Malhavoc Press


Malhavoc Press is an American publisher of role-playing games, specializing in third-party material for Dungeons & Dragons' third edition.

History

Game designer Monte Cook left Wizards of the Coast in April 2001, founding Malhavoc Press as a d20 System imprint in May 2001. In July 2001 Cook signed with White Wolf's Sword & Sorcery Studios, at that time the largest independent publisher of d20 material, so that they could handle publishing matters while he focused on game design and writing.
The company's first product was The Book of Eldritch Might. This was the first commercial book published exclusively as a PDF that was released by a print publisher. It was an immediate success and has been credited with demonstrating the viability of PDF publishing within the role-playing industry. This and other early Malhavoc products were initially released only in electronic format through the Malhavoc site, though print versions of most of them were subsequently released by Sword & Sorcery. Malhavoc worked with Fiery Dragon Productions after the latter left Sword & Sorcery in 2002, and the majority of Fiery Dragon's licenses were taken from Malhavoc.
In 2001 Malhavoc won the ENnie Award for Best Official Website, and in 2003 for Best Publisher.
While the company was successful, Monte Cook announced in August 2008 that he had originally moved on from Wizards of the Coast primarily to write fiction, rather than design and release RPG products, and that "there are other areas I'd like to explore creatively". As such, "Malhavoc Press and virtually all game-related work" on Cook's part was put "on the back-burner" at that time, though he stated that he was not closing the press and left open the possibility of releasing future work under the Malhavoc name, should he later desire. August 2008 also saw the sale of Malhavoc's publisher, Sword & Sorcery Studios, by its owner, White Wolf. Malhavoc was never formally closed, but has not released any new product since 2009; Cook formed a new publishing company—Monte Cook Games—in 2012.

Malhavoc Releases

Most releases were written by Monte Cook, but other authors also wrote for the company in its first few years.