Think Like A Game Designer - Monte Cook — Crafting Immersive RPGs, Mastering Game Narratives, Refining Dungeons & Dragons, and the Nuances of Effective Playtesting (#24)

Episode Date: January 28, 2021

Monte Cook is a legend among roleplaying game designers. Monte has worked on hundreds of roleplaying products. He is probably best known for his work on the 3rd Edition of Dungeons & Dragons, Planescape, Ptolus, and Arcana Evolved. In addition, his own games Numenera, the Cypher Systems, and Invisible Sun, have won numerous awards. In this episode, we’ll discuss Monte’s philosophies on developing roleplaying games, the importance of clear rules and good writing, and what it takes to bring new people into strange and wondrous worlds. Enjoy! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justingarydesign.substack.com/subscribe

Hello and welcome to Think Like a Game Designer. I'm your host, Justin Gary. In this podcast, I'll be having conversations with brilliant game designers from across the industry with a goal of finding universal principles that anyone can apply in their creative life. You could find episodes and more at think like a game designer.com. Welcome to season three of Think Like a Game Designer. I'm very excited to continue to bring you more amazing guests, design lessons, and tips about the gaming industry. But I also want to share something. new and exciting that I'm launching this year. In addition to the podcast and the book for Think Like a Game Designer, I'm also launching a masterclass for those that really want to go deep into game design and work with an incredible group of people to take your projects to the next level. We've already had an incredible beta group go through the course last year. It includes video lessons for me, access to an exclusive Discord group, monthly masterminds where we can dive deep into the actual problems that you have with your own. own designs and really walk you through everything that it takes to go from initial idea,

whether you have a project you really want to work on, or you have no idea where to start, all the way through to getting your game published, whether that's launching it via Kickstarter, launching your own company, selling it to a publisher, or whatever you want to do to make your game design dreams come true. If you think you might be the right fit for this course, go to think like a game designer.com to learn more. In today's episode, I speak with Monty Cook. Monty is a legendary RPG designer who worked on not only the third edition of Dungeons and Dragons and helped revitalize that entire brand and the RPG concept and D20 system

in general, but has also runs his own company, has launched several hugely successful brands of his own, including Numenera, which had over $500,000 Kickstarter campaign and tons of other really interesting, very unique worlds and incredible storytelling capacity. In the episode, we talk a lot about the process of designing these games, what it was like to be able to work on third edition and the process of taking something that was so beloved as Dungeons and Dragons and being able to revise it in the way that they did. We talk about being able to run your own company creating RPGs and how you think about marketing in the modern world and how you can really treat marketing as education of your audience and the way that you're able to boil

things down into elevator pitches. We talk a lot about empathy and how you build empathy with your audience and being focused on what players do. And I even pick his brain at the end of this episode about how one might make an Ascension RPG and what things I should be thinking about when I do that. For those you that are listening, what would you think about me making an Ascension RPG? If you think that would be something I should be spending time when you might be interested, go ahead and message me either on Twitter at Justin underscore Gary or any of the other channels where you can normally hear me. But outside of that issue, honestly, this has so many universal principles that are going to be valuable to everybody. The core

things. Monty speaks from a lifetime of experience in RPGs, but in reality, these principles, as you'll know, if you're listening to this podcast for long enough, are universal, and it's just great to get to hear them. And a lot of the really clever and interesting ways that Monty frames them, I found it incredibly valuable. It was a great process that I'm actually going to go start working on some of those design ideas right now. But while I do that, you can listen to my talk with Monty Cook. Hello and welcome. I'm here with Monty Cook. Monty, it's great to get to chat with you.

Hi, yeah, it's great, great on my end as well. Excellent. It's always good when it works out that way. You know, so you have, we have kind of, you know, had similar connections and, you know, crossed paths in a variety of ways, but never really gotten to have a chat. So I'm excited and I know there are actually members of my team who are flipping out that I'm getting to talk to you right now. If you have made many, many happy hours for many people that I know and love. So thank you for them.

I love to hear that. You know, for one of the things that, you know, I always try to start these podcasts off with is kind of starting with your early career or even kind of before that, like what kind of got you into games and into design? Because I think for a lot of people where they see where you're at now, it's really hard to picture, picture a little Monty and what kind of brought you from there to hear. Yeah, well, you know, games is something that, you know, I almost feel like I was born for it, which by that I mean, I don't even remember not making up games.

Like, I can remember being very, very small and just like taking one of those pieces of, you know, white paper and drawing squares around the edges like a monopoly board or some other kind of board game and making up my own board games or whatever. It was just something that I've always been really driven to do. I got into role-playing games. I started with war games like a lot of people do. And I've heard more than one person have this same experience where just like out of the gate, I want, like, as soon as I learned what, like, war games and things like that were, you know, which was a step up from, you know, monopoly or sorry or whatever. I just went straight into the deep end and bought myself, uh, the rise and fall of the Third Reich. Wow.

You know, you're not messing around. Yeah. And of course, I couldn't make heads or tails out of it because I was, you know, I don't know, eight. So, uh, that's amazing. I think I was able to return it to this store and I got squad leader instead, which still, you know, that's still quite a big thing to bite off, but not quite as big. But anyway, by about age 11, I had learned that the existence of role-playing games, you know, I just like overheard a couple of kids talking about, you know, something to do with dungeons and graph paper and like a mess. Magic Crown. And I had no idea what they were talking about, but I knew I wanted in. And so I dove deep into that and really have never stopped.

And that was a long, long time ago. Sure. And did you start with Dungeons and Dragons or something else when you were getting first into it? Dungeons and Dragons. You know, we're talking 1977 here. So there weren't actually a ton of options. Right. people start with D&D. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's as I've sort of gone through the arc of, you know,

dozens of these podcasts, they're overwhelming majority of inspiration points for the people who are now, you know, the top designers is either Dungeons and Dragons or Magic the Gathering as the top answers of like, oh, my head exploded. Now I'm going to do these things. And it just depends on their generation, generally speaking. Yes. Okay. So then, you know, you got, you, you got, You've been passionate about games your whole life. You, you know, jump right into the deep end as an eight-year-old playing rise and fall in the third, right? Which is amazing. That's fantastic.

