Monte Cook's new game

[kyoryu]

Figured he'd do something... initial playtest reports from some old friends on facebook seem positive.

http://www.montecookgames.com/announcing-numenera/

[Totally Guy]

Do you think it'll be quite traditional? I'm only familiar with his work on 3.5 D&D.

If you look as Peter Adkison who was CEO of Wizards at the time of 3.5, his tastes and opinions have completely changed since he was involved in D&D. Could the same be true for Cook?

[DigoDragon]

I'm amused that my own game world concept is nearly parallel to his concept. :smallbiggrin:

[kyoryu]

Do you think it'll be quite traditional? I'm only familiar with his work on 3.5 D&D.

No clue. I'll see if I can scan through Facebook and find some links to some of the playtest reports.

(and what does "traditional" mean, anyway? :smallbiggrin: For Monte, I'd imagine that the question translates closely to, "will it be like 3.x")

[Totally Guy]

(and what does "traditional" mean, anyway? :smallbiggrin: For Monte, I'd imagine that the question translates closely to, "will it be like 3.x")

Tell me about it. I'm fed up with struggling to communicate the things that are common between games I like and games I like less.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Beats having to work on 5e...

[Friv]

I will reserve full judgment until I see the whole thing. However, it's already doing the thing I hate most in fantasy - applying wildly absurd timescales that make no sense.

I mean, a BILLION years in the future? And there have only been eight empires in that time? How does anything even look human anymore? Evolution should have rendered the whole damned planet totally unrecognizable.

A billion years ago, we were still in the Precambrian era. A billion years is twice as long as there have been things that aren't microscopic on our planet. A billion years is a truly staggering, amazing, impossible amount of time.

And in that time, there have been eight human empires. Each of those eight empires has spanned an amount of time more commonly associated with geological periods than empires.

Argh! :smallannoyed:

[kyoryu]

FWIW, his kickstarter is here:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1433901524/numenera-a-new-roleplaying-game-from-monte-cook

(BTW, I've got no dog in this race. I'm not a huge 3.x fan, so it's probably unlikely that his game will hit my happy spot).

[Totally Guy]

I just read a bit more of his blog and he says the same kind of things that the community here generally says. So I'm not expecting great things.

[Knaight]

I just read a bit more of his blog and he says the same kind of things that the community here generally says. So I'm not expecting great things.

Can you be more specific? As is this is fairly vague.

As for Numenera, it looks like yet another fantasy heartbreaker in the making. The idea of what appears to be magic actually being scientific devices straight out of borderline science fiction is interesting, but it can't hold a setting on its own.

[DigoDragon]

I will reserve full judgment until I see the whole thing. However, it's already doing the thing I hate most in fantasy - applying wildly absurd timescales that make no sense.

This I can agree with. In my own setting, the time between the last civilization and the current one was about 2000 years. The date of the current era is 1836, based on the eariest known recorded history books. This allowed the WSOD that things like old dungeons and artifacts can still be found after two thousand years.

I'd be surprised if anything from the older civilizations survived a billion years. I know magic can be powerful, but wow...

[Raoul Duke]

I am extremely excited for this! Anyone know when the playtest opens?

[kyoryu]

I will reserve full judgment until I see the whole thing. However, it's already doing the thing I hate most in fantasy - applying wildly absurd timescales that make no sense.

I mean, a BILLION years in the future? And there have only been eight empires in that time? How does anything even look human anymore? Evolution should have rendered the whole damned planet totally unrecognizable.

He makes a few posts about this on his blog.

[The Glyphstone]

I just read a bit more of his blog and he says the same kind of things that the community here generally says. So I'm not expecting great things.

I think the main difference between MC and our community is that he thinks Wizards > Fighters is 'the way it should be', while we just shrug our shoulders and accept it. Few people on GitP like the fact that casters render mundanes obsolete, but changing it takes more work than most people here can justify doing. Cooke likes Linear Fighters, Quadratic Wizards and encourages it in his games.

[eggs]

Looking at his blog, I won't be counting down for this one.

I like Cook's weaselly and too-familiar "I meant to do that" response to the billion years thing.

