Quote from: Xavier Onassiss;863708Hostility is a strong word, and I don't "hate" Monte Cook, but ever since he wrote this worthless drivel I've paid him no attention whatsoever.

WTF?!!! How is that 'drivel'? It's a guy who writes games discussing his own changing tastes and where that has led him to in regards to his own work.
As far as I can tell he's not making pronouncements of what should/shouldn't be... just what he'd like and what he'd like to do.

QuoteDude's got problems.

How does that blog entry lead you to that conclusion?

Quote from: Simlasa;863710WTF?!!! How is that 'drivel'? It's a guy who writes games discussing his own changing tastes and where that has led him to in regards to his own work.
As far as I can tell he's not making pronouncements of what should/shouldn't be... just what he'd like and what he'd like to do.

How does that blog entry lead you to that conclusion?

Clearly the dude has problems.

Quote from: Simlasa;863710WTF?!!! How is that 'drivel'? It's a guy who writes games discussing his own changing tastes and where that has led him to in regards to his own work.
As far as I can tell he's not making pronouncements of what should/shouldn't be... just what he'd like and what he'd like to do.

How does that blog entry lead you to that conclusion?

The dude has problems?


Not the Monty Dude, the Xavier O. dude.

Quote from: Xavier Onassiss;863708Hostility is a strong word, and I don't "hate" Monte Cook, but ever since he wrote this worthless drivel I've paid him no attention whatsoever.

Dude's got problems.

I'm curious what you mean by problems? In that link he describes some personal tastes regarding character generation and pregens and some plans for how he'd like to design chargen for his games in the future...was this the correct link?

Quote from: Simlasa;863710WTF?!!! How is that 'drivel'? It's a guy who writes games discussing his own changing tastes and where that has led him to in regards to his own work.
As far as I can tell he's not making pronouncements of what should/shouldn't be... just what he'd like and what he'd like to do.

How does that blog entry lead you to that conclusion?

Yeah, I just read it and I'm baffled as well.

To OP: envy

Quote from: Simlasa;863710WTF?!!! How is that 'drivel'? It's a guy who writes games discussing his own changing tastes and where that has led him to in regards to his own work.
As far as I can tell he's not making pronouncements of what should/shouldn't be... just what he'd like and what he'd like to do.

How does that blog entry lead you to that conclusion?

Well in point 2 he mentions a player being bewildered by character options in 3e. He neglects to mention, that as one of the authors of 3e, he was responsible for that large array of options. However, I think that what that post is trying to say is that age and experience has lead him to change his opinions on complex character creation processes.

Quote from: yojimbouk;863752Well in point 2 he mentions a player being bewildered by character options in 3e. He neglects to mention, that as one of the authors of 3e, he was responsible for that large array of options. However, I think that what that post is trying to say is that age and experience has lead him to change his opinions on complex character creation processes.

  Designers can change opinions. It happened with Cook, it happened with Mearls, and I'm sure there's plenty of others.

I did find the post a touch ironic, since Monte started his career working on Rolemaster and Champions.

Quote from: TristramEvans;863731Yeah, I just read it and I'm baffled as well.

For someone that writes for a living, Monte Cook doesn't communicate that well in his blog. I think what he meant was:

"I dislike locking a character into a background that may not match the campaign being played. I also dislike having three reams of paper books full of, too many, choices about the character."

I think what he wrote was:

"Character generation sucks. I want to make stuff up as I play the game."

The latter was written first and more clearly, while the former was not as clearly or prominently addressed.

If you make it to the latter half of the post, what he says isn't silly. He says in his games he'll provide pre-generated characters (which almost everyone does), fast chargen options (which are also very popular), and won't "front-load" everything, so you can still discover something about your character during play.

Hmm. Lot's of games have setups to allow discovering your character's hidden/forgotten past, or overcoming one chargen option like being wanted/hunted, and replacing it with a new problem (non-perfect prosthetic limb?) that could engender future game scenarios. None of which, written more clearly, would cause too much brouhaha.

