Hot Stuff
This week saw the release of Monster Manual 2 for 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons. As a gaming enthusiast, I thrive on monster book releases, remembering with a certain fondness the black and white illustrations in the original AD&D Monster Manual. The new book brings back many old favorites, and I hope to do a proper review of it here once I've been able to do more than just flip through the pages.
In celebration, Wizards of the Coast is sponsoring Worldwide D&D Game Day: Monster Manual 2. Most of my local gaming stores have closed, but I'm looking to venture out to one of the few remaining for this event. More from the D&D Insider website:
Bring your friends and join in the fun as we celebrate the release of the Monster Manual 2, packed with new options for your Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition game.
Come and face down enemies (both brand new and some old returning favorites) jumping right off the pages of the next big monster expansion for the game. While you're at it, beat those vile beasts down with characters using options from upcoming releases. No matter if you're new to the game or a 4th Edition veteran, we'll have everything you need to embark on an all-new adventure!
Just for participating you'll take home the pregenerated character sheet and a miniature of the character you played. If you DM the game, you'll take home the adventure itself, a poster map of the encounter areas, and a pack of monster miniatures used in the adventure.
Dave Arneson, who along with Gary Gygax was co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, has died of cancer. He was 61.
While Gygax, who passed away last year, is popularly known as the father of D&D, Arneson was D&D's co-creator and was largely responsible for role playing as we know it. According to the mournful splash page up at Wizards.com (amended by a more reliable proper statement), Arneson's original "Blackmoor" RPG campaign was the first ever role-playing campaign and the model for all that followed, including some of the basics of RPG gameplay: "that each player controls just one hero, that heroes gain power through adventures, and that personality is as important as combat prowess."
But with as big a debt as the gaming world owes Arneson, it's the words of his daughter, Malia Weinhagen, that mean the most:
"The biggest thing about my dad's world is he wanted people to have fun in life. . . . I think we get distracted by the everyday things you have to do in life and we forget to enjoy life and have fun"
So in honor of the man jointly responsible for gaming culture and the invention of the modern RPG, have a wonderfully fun weekend enjoying life.
Paizo's popular RPG Superstar 2009 contest continues with a bit of a twist straight out of reality TV. The top 8 contestants each were given one of their opponent's entries for a villain and told to design a lair for that villain, complete with a map. While many of the tasks provide a glimpse of the writers' creativity (Clinton Boomer from last year's competition for instance), or skill in imagery (James MacKenzie from last year's competition), this task really gives an idea of what writing for rpg publishers can actually be like. Usually your imagination can't run wild and you are given very specific instructions to function in... and someone else's creation to use to do it. I was surprised and interested to see the task, and I hope some of you will take a look at the entries and vote.
Voting for this round, to chose the final four, closes at 5 p.m. Eastern time today.
Paizo has once again launched a search for new talent. Drawing on their experiences from last year's RPG superstar, they have once again gathered contestants to work game writing magic in a whirlwind display of creativity. The beneficiaries? Well, besides Paizo who will gain a pool of new talent to work with, and the talent who gain possible freelance gigs out of the event, the beneficiaries are readers at Paizo's forums.
Paizo will be releasing their Pathfinder RPG, an OGL based advancement of the 3.5 ruleset that, if all goes as advertised, will also be backwards compatible with existing 3.5 material. That's right... for those of us who want to continue playing 3.5 (or something close to it) this is a promised salvation. What does this have to do with the RPG Superstar events? Well, the design is all taking place using the Beta rule set for the Pathfinder RPG. That means, for folks wanting to play the game, that this contest will yield what is, for all practical purposes, the first set of supplementary material for the game... and it's all FREE, posted for anyone to see on their boards.
I did mention this was a contest right? And one that YOU, the readers, get to participate in. The last round involved all 32 talented writers selected by the game writing professionals who acted as the initial judges. Those folks each contributed a villain concept, and 17 folks were selected to create the stat block for their villain. The judging for that round is now going on, and you can participate in the selection! Just go to the forums and take a look. Will you like Bracht Darkhouse, the Flesh Peddlar or Malgana the Twistwood Lich? Find out now!
Once again we've been blessed by the PR sorceresses at Wizards of the Coast and have received a spoiler card for the next Magic: The Gathering expansion, Conflux. The venerable trading card game's newest expansion drops on February 6th and follows on the heels of Shards of Alara, including mythic rare cards in one out of every eight packs and more prismatic cards.
Alara introduced us to the five shards of a shattered world segregated by the absence of different colors of magic: Jund, Esper, Grixis, Naya and Bant. In the aptly-named Conflux, something is drawing theses shards together in a ring, forcing contact between the shards and causing natural disasters as the disparate shards find themselves growing increasingly and uncomfortably close together.