[Jarawara]

I will reserve full judgment until I see the whole thing. However, it's already doing the thing I hate most in fantasy - applying wildly absurd timescales that make no sense.

I mean, a BILLION years in the future? And there have only been eight empires in that time? How does anything even look human anymore? Evolution should have rendered the whole damned planet totally unrecognizable.

A billion years ago, we were still in the Precambrian era. A billion years is twice as long as there have been things that aren't microscopic on our planet. A billion years is a truly staggering, amazing, impossible amount of time.

And in that time, there have been eight human empires. Each of those eight empires has spanned an amount of time more commonly associated with geological periods than empires.

Argh! :smallannoyed:

Correction: He does not say 'eight empires', he says 'eight civilizations'.

And he doesn't say they are human.

*~*

There are those who believe there was a civilization before ours, be it based on Atlantis, Lemuria, or alien colonisation. That would be one civilization. They were destroyed, and we arose, so we are (theoretically) the second civilization.

When we have destroyed ourselves, there would be an opening for the third civilization... perhaps from survivors of our own nuclear holocast, evolved into molemen, or perhaps held as cattle by machines, dreaming in the matrix, or perhaps the machines themselves would be considered the next civilization.

But one day, a hero will arise which will overthrow the world of the machines and free the cattle from their dream-pods. This hero can survive in the open scorched land of the future, can thrive in the deep dark of the underworld, and has amazing powers. This hero is also an evolved cockroach. And thus gives rise to the fourth civilization, two in one actually, as two great civilizations arise and war continually, as depicted in the game "The Ant and Cockroach War". Humans, if they still exist in any relative term, are simply lost in the middle, toted around as a food source.

Continue that process through four more great civilizations, and yes, this world won't be recognizable at all. If there are surviving elements of the previous civilizations, then there might actually be humans (or something that once was human) available to play, but I'm chomping at the bit to play a crossbreed cockroach/living plant with evolved cybernetic implants that carries around his own portable sun.


.... and if it turns out that I can actually play that rediculous option, then I will wholeheartedily agree with you: Aargh!!! :smallannoyed:

[Knaight]

There are those who believe there was a civilization before ours, be it based on Atlantis, Lemuria, or alien colonisation. That would be one civilization. They were destroyed, and we arose, so we are (theoretically) the second civilization.

And in all three of these cases, you usually see people assuming those civilizations existed among macroscopic, land dwelling creatures. You usually even see an assumption of fairly modern mammals. So, lets take a look at the two most iconic domesticated animals - the horse and the dog. With extremely liberal estimates, we can treat the Himalayan wolf as sufficiently dog like, putting the dog as 800 thousand years old. Horses can be traced to 5 million years old. So, that gives us either 1 civilization per 2.5 million years, or 1 civilization per 400 thousand years. We aren't getting anywhere near a billion out of this belief.

[kyoryu]

Continue that process through four more great civilizations, and yes, this world won't be recognizable at all.

In his defense, he does make a few posts in other places about being enamored with "science fantasy" rather than "science fiction". So, yeah, that makes little sense from an actual scientific view, but I find it a reasonable "science fantasy" backdrop.

[Rallicus]

You guys are really discussing the verisimilitude of a timeline that spans a billion years? Really?

It's a tabletop setting. If you can't pull back and ignore your preconceived notions of how things may or may not have worked on Earth versus how things work in a setting like this... well, that's pretty dang nitpicky.

That said, I like the artwork. I like the setting, even if it is a cliche "uncover ancient technologies from our ancestors" sort of thing. I like that he emphasizes storytelling over mechanics, because those are the type of tabletop systems I enjoy. I like that he claims generating encounters and the like won't be bogged down by convoluted stats.

That's about the extent of my interest though. I cringed when he brought up the spell caster class, because he essentially said that they harness what this whole setting is all about. So what does the warrior have to gain? Or the "jack of all trades?"

I'd like to think that Cooke would pleasantly surprise me, but I doubt it. Will it be Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit 2.0? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFuMpYTyRjw) Or will it be completely different?

I'm leaning towards the former. When you start a new tabletop game setting and introduce a fighter class and a wizard class right from the start, you're already using something that's been done to death.

Hopefully I'm wrong.

[The Glyphstone]

It's not a Monte Cook game if wizards aren't better than fighters.

[Cieyrin]

It's not a Monte Cook game if wizards aren't better than fighters.

Iron Heroes was published under Monte's Malhavoc Press, though that's more an exception to the rule that confirms it.

[Ranos]

Arcanists are ridiculously strong in Iron Heroes, don't let the sidebars and the fluff tell you otherwise.

[Knaight]

You guys are really discussing the verisimilitude of a timeline that spans a billion years? Really?

It's a tabletop setting. If you can't pull back and ignore your preconceived notions of how things may or may not have worked on Earth versus how things work in a setting like this... well, that's pretty dang nitpicky.

If it is so poorly designed that the solution to the verisimilitude problems is to just ignore them, then we have a problem.

[Lord_Gareth]

If it is so poorly designed that the solution to the verisimilitude problems is to just ignore them, then we have a problem.

This. Just...this. Monte Cook needs to get out of game design and into something more his speed.

Like, y'know, janitorial work.

[The Glyphstone]

Iron Heroes was published under Monte's Malhavoc Press, though that's more an exception to the rule that confirms it.


Arcanists are ridiculously strong in Iron Heroes, don't let the sidebars and the fluff tell you otherwise.

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/ironheroesmotivator.jpg

[Cieyrin]

Arcanists are ridiculously strong in Iron Heroes, don't let the sidebars and the fluff tell you otherwise.

It's such a last minute mess, though. The Spirtualist had an actually well thought out token system that's fairly well balanced with the rest of the classes while being supernatural. The Arcanist has some neat things going for it, the spellcasting is not really one of them. Powerful, probably. A headache it is, though.

[Tyndmyr]

I will reserve full judgment until I see the whole thing. However, it's already doing the thing I hate most in fantasy - applying wildly absurd timescales that make no sense.

I mean, a BILLION years in the future? And there have only been eight empires in that time? How does anything even look human anymore? Evolution should have rendered the whole damned planet totally unrecognizable.

A billion years ago, we were still in the Precambrian era. A billion years is twice as long as there have been things that aren't microscopic on our planet. A billion years is a truly staggering, amazing, impossible amount of time.

And in that time, there have been eight human empires. Each of those eight empires has spanned an amount of time more commonly associated with geological periods than empires.

Argh! :smallannoyed:

It's worse than that. In a billion years, the sun will be about 10% hotter and brighter than now. IE, the earth should no longer be sustaining water. Or, yknow, life.

So, my assumption is that he tossed on billion because the word sounded awesome.

[kyoryu]

It's worse than that. In a billion years, the sun will be about 10% hotter and brighter than now. IE, the earth should no longer be sustaining water. Or, yknow, life.

So, my assumption is that he tossed on billion because the word sounded awesome.

Yeah. Science fantasy.

http://www.montecookgames.com/science-fantasy/

He pretty clearly is thinking of this setting more in terms of John Carter of Mars or Star Wars than 2001.

Civilization on Earth a billion years from now is just about as realistic as the Force, or people on a planet with slightly lower gravity being able to defeat whole regiments because they're used to slightly higher gravity.

It fails entirely as science fiction, but I think it's more fair to judge the setting in the appropriate genre.

Now, if you don't like science fantasy, that's fine, too. But judging a science fantasy setting based on science fiction standards is like saying that Saw is bad because there's no romance.

I probably won't like the game either.... but for entirely different reasons :smallbiggrin:

[eggs]

Yeah, saying his fantasy-in-space world takes place a million years in the future is fine. It's silly, but that's how it works.

But the followup claims that the billion years were carefully considered and that they only make the game more realistic is just such a familiar move from Cook *cough*IvoryTowerGameDesign*cough* that I have to roll my eyes.

[Beleriphon]

It fails entirely as science fiction, but I think it's more fair to judge the setting in the appropriate genre.

Now, if you don't like science fantasy, that's fine, too. But judging a science fantasy setting based on science fiction standards is like saying that Saw is bad because there's no romance.

I probably won't like the game either.... but for entirely different reasons :smallbiggrin:

I think this is more the Doctor Who of gaming. Because Doctor Who is just silly from a science stand point. I cannot accept as science that 5 trillion years into the future at the end of the universe human look human, and speak British English. A science fantasy story Doctor Who works spectacularly as a way to just do whatever the writers want to make an entertaining story.

[Sith_Happens]

I think this is more the Doctor Who of gaming. Because Doctor Who is just silly from a science stand point. I cannot accept as science that 5 trillion years into the future at the end of the universe human look human, and speak British English. A science fantasy story Doctor Who works spectacularly as a way to just do whatever the writers want to make an entertaining story.

To be fair, the "speak British English" part is probably just the TARDIS's translator at work.

[oxybe]

to also be a bit more fair, i remember that episode and the doctor did say that humans have evolved quite a bit.

the humans of 5 trillion years in the future are not the same biological humans of now... they just keep going back to the same standard physical shape we all know, love and easily relate to.

:smalltongue:

[kyoryu]

to also be a bit more fair, i remember that episode and the doctor did say that humans have evolved quite a bit.

the humans of 5 trillion years in the future are not the same biological humans of now... they just keep going back to the same standard physical shape we all know, love and easily relate to.

:smalltongue:

Well at least that's all thought out in advance, and not a paper-thin rationalization.

:smallbiggrin:

[oxybe]

of course.

:smallbiggrin:

[The Glyphstone]

Dr. Who handwaving its science? Perish the thought!:smallcool:

[Friv]

It was silly in Doctor Who, too.

Anyway, my complaint about it is that it denotes a certain mindset to me, which is the mindset of an eight-year-old playing with his toys. "Ooh, ooh, what's the biggest number I can think of? Oh! A billion!" And yeah, I believe that blog post where he says "We just wanted to excite people and make them think", but it doesn't excite me, and the only thing that it makes me think is that wild exaggeration is going to be the order of the day here.

I suppose I shouldn't be that surprised that I'm underwhelmed by a Monte Cook product, but I keep expecting that the last several times were just a fluke, since he's so popular with someone.

[Knaight]

It was silly in Doctor Who, too.

Anyway, my complaint about it is that it denotes a certain mindset to me, which is the mindset of an eight-year-old playing with his toys. "Ooh, ooh, what's the biggest number I can think of? Oh! A billion!" And yeah, I believe that blog post where he says "We just wanted to excite people and make them think", but it doesn't excite me, and the only thing that it makes me think is that wild exaggeration is going to be the order of the day here.

I suppose I shouldn't be that surprised that I'm underwhelmed by a Monte Cook product, but I keep expecting that the last several times were just a fluke, since he's so popular with someone.

I'm inclined to agree with all of this. I'd also note that there is room for larger than life settings, but Numenera looks like it is wildly inconsistent on that front. There is a glorious past, yes, but it's undercut by how long it is. If these civilizations had risen and fallen over the course of 500,000 years (which is still a huge amount) they would be that much more impressive. The billion years is wildly out of proportion with everything else we've been shown in the game.

[Dienekes]

Huh, a guy who worked on D&D writes bad fluff. Ya don't say.

Honestly I've always been far more interested in mechanics. Because unless I'm playing Paranoia I write my own fluff anyway.

[oxybe]

his [Cook] fluff tends to be generic fantasy fare when he's working within the D&D scope we're familiar seeing his name attached to, so i'm a bit curious what he can do when left unchecked. what i've seen is rather meh-inducing.

now, i'll be entirely honest and say my own fluff is rather horrid, which is why when i do write something to replace current lore (as i find the generic D&D/tolkien fantasy overdone), it's usually stolen wholesale, had the serial numbers filed off and given a new coat of paint.

i'm really more interested in the mechanics of the system and if they work for the stories i want to tell.

unfortunately, it's a Monte Cook system, so i'm firmly in "expecting a train wreck, hoping to be surprised" as i'm most familiar with his D&D stuff.

[TheHarshax]

Correction: He does not say 'eight empires', he says 'eight civilizations'.

And he doesn't say they are human.

*~*

Continue that process through four more great civilizations, and yes, this world won't be recognizable at all. If there are surviving elements of the previous civilizations, then there might actually be humans (or something that once was human) available to play, but I'm chomping at the bit to play a crossbreed cockroach/living plant with evolved cybernetic implants that carries around his own portable sun.



This reminds of Mutha Oith (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/91069/Low-Life)

[kyoryu]

The proposed book contents:

http://www.montecookgames.com/very-rough-outline/

(I just keep getting these updates on Facebook through a mutual friend)

[Raoul Duke]

I've never encountered any issues with Cook's system design before. What are these issues people refer to? It sounds like there are a few people who dislike his designs - I, and most people I know, consider Cook's 3rd edition designs as the single best thing to happen to D&D, and in turn, the entire RPG industry benefited from it. D&D was clunky, had no unified mechanics, and had no systems in the core for handling skills and social situations to speak of, and with the 3e PHB alone all that was addressed. How is it, then, that people feel he has anything but an excellent track record?

[The Glyphstone]

I've never encountered any issues with Cook's system design before. What are these issues people refer to? It sounds like there are a few people who dislike his designs - I, and most people I know, consider Cook's 3rd edition designs as the single best thing to happen to D&D, and in turn, the entire RPG industry benefited from it. D&D was clunky, had no unified mechanics, and had no systems in the core for handling skills and social situations to speak of, and with the 3e PHB alone all that was addressed. How is it, then, that people feel he has anything but an excellent track record?

Because he's also the primary cause of the massive disparity in power levels between mundane sword-slinging warriors and spellcasters, a gap that wasn't nearly as vast pre-3rd edition and the results of which have been a brutal legacy of arguments, flame wars, and divisive opinions to this day. And that's even without touching his proclaimed 'Ivory Tower Game Design' ideals.

[crimson77]

I am actually really excited about this project. I decided to pledge money to get his ebooks. I think this might be a great system for PBP and he seems to have some interesting ideas. I agree with some posters "a billion years" does seem like a weird number, I would have preferred him to use "in the distant future" or something to that effect. However, I think he has some good ideas and I feel the need for a change from 3x that is less complicated. I like that he is releasing a lot on ebook/pdf.

I think this might be a really cool project. I am more excited about this than 5e.

[Starbuck_II]

It's such a last minute mess, though. The Spirtualist had an actually well thought out token system that's fairly well balanced with the rest of the classes while being supernatural. The Arcanist has some neat things going for it, the spellcasting is not really one of them. Powerful, probably. A headache it is, though.

Best part, you can get more than 100% real with illusions as an Arcanist. Thus, mastering illusions means you mastered every other school (you make an illusionary version).

The idea was sound, but implemention not.

Numeria sounds like Points of Light (4E's Setting)

[Knaight]

I am actually really excited about this project. I decided to pledge money to get his ebooks. I think this might be a great system for PBP and he seems to have some interesting ideas. I agree with some posters "a billion years" does seem like a weird number, I would have preferred him to use "in the distant future" or something to that effect. However, I think he has some good ideas and I feel the need for a change from 3x that is less complicated. I like that he is releasing a lot on ebook/pdf.

I think this might be a really cool project. I am more excited about this than 5e.
Feeling the need for a change from 3.x that is less complicated leaves pretty much the entire industry as an option. There's no reason to stick with something made by someone largely responsible for 3.x being complicated in the first place.

[Lord Ensifer]

I just checked it out, and my first impression was seeing this under "Gameplay":

"Numenera gameplay involves a simple d20 roll that determines success or failure for any kind of action. To avoid a lot of cumbersome math at the game table, there aren’t a lot of modifiers to this roll. Instead, skills and other assets reduce the difficulty of a task."

So instead of adding modifiers to the roll, we add them to the DC. Streamlines things a little, I guess, but not really avoiding "cumbersome math."

[crimson77]

Feeling the need for a change from 3.x that is less complicated leaves pretty much the entire industry as an option. There's no reason to stick with something made by someone largely responsible for 3.x being complicated in the first place.

Seems like we are just coming from different perspectives. I grew up playing basic D&D then 1e and 2e (kind of a hybrid between the systems). I took a break when WOTC took over and started playing again at the end of 3e start of 3.5e. I have enjoyed 3.x, I thought it was a necessary step from 2e; however, I have tired of it. I looked at 4e (got the first few books) but it never felt right to me. I liked where PF has been going but it feels more of the same. I have played a few other systems but gotten tired of them or they just were not a good fit.

