Back in 2001, I ran a Q&A with Zeb Cook [wiki entry], much like I did with Gary Gygax around the same time (found here Part 1 and Part 2). Like that interview, this was lost to me since 2002 or so, until I discovered it recently on an old backup CD of some of my websites of the time.
I present to you that Q&A session which mostly covered his creation, the amazing Planescape setting!
Some of the answers I found did not have complete or clear questions. I think they were lost in the translation from the forum where the Q&A was occurring to the document I put together which was then translated again to the website I had made. I have cleaned it up where I could and it’s good for the most part, but there are some places where the question may not be entirely clear.
And also, again as a disclaimer, the answers to some of these may have been common knowledge at the time – but back then I was not following the industry at all. I was only just starting to follow it.
WEEM: Are you in anyway related to Monte Cook?
David “Zeb” Cook: No, Monte and I are not related. It is kind of eerie, though.
W: Are you working on anything new? Why haven’t you done much for tsr/wotc lately?
DZC: Always working on new things — I’m in the computer game biz now. The only problem is I’m working on stuff I’m not supposed to talk about. That’s also pretty much why I haven’t done anything for TSR — no time.
W: Where do the faction themes come from?
DZC: My “official” explanation when people have asked me in the past where I got the factions from goes something like this — they are all the bad philosophy ideas that we used to argue about in college after a few too many beers. The kind of debate where you know just enough about the philosophy to get yourself in trouble, but by damn you’re going to defend it just for the sake of arguing.
W: What do you think of all the Planescape material that came out after the main box set?
DZC: Most of it I liked, although I sometimes think things went too much the goth-gloom route for my taste. Of course I really liked the unplayable surreal ideas, which is maybe not so good for a game. The Factol’s Manifesto sticks in my mind as being a 50/50 product; parts of it were dead on, other parts I found very disappointing. I general I think Colin and Monte did the best jobs with the line.
W: Were you the one who originally invented the idea for planescape?
DZC: The original pitch for Planescape — as a series of sourcebooks about the planes — was by Slade. It was decided to make it a setting/line so the project got transferred to me, on the basis of schedule (I had time, Slade was booked) and experience.
W: How much did you take from the manual of the planes and other 1st edition books?
DZC: One of the first steps is to go through existing material and cull details from it. Jeff had a lot of really good stuff in MotP, and I wanted to be as faithful as practical to it. At the same time, my instructions were to make a campaign setting and not just a place to pop out and visit. This meant trying to make things a little friendlier for adventurers (hence stuff like Sigil).
W: What inspired you to make it?
DZC: I decided I wanted to do something really different and give the planes a more surreal treatment. Aside from the tons of history I usually read, some of the other inspirations were experimental fictions (Dictionary of the Khazars, Inivisible Cities are good starts), mysticism, bizarre films, and lots of Philosophy 101, just enough to be dangerous.
W: How much help did you have from other TSR staff?
DZC: Nothing happens in a vacuum. While I was expected to put together the setting myself, that means bouncing a lot of ideas off co-workers, reassuring managers that you haven’t gone completely bonkers, etc. Kudos goes to David Wise, who did the editing and became my collaborator in many ways, Dori, and Dawn and the folks in Graphics who helped make the thing a reality. And of course all the artists who helped define the look and in many ways pushed my suggestions and ideas further than I originally anticipated.
W: What do you think of: Dead Gods? Tales from the Infinite Stair Case? Faction War? The planes of box sets? Hellbound?
DZC: The expansions were generally good. It’s tough to figure out ways to make some of those planes playable and interesting. Most of the modules I never read (I’d left TSR by then). Faction War was completely after I was gone, but I can understand the desire to shake things up. As for Factol’s Manifesto, some of the sections I think are great expansions on the faction background, but there are a few (particularly the Mercykillers, unless my memory is toast) that seemed to wildly miss the point, even to the extent of making the faction unplayable.
W: What do you think of wotc’s aquisition of TSR?
DZC: I was surprised, but since I had lots of friends at TSR, relieved. There were worse options in the waiting. Since then I haven’t really thought about it much.
W: What do you think of them changing baatezu and tanarri to demons and devils?
DZC: There’s not much for me to say, since I’m not there. We changed them for the specific reason that had to do with the times and the long-running hassles TSR had been forced to endure simply because they were named what they were. That WotC feels freed of that concern, that’s their business. Plus, they want to make their own statement. Me, personally, I had grown fond of tanar’i and baatezu.
