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You are here: Home / Archives for 4e

The State of D&D, Post-Gen Con 2013

October 2, 2013 by Dave

I feel like this post should start with a Star Wars crawl: “It was a time of great change in Dungeons & Dragons…”

Filed Under: Board, Card, and Miniature Games, Editorial, Featured, Newest Critical Hits, News, Roleplaying Games, Video Games Tagged With: 4e, D&D, D&D next, dnd, dndnext, gen con, gen con 2013

Review: “13th Age”

September 23, 2013 by Mike Shea

30 Second Summary 13th Age feels like the spiritual successor of 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons mixed with the storytelling mechanics of games like Fate and Fiasco. Rob Heinsoo and Jonathan Tweet give us a fully refined RPG mixed with a pile of house rules we can drop into any d20 game. While it’s great […]

Filed Under: Featured, Newest Critical Hits, Reviews, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: 13th Age, 4e, D&D, Dungeons and Dragons, Reviews

“Neverwinter Campaign Setting” Icons for “13th Age”

August 8, 2013 by Dave

I’ve played (and run) a few more sessions of 13th Age since I wrote my first preview, as the rules became more solid and filled out from those first playtests. I was initially more guarded, but since then, my opinion of 13th Age has only gone up. The actual books are making their way into […]

Filed Under: Critical Threats, Featured, Game Hacks & Content, Newest Critical Hits, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: 13th Age, 13thAge, 4e, D&D, forgotten realms, Neverwinter

Interview: Rich Baker on “Primeval Thule”

July 22, 2013 by Dave

If you know D&D, you probably know the name Rich Baker. From his role in development of settings like Birthright, games like Alternity and the new Gamma World, many Forgotten Realms supplements and novels, war games, and much more, Baker has many years of industry experience on all kinds of products. Now, Baker has teamed up […]

Filed Under: Featured, Interviews, Newest Critical Hits, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: 13th Age, 13thAge, 4e, campaign setting, D&D, pathfinder, Primeval Thule

Flank You Very Much: Tactical Play in D&D

June 5, 2013 by Shawn Merwin

An interesting question came up in an online discussion of D&D Next, and I very much anticipated seeing how the answers would play out. The question regarded how players and DMs handled flanking in the playtest, since the current iteration of the rules do not mention flanking. I was most interested in not what people […]

Filed Under: Editorial, Know Your Roll, Newest Critical Hits, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: 3e, 4e, D&D, D&D next

Back Catalog D&D PDFs Begin to Resurface on DriveThruRPG

January 22, 2013 by Dave

PDF editions for D&D products have begun to reappear on both DriveThruRPG and the new completely branded site D&D Classics.

Filed Under: Featured, News, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: 1e, 2e, 3e, 4e, D&D, drivethrurpg, OD&D, PDF

Freelancer Chronicles: The Coast Wizards and I, Some Lessons.

December 19, 2012 by The Chatty DM

In which Chatty shares is experiences as a Wizards of the Coast freelancer. The good and the bad. He shares many of the lessons he learned from his experiences should you want to give it a try.

Filed Under: Featured, Freelance Writing, Musings of the Chatty DM, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: 4e, D&D, d&d 4e, dragon magazine, dungeon magazine, Dungeons and Dragons, Freelance Writing

The Exaggerated Death of 4th Edition

December 7, 2012 by Mike Shea

Just because Wizards of the Coast pays little attention to 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons doesn’t mean its dead. D&D isn’t Star Wars Galaxies or City of Heroes; WOTC can’t shut the servers down. With currently published material, we can play 4e as long as we desire and the 4e products released since late 2010 are the best in the edition. 4e didn’t die — it finally became stable. It’s not only alive, it may now be the best time to play!

Filed Under: Editorial, Featured, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: 4e, character builder, D&D, d&d 4e, D&D Insider, Dungeon Commander, Editorial, Marketing

Gen Con 2012: D&D Keynote and More

August 22, 2012 by Dave

D&D is in a transitional period, and that showed quite a bit at Gen Con. No longer in one big room at the Sagamore, D&D events were spread out across different rooms in the convention center, with the booth in the exhibit hall focusing mainly on showing off the new MMO expansion, the Lolth statue, and selling branded merchandise. Organized Play such as Living Forgotten Realms and Ashes of Athas kept the torching going for D&D 4e, while other rooms were dedicated to demoing Next. Let’s start with the current offerings from D&D and move forward from there.

Filed Under: Editorial, Featured, News, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: 4e, D&D, d&d 4e, D&D next, drow, forgotten realms, gen con, Gen Con 2012, Menzoberranzan

The Easily Lost Explorer’s Guide to Dungeon Crawling

April 13, 2012 by Dave

if we all had perfect spacial thinking and effective communication skills, we wouldn’t need a battle grid in combat. The DM could describe the dimensions and shape of a room in the dungeon, as well as relative positions of inhabitants and features. We could just describe how far we’re going, all adjust our mental pictures appropriately, and voila: the entire time to set up a battle would be the time we need to talk about it. Unfortunately, we don’t all have that. Some of us are terrible at it (me) while others of us are really good at it.

Filed Under: Critical Threats, Editorial, Featured, Roleplaying Games Tagged With: 3e, 4e, battle grid, combat, D&D, D&D next, dave gets lost easily, gridded combat, scenery, spacial reasoning, theater of the mind

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  • Dave

    Dave "The Game" Chalker is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of Critical Hits. Since 2005, he has been bringing readers game news and advice, as well as editing nearly everything published here. He is the designer of the Origins Award-winning Get Bit!, a freelance designer and developer, son of a science fiction author, and a Master of Arts. He lives in MD with e and at least three dogs.

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