Quote from: Stainless;533717I bet the Hasbro bean counters have decided not to go with an open playtest. I can imagine him resigning over that and it being a "management issue".

That is a possibility. That's the kind of thing that would make Monte quit if there were unreconcilable differences on that score.

Quote from: Stainless;533717I bet the Hasbro bean counters have decided not to go with an open playtest. I can imagine him resigning over that and it being a "management issue".

Hmm....

Why did he resign over 3/3.5e?

Quote from: Marleycat;533720Hmm....

Why did he resign over 3/3.5e?

Mostly because he wanted to concentrate on Malhavoc Press, at the time, and didn't see the point of staying plugged to the WotC collective while doing so, as far as I know.

Mr Burns taking over WotC.    :rolleyes:

I can't say that I cared for Cook in any measure--his mechanics were sloppy, unrefined, and poorly thought-out--but his loss is a moral victory for the 4vengers.

Considering no one really knows what he was doing or what effect he was having, I see no reason to get excited for good or ill.

I'd lay my bets on some bullshit monetization scheme being implemented. It's all the rage among short-sighted corporations these days, including EA, Activision, and yes, Hasbro.

WOTC must get the D&D brand over the magic $50 million/year mark, or face the entire RPG half of the company, and the D&D brand name itself (and every single D&D setting), being shelved for a decade. If they're desperate—and they are, the whole "come back to us" D&D Next approach is driven by desperation—they'll no doubt have cooked up some collectible bullshit that will make gamers hate WOTC.

(Okay, "hate WOTC even more". Happy?)

Monte seemed to hate the edition mill they were planning back in 3.0 days, and I'm pretty sure he'd hate anything conceptually resembling the gamer-exploiting approach of EA's DLC policy or Activision's "exploit each brand name on an annual or near-annual basis". I have no idea what WOTC might be thinking of, but it's bound to be something unpleasant.

Or I could be entirely wrong.

(But I doubt it. D&D minis game, anyone?)

D&D 5th is riding such a knife's edge in terms of "love it / fuck it" (despite being not even in print yet - go figure) that this sort of thing isn't going to help at all.

Lord love 'em (the developers that are left) as this seems like a "charge of the Light Brigade," sort of thing on WotC's part with 5th; hemmed in by (game) cannon on the left, 4th edition fans and those who want more modern sort of things on the right and the nasty, angry barrels of the grognards of old in front of them they have no choice but to struggle forward under terrible fire.

You know if it were any company that owned the game besides hasbro i'd actually say maybe it should take a couple of years break to figure out a new direction for the franchise, unfortunately hasbro owns the game so they'd just turn it into boardgames or a magic style cardgame instead and pretend it never existed as an rpg before...in fact i bet thats partly what hasbro wants anyway.

Hasbro isn't paying a hell of a lot of attention to what WotC does outside of Magic, I don't think. People have been saying that WotC would pollute D&D with Magic: the Gathering related tie-ins ever since they bought out TSR, but they've so far chosen not to intermix the two. Considering that they've already capitalized on D&D IP with the Ravenloft boardgame, I don't see why that wouldn't have happened already, if they were going to do it.

Quote from: Halloween Jack;533752Hasbro isn't paying a hell of a lot of attention to what WotC does outside of Magic, I don't think. People have been saying that WotC would pollute D&D with Magic: the Gathering related tie-ins ever since they bought out TSR, but they've so far chosen not to intermix the two. Considering that they've already capitalized on D&D IP with the Ravenloft boardgame, I don't see why that wouldn't have happened already, if they were going to do it.

Maybe they are? Would that make him quit?

This does't sound too good. Will be interesting to hear what comes through the grapevine.

Quote from: Marleycat;533754Maybe they are? Would that make him quit?

Like I said, God only knows what impact he was actually having on 5e design, so God only knows why he quit doing whatever he was doing. Monte Cook is the Maltese Falcon of D&D.

Whatever it is, it can't be good. Monte Cook is not a drama queen. It's got to be a pretty significant disagreement to make him throw the towel and quit.

Quote from: Halloween Jack;533780Like I said, God only knows what impact he was actually having on 5e design, so God only knows why he quit doing whatever he was doing. Monte Cook is the Maltese Falcon of D&D.

Love him or hate him he is a very good designer and it really isn't good news for 5e from an outsider's prospective.