the game to be a bit more dynamic (with feats, for example) and cohesive (the way spells interact with creatures and so forth). There is one weird little theory of mine, though... d20 Call of Cthulhu actually provides for a larger range of improvement than BRP. An experienced d20 Call of Cthulhu character is more different from a starting character than an experienced BRP character is from a starting character. I think that's cool because when the forces of the Mythos come stomping down on you and crush you like a bug, it has even more of a cosmic impact. You feel, "Hey, I actually am pretty tough now," and then a mi-go puts your brain in a jar and you say, "Oh, guess not."

Morrus: Do you think that (the advancement) will bother diehard Chaosium Call of Cthulhu fans?

Monte: Well, there IS character advancement in standard Call of Cthulhu. It's just a little more subtle with their skill system. If you read the book, though, you realize that the important thing [remains] -- that characters can't openly challenge the forces of the Mythos and win. I think all concerns will go away.

Morrus: <BadMojo> Could you compose a haiku about Call of Cthulhu d20?

Monte: Call of Cthulhu / d20 is very scary / be careful with it
Urm. That's the best I can do. If you want iambic pentameter, I'm leaving.

Morrus: <Charles> A question for Monte: Have you or do you plan to use Call of Cthulhu d20 in your D&D games?

Monte: Yes, I have. I've used some of the spells (modified a bit) and I have used some of the monsters. If I was going to start my campaign over again, I might even adopt the sanity rules. It would also be fun to run a complete, dark horror fantasy game, where all the gods are cosmic, evil entities, making clerics the scariest madmen on the planet.

Morrus: What about your alternate classes? Do you use them in your own games?

Monte: Absolutely. I have both a PC alternate sorcerer and an NPC alternate bard in my games right now.

Morrus: If you could go back, would the core D&D classes look like your alternate classes?

Monte: Well, I wish I could go back and fix the ranger, but I don't know if I'd use my "alternate ranger" exactly. I actually wouldn't put my bard or sorcerer in the core books, simply because they are both too space intensive. The PH simply doesn't have room for an alternate sorcerer spell list and certainly not for the spellsongs.

Morrus: What about other changes? Anything else you'd have done differently?

Monte: I get that question a lot, and it's really much harder to answer than you might think. Looking back, I'd probably redo the way magic items are organized and priced. I'd make Skill Focus +3. I'd fix haste and harm. So many things, though, would take a lot of more complex "tinkering."

Morrus: Were there any "sacred cows" you'd have liked to have changed, but didn't because it would have made D&D too "different"?

Monte: Well, I'd think long and hard about making armor damage-absorbing rather than damage-avoiding. But all the real sacred cows -- levels, classes, hit points, and so on -- I think are great.

Morrus: Quite a few people are asking whether you would like to revisit Planescape given the opportunity?

Monte: Under perfect conditions, sure. That's tough, because working on Planescape carries with it a lot of baggage. I wouldn't want to go through all the Wizards approvals, for example. Don't look for Malhavoc to license PS anytime soon, despite the rumors going around to the contrary. That said, I still love PS.

Morrus: <joshrottenuest> Monte, you get asked what you'd change about the work you've done alot. But out of all the work you've done for Wizards what are you most happy with?

Monte: I'm really happy with the DMG, overall. It meant a lot to me to be able to work on that book, when the 1st Edition DMG shaped me so much. It has it's flaws, but I'm really proud of it overall. I'm also really happy with the way Rerturn to the Temple of Elemental Evil worked out. Beyond that, I guess my favorite thing was probably Dead Gods.

Morrus: Do you prefer to write adventure material or rules-based material?

Monte: I really like both, but if I had to choose, I suppose it would be adventures.

Morrus: <BadMojo> Do you have any desire to ever revisit (professonally) Call of Cthulhu? Scenarios, supplements, etc?

Monte: I'm a HUGE Lovecraft fan. That said, I've poured most of my current horror "supply" into Call of Cthulhu, and before that Dark Matter and my novel, Of Aged Angels. I would like to go back to that someday, but not for the moment. My plans are to work on fantasy stuff for a while.

Morrus: There are a lot of questions here about Book of Eldritch Might III. Can you tell us what to expect?

Monte: Well, it's going to be a little different. It will have feats, spells, items, monsters, and probably a prestige class or two, but the format will actually be presented as a series of magical locations that you can put into your campaign. For example, there might be a weird demi-plane with some strange new inhabitants, and they have some spells, feats, and items unique to them. You can use the setting, or just the game rule material (your choice) or both. I like the idea of providing not only a new spell or feat, but a place and a bit of a background of where it came from, so you can use that right in your campaign. I have no plans, in case you're wondering, of doing any more "revamps" of classes in that book. Although I'm toying with the idea of a new paladin for The Book of Hallowed Might. I'll see how it goes. No promises.

Morrus: Talking of Hallowed Might -- is that just a divine version of Book of Eldritch Might, or have you taken a different slant on it?

Monte: Really, it's a divine version of Book of Eldritch Might. Expect new divine feats, spells, items, etc. I also want to introduce some of my wacky variant alignment material in that book.