I like some of the ideas that Mr. Cook is presenting on his blog and on the kick starter page. I think he has started to come full circle from where he might have been during the 3.x years. While I don't think it will be a perfect system but something new with an interesting campaign setting. I do share Mr. Cooks beliefs that things should not be "balanced." I think that characters should have a range of abilities and classes should be different (and at different power levels). I know this idea is controversial on this forum. However, it really comes down to personal preference for the player (and the group). In addition, I can understand and respect your decision to disagree with me.

[Knaight]

So instead of adding modifiers to the roll, we add them to the DC. Streamlines things a little, I guess, but not really avoiding "cumbersome math."

Or we subtract them from the DC, depending on whether it is a roll under or roll over system. It streamlines absolutely nothing.

[The Glyphstone]

Seems like we are just coming from different perspectives. I grew up playing basic D&D then 1e and 2e (kind of a hybrid between the systems). I took a break when WOTC took over and started playing again at the end of 3e start of 3.5e. I have enjoyed 3.x, I thought it was a necessary step from 2e; however, I have tired of it. I looked at 4e (got the first few books) but it never felt right to me. I liked where PF has been going but it feels more of the same. I have played a few other systems but gotten tired of them or they just were not a good fit.

I like some of the ideas that Mr. Cook is presenting on his blog and on the kick starter page. I think he has started to come full circle from where he might have been during the 3.x years. While I don't think it will be a perfect system but something new with an interesting campaign setting. I do share Mr. Cooks beliefs that things should not be "balanced." I think that characters should have a range of abilities and classes should be different (and at different power levels). I know this idea is controversial on this forum. However, it really comes down to personal preference for the player (and the group). In addition, I can understand and respect your decision to disagree with me.

It's not so much that everything should be balanced, it's that 3.x, and Cook, were somewhat deceitful when they wrote it by presenting it as such. Games like, say, Ars Magica are completely up-front about the fact that casters stomp mundanes, and it works because the party is expected to be entirely casters - anyone playing a meat-monkey in Ars Magica does so fully aware they will be inferior most of the time.

D&D didn't do that - it was written such that the Fighter, Monk, and Wizard were all advertised as being equally powerful and effective characters, highlighting Cook's 'Ivory Tower Game Design' ideal of building deliberately bad options into the game without telling players, so that smart players are rewarded by finding and avoiding said traps. If your game is honest that out of W,X, Y, and Z, X is the weakest/least flexible option but presents it as a choice anyways for completeness or the sake of a challenge, that's fine, but outright lying to your players and saying W,X,Y, and Z are equally good and coming out years later to claim it was a deliberate choice you covered up isn't fine. (personally, I think I.T.G.D. is nonsense and he was just making up excuses after the fact for being bad at balance, but YMMV.)

[Knaight]

D&D didn't do that - it was written such that the Fighter, Monk, and Wizard were all advertised as being equally powerful and effective characters, highlighting Cook's 'Ivory Tower Game Design' ideal of building deliberately bad options into the game without telling players, so that smart players are rewarded by finding and avoiding said traps.

That's one interpretation. The other one is that Monte Cook has no idea how game balance works, accidentally broke the game in a fairly spectacular manner, then made up "Ivory Tower Game Design" wholesale instead of admitting that he screwed up. Given the way he's doubled down on the billion years nonsense, this does fit within a consistent pattern. Plus, he decried Ivory Tower Game Design, and said it was a mistake - then he published Iron Heroes, which was also horribly unbalanced.

[The Glyphstone]

Like I said, I personally consider Ivory Tower Game Design to be a load of nonsense cooked up in an attempt at retroactive butt-covering, in the classic comedic sense of slipping and falling then insisting you meant to do that, only with the added touch of claiming it was an impromptu improvisational breakdancing move.

[kyoryu]

highlighting Cook's 'Ivory Tower Game Design' ideal of building deliberately bad options into the game without telling players, so that smart players are rewarded by finding and avoiding said traps.

I look at it a slightly different way. The "ITGD" as you call it, really is to reward players who want to play the game "Look What I Can Build". That's a pretty popular subgame, as evidenced by M:tG.