W: How much research did you do for sigilian cant?
DZC: The cant is a mix of slang, mostly Elizabethean with some later (mostly Dickensian) stuff thrown in. Two good books to get some background are: “The Elizabethean Underworld” and “Cony-Catchers and Bawdy Baskets.” The first is a good overview, the second is a collection of popular broadsides printed at the time that “warn” folks about the ways of thieves. I’d also recommend “Thief-Taker General” by Gerald Howson for anybody who wants more good thief stuff (and if you want to get really grim, “The Hanging Tree” a history of public executions in England).
W: Do you think they will ever release any info on the Lady of Pain, whether it is her background, stats, anything (and I don’t mean in Novel format – I read Pages of Pain, and liked it though). I know that many people don’t want to know as it would spoil the mystery, but for us “spoiler” seekers, it would be interesting to see.
DZC: While I can’t predict what WotC might do, I’ll hazard a guess — nothing. Certainly if it were my choice that’s the way it would be. The point about the Lady of Pain is that she isn’t really anything (except maybe an convenient embodiment of DM law) which lets her be anything. The minute something gets quantified, it loses it’s “reality” and becomes nothing but a game mechanic. (Think about it — you treat a character in a novel as real in part because of what you don’t know about it, but a character in a game is often nothing more than a collection of numbers and powers that highlights it’s artificiality and assumes more importance than the characterization in the setting.) This is a case where less IS more. Plus, some bright boy will instantly find away to abuse the mechanics.
W: Where did you come up witht he name Lady of Pain and did you think that it would be confused so often with Loviatar when you chose it?
DZC: Actually I wanted to call her Our Lady of Pain, but that was one that made management flinch, so we softened it ever so slightly to The Lady of Pain. Why Lady of Pain? — well, she was female and all those blades looked like they could hurt. I might have thought about Lovitar once or twice, but it never connected with us that folks might get the two confused. I guess we so identified with the image that there was no consideration of the other.
W: Regarding the pronouncing of “Sigil”, it seems you had the possible mis-pronunciation in mind. In the first box set, one of the quotes is about a Guvner sentencing a prime to death because he pronounced sigil sijil.
DZC: Yeah, we went with the “mispronunciation” (because I think I mispronounced it that way) although both are technically correct. The quote was a poke at the pronounciation problem, a very small in joke.
W: What are the dabus, really? What is the story behind them?
DZC: Don’t know. Never really had time to think about them beyond what’s there. In truth, there’s a lot of stuff in PS that exists “simply because” — it fills a need and manages to hit an emotional cord. PS is more about gut logic than explanation. The dabus are one of those — they exist to give the city some more mystery and character. And besides I thought the idea of making DM’s role-play a dabus was too dumb not to. The thought of DM’s pantomiming all those rebus’s fills me with wicked glee.
PS. At one point I was going to do a Sigil sourcebook where the Undercity of Sigil was this immense patchwork scaffolding (as if the surface was a facade)where the dabus dwelt in ratty nests. Don’t know what that was about either, but I thouht it was a cool image. (Ask me sometime about the Temple of Breath.)
W: Was it ever known upon her creation where The Lady of Pain gets her power from, or is this another piece of info not vital to the creation of PS ?
DZC: Zip, nada, nothing. I’d say everything that was decided about the Lady of Pain made it into print. Some folks entertained their own ideas, but there was never a strong consensus. Questions beyond that were either deliberately ignored or there just wasn’t time to ponder on it. There was always more work to do!
W: How was it decided which monsters would be in the first monstrous compendix that came with the original Planescape box set? Were they just extras that wouldn’t fit into the monstrous manual appendix or did you just happen to really really like modrons?
DZC: Monsters — Hmmm (answer hazy). Yes, kind of really liked the modrons (in part due to Tony’s art), tried to give a sampling of creatures from throughout the planes, part to fill some of the gaps in the lineup of PS suitable creatures, and part because we had to offer stuff that hadn’t already appeared in other product.
David & Company seem to have had as much fun making the game as we had playing it. Thanks for the interview, this is great stuff. If I ever run PS again I’ll make sure to include the Scaffolding of Reality and the Temple of Breath somewhere in there. 😀