Morrus: That sounds interesting -- a complete rewrite of alignment, or just a few tweaks?

Monte: Well, the basic idea is that each of your alignment "components" (lawful, good, etc.) has a rating. For most people, it doesn't matter, but divine casters get mods and access to new abilities depending on the rating. Rewarding the faithful, so to speak. It's also a way to quantify how "evil" something is when you use detect evil, and that sort of thing.

Morrus: I might get the book just for that -- alignment has never 'sat quite right' with me. If time, money and legality were no issue, what would your dream project be?

Monte: Well, I've actually done a lot of my dream projects. The DMG, Call of Cthulhu, Rerturn to the Temple of Elemental Evil, The Book of Eldrtich Might -- these were all dream projects. However, I might like to create a whole campaign setting whole cloth at some point. And if money and whatnot are no object, I'd put it in a big box with full color maps, specialized miniatures, and all sorts of thngs like that. I'd want it to be REALLY different from the typical campaign worlds, though, because if it wasn't, then what's the point? I mean, if you like standard fantasy, you've got great examples of that with Greyhawk or FR. It would also be fun to do a book based on Steven Brust's world, or Donaldson's The Land, but for the most part I don't really like licenses, so in the end I probably wouldn't do that.

Morrus: <Caliban> Would you ever consider doing a d20 conversion for your Dark Spacerolemaster supplement? Perhaps as additional material for a Dragonstar setting? (Do you have the rights to that supplement, or is in chapter 11 limbo with the rest of Iron Crown Enterprises?)

Monte: As I and my lawyer understand it, the rights to Dark Space reverted back to me. I plan on doing something with it at some point (I'm already putting the concept of the Vlathnachna from that book, if you remember it in The Banewarrens). I might do it in conjunction with Dragonstar. The guys at Fantasy Flight are really cool. I'd like to work with them someday. But I have no solid plans for it at this point.

Morrus: Have you spoken to them about it?

Monte: A little bit, actually.

Morrus: Talking of Dragonstar -- what have you seen done with the d20 system that really stood out as innovative or unique?

Monte: Well, Dragonstar is pretty cool. They didn't do everything the way I would, but... :) Seriously, there seems to be some great stuff coming out right around now. I'm interested in Spycraft, but haven't yet looked at it. To be brutally honest, though, I figured that there would be more innovation by now. Particularly from Wizards. I'd like to see someone create some really new amazing system or subsystem for the game and take things in a direction that no one has thought of yet. I'm not trying to say that everything's crap (I don't think that at all), but I thought that by now there would be more people
doing more "tinkering." If I had to criticize a little, I'd say that too many d20 companies look to Wizards to pave the way too much. I say go wild.

Morrus: Can you think of anything in particular you'd like to see done?

Monte: Well, that's the point. I want to see things done that I've never thought of. I don't know. Someone on my message boards presented this weird new way to do multiclassing. It was really cool -- it had problems, but it was very innovative. That sort of thing. Surely there are designers out there who want to publish their own way of doing experience points, or monster abilities, or something like that. I guess the thing is, people keep wanting to add to D&D with d20. But d20 also gives them the ability to change things too.

Morrus: I think many of them are scared to get too adventurous; partly form lack of understanding about what they can do (legally).

Monte: I can understand that.

Morrus: <Sutekh> Okay, question: In your opinion, how long does the d20 dotcom style craze have left to run?

Monte: Here's my theory. There will be no d20 crash. It will be a slow spiral downward. Small d20 companies with poor sales with drop away one by one, not all at once. However, from what I hear, there are plenty of new people waiting in the wings getting ready to publish soon. It's amazing. What I think players should do is figure out who's putting out the stuff you like and support that company, to make sure it weathers the tough times.

Morrus: Do you think the .pdf market will increase in size?

Monte: Yes. Look at the last year. When I published The Book of Eldritch Might at the end of May, there were so few people doing pdfs for sale that it took me forever just to figure out how to do it on my own. Now everyone's doing it. There's a whole website, rpgnow, devoted to selling just gaming pdfs. It's amazing. I think it will only increase from here.

Morrus: <winRose> I understand you have strong oppinions about piracy of ESD products, but I've heard conflicting reports. Where do you stand, and what measures -- if any -- are being taken to help slow down the illegal information trade as it pertains to RPGs and RPG accessories?

Monte: Well, I hope it comes as no surprise that I think pirating copyrighted material of any kind really sucks. People rationalize it in a million ways, but you can't deny that you hurt creators when you do it. That said, we've taken no special precautions to prevent it. The reason is that to do so would almost certainly increase the cost of our products -- and then the bad guys win. It's bad enough that we have to consider altering prices to deal with lost revenue from pirating (but so far we aren't going to do that). We have shut down a couple of websites full of pirated material, but that's a drop in the bucket. The real truth is, if people are determined to be thieves, they are going to steal. I haven't the power to stop them. If you feel the same way, and you find a website that hosts copyrighted material, you can send an email to their ISP and shut them down. There's my mini-rant for the night.