The problem is, IMHO, that a lot of people don't necessarily want that in an RPG, and especially not when the "traps" are iconic classes like the Fighter. And there's a question on how much you want to emphasize "Look What I Can Build" versus "Let's Play Chess". The two are pretty diametrically opposed.

[wumpus]

It's not so much that everything should be balanced, it's that 3.x, and Cook, were somewhat deceitful when they wrote it by presenting it as such.
...
D&D [3.x] didn't do that - it was written such that the Fighter, Monk, and Wizard were all advertised as being equally powerful and effective characters [deletia]

Note that AD&D (and presumably 0e) were considerably different. The idea was that high-level wizards were incredibly overpowered (and said as much in the Players Handbook). Low level magic users (they weren't called wizards until something like 12th level) were rather wimpy (OW! My hit point). This is indeed a 3.x mistake. I would go so far as to claim that the AD&D method was a mistake as well, as characters would often be made on the fly for an adventure, forcing players into "unearned" power levels.

My take on Ivory Tower Game Design is a bit different. I strongly believe that the world should be an important part of the game, and maintaining the [suspended dis]belief in that world should be high on the priorities of the DM and the game designer. Allowing the game to emerge from the rules helps that, and should not be discarded out of hand (no comment on MC's motives on his essay).

I would recommend that a game designer keep separate sets of books while attempting ITGD. The first book would the published books, the second would only be available to game designers for updates (and cover what is expected to emerge from this game). This requires serious playtesting and is likely to be impossible in many corporate enviornments an for plenty of game designers simply because it is too easy to stick your fingers in your ears and claim "the secret books describe what real players will do, I'm ignoring the testing". In the olden days, it would be perfectly fine to include the entire secret document in the DMG, but they have since discovered the joy of selling a complete set of books to every player. I still think that the DMG (and online errata) would be a good place to include any hints necessary to determine RAI for various controversies.

The second failure of ITGD in 3.x is the metagame itself (done to death in various threads that describe it). If there is nothing a non-optimized PC can do in game to match the output of an optimized PC (presumably at a lower playing skill level) then the game failed hard. Having bad feats adds a certain verisimilitude to the game (and should be replaceable by newbies who took them by mistake), nerfing entire archtypes (presumably via "Timmy classes") is a disaster. The setting is Swords and Sorcery, not just Sorcery.

I would claim that ITGD was a disaster for both of these reasons. First, the vast power balance between classes meant that players in a group had better stay on the same power tiers, wiping out 80% of available classes. Second, in order to reach that tier, plenty of classes needed to follow an arcane set of improbable choices, thus making the world seem contrived to fit such arbitrary rules. In 3.x, ITGD didn't provide a world that operated under its own principles, it provided a metagame where its "heroes" spontaneously obtained arbitrary skills until they suddenly merged into superpowers. ITGD can't even claim to sell more books to power games/munchkins: you can look up various forums on the internet what the OP parts are whether or not the game deigns to tell you what they are.

[Morty]

It would be very difficult to persuade me that "Ivory Tower Game Design" was anything other than a half-baked attempt at convincing everyone that he had totally meant to do that.
And if it isn't, then it's an example of utterly horrible game design. Either all options available to the players are equal or they aren't. Both options are valid for different sorts of games. But claiming they're equal even though they're not so that "skilled players" are "rewarded"... well. Do you see people selling customers dishwashers that turn out to be refrigerators and claim they did it on purpose to reward perceptive people?
Having a certain category of characters be more powerful, versatile, efficient etc. is fine... as long as you don't expect them to be members of a group of PCs on an equal footing with other categories.
Not sure how it applies to Cook's new system, of course. I gave the blog a rather cursory read.

