A Running Conversation with Zeb (David Cook) • Page 2 • Collecting General • The Acaeum

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A Running Conversation with Zeb (David Cook)
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Agent Cooper
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Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 8:54 am

Zeb - Thanks again for sharing with us.

It seems to me that revising Dungeons and Dragons into a 2nd edition was a pretty risky undertaking at the time. I understand alot of folks back then (and many still today) considered Gary's 1st ed books almost like holy canon. When you learned you'd be working on the 2nd Edition of D&D, were you nervous about the reception from long time gamers? Was there any conversation with Gary Gygax about the revisions? Has Gary ever spoken to you personally about his thoughts on the work you did on 2nd Ed?

Agent Cooper
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Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 8:54 am

Oops, double post!

*DELETED*

benjoshua
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Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 11:20 am

Agent Cooper wrote:Zeb - Thanks again for sharing with us.

It seems to me that revising Dungeons and Dragons into a 2nd edition was a pretty risky undertaking at the time. I understand alot of folks back then (and many still today) considered Gary's 1st ed books almost like holy canon. When you learned you'd be working on the 2nd Edition of D&D, were you nervous about the reception from long time gamers? Was there any conversation with Gary Gygax about the revisions? Has Gary ever spoken to you personally about his thoughts on the work you did on 2nd Ed?

And to follow on with this line of thinking, why did TSR undertake 2nd Edition? Was it mostly to generate revenue? Generate interest? Tie up loose ends created by Unearthed Arcana, Oriental Adventures, etc...? Or did somebody just come up with this idea to give people something to do?

Also, was the decision making process about the 2nd Ed rules done by committee or was one person given final say? Were the final decisions well received or was there discontent? Were you pleased with the final outcome or did some people aready suspect that 3E was necesary at some point and time?

Thanks again for your willingness to consider our interests.

Truth is worth finding and life is too short to work for money.

sauromatian
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Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 12:07 pm

benjoshua wrote: why did TSR undertake 2nd Edition?

Dunno what Zeb is going to say, buts people were clamoring for it after the orange-spine printings came out. Slick new covers, but the same amateurish, sloppily organized 70s-era content, plus new-content hardcovers which made it all more obsolete.

Zeb
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Posted: Sun Jan 27, 2008 12:01 pm

Agent Cooper wrote:Zeb - Thanks again for sharing with us.

It seems to me that revising Dungeons and Dragons into a 2nd edition was a pretty risky undertaking at the time. I understand alot of folks back then (and many still today) considered Gary's 1st ed books almost like holy canon. When you learned you'd be working on the 2nd Edition of D&D, were you nervous about the reception from long time gamers? Was there any conversation with Gary Gygax about the revisions? Has Gary ever spoken to you personally about his thoughts on the work you did on 2nd Ed?

Well, I didn't so much "learn" as I lobbied to do them. It was a big project and I wanted to take it on. Was I nervous about the reception. Yes to some extent. The whole company was concerned about it. That's why there was a chunk of effort to reach out to the fans and let them know what we were doing (and why in many cases). Part of that was marketing, but all the designers involved spent time at conventions explaining and listening.

I've never really talked to Gary at any length about the revisions, before or after. Before, given the relations between Gary and the company, was difficult. I had worked around Gary for some time though, so I'm sure some things were absorbed.

Zeb

Zeb
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Posted: Sun Jan 27, 2008 12:29 pm

benjoshua wrote:
And to follow on with this line of thinking, why did TSR undertake 2nd Edition? Was it mostly to generate revenue? Generate interest? Tie up loose ends created by Unearthed Arcana, Oriental Adventures, etc...? Or did somebody just come up with this idea to give people something to do?

Also, was the decision making process about the 2nd Ed rules done by committee or was one person given final say? Were the final decisions well received or was there discontent? Were you pleased with the final outcome or did some people aready suspect that 3E was necesary at some point and time?

Thanks again for your willingness to consider our interests.

Well of course it was to create revenue. As nice as it might be to think that AD&D was some altruistic enterprise, TSR was a company and needed to sell stuff to survive. But it if was going to be done, then we also wanted to try to create something that was useful and valuable, sothe goals were all of those you've listed (except just giving people something to do!).

Originally, the whole thing was proposed as a straightforward re-edit of the rulebooks to make them better organized and more readable. We felt that the difficulty of the books was a limiting factor on our market size and that fixing that would improve sales. That quickly changed as we realized it was going to take more. Over time there were inconsistencies and contradictions throughout the hardbacks, there was material we wanted to incorporate from later books, and there were systems that just didn't work well and needed to be fixed. So it went from re-edit to a rewrite.

As for the process, nothing happened in a vacuum or by my decision alone. Steve Winter, the editor, was heavily involved in with me. I worked out a lot of what I wanted to do, but the other designers and editors had to be comfortable with it, contribute their ideas, and their opinions. Management, while not concerned with specific systems and rules, had their guidelines and conditions regarding compatability and approach. We had a lot of 1e product and players out there that we had to bring over. Nor did we want to tie to rules to a particular setting since we had several at the time.

In the end, the design staff had to be happy with the work or they would have made me change it. There were always disagreements but that's what compromise was about. I don't remember any major points of conflict. Did we know there would need to be a 3e? Yes and no. We all realized the game was an evolving thing and eventually it would need to be redone. There were ideas that didn't get in the books and more would come along (as they did). The process of going from 1st to 2nd had taught us that if we didn't know it already. But nobody left the room saying "We're going to have to rewrite this tomorrow."

Zeb

Ethesis
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Posted: Mon Jan 28, 2008 12:06 am

Zeb wrote:Okay, so here's the good and bad news. This collection of characters never played in an adventure together. The little listing of events is imaginary since they didn't play together. I'm not even sure that all of them were actual characters. Here's a run down of each as I remember them:

Fred 9802: This was one of my characters from college before I joined TSR. He was a dwarf fighter. The 9802 comes from the fact that previous characters seemed to have short careers so he was "9802" in expectation of a short life span.

Knock Grafton: One of my wife's characters. Just used the name here, because she remembers the character as a 1/2 elf mage/thief with a hatred of dwarves.

Black Dougal: Don't anything about this one except that it is a very appropriate name for one of Kevin's characters since he's very Scottish.

Steve Marsh: Nothing about this one.

The Moldvay Characters: Certainly these names, if they were actual characters, were provided by Tom. I never really met any of his family. They look suspiciously like Tom immortalized them judging by the character names. I do remember Tom having a female character named Morgan Ironwolf -- very much his style.

Elron Hubbard -- Definitely one of Lawrence's characters though again I don't know from where.

Jean Wells: I don't know anything about this character though I did work with Jean.

Good to see old memories again.

Regards,

Stephen

Agent Cooper
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Posted: Mon Jan 28, 2008 10:11 am

Zeb-
Gary is a very bright guy, and 1st edition is a wonderful game system. But the books are not very well organized. Sorting through all those 1st Ed rulebooks and variants and getting them into a cohesive whole had to be a tremendous undertaking. When I pick up a 1st Ed DMG and look through it, I can't imagine where I'd even start. Did you and the folks working with you ever feel overwhelmed with the scope of it?

What was the most difficult part of doing the 2nd ed revision? What parts of the revision are you most proud of? Anything you really wanted to see go in that didn't make it?

What do you think of 3rd Edition?
Any thoughts or opinions?
Any feelings about 4th Ed, from the info available now?

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