Early years Cook has been a professional game designer since 1988, working primarily on role-playing games. Much of his early work was for
Iron Crown Enterprises as an editor and writer for the
Rolemaster and
Champions lines. Cook was at one point the editor in charge of both the "Campaign Classics" line of books for the
Hero System and the
Rolemaster line. Cook worked for Iron Crown Enterprises for four years; two as a freelancer and two as a full-time designer. During this period, Cook wrote the multi-genre setting
Dark Space (1990), which was a blend of fantasy, science-fiction, and horror. Cook wrote the adventure
Beyond the Veil (2001), one of the later releases in the "Penumbra" line of
d20 System books from
Atlas Games. This and other early Malhavoc products were initially released only in electronic format, though print versions of most of them have since been released by White Wolf, Inc. Malhavoc Press worked with
Fiery Dragon Productions after Fiery Dragon ended their arrangement with Sword & Sorcery in 2002, and the majority of the licensed work from Fiery Dragon was through their arrangement with Malhavoc. Cook set the d20 rulebook
Arcana Unearthed in his giant-dominated world of "The Diamond Throne". He eventually succumbed to pressure from his customers to sell his products in standard-PDF form, and DriveThruRPG has more recently done the same. In August 2006, Malhavoc released
Ptolus, a campaign setting based on Monte Cook's home game that was used as the playtest campaign for the third edition D&D designers. Shortly after the release of
Ptolus, which Cook has often described as the culmination of his original ambitions for Malhavoc, he announced that he would be focusing on writing fiction and other unspecified forms of creative work, rather than role-playing games, for the foreseeable future. White Wolf and
Goodman Games announced his final RPG books. ''Monte Cook's
World of Darkness'', his own take on White Wolf's modern horror setting, was released at
Gen Con 2007. From Goodman Games is
Dungeon Crawl Classics: #50, Vault of the Iron Overlord, which was also targeted for the same Gen Con release. However, due to demand by fans reading his
LiveJournal, and posting their desires on the Malhavoc message boards, Monte Cook released one more RPG product in early 2008,
The Book of Experimental Might. This was quickly followed by
The Book of Experimental Might II: Bloody, Bold and Resolute.
D&D Next Cook returned to Wizards of the Coast in 2011. On September 20, 2011,
Mike Mearls announced that Cook would be taking over his "Legends & Lore" column for the
Wizards of the Coast website. In January 2012, it was revealed that Cook was to be the lead designer for the 5th edition of
Dungeons & Dragons. In April 2012, Cook announced his departure from
Wizards of the Coast due to "differences of opinion with the company" but not "with [his] fellow designers".
Monte Cook Games and Numenera Cook co-founded Monte Cook Games, LLC with Shanna Germain in 2012, which is a roleplaying game company that has produced
Numenera,
The Strange,
The Cypher System Rulebook,
Invisible Sun, and
No Thank You, Evil! which went to press in Fall 2015 after a
Kickstarter campaign raised over $100,000 to fund its publication.
Numenera is a Kickstarter-funded table-top RPG created by Cook, set a billion years in the future in a science fantasy and post-apocalyptic setting with streamlined rules that prioritize the story, the action, and the wild ideas. It raised over $500,000 (more than 25 times its goal of $20,000). System playtesting was announced on October 30, 2012, and the game was released on August 14, 2013. Cook has stated that
David "Zeb" Cook's (no relation)
Planescape fantasy world was a significant influence on concepts in
Numenera. The Ninth World of
Numenera was also the setting for a 2013 release of the
Thunderstone Advance deck-building game by
Alderac Entertainment Group, as well as the 2017 video game
Torment: Tides of Numenera, which was developed by
InXile Entertainment after a successful Kickstarter campaign.
The Strange is a Kickstarter-funded table-top RPG created by Cook and
Bruce Cordell using the same Cypher System ruleset as
Numenera. The game, which involves traveling through different worlds known as Recursions, was released in August 2014.
Invisible Sun is a Kickstarter-funded table-top role-playing game created by Monte Cook Games, with a street date released of September 20, 2018. It is a surreal fantasy game with many game accessories.
Stealing Stories for the Devil is a Kickstarter-funded table-top role-playing created by Monte Cook Games. It was released in February 2023. It is billed as a reality-altering heist game, where player characters use different abilities to lie to reality. It is a boxed set with board game-like aspects.
Tidal Blades, the Roleplaying Game is a Kickstarter-funded table-top RPG created by Cook and Shanna Germain using the Cypher System ruleset. The game was released on August 14, 2024. It is a tropical fantasy game located around the near islands and coastal city of Naviri, surrounded by a frozen temporal rift called The Fold. It was Kickstarted along "Tidal Blades 2, Rise of the Unfolders", the boardgame. == Career ==