And then find RPGs, and this is the sort of love, then this passion that is there. And so I assume you're immediately starting to just kind of create your own on the side and building your own campaigns. And then that ends up. How does that end up becoming, you know, more serious for you as a career option? all my RPG stuff from the local bookstore and I walked into the bookstore and there was this new adventure module, Dwellers of the Forbidden City, which is what was remarkable to me at the time because it said that the author wasn't Gary Gygax. And I think that was the only RPG author whose name I'd ever seen. But it was someone named David Cook.

and, you know, I thought, hey, that's, that's my name. That's my last name. And it was like the moment when I realized that it was someone's job to make this stuff. Like, I don't think I'd really internalized that. And so, and that was probably about 14. And I just decided then and there, standing in that old B. Dalton bookstore that, that was what I was going to do. And it's what I did. I started, so in college, I started playing a game called Rollmaster, put out by a company called Iron Crown Enterprises. And, you know, for the few people out there who have heard of Rollmaster, you know, it's,

it's an in-depth kind of hardcore millions of tables kind of game. Lots of people call it chartmaster, in fact. And anyway, that was, that was, you know, my game du jour at the time. And a friend of mine, while I was in my third year in college, a friend of mine had gone to the Origins game convention and met with the guys at Iron Crown found out that they were looking for writers and started talking about me. and, you know, and, you know, I mean, everyone thinks that their, that their GM is great and could do this for a living and whatever. So I'm sure they heard that story a million times. But he got their writer's guidelines and whatnot from them and came back home and, you know, that year in college and just said, you know, you're doing this. You have to do this.

And so I gave it a try and put together a proposal for, for, for, a product that I knew that they were already looking for, which was a book of like monsters and magic items and just kind of was in the right place at the right time. So I wrote my first two different published products while I was still in college. And is this, is it correct? So that's the first time you've written something like that or you just had, I mean, you'd written campaigns for your, for your own playgroup prior to that. Right. And I'd done, um, So I have a minor in, well, I guess it's the technical term is I have a focus in creative writing in my English degree. And so I had been doing a lot of creative writing.

And so, you know, writing was something that was very familiar to me. But this was definitely something new. I mean, I did the thing that I think a lot of D&D players did when they were a kid, which is, you know, they took. some adventure and they rode it up making it look like a like a actual module you know but um that hardly counts as anything well you know one of the things i try to do with this podcast is really sort of break down you know the the universal principles right and where things are that are you know sometimes it's it is right place right time but very often there's a lot that's going on underneath the surface that lays the groundwork for that right place right time to be a thing um and and a couple

things that occur to me as I'm listening to your story, right? One is, you know, of course, you are DMing and creating these experiences for friends in your group. And it was actually one of those friends who ended up being the connector that made that happen, right? And so you were without expecting any pay at all, but because it was just something you were passionate about, are creating these great experiences, which, you know, were clearly pretty high-level experiences that then ended up creating an opportunity for you. So I think there's something really interesting there. Of course, that person going to a convention is always something, you know, connecting to the larger community is, and going, when we're able to go to physical conventions, that is doing that,

or being part of online communities, at the very least, is always something that, that I think helps create more possibility of you being in the right place and the right time. And so those are, and then, you know, you were practicing the craft, even in a different format, whether it's in college of writing, how often would you, were you writing every day? Did you have a specific ritual or process? Was there something that, you know, you were using as a, you know, you were using as a, a way to get better or make that something. Because a lot of people that would love, I bet you there's a ton of people right now, they're thinking, oh, my God, I have this game idea, I have this story, I have this campaign. I would love to write it out, but I just can't find the time or I don't

know where to start. Like, what are there, are there tips that maybe you have that could help people there? Well, it, when it comes to RPGs, there's, it's really the marriage of, of a really good solid writing plus game design. And I would say that they are both extremely important. And I know that that's true for all kind of rules writing and whatnot. But I think role-playing games more than most other kinds of games require the ability to create and describe really interesting and evocative. and intriguing sorts of characters and places and things like that.

And it requires, there's a succinctness to it because, you know, people who aren't really skilled writers, they either don't tell you enough or they tell you way too much. And learning to be able to kind of create and, and elaborate on something. thing, but do it just exactly the right amount, right? Because role playing games, I always think, you know, if you're designing an adventure, for example, for a role playing game, you're not

a storyteller. You're creating the tools to make someone else become a storyteller. So there's a, there's kind of this empathy that is required of understanding what the game master who's reading this is going to need to know or if it's a you know if you're writing player facing material right you you've got to understand what is a player what's going to intrigue a player what's going to interest them and then and then what do they need to know and then give them that and really know more than that right because they're going to take what you've created and they're going to put their own creativity into it and and you've got to give some room for that yeah i think that's that's a really actually, you know, profound insight that, you know, that they, they don't know, the mistake of not

telling enough or telling way too much is, is a really great frame. Because, you know, the way I think about it when I'm, when I'm building these sorts of things is you want to put enough hooks out there, right, with some good bait that people want to come in, right? They want to, like, take it. And then from there, you want them to be able to run with it and not feel like they're, they're trapped or They're constrained by what you've built. You want to give them things that make you start thinking and start growing, you know, start being like, oh, wow, I can follow this path or follow that path. But I don't, you know, I don't have to just sort of do exactly what was in the designer's minds.

Right. And that's not an easy thing to do. And it seems like it's even compounded further. You know, I found a lot of RPG systems can be great with the right type of group, right? Like if there's a group that can handle a looser story, they can run with it. There are some groups that really want to have a lot of restrictions and a lot of guidance. And so when you're crafting an RPG, are you thinking about one of those groups in particular?

Is there a way to write it so that people can kind of go as deep as they need to? How do you think about it when you're building these systems and worlds? Well, you know, one of the best pieces of advice that I got early on was from a game designer and editor named Rob Bell who he said, there are people out there who are super creative. They are, you know, they kind of just get role-playing games

and, you know, whatever you put in front of them is, you know, they'll just automatically understand it and it'll be really easy for them. You're not writing for those people, right? You're, those people don't really, they don't need you. Frankly, right?

They're, they're kind of doing it all on their own. So it, it behooves you, I think, as an RPG designer to think about the different kinds of gamers out there. And you can do that in a lot of ways, right? There's kind of like you were getting at. There's people who are, who they just kind of, you know, they're the guy. and they're, they're, or,

or, you know, I'm not trying to be sexist. They're, you know, man or woman. And they, uh,

they want something cool. They're creative and smart and, and, and all that kind of thing. But, you know, they've got a busy job and they've got kids at home and, or they've got school and they're just,

they don't have time to sit down and create a whole thing for their group, a whole campaign, a whole adventure, whatever. And so you're just kind of giving them, something and they're just going to read it and and and use it but but they already kind of know what they're doing and there's so there's that group of people and and those people often want to inject their own creativity into it they want to uh you know kind of go off on their own they want to

have a lot of freedom but then there's people who aren't in that situation and maybe they're brand new. Maybe they just aren't, you know, they love playing role-playing games, but they aren't a creator themselves. And those people need a lot more. And, and so it's tough to create the balance between those two things and give both of those groups what they want in the way that they want it. One of the things that, you know, I've been doing this for over 30 years and I'm still experimenting with, I'm still struggling with, is the right way to present the information because of that, because everyone is coming at it differently. And, you know, a game designer named Jonathan Tweet that I worked with on third edition D&D, he made the great observation that

Every role-playing game product is it is the thing that you read to learn how to play the RPG, but it's also the reference work that you're going to use throughout your time playing that. And so the first time you read through it, you need the information presented in one way. And then for the rest of the time you're using it, you need to present it in a completely different way, right? You need to be able to reference a rule quickly because you know how it works. You just need to look it up. And that's so true and so tricky to find the sort of middle ground in there. So, you know, I've already gotten, I already kind of lost where I was going with that.