Our exclusive spoiler card is the Beacon Behemoth, who hails from the jungles of Naya, and we've got four more pooled cards after the jump for you M:TG fans!
With Magic: The Gathering set to expand its universe with the fivefold worlds of Shards of Alara this October, GayGamer and Velvet DiceBag are proud to host this exclusive spoiler card, Skeletonize, a flaming harbinger of death and eventual resurrection - in the enemy's hand. We're also sharing five other spoiler cards - after the jump - that each reflect the nature of one of Alara's sundered worlds.
What was long ago a single plane brimming with mana is now a sundered world of five realms, each divided along the lines of mana and with access to only three of the five colors of magic essence. Bant, Grixis, Jund, Esper and Naya represent five lands separated by magical alignment, each boasting an environment specialized to its mana color.
Make the jump to learn more about the Shards of Alara!
Greetings! I am currently a bit down because I wasn't at DragonCon (apparently the steampunk contingent stole the show--darn it I should have been there!), but that leaves me no excuse not to fill you in on the interesting things that happened this last week in our hobby!
• Chaosium released a sneak peek of its new product, Pulp Cthulhu, detailing one of its new occupations--the Reanimator.
• Wizards unveiled the Shards of Alara Orb of Insight for their new Magic: the Gathering set--write anything in the box and see how many times it will appear in the new cards!
• A new collectible miniatures game, Mutant Chronicles, is shipping now from Fantasy Flight Games.
• Games Workshop has a whole bunch of new Warhammer and Warhammer 40k stuff, including a new Dark Elf Battalion and bad-ass War Hydra, and a new 40k boxset that has everything you need to start playing the game--plus a new line of paints, Citadel Washes, that promise to make shading easier than ever before.
• Palladium's press release announced new products for the fall, including the Macross sourcebook for the Robotech RPG, and a new Zombie Apocalypse RPG called Dead Reign.
• A legendary Call of Cthulhu podcast has reached its end--YogSothoth.com's Bradford Players have completed Horror on the Orient Express!
More to come, of course, as the week progresses!
From GayGamer: On an article posted to John McCain's website yesterday in response to plagiarism charges from the liberal blogosphere, McCain's campaign bashes gamers in a venomous ad hominem attack tucked into the last paragraph:
It may be typical of the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd to disparage a fellow countryman's memory of war from the comfort of mom's basement, but most Americans have the humility and gratitude to respect and learn from the memories of men who suffered on behalf of others.
Right - because gamers can't quite possibly understand the sacrifice our troops make to keep us safe. Good job, ignorant and bitter McCain campaign staffer; you've shown the same amount of savvy that a typical High School bully shows as he kicks around the little guy in the classroom.
In that one sentence you've not only insulted gamers like me who have utter respect for our troops, but you've insulted those members of the military who themselves enjoy rolling the dice and dungeon crawling as an enjoyable hobby. There are at least three members of my regular gaming group who are service members, and you just insulted every single one of them.
Way to go.
Smears the Left Can Fight For [McCain]
It is August! That month of hopefully-lovely weather, people slowly gearing up to get back to school, etc. etc. Hopefully you've got some good game on this summer so far, but if not, you have a whole summer month left to atone!
Here's some stuff that's going on (and I promise that this is one of the last big round-up posts in lieu of actual posting, because there's just two weeks to go in my job)!
• Five days left to vote in the ENnie awards! Go go go!
• Three days left in the BRP Adventure-writing Contest. Five to seven thousand words, every genre except Lovecraftian, possible publishing!
• Two weeks before Hunter: the Vigil!
• FFG's reprint of Dark Heresy in stores now, and the launch of the website for Red November, the game of gnomish submarine adventure (awesome)!
• Humans!!!, the companion board game to Zombies!!! in which you actually play the zombies (and yes, you can play the two together) is out this month from Twilight Creations!
Keep your eyes peeled--it might have been a slow couple of weeks in terms of product releases, but the end of August is going to get mighty busy indeed (much to the chagrin of people like me who have school to go back to).
VelvetDiceBag, as you may have noticed, has been kind of non-existent lately. Faerie Dragon already went over the reasons why he hasn't been here as frequently in the past couple of months, and on my part I was slewn first by an exam period and then a soul-sucking 4 a.m.-shift job that drained all energy I might have had.
But now that I'm getting used to said job, I'll do my best to post regularly on this, my far better job!
Let's take a look at what's been happening in Tabletop Gaming in the last few days.
• ENnie Award voting will begin shortly, after they resolve their technical difficulties. Keep checