dt.com: So what are the next steps on the horizon for Monte Cook?

Monte Cook: Well, I've been working on a novel for a few months now and I'll probably keep that as my focus for the rest of this year for sure and maybe beyond that as well. It'll take as long as it takes. That's the way I want to approach it. I don't want to have any kind of self-imposed or even artificially imposed deadlines. I just want to work on that and see how that goes. I've also got a comic book series with the Ptolus comics and a few other things going on.

dt.com: You're also moving to Milwaukee. How did you pick Wisconsin, what draws you there?

Monte Cook: Well, Sue is from Wisconsin, she grew up in Milwaukee and we both lived there when we worked for TSR. So it's an area that's really familiar to us. We've got family there, we've got friends there. And Milwaukee's a great town. Milwaukee also offers us the opportunity where we could purchase a house on the eastern side of the city and have it be both just a couple of blocks from the lake as well as a couple of blocks away from the edge of downtown and maybe a nice little grocery store or restaurant or something. That's the kind of little more laidback atmosphere we're looking for right now.

dt.com: Let's talk about Ptolus. You've given birth to your baby.

Monte Cook: It's done!

dt.com: Where do you want it to go now?

Monte Cook: The thing is, it's everything you need. The entire product line is there between both covers. It is both the beginning and the end.

dt.com: It really is like you've framed your entire 3rd Edition experience with it. Ptolus started it and now here we are five years later.

Monte Cook: It's true, it's a very nice way to sort of acheive some closure for me with this, since this is the campaign that I've been running since '98 and my whole 3rd Edition career has been centered around this campaign so it's nice to have it come out.

dt.com: I'm assuming that you're going to keep gaming and keep running your current campaign. Are you going to keep doing it in Ptolus or is this an opportunity for you to do some things in your game to shake things up in a completely new way.

Monte Cook: Actually I've been doing that kind of thing for about the last year since Sue is one of the players and has obviously read the whole thing, cause she edited it. So I already had to do the whole sort of shake up thing. With our move coming, the Ptolus campaign as it exists now is going to have to come to a close. Which is kind of sad, because we've been together as a group so long.

And then, after we move, after a suitable break period, you know I'm kind of torn. Half of me says, you know, I'd like to do maybe something different. And that same half says, now that's it actually a book there's something about it that makes me less likely to use it because now it's all sort of set in stone and if I actually have something that I contradict I'm "wrong." Whereas before that wasn't the case. But the other half of me says, "Hey, I want to be able to use all these wonderful player aids and maps and handouts too!"

dt.com: The production that went into the book is fantastic so I have to imagine you're kind of depriving yourself of something. Because I can't imagine you had those kind of things in the original campaign, right?

Monte Cook: I had some of them. I was a big Call of Cthulhu fan, so I've always been a very prop and handout and special materials kind of gamer. But yeah, now it's got all these wonderful production values and the artwork and it'd be fun to actually take advantage of it personally.

dt.com: Tell us a little bit about what's on deck for the Arcana Evolved reprinting.

Monte Cook: That book is pretty much out of stock for us right now so we're doing a reprint with errata. That will come out toward the end of this year. And after that you're gonna see some interesting stuff still coming from Fiery Dragon and Blue Devil and maybe even a couple of other people that I've been talking to. So there's still going to be plenty of interesting stuff goingon in AE even as I step back. But I'm really, really happy with how that line is overall.

In the products that we've done, there's really a lot to use there and I don't feel like I'm abandoning AE fans with nothing because we've really given them a lot. With the Spell Treasury, that was the one last thing that I wanted to make sure was done before the end of things because not only was it something that people had been asking for, but it's almost like a skeleton key which makes regular d20 products easier to use with AE. Because now if you see some monster and it's got three spell-like abilities and they're all d20 spells, well, now we've got the AE versions for them.

dt.com: What sort of charge would you give the fans at this point? What advice would you give them as the continue to tinker?

Monte Cook: Well, use what's there as a set of building blocks and a starting place. There's tons more champion types and all kinds of interesting things. There's room for expansion. AE was always meant to be something that the end user him- or herself can customize and make their own. The champion types and even, to an extent, the witch types, were always meant to be "here are the basic ones, now you go forth and create a bunch of your own."

dt.com: Some people have speculated that there's an intersection between the lands of the Diamond Throne and the surrounding lands and backstory of Ptolus. Is there some sort of secret crossover in your mind, like in the ancient mists of history or something?

Monte Cook: Not directly. But both of those projects were developed concurrently in many ways -- in that one grew out of the other and vice versa. So the things that were going on in my head were similar sorts of things. And there were things I liked in Ptolus but I knew I was never going to make a really big deal out them in a published product. For example, the titans. So taking that idea and making it a really big deal in AE and AU was the sort of thing I really enjoyed. It was a nice opportunity.

dt.com: Does it look like there's the potential for the Ptolus comic to be more than just the limited series?

Monte Cook: It's possible. Right now it's the six issue series. If it was more, it would probably be another limited series, maybe starring other characters from the setting. We'd go that way rather than an ongoing open-ended series.

dt.com: How do you like the challenge of writing a comic book rather than writing game material or straight fiction?

Monte Cook: It's really very different because the vast majority of hte writing that you do, the reader never sees. It's all describing what the panel looks like and communications with the artist talking about the layout of each panel. And the only writing that I do that anyone sees is the dialogue in the voice balloons. And so that's kind of weird for me because I'm not used to that.

dt.com: So we've got game material, comic books, a novel on the way... when do we get the Monte Cook screenplay?

Monte Cook: That would be a lot of fun, but I also hear the horror stories of how hard that is to do. So, maybe. Never say never.

dt.com: If you could do a movie, what genre would you do?

Monte Cook: If I could do anything I wanted to do, I think I'd do some Lord of the Rings budget type fantasy epic but make something that isn't necessarily directly Tolkien derivative, not necessarily something that people have seen before. Kind of change the idea of what fantasy is. There's a lot of that going on in fiction right now but not really in movies.

dt.com: Any final thoughts? You really are turning a chapter in your life here. Has Gen Con kind of been a bookmark for you in that process?

Monte Cook: Yeah, it really has, actually. Now that Gen Con is done and now that Ptolus is out, I'm going to devote almost 100% of my attention to working on the novel and the other projects that I have going on and kind of stepping away from the whole game thing. And so to have that happen at Gen Con is kind of interesting, because it is the gaming mecca, if you will.

Mostly, I'm really looking forward to next Gen Con, because next Gen Con I'm going to preregister and I'm going to sign up for a bunch of games, and I'm just going to come with my dice bag and my backpack full of books, and do nothing but play games.

dt.com: I don't think there's any better way to wrap it up than that.