No, no. Well, I'll pick up on that threat, actually, because I think it's worth it. Like, not only, I think this is, you're right, especially true in role-playing games, but it's also true in all rulebooks I've found. Like there's, you want to actually think about things in terms of like, okay, it's my first time encountering this. I need to go through and get everything. But then very often some new dispute will come up or you'll forget how a little thing works and you'll have to be able to quickly, you want to quickly sort and find the rule that you want. And so the idea of making something that is, you know, appealing and attractive to want to kind of interact with that can give you a clean ramp up to understand what's going on.

And then that can become a reference tool is like a, it's a, there are principles that you need to almost, you know, you're creating sort of three different books in one. And that is not, you know, it's not easy. As you said, it's not something that just, you know, you could be like, yeah, well, I've done this enough times. It's no problem, right? I don't have quite the tier of experience that you do, but I've been, you know, written real books for 20 years now and have found that that same problem. And it's something you have to kind of keep trying to innovate more. Is there other ways you can use graphics or illustrations to help bring things together? Is there areas where, you know, bringing in a story that kind of connects things together and create some narrative hook or changing the fonts so that the crunchier

rules jump out at you and if you're flipping through or indexes or, you know, there's a million different tools that are available, but understanding the principle of what you're trying to go for to be able to is one of the ways that you could reach these audiences, right? The person who just doesn't have time and needs to put something together. The person who really needs a lot of guidance. the person who's even, you know, the super creative that you don't, that's easier to do, but that you want to give them something that's why they're going to come and join your, your world and play in your playground as opposed to any other one they could reach. Yeah, yeah.

You know, the, the word that I find myself using a lot nowadays is, is empathy, you know, and by that, I mean the ability to kind of put yourself into the place of the person who's, who's reading your material or trying to use your material at the table and and figuring out what they need before they need it, right? It's it's a bit of a magic trick sometimes. And I think that, like, for example, one of the things that we did in D&D, in third edition D&D was we decided that examples were really good teaching tools. And so every time we would present a new rule, it would start with an example. And that example would be italicized.

And the reason for that was you would learn that, you know, once you come back and you're referring to it and you don't need to learn how it works, you just, you know, need to quickly reference the rule. You can skip over the example. You can skip over the italicized and get straight to the, you know, what, you know, what's the bonus for this action or whatever. And that's pretty good. And your mention of graphics and fonts and everything, I mean, that's just such a huge playground for a creator. Because, you know, now that we kind of can make our products look like whatever we want, it opens up a whole new vista for how, you know,

trying to understand how people get information and how they absorb information and how you can present it, you know, in boxes and bullet points. And, you know, the old way of, of, you know, from 1970, whatever, of doing a thing where you get a map that's on a piece of grid paper with numbers on it. And then a bunch of text that's keyed to those numbers, like, just because, that's the first way that it was done does not make it the best way. In fact, I'm going to argue it's not a good way at all to present role-playing game information. And so, you know, just experimenting with that. That's what I would really encourage people if you are interested in getting into this hobby is, you know, learn what people have done, but then think of ways that they haven't

done it, right? That presenting the information of coming up with, you know, the ideas for your games, like, like, there's a lot of room to just really blaze a whole new trail. Yeah, and it's funny, you know, because when you think about it, it's like, you know, you've been doing this longer than almost anybody now, but it's, it's such a young genre in general, right? I mean, it's just, you know, whatever, the role-playing games has been around for less than 50 years or so of, like, actually, you know, the people have been doing this.

Right. And as the medium has evolved. and they've become more and more popular, not just in what you can do when you're talking about fonts and graphics, but now, you know, there's, how does your game look when it's streaming and doing video tutorials?

And, like, podcasts, it's funny. I was always like, you know, I'm like, hey, I wonder how my podcast is doing. And I'm in the gaming category where there's 25 Dungeons and Dragons and role-playing game podcasts that are more popular than anything that I've ever done here.

And it's like, well, the people are passionate about this sort of thing. And so how does your game present to that community? And you leverage those tools to teach and create more evocative worlds and connections. These are things that people are all still discovering today. And so I think it's a very exciting time to be working in the space. Yeah, that's a fantastic example.

You know, people streaming games and watching games, you know, critical role and similar sorts of programs. They have completely changed. They have upended the table as far as role-playing games go. and which is a good thing. And they've introduced literally hundreds of thousands, if not millions of new people to the hobby. And it's just, it's been kind of a revolution. And I would say that's only true of the last like four,

five years at most that it's really made a, really kind of changed everything. Do you, I know it is super early on. that front. But so what, how has that changed your thinking about how you design games or or foster communities? Are there any little tricks or surprising insights that you found that now given this new context, do you think about games and design differently? Well, um, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's kind of, it is a, it is a new space and, and I think we're all trying to kind of navigate it. We, um, you know, we try to, to,

we tried early on to do a lot of our own streaming games and whatnot. And that had only moderate success for us. And I think it's because, you know, we were a bunch of game designers trying to be streamers. And what we really needed to do was find some streamers who would work with us and because they knew what they were doing, right? And there's no reason for us to. sort of reinvent the wheel as far as streaming goes. So now what we're trying to do is,

is find streamers and create incentives and synergies there and partnerships to have them play our games and show off our new material and whatnot and expose it to an audience in a way. You know, I think it's like a whole new way sort of to learn how these games go and how to play them. I mean, I learned by doing. I didn't learn by sitting down and reading a book. And I think that a lot of people now are learning by watching. And I think that's totally valid.

I think that it's a fantastic way to learn how to play a role-playing game is to watch a few episodes of critical role. The flip side of that, of course, is that you, then you, you're going to go buy a book and you're going to start playing the game and it's not going to be like critical role right because you know you're not going to be matt mercher uh coming out of the gate as as a game master and um you know we've we've seen a little bit of uh almost like uh i don't know what you would call it kind of almost like a negative aspect of that right where people get disillusioned by role playing games because it's just not what you're

they saw, you know, on their streaming channel. But, you know, well, this ties back into that empathy point, right? Yeah. And being able to figure out now you've got to play to that audience that's, you know, watching and the audience that then's doing. And how do you make the game that's going to cross that bridge in the most effective way? Or, you know, that when they first pick up the book, that it takes them from, okay, I have no idea what I'm doing.