[erikun]

I've never encountered any issues with Cook's system design before. What are these issues people refer to? It sounds like there are a few people who dislike his designs - I, and most people I know, consider Cook's 3rd edition designs as the single best thing to happen to D&D, and in turn, the entire RPG industry benefited from it. D&D was clunky, had no unified mechanics, and had no systems in the core for handling skills and social situations to speak of, and with the 3e PHB alone all that was addressed. How is it, then, that people feel he has anything but an excellent track record?
I have the exact opposite reaction to D&D3. While I think that the ideas for D&D3 are great, the implementation was just terrible. A large amount of AD&D was functional, if awkward, and the designers at WotC (not just Cook) really didn't seem to understand how the system worked before trying to fit it into a system of standardization. This is how we ended up with something like 25 CON in AD&D adding +63 HP to a 20th level Warrior (non-Warriors only got +18 HP) and being quite difficult to achieve, while 25 CON in D&D3 adding +140 HP to all 20th level characters and being quite easy to achieve.

The skill system was another example. It was pretty much taken straight from GURPS and stuck in a level-based system, but the entire system just ends up awkward and does not function the way it seems to be intended. The d20 systems that do make it work - Mutants & Masterminds, for example - ultimately end up bypassing the whole system to make it functional.

Perhaps the designers shouldn't be blamed too much for the whole mess. I mean, I don't think any of them were part of TSR before WotC bought the D&D brand name. They clearly needed to make a new system and didn't have the time to play a bunch of ideas to see which ones worked. However, saying it is understandable that D&D3 is a mess isn't the same as saying that D&D3 isn't a mess.

[kyoryu]

I have the exact opposite reaction to D&D3. While I think that the ideas for D&D3 are great, the implementation was just terrible. A large amount of AD&D was functional, if awkward, and the designers at WotC (not just Cook) really didn't seem to understand how the system worked before trying to fit it into a system of standardization. This is how we ended up with something like 25 CON in AD&D adding +63 HP to a 20th level Warrior (non-Warriors only got +18 HP) and being quite difficult to achieve, while 25 CON in D&D3 adding +140 HP to all 20th level characters and being quite easy to achieve.

The skill system was another example. It was pretty much taken straight from GURPS and stuck in a level-based system, but the entire system just ends up awkward and does not function the way it seems to be intended. The d20 systems that do make it work - Mutants & Masterminds, for example - ultimately end up bypassing the whole system to make it functional.

Perhaps the designers shouldn't be blamed too much for the whole mess. I mean, I don't think any of them were part of TSR before WotC bought the D&D brand name. They clearly needed to make a new system and didn't have the time to play a bunch of ideas to see which ones worked. However, saying it is understandable that D&D3 is a mess isn't the same as saying that D&D3 isn't a mess.

While I'm not a 3.x fan by any means, I'm a bit kinder than that.

I think 3.x came at a weird time, and had a weird mission. RPGs had evolved (note: I don't apply a value judgement to this, simply pointing out mutation over time) from the first days of D&D, and a lot of rules in D&D harkened back to that time. Even worse, the "metagame" if you will, of D&D - how actual sessions were planned and played, had evolved far, far more than even the rules had.

3x was in the awkward position of trying to maintain D&D continuity while simultaneously being more appropriate to modern sensibilities.

I'm not even sure that they really intended for some of the build craziness that was seen - xp penalties for multiclassing existed for a reason, after all.

I do think that in their eagerness to clarify and simplify the system, they missed a lot of reasons why a lot of those rules were in place. I'm not really sure why that happened. Maybe some of these issues don't really show up if you play the game "as intended," forgetting that new players don't have an "as intended".

[Hiro Protagonest]

I do share Mr. Cooks beliefs that things should not be "balanced." I think that characters should have a range of abilities and classes should be different (and at different power levels). I know this idea is controversial on this forum. However, it really comes down to personal preference for the player (and the group). In addition, I can understand and respect your decision to disagree with me.

If you want something like that, you should at least attempt to keep martial classes relevant.

A good way of making spells stronger than swords is how Berserk does it. The spellcaster in that is what manages to win the day. But spells are lengthy, and spellcasters are vulnerable. They need the warrior to protect them.

A worse way of making spells stronger than swords is how Buffy the Vampire Slayer does it. Sure, Buffy can take down monsters. But Willow can just tell reality what to do.

The worst way of making spells stronger than swords is the way D&D 3.X does it. A 14th level wizard can stack layers of protection, and has enough spells written down to deal with almost anything given a day of preparation. A 14th level paladin can't take down appropriate-level evil outsiders, because, surprise, they get abilities that do the same thing as high-level spells.