There are some issues, to me, with his reasoning. Narrative stuff aside, he is also assuming the chargen is totally unlinked to the setting or campaign--and that the campaign is horribly rigid scenario-wise. I don't want to play kill everything all the time scenarios. Nor do I want to play diplomat scenarios all the time. Sometimes I want to play Columbo scenarios and sometimes Stainless Steel Rat scenarios.

I or the players I run would actually have a lot of fun running a diplomat (Cook's example of a possibly inappropriate background) investigating a Cthulhu cult (with no occult knowledge, Cook's example) or being one of the survivors of a crash on an unexplored world having to figure out how to get food (without trapping experience, Cook's example).

But I think that is one of the differences between narrative players and non-narrative. We (non-narrative) like solving problems given a fixed set of tools and resources, as opposed to (narrative) writing ourselves out of the problem by creating on-the-fly tools and resources. [I don't think I did the narrative side justice there, but I tried...] We'd all be working on the books we're writing if we wanted to do the latter.

To us it is fun playing a Traveller PC who could be an aristocrat or a drifter or a hunter and taking them through mysteries or diplomacy or a mob hit or a non-violent rescue mission with the skills they have available.

A lot of people think out loud on their blogs. What I see are folks reading way too deeply into one man's reflection of the day. Maybe he changed his mind, maybe he hates character creation, maybe he has some more nuanced position and didn't convey it well to his audience, whatever the case, I still don't get the hatred it prompts in people. There is a big difference between reading a blog post and disagreeing with it or feeling like it is a bit confused and "dude's got problems".

Also with a guy like Monte, he isn't writing with narrow sections for he internet in mind. I don't think he is the type of person who really pays much attention to the sections of of RPG audience who have emerged in forums and the like over the years, so you don't find him writing defensively against accidentally using a particular word that sets one group or another off. To me that isn't a clarity issues with his writing. He just isn't interested in some of the distinctions people get upset about online.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;863766He just isn't interested in some of the distinctions people get upset about online.

We so need more of this.

Quote from: Tod13;863763For someone that writes for a living, Monte Cook doesn't communicate that well in his blog. I think what he meant was:

"I dislike locking a character into a background that may not match the campaign being played. I also dislike having three reams of paper books full of, too many, choices about the character."

That's what I read him as saying.

QuoteI think what he wrote was:

"Character generation sucks. I want to make stuff up as I play the game."

Nope. I didn't get this interpretation at all.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;863766A lot of people think out loud on their blogs. What I see are folks reading way too deeply into one man's reflection of the day.

I thought thinking out loud, rambling conversations, and nattering to yourself was the point of having a blog. Apparently I've been blogging all wrong.

The obsessive Kremlinology style analysis lavished on every word written by anyone associated (past or present) with WoTC, is so absurd that if someone wants to avoid having sinister intent read into what they write, their only option is to write nothing at all.

Quote from: Tod13;863763For someone that writes for a living, Monte Cook doesn't communicate that well in his blog.

As someone who has been reading for most of his life, it all seemed pretty clear to me.

Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;862788"Liberals" today slut-shame as much as conservatives ever did, if not more. It's sick and neurotic and weird and makes me almost embarrassed to be in the same camp as them on many social issues.

America, you have changed in very short time indeed!
I was there for 3.5 and the web-wars. I followed the Monte Cook shennnigans quite closely at the time.
But this identity politics thing? Wasn't around five years ago in the strength it is now. Very strange.
Constructivism is onto something if you guys now reframe that old debate  into the current framework.

Or maybe I missed some context of such posts?

@topic: I dislike Monte Cook because of his blandness. More specifically, I was a fan of Monte until I got my copy of Ptolus. There cannot be a more boring "awesome" place. It is like somebody actively tried to make sth. awesome and ended up with...original but artificial blandness.

The best simile I can find is Supertramp. Yes, Monte Cook is the Supertramp of RPGs. To me.