And it doesn't look like what I see on YouTube. So now what? Right. like one of the things that we've discovered as far as streaming goes is um kind of this was i would love to say this was intentional but it wasn't um uh that like some of uh the games that i'm currently working on things like uh the cipher system at numinara and invisible sun um they're very much created to be very conversational um like the very heart of the game design uh is is almost a brief sort of negotiation, right?

The sort of the core mechanic is that the game master says, this task is going to be this difficult. And the player says, oh, but I've got these various things, and I'm going to do this various thing to try to make that easier. And then when you've kind of come to that conclusion, then you roll the die. And it just turns out that that makes for really good streaming. because, you know, a game where it's very rules heavy and your nose is always in a book

or you're always looking down at your character sheet to calculate bonuses and whatnot. That doesn't make for as good, you know, to use a silly term, right? That's not good TV. And so we've, we kind of have stumbled upon that. and and we're trying to make more of that. And it also, you know, here we are in 2020, right? And everybody is playing over Zoom or, or Roll 20 or whatever. You know, we're all playing virtually because we can't get together.

And it also turns out that our games work really well that way. We're discovering because of that sort of conversation back and forth. aspect at the heart of them. But, you know, we're also, you know, quickly scrambling to come up with other ways to make games and game products that might be more useful if you are not all sitting around a table, which is, you know, the opposite of what I've been doing most of my career, which is how do I make the experience of sitting at a table with my friends? How do I make that as awesome as I can?

Yeah, it's a really, it's a big. a fascinating thing everybody's had to react to lately and and you know it's it's funny even just working in tabletop generally speaking it's always been that well what differentiates tabletop from just playing a video game or you know playing an online RPG it's like well no I'm here and I'm with my friends I can you know it's like well okay well how about if you can't do that and that's like okay well uh there what what is it that no and I mean it's a great question to answer and I think it's funny because I think role-playing games are able to answer that question better than most, right? Because that communal storytelling is just compelling on its own, right? That the sort of

free form of, you know, us able to sort of use our imagination and play within the sandbox is something that's compelling, you know, it just goes back to our days. Stinn around a fire pit and, you know, around a fire and telling stories. I think it's just a very primal thing that we always want to do. And so it's interesting to see how it adapts to the new world and, you know, streaming tools. and whatnot. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, I think, you know, not until we develop true artificial intelligence,

are we ever going to have a role-playing game that is sort of replaced by a computer game in its entirety, right? Because it's the ability of a living, breathing human to react to whatever you can think of doing. that really makes role-playing games, I think, something special, right? That you literally have no bounds as what you can try other than whatever the logic of physics of the game are. And, you know, you just can't get that, you know, with a computer game setup. I mean, you can do a lot of really great things and there are a lot of great games out there.

but, you know, nowhere does, you know, can you just literally say, I'm going to go off in this completely weird direction and I'm going to, you know, try to interact with this thing that, you know, no one thought I was going to interact with except at a real role playing game, a table table. Yeah. All right. As a couple of other topics I would love to jump to. I, you know, for me, you know, I also grew up playing Dungeons and Dragons and, you know, absolutely loved it. And then, you know, the third edition was this amazing kind of revolutionary moment in the history of Dungeons and Dragons. And you were a critical part of building that. And I'd love to just sort of go behind the scenes a little bit and talk about what that experience was like, what things, you know, you're working with a lot of really talented people and you're taking on a legacy that was many ways the foundation of your own.

game design, you know, love of games and what was going on and when this process was happening, maybe you can kind of just, you know, put some insight behind for those of us who have spent countless hours playing these games and loving them, what it was like when you were making some of those tough decisions because there was a lot of big breaks from the past that couldn't have been easy. Yeah, it was, it was difficult, particularly at the beginning. There just was, there felt a lot of pressure, a lot of responsibility. because this was a game that we loved and millions of people loved.

And, you know, we didn't want to screw anything up. And so early on, we came up with this sort of list, I think we called it the sacred cow list. Like the things that make D&D, D&D, that we absolutely would not change. You know, and there were things like six ability scores, you know, that go from 3 to 18. And, you know, when you cast a fireball, you pick up a bunch of six-sided dice and toss them all at the table. at once and you know those kind of very very d and d moments we didn't want to lose any of those um and and you're right that i was working with a lot of great people and uh you know i already mentioned jonathan um but uh skip williams and uh rich baker and and a lot of people um and

uh it you know when it was at its best uh the experience uh the experience was literally me and a couple of these other guys sitting in a conference room at the office and just saying, okay, so today we're gonna talk about second level clerics bells. And that was our day. And I mean, it just doesn't get any better than that, right? I love it. I love it.

And so that was great. The process was just shy of three years. pulling that all together basically from start to finish. And it was just, it was great. And it went through a lot of different iterations. You know, what became third edition was not what third edition started with at all. And that was through, you know, experimenting and playtesting and, you know, just honing, right? So to walk through this in a little bit more detail.

So you start off the process with these kind of fundamental design pillars, right? These are the things that are core to the experience of Dungeons and Dragons, whether it's, you know, even to simple things like which numbers you're using or the actual visceral experience of the dice roll or specific other things. And that became your kind of lodestone. And then from there, was it just literally just going through each thing one by one and saying, what do we want to do with this? What does second level of clerics' belts feel like?

Or was it? Well, there's probably an intermediate step in there. Like, so people don't even really, even people who played second edition and first edition, they don't even, I don't think, often remember what they were like, right? There was no core mechanic in Dungeons and Dragons until third edition. So, you know, literally, like, if you were making. making this kind of role, you were rolling, you know, and trying to get a high number. And then the next round, you might try something different.

And it's a completely different mechanic. And you're trying to roll a low number on your die. And it was just, you know, it was really geared toward the people who, like, had a command over the rules. Like, you needed to really know the game to play it. And, you know, from the outset, we wanted to make the game more approachable, simpler, you know, and pay attention more to the casual player. And so, you know, the biggest part about that is just coming up with the core mechanic of, I mean, it sounds, it just sounds so obvious, right? It sounds so like, of course that you did that, right? But it was actually a big deal in Dungeons Dragons.