Morrus: Do you feel you've lost significant revenue from piracy?

Monte: It's hard to tell. Remember, revenue that is insignificant to a large company is signficant to an individual.

Morrus: <Mistwell> I've always wanted to see rules for running an evil PC. Is that something you think we might see some day for D&D 3rd Edition?

Monte: Could be. Really, though, what sorts of extra rules do you need?

Morrus: Would you like to work on such a project? Perhaps a bunch of evil prestige classes, spells, magic items?

Monte: That does sound pretty cool. Sure, I'd work on that.

Morrus: What would you call such a project?

Monte: I'd call it Morrus' Big Book of Badass Stuff.

Morrus: Okay, I'll quit now :)

Morrus: <TheSigil> What are your thoughts on cross-use of OGC among companies, i.e., do you think it is helpful, useful, or even likely that we will see products from Company A that incorporate content from Companies B and C. If not, why not? If so, what can/ought to be done to make it easier to do this?

Monte: I think to a degree, it's a very cool thing. As I've said before, I'd like to see companies actually talk and work together rather than just take open content from a product. I think, for example, that an upcoming Necromancer product is going to use some things from one of our products. We worked it out together and I think it's very cool.

Morrus: Do you think there'll eventually be a "standardisation" of OGC material as the best variations become an unofficial "core"?

Monte: Well, I sort of doubt it, actually. I know you're a bit of a fan of the idea, Morrus, but I would be afraid of it stifling creativity. If "we" (whoever "we" is) nail down the "standard" naval rules now, what if someone comes up with the best new naval rules in the world a year from now? I like d20 because of the freedom it affords creators.

Morrus: <Sutek> Do you think there is a gaming genre that the d20 system just does not work well with? Such as a superhero game?

Monte: I'm really anxious to see a good d20 superhero game. I think it will be tough, but I bet it can be done. So in short, I think d20 is flexible enough to handle anything -- but that's based on the idea that a designer is willing to really stretch and change the system.

Morrus: Would you say that the system has any in-built weaknesses that could limit its scope?

Monte: It's not going to handle hyper-realistic gaming well. The abstract nature of some of it might get in the way, I suppose.

Morrus: How important do you think "balance" is to the game? To some it seems to be a holy grail; to others it doesn't matter at all.

Monte: I'm of two minds on this. On one hand, I think balance is key. It keeps the game from falling apart -- particularly the game of the newer player, unaccostomed to handling balance issues. It should be every designer's primary job to make sure his new rule or adventure doesn't wreck someone's game. However, the other, far more experienced gamer in me says that game balance is, in fact, an illusion. Instead, it's a contract of trust between a DM and the players. Whether it's based on rules, or an unspoken understanding, or whatever, that's what actually keeps a game going. But that's pretty esoteric game philosphy.

Morrus: What do you think of the Wizards of the Coast layoffs? More particularly, all the big names who have left (both recently and in the last couple of years)?

Monte: Well, there's a topic that I could go on all night about. Basically, I think it was ultimately unfortunate that Wizards was sold to Hasbro. While the recent layoffs may not have been caused by them directly, the previous ones were, and that led to people leaving who might have been able to keep this most recent round from happening. It's all extremely complicated. I'm really sorry to see Wizards lose Sean Reynolds, but Sean was going to move away for personal reasons anyway. (On the other hand, if Wizards were a worker's paradise, maybe he wouldn't have made that decision -- who can say?) There are still good people there on the RPG end of things, though, so don't worry. You'll still see good products from them.

Morrus: Okay, just two more questions. This one keeps coming up, so I'd better ask it: What advice do you have for a new d20 publisher?

Monte: And here I thought it would be an orc and pie question. :)

Morrus: Nah, people are just waiting for the "Return To."

Monte: I'd think long and hard before I'd BE a new d20 publisher at the moment. Now's not a great time to come into things. I guess I'd say focus on quality above all else. Our audience is extremely intelligent and know quality when they see it. I have faith that that strategy will win out.

Morrus: Last question here... I'm not sure I understand it fully... <RangerWickett> Can I ask, Monte, have you had a player character you ran that significantly affected your game design interests or philosophy?

Monte: Interesting. I suppose that would be Malhavoc himself. He was a spellcaster, and ever since him I've loved spellcasters. Of course, my second favorite character was Pretor, a paladin -- as different from Malhavoc as you can get, so go figure. Really, though most of my game design philosophy and ideas come more from experiences DMing than they have playing.

Morrus: Thanks, Monte -- it's been fun! You wanted to say a couple of things before you head off?

Monte: Before everyone leaves, I'd like to say that we're going to have not one, but two big announcements on MonteCook.com next week. Both are very cool, very good news. I also wanted to mention that I heard that all of the signed Call of Cthulhu copies at the Wizards of the Coast online store have sold out -- faster than any other promotional signed product -- and the unsigned ones are selling out fast. I just wanted to thank everyone for the support. Thanks for coming, everyone!

* Transcript edited for style and clarity.