Last Day for December '08 Blog Carnival
Today is the last day for the latest RPG Blog Carnival about “Transitions and Transformations” before UncleBear takes over . So if you want to get an entry into this month’s carnival, you want to do it today and leave a comment on the post. And even if you have written an entry for the carnival, you may want to double check that you’ve got a comment or trackback there so I can include it in my wrap-up post (which will probably be in a week on January 7th.)
Thanks to everyone who particupated.
Give the Gift of D&D: Winners Announced!
Nearly 40 entries later, our contest to give away a 4e Basic Set, Keep on the Shadowfell, and D&D Minis starter has ended. And we have winners to announce!
First, our runner-up, who posted the snarkiest answer. Tonester’s saga was as following: [Read the rest of this article]
D&D Character Builder Beta, Open to All
The character builder is now available for everyone, D&D Insider subscriber or not. It is still only levels 1-3 (a recent Digital Insider suggests that early into 2009, but not that early, it will be opened up to all 30 levels) but contains some updates from recent material, including Martial Power.
Check it out (it’s free), especially if you were intrigued by our review (even though this version is probably slightly updated from when it was reviewed.)
Equivalent Exchange
icv2 reports that Full Metal Alchemist will be getting a second series. Sequel series that picks up after the movie? Re-done version that sticks closer to the manga (ala Hellsing)? The adventures of the protagonist pair’s alter-egos in our world during the early 30′s? The article doesn’t say, but I’m skeptical that anything will be able to compare to the original. As far as wrapping up every plot thread, it seems like they did a pretty darn good job the first time around.
Take a trip down to Fabletown
Legends In Exile
This project has really high potential, but I fear could easily suffer from a serious watering down that would make the show revolve around a “fable of the week” concept at the expense of its excellent overall plot line. For those who do not know, the comic revolves around exiled fables that set up in New York after an evil empire conquers their homelands. Major characters include Snow White, the Big Bad Wolf, Jack of Fables, Little Boy Blue, and Prince Charming.
Bioshock's Lead Designer on the Triumph of the Nerd
Ken Levine’s keynote speech from the latest Penny Arcade Expo is fantastic, so I’ve embedded it here. He talks extensively about what it was like growing up as a nerd in the 70′s, and talks extensively about finding a gaming group. Not only does he share much of how I feel, it’s a hilarious talk- he uses the phrase “Gygaxian Gingerbread House” at one point. It’s about half an hour long, but well worth listening to.
Thanks to joshx0rfz for sending it my way.
Play Auditorium
Thanks to Tycho, today I found the game Auditorium online and now I’m hooked. The funny thing is that I’ve only played with it at work where I don’t have speakers, but from the name and looks of it I imagine I’m missing a part of the game without the auditory experience. I guess a fun physics / puzzle game is enough for me as it is!
The game involves using various directional nodes to direct/influence flowing particles towards meters that fill up as more particles hit them, and you finish a level when you fill up each bar. The later levels incorporate whirlpool nodes and different colors for greater challenge, and possibly more but I’m currently stuck on a level so I don’t know about that yet!
You should check it out!
And also also, the un-end of the D&D Miniatures Game
Well, you remember that this happened.
Today, WotC announced that the D&D Miniatures game would not die after all. Instead, they’ve decided to hand it off to a handful of committed volunteers to develop stats for future minis releases and keep the skirmish/tournament scene going, with official license from WotC.
The group granted the license is known as “The Guild” and is made up of some serious DDM fans, so it looks to be in good hands. The forum thread about The Guild already contains an impressive amount of work towards branding themselves. The coolest part?
Tony Gullotti (Dagaron) of Indiana is point person on the design and production of a custom DDM Guild miniature. The miniature will be available by Gen Con. Polling the community resulted in a win for the Guild Master concept — a tribute to E. Gary Gygax.
I’m hoping I can get my hands on a EGG mini at next GenCon- that’d be awesome.
The Guild is also answering questions over at EN World, as well as some clarification by The Rouse. Overall, a very cool move on WotC’s part (and in fact, totally different than how Hasbro handles its board game library- they hold onto the license as long as they can, even if they don’t plan on publishing it).
The return of entangling and the red death
Next month’s editorial calendar for D&D Insider is up. In it, there are not one, not two, but FOUR playtest articles coming out. The Druid is first up, coming on December 1st. As one of the most missed classes that didn’t make the edition jump, this should be good news to all you entagling shillelagh-wielders out there.
Additionally, it also looks like we’ll see the Invoker class, now almost confirmed to be a new class making its first appearance in Player’s Handbook 2. Is there some thematic link between it and the Druid? Since Primal powers are called Evocations, will the Invoker Evoke, harkening back to the Invocation/Evocation school of 2e? We’ll find out soon enough!
Presumably, we’ll see some new magic items with the Adventurer’s Vault 2 playtest. Unless they feature some brand new awesome mechanic, this will largely just be more magic items to use. I could be wrong, and we’ll see brand new rules for skateboards or something, but new magic items is a best guess. [Read the rest of this article]
4th Edition Encounter Planner
Earlier this week I was talking to Asmor and idly mentioned to him how I was trying to make an Encounter Planner for 4th Edition that used the DMG encounter templates. I was hoping to have something where I input a level, choose a difficulty, and it outputs a list of the monsters that will fit into the templates. I brought this up with Asmor because he’s already created a ton of 4E D&D tools that have helped me out as a DM on many occasions, such as the Monster Math Cruncher for creating custom monsters (something I love doing) which works great in combination with his Monster Maker program (which I definitely recommend using.) He’s also created a 4th Edition Random Encounter generator and Random Treasure generator, both of which are excellent tools now that the random charts are no longer presented in the core books. All of these tools are really well made, and extremely helpful for any 4e DM.
Well, sure enough, only a couple of days later and he’s sent me a link to his new 4th Edition Encounter Planner, which does pretty much exactly what I wanted it to! I haven’t gotten to use it to maximum effectiveness yet in my game, but I will be for future encounters that I want to design using the DMG templates, and it will definitely be a time-saver. Thanks to Asmor for creating it, and hopefully some of you enjoy it as well!
You can see a full list of the scripts and programs he has created over at his site. Also don’t forget to check out his great site, Encounter-A-Day!