And so, you know, that you took a modifier from your ability score and your skill and you added it to a D20 role. And that's the way you did everything was a big deal. And so there was a lot of talk about that and just sort of the big, big picture. You know, Peter Atkinson, who was the head of Wizards of the Coast, the founding. of Wizards of the Coast was a big D&D fan. And so he played a big role in the early development of the game. You know, so literally I'm having these design meetings and sort of my boss's boss's boss is in there with me, you know, talking about, you know, what he thinks we should do.

And that's that's a whole dynamic right there. For sure. For sure. And, you know, but he was the one who said, you know, do whatever you need to do to make this the best game it can be, even if it means changing things that people are really, really used to. And, you know, we really took that to heart because, like, you know, like you said, it was, it was a big departure from previous editions. Yeah. No, that's, I mean, A, that's a great testament to Peter. I know, I know Peter very well,

and we've, oh, great. I know how passionate he is about this project. and, you know, role-playing games and Dungeons and Dragons in particular, I mean, I would say that's probably at the near the top of his list of things he's proud of as being able to sort of shepherd Dungeons and Dragons through this process or be a part of it. And I think that the core principle that you talked about, you know, you kind of joked about it sort of being simple and obvious, but it is so far from it for most. And so I would just want to re-say it again because I say it. We have a lot, it comes up in a lot of conversations, right? Is that finding that core mechanic that's going to serve the purpose that you want to serve and building everything around that. And is this very important thing and cleaning out

and getting rid of the things that don't serve that purpose. And so it's very hard because there's a lot of mechanics that you could be attached to. And this doesn't just apply if you're building on a game that existed before, but even in your own designs and you're an original designs very often. I mean, I know I've been carrying this right now in a project. I have these really cool mechanics in my game and I'm like, I have to ask myself, does this serve the core of what's going on? Is this really needed here? Can I do this? Can I do more with less? And it's something I think every designer has to stay focused on no matter how hard that process becomes, which it's never easy. You know, core mechanics, one of those things where you, you know, you have to, like you said,

you have to make it so that everything fits. And if you don't, like when you're doing that initial playtesting and you've got something in there that just clearly doesn't go with, you know, one of these things is not like the other kind of situations. It becomes really obvious, right? Where suddenly the game kind of screams to a halt and you're suddenly dealing, you know, what? I'm rolling a percentile die now. Okay. You know, and you can really see that, But that doesn't often come out until you actually start doing those initial playtests. Right. Yeah, there's no substitute for playtesting when it comes to things. As great as something can sound in your head, right, or on paper when you're writing it down,

the difference of what it's like in an actual playgroup. And I think this ties back in a little bit to your earlier point, which is, you know, how important empathy is, right? Being able to understand what it's like for somebody to be playing through your game. And I'd meant to ask you earlier, but maybe it's worth diving into now. like, you know, how do you develop empathy? How do you train yourself to be better at this? And I think one of those tools, of course, is playtesting, right? And being able to learn to watch your playtesters and find those areas, not even necessarily where they're going to tell you that something

is wrong, but where you can just see now they're hesitating and they have to put down the D20 and pick up D10s or figure out what's going on next or, you know, those moments where you can really feel the confusion or loss or loss of energy and momentum in the game. Yeah, I think that you really kind of hit that on the head where it, you know, if you spend a lot of time, and actually this goes back to our streaming portion two, where we're talking about that, where watching people play is a fantastic way to develop that because, you know, you have, I think, an innate sense just as, you know, a person that, you know, like you want there to be energy. You want there to be, you know, things to be moving along quickly and you want things to be exciting and people to be engaged. And you can watch when that happens and when that doesn't happen. And you can start to see, oh, you know, if I had written this in a different way, if I had given them a different piece of information, or if I had cut this whole section out because it's actually kind of slow and boring, you know, you begin to learn and figure out that kind of empathy of understanding. what makes the game work really well.

And, you know, I always tell other designers, other RPG designers, you know, you have a particular skill in this that other game designers might not, in that what you're actually doing is your role playing, right? You are taking on the role of a GM sitting down at a table with their friends and, you know, thinking about what they need and what they want and whatnot. And it's really kind of the same thing. You're putting yourself in someone else's position because, you know, that's the thing that I see tripping up, even really experienced designers, is, you know, that idea that, okay, I understand how this works

in my head and I understand how I think this should go. And so I'm just going to write this and put it down. And that isn't always the only way, or it isn't as clear as you think it's going to be. Yeah, yeah, I think, although I love the idea of that as a role-playing gamer, you're just functioning to role-play as your role-playing gamers. I feel like maybe there's a meta-game we could design here, the RPG where you play other people playing an RPG. I have played that game, actually.

of course you have so I think that that it is that being able to sort of put yourself in somebody else's shoes and sort of try to understand things from their perspective and it's something that yeah takes practice and observation

but it's critical to every aspect of design and I mean literally every aspect of design I don't care if you're designing shoes or you know games or whatever right that's what you need to be doing and I mean literally put yourself in someone else's shoes I guess A. Okay. So I think there's tons of great principles here. And I'm sure we could dig forever into a lot of the nuances of RPG design and game design. But I also really want to talk to you a little bit about some of the business side of RPGs and gaming. Because I'm pretty sure that if I thought I could make a good living at designing RPGs, that's what I would have done also.

And you started on that plan without, you're just like, that's what I'm doing from when you're, whatever it was, 11 or 12. You're like, that's it. Once I know this is possible,

I'm doing it. And I think that most people don't, you know, in fact, one of the reasons like my company, we've been talking about making an ascension RPG for the longest time. I mean,

for literally at least eight years now. And we've kind of played around with the idea, but it's very hard to think of investing the enormous amount of time and energy it does to build a great RPG, when for most people, the experience is it's a narrow audience with not that much upside. And you've been able to create companies and projects that are like outrageously successful. I think you had over what half a million dollar funded Kickstarter for Newmanera and a variety of successful Kickstarter, huge things. And so maybe we could talk a little bit about that.

How, you know, what is maybe keys to your success or how should people out there be thinking about this sort of thing? and how can I make a profitable Ascension RPG so I can work on that. Take those in any order. Okay. Okay, those are easy questions. No, they are. You know, it, you don't, here's the thing that, that I feel like pretty much everyone who's, who's been in any industry for a long time is going to tell someone who's just getting in, right?

and that is you don't you don't probably unless you're like the one in the million shot you don't start off your career with a super successful game and and you know a huge earning kickstarters and everything um it takes a lot of work i mean and i i started you know as a freelancer and got paid very little and and then i went to work full time at a game company and got paid very little. And, you know, and I just decided that I was okay with that. And, you know, eventually things got much, much better. But, you know, I started, you know, literally on the ground floor. And so there's a lot of that. But I think that a lot of the game design principle, that we were just talking about also tie into this, right?

I think that if you've had some success and if you've created some games and some game products and whatnot, that, like, I don't think there's anyone in the world who's sitting down and thinking, oh, Monty Cook, he designs those games, and they clearly have a lot of empathy, and they seem to really, you know, speak to all kinds of gamers. No one's sitting down and thinking that, but they are thinking, oh, Monte Cook, I like his stuff. And, you know, hopefully, hopefully they're saying that. And, but, but I think if you were going to explore why that is, I think it would be because it, you know, and it took me a long, long time and lots of trial and effort, right? But, but, but picking up on those kinds of things

that we were just talking about and putting those in your games and making them, making that be your through line like like just you know uh it just sounds it just sounds so meaningless to say just make good games and eventually you'll succeed but but the more you know yeah i mean you know it's hard no i i do i know i want to so i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna say some things that a hundred percent agree and emphasize what you said and then i'm gonna push back a little bit for purposes of good discussion. Because I think it is exactly the same advice I gave to anybody that wants to get into the tabletop industry. You know, you have to be able to, you want to work on the craft, right? You know, you've been doing this for 30 years. I've been doing this for 20 years. Plus,

I was a pro magic player for a bunch of years before that where I was working on, you know, different sides of the gaming industry. You want to be making connections and adding value and building communities over time. You know, you don't just launch a Kickstarter to nobody. You launch one that you've built, you've earned people's trust and attention over time and you are much more likely to succeed. These are things that take a lifetime, not an overnight success or a couple of months. And I think that the other piece of this, which you've, you didn't mention explicitly, but it's clearly evoked as part of your story is it's got to be something that you're passionate about, right? That you would, your passion is what's going to carry you through those years of

low pay and failures and trials and figuring things out, right? If you're not passionate about what you're doing, then I think you're going to hit a wall and it's not going to come across. And I think that passion is also the thing that's going to be way more likely to make your games successful because you can better empathize with the other types of people that are passionate like you are. And so I think those things are all 100% fundamental parts of success and working on the specific skills of empathy and iteration and playtesting and all of that. So even though it sounds cliched and it's, you know, you feel weird.

saying it, like, I say it over and over again. I think people need to hear it over and over again because it's not that it's complicated, but it doesn't make it easy either. So that's my, that's my warm and fuzzy agree part. My other part is like, you know, like you, I like you, I'm a game designer and run a company. And I also feel like I have to make decisions when I'm going to pick a genre to work on, right? There's many things I could be passionate about. I like a lot of types of games. It feels like the RPG world is a very particularly tough one. I can't think of many other examples of people who have reached your tier of success exclusively or primarily in in RPGs because it's just they don't

monetize particularly well on their own. There's a lot of competition, low barriers to entry, lots of niche kind of components to it. And so is there something about that space or the way you've interacted with that space or is it just, you know, look, it's the same as every other. You just got to keep grinding at it or is there something more to it when somebody's thinking about that's what I want to do? I might look at it this way. I think that there's two approaches that you can have, and this is probably true of a lot of different things, but I only know RPGs. So I'm going to talk about RPGs. And that is, you can either figure out what people are doing already and what they really like and then just give them lots more of that.

Right. And so in the RPG field, that would be, you know, traditional fantasy with elves and dwarves and wizards of pointy hats and, you know, that kind of Tolkienesque fantasy. And, you know, just do that really well. And you can have some success at that. That is, I would say, for the last 20 years and really probably the whole time, that is not the path. that I have taken. I have taken the path of, you know, appealing to the people who, you know, they've read those books, they've seen those movies, and they're ready for something else. And they want to go off in a completely different direction. And they're looking for the spark of creativity, the bit of, you know, kind of brain exploding sort of, ideas of, you know, what if it was Earth, but it was a billion years in the future kind of, kind of thing. And, and, and so, like, I, I wouldn't make it as simple as, you know,

I, I have aimed my products at, you know, experienced gamers versus inexperienced gamers, because I don't think that it actually slices quite that way. But, uh, I think that there's a, knowing who is probably going to be interested in your product is probably a really important aspect of the business side of this. And figuring out what that kind of person wants and what will intrigue them, you know, when it comes to marketing, you know, how do you, how do you get their attention? But just knowing your audience and understanding that it's not. enough to just say, oh, well, you know, gamers like X, right? Because it's a fallacy to think that all gamers are, you know, a single entity like that. And so, you know, yes, I have, I have subdivided the audience and that, and sort of by definition, I'm not going to appeal to every gamer out there,

but I think that that's probably a foolish goal anyway. Yeah, 100%. I think the, the, the, The idea of, you know, trying to appeal to everyone is the same thing as appealing to no one, right? You can't, you can't be everything to everybody. Knowing your target audience is absolutely critical, right? It's, and it's great because we've, you know, you say you only know, RPGs, but I, these are, these are the universal principles, right? Know that what are your core tenants, right? What are the, what's the emotional core of what you're going for? What's the core mechanic that's going to serve that? Have empathy for your audience. Know who they are. Know where they are. What are they doing now? What are they like now? What are they missing now? Right? And then being able to build things around that or at the very least tailor what you're building towards that, I think is really key. And you also, you know, you sort of mentioned it, but as, you know, you're, you're targeting an audience that's not

necessarily just the super sophisticated people, but people who have played these games before and are looking for something new and different. And even if that subdivides your audience smaller, you can give them exactly what they're looking for. You can create super, super, fans. And those people, and even if it doesn't take that many of them to be hugely successful, especially as a solo designer, those people are the ones that you can really make so happy and make their lives much better, even if it means that millions of other people are going to hate what you do even, right? That's not for them. It's as important to know what your game is not for as it is to know who it's for. Right. Right. And that's a, that, that's an interesting space too,

because, you know, if sometimes I think people get angry, right, when you make something and it's clearly not for them, right? And they will interpret that as it, you know, it's terrible, it's bad. And, you know, you're going to see those posts online or whatever. And you just have to learn, say, okay, you know, I wasn't, you know, to use your shoe example that you were using before, right? Well, I wasn't, you know, you're sad that you can't run in these dress shoes, but I wasn't, making, you know, I wasn't making sneakers. I was making dress shoes. And, you know, that's just, that's just the way it is. And, and that's okay that you don't like them. And, and, and, and, and, but then, you know, then you, then you turn to the people who you are appealing to and,

and you kind of, you focus on them, um, understanding what they need, which is, again, a whole another big topic because it's dangerous to just kind of say, what do you need, right? Because, that, you know, people, and I'm myself included, right, like, people are good at expressing what doesn't work, but they're not great at expressing what does, right? And so they might tell you, well, you know, I'm just going to pull an example out, right? Like, combat moves a little slowly in this game, so it would be cool if you did this, right? Right. And the thing to take away as a designer is the first part of that sentiment, right? Oh, combat's moving a little slowly. Because their suggestion, you know, it might be great, but it might not be great, right? Because they're not a game designer. And so I think you pay attention to the needs, but not the wants, I guess, is maybe the way I would break that down.

Right. There's a couple layers. So one is a quote that. long time listeners will be familiar with because it's basically my favorite quote for my favorite author. It's Neil Neal Gehman that when your readers tell you that something is wrong, there's almost always right. When they tell you how to fix it, they're almost always wrong. Exactly. That is exactly what I'm saying. Yes. Good job, Neil. And yeah, it turns out he's really good with words. And so that's something that, you know, you sort of have to live by. And again, it's not about arrogance. It's about, you know, that is just your job as the craft is to be able to use the tools at your disposal to create the experience in the audience. It's that their job is not to

figure that stuff out, but they are the only metric that matters, right? Their experience is the only real judge. And so if you're seeing a problem, and a very common thing for new designers is they'll just be like, oh, they just don't understand, right? You just don't know. It really does work. If once you really know what I'm going for here, it's going to be great. And that's just, that's a recipe for disaster. As is the reverse of trying to appeal to everybody, right? The, the classic example from my world is like everybody wants to remove man a screw from magic right everyone wants to get rid of the the randomness of i didn't draw the lands that i got i wanted and and that would be it would be so much better if it was predictable and the reality is no it would be so

much worse and in fact i've worked on games like that you know it's it's a terrible thing that feels like it would be a good idea but but the nature of that randomness does so much work for the game and creates the excitement in the best moments and so it is uh it is important to sort of understand that those inner workings and again that just comes from from skill and and and practice as a designer. I want to pick up on one of the thread though, because you said something interesting that, you know, you don't appeal to their wants, appeal to their needs. And that made me think of two things because one is this idea that we were just talking about, but the other is to some extent you do need to sell them on their wants, right? Because the

the thing that is the what going to get them to buy your game or try your game in the first place is giving them something that sounds like something they would want. And I'll give you, I'll give you a tangential example, right? Like I just launched a beta version of a course for this, for teaching game design. And I'll be putting out a bigger version later. And it has all kinds of material in it. But, you know, the most important thing to teach people is these exact principles like we're talking about, the fundamentals of design, right? How do you create a core design mechanic. How do you test it? How do you understand what's going on there? How do you build that and iterate? But what they want to know is how do I launch a Kickstarter?

Right? They want to know how do I get the game published? How do I get the graphics done? And like they want to know this stuff that's like just not as important when you're up front. And is so, but I had to put that material into the course to help to get people excited about it and get people to, so I'm kind of selling them on what they want and then giving them what they need. Yes. That is. That is very insightful and very much a truism. And I find that for a lot of my projects, you know, for the, you know, I make weird games.

My, you know, my RPG settings and everything, very rarely are they kind of straightforward, oh, you've seen this before, kind of stuff. And so often what I have to do is I have to, I find myself explaining to people why this is something that they've always wanted, even though they didn't know they needed it, right? And so a lot, I feel like a lot of our marketing is actually sort of education, right? Where, you know, having to explain sometimes, you know, pretty weird and out there concepts.

And so that means that we have to figure, like we spend most of our time when we talk about marketing. We spend it like how do we get this thing across in a very simple, straightforward kind of elevator pitch kind of way. And, you know, that's a whole skill all by itself that is actually pretty, you know, extraneous to game design. but is really important to game marketing. And, you know, we're, you know, we're running a Kickstarter right now, but actually I'm working on the next Kickstarter. And, you know, thinking a lot about that because, again, it's kind of new and weird concepts.

And it comes down to, you know, to go back to your want and need kind of thing. It comes down to understanding the nugget. of the thing in your game that is the, that is the thing that's going to push the button in someone's brain that says, yeah, I do want that. Right. Like you were pointing out with the Kickstarter versus the, you know, actual ground level stuff.

Like, that's really smart. And I try to do the same thing. Yeah, I mean, with, you know, marketing is, I'm sure we could do a whole other podcast about my podcast. Yeah, yeah. No, well, I loved the phrase you use, marketing is education. I think the idea that, like, what you're trying to do is just really help people understand what it is that you've made and then let them decide if this is for them or not, right? Right.

Because so often, especially in the gaming space, a lot of it is like there's so much to digest to really know whether this is something I'm going to like and whether or not that, you know, the investment to make the purchase is one thing, but the investment of time that. it takes to read a rule book and get into a game and get a group together and run a campaign or do, you know, whatever, right? It's a lot you're asking of people. And so being able to educate them on, okay, this is what the experience is going to be, and this is how it's different from what else is out there, and this is what you might like. And, you know, you talked about elevator pitches being, you know, different or, you know, somewhat separate from the game design process, but I don't, I don't view it that way. I mean, I really do view it as pretty central to it, right? When you talk about what your core emotion is, what your core mechanic is, what the main hook of the thing is, I do like to think about it in terms of an elevator pitch, even early in the process.

And when I try to explain it to people, I try to refine it throughout the design. How am I saying this to somebody? How can I get this message across? How can I educate? I didn't think of it in those terms, but I really like that. How can I educate in the most, you know, precise and kind of punchy way possible that gets someone wanting to learn the next thing, wanting to come along for the next piece of the right? And so I think it's, and especially for people out there that don't, you know, if you don't have an audience, you're just getting started, you're trying to sell your game. You know, it's true for everybody, but especially in that space. Like, you know, you've got to be able to make something that's got the ability to be pitched well. It's got to have a good hook. If it doesn't, nobody's going to pay attention. You know, a great way to learn that is to, you know, go to GenCon and work in a booth.

And or, or, you know, I'm sure. Yes, 100%. Work in a game store. Right. And pull a game off the shelf to a gamer in front of a gamer and say, okay, here's what this game I was about. Because you will, you'll say some things and you'll see their eyes kind of glaze over and they won't care. Right. And then you'll come upon one thing, right, that you've said.

And then suddenly you'll see their eyes brighten and you'll realize, oh, that's it. Right. That's the key. You know, that's the thing that makes this special or interesting or useful or, you know, something that is desirable. And that is such a useful tool is to be able to kind of figure out what your elevator pitch is. I mean, I have had games that we've made. And when we initially tried to sell them, we kind of did it wrong. And it wasn't until further into the process that we kind of stumbled upon, oh, that's the appealing thing about this game. We knew it was a great game.

But communicating that is a whole process of figuring out. Yeah, that's so right. And I remember exactly what it felt like, you know, when I'm first starting to demo games at the booth at Jen Conner, one of the other conventions. And you just like, you, you know, you go through 100 reps over the course of that of the show. like pitching the game, pitching the game, pitching the game, and you refine it, you figure out what works. And so, you know, I can do an ascension pitch and demo in my sleep now. I know exactly what to do and how to get people hooked and where that, and then exactly the moment where they become hooked and take off and then, I don't need to be there anymore.

It's really funny. And yeah, it's just, there's no substitute. Again, this is about that training of empathy and, you know, trying and playtesting. You're playtesting your pitch, basically, and seeing what happens. Absolutely. All right. We're running nearest to the end of time, and I know my team would kill me if I didn't spend a little time talking to you about our Ascension RPG concepts. because I don't know how familiar you are with Ascension in general, but we're a deck-building game. We've created our own sort of fantasy universe.

There's four different factions that are built into these different worlds. And we have been making the game for, we just celebrated our 10th anniversary. You know, the game is very beloved, but it appeals very much to the sort of the cross between the kind of dominion, classic deck building and magic, the gathering, kind of sealed play, drafting play, more Dungeons and Dragons-y themes story. And so we've, without going too much into the world, specifically, I'm wondering about this ability to take the audience that I have, people who really enjoy this kind of deck-building game and into the universe, and bringing them into an RPG world.

Because I feel like there's this whole fantastic thing. Because I've, again, I grew up on RPGs and I love them, but I have these fears around how can I take what I have and help bring those people over into the fun of role-playing games? Well, that is, you know, that that's an interesting challenge. And it's kind of the other side of the coin that I was talking about where, you know, you've got, I don't, I don't mean this to be dismissive, but you've got a kind of a kind of a traditional fantasy kind of background,

kind of world. I mean, I realize that it's new and original, but, but, but the, but the, but the thing is, is that you are facing down like, you know, the giant

gorilla, uh, of Dungeons and Dragons, right? And so I think the absolute first question you would have to ask is, if we made an RPG, what could we offer the world that they can't get with Dungeons and Dragons. And I think that you have to look at it from the game design point of view.

I think you have to look at it from the setting point of view. The character options, like, I think each one of those has to have at least one thing that is like, okay, you can't do this in D&D. You don't get this in D&D. And some of that just might be emotional, right? Like, you know, people have had a lot of success over the years, like, just coming up with, like, dark fantasy RPGs, right? And those go head-to-head with D&D, but, you know, they offer a kind of emotional experience that you can't get with sort of vanilla D&D. Right.

And so that's what, that's where I would start. knowing that you know a huge percentage of your customer base is probably already playing D&D, right? If you're talking about an Ascension RPG, you know, you're

kind of entering into their realm. And so you know, giving them reasons to play your game and not D&D or your game and D&D, is, yeah. Yeah, no, I think that's, I think it's a great way to look at it. And it's, it's funny, too. I mean, I appreciate you, you know, couching in in very soft language, because, you know, we, I think we do, we did spend a lot of effort to create an original world and original story, but we also purposefully did play off of the common fantasy tropes. Sure. Because as a new company and new thing, I wanted to get people immediately into, okay, I understand. I don't, I wasn't able to tell them a story in a traditional way, right? I didn't have a full story book or anything.

like that. You had to be able to see a card and an art piece and maybe a line of flavor text and know what was going on and be able to connect to that world. And so it's a great point that like, yeah, okay, I have to make sure to very much distinguish the elements of our world that are different there. Both in story scope is one of the things we've talked about, right? The characters in Ascension are sort of these legendary warriors that are at very high tier as opposed of Dungeons and Dragons more classically, you know, starts as the feeling of an adventure. sure working your way up. And so there's the scale of the story and the scope can be one area to differentiate.

You know, mechanics is an area where I think I feel the most comfortable because I think there's some really interesting things you can do with what, you know, what people might expect from a game that already has tons of art pieces and cards and things. But that's been a fun thing to play with. Like I said, it's something we've been having on our back burner for a very long time and because it's a passion of all of ours. but it's not an easy thing because like you said, yeah,

we're going up against the 800-pound gorilla in the space that we don't have as much experience in, at least professionally. Yeah, it's such a double-edged sword because, you know, the universality of being able to talk about, you know, like I think, you know, you hit the nail on the head. Like you sit down and you start showing somebody a card game

and the cards have words like, and dwarf and wizard on them, people know what those things mean. And, you know, if it says, you know, boggle and wazes and right, you know, it's just like, okay, this is just, this doesn't mean anything to me. There's no, I don't, it doesn't evoke any emotion in me.

It doesn't, it doesn't say anything. And so that, that I think is a very powerful tool. But then later on, right, the other edge of the sword is that, how do you how do you distinguish yourself from from everything else that's like that and i think that you know one thing that i would do for sure is i would focus on players so many times when um uh you know a a brand new designer or a person who wants to be a designer comes to me and he said and i say okay you know what do you what do you have i uh and and and they start talking about the world. Well, it's this world and there are these mountains floating in the air and whatnot.

And that's all cool, but I think the place you ought to start with is what do the players do? And I think that, I think your elevator pitch needs to include that information, right? Such and such is a game where, you know, characters, whatever does they do, right? explore floating mountains in the sky or whatever it is. And, you know, it took me a long time to figure this out, even though it's just so stupidly obvious, right? But, you know, for every game master, there's four or five players, right? That's your RPG audience.

And so, you know, people are always marketing to game masters. but they're the smaller part of your audience. And, you know, so if you can make things appealing to players, you've really really accomplished something. That's a great piece of advice to end it on. This has been such an enjoyable conversation, Monty. I'm really glad we got to do this. I appreciate you taking the time.

Yeah, I've enjoyed it too. For people that want to see more of your stuff, read more, play more, learn more. Where can they go? Montecookgames.com is pretty much a great resource. It'll send you off to social media or our current Kickstarter if we have one or, you know, we have a newsletter you can sign out for there. So that's where I would go.

Great. Well, once again, it's been a genuine pleasure. And I want to thank you for the, I can't even count how many hours of joy that your games have provided myself, my team, and I'm sure the many, many thousands of people listening right now. So thank you again. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's podcast. If you want to support the podcast, please rate, comment, and share on your favorite podcast

platforms, such as iTunes, Stitcher, or whatever device you're listening on. Listener reviews and shares make a huge difference and help us grow this community and will allow me to bring more amazing guests and insights to you. I've taken the insights from these interviews, along with my 20 years of experience in the game industry and compressed it all into a book with the same title as this podcast, Think Like a Game Designer. In it, I give step-by-step instructions on how to apply the lessons from these great designers and bring your own games to life. If you think you might be interested, you can check out the book at think like a game designer.com or wherever fine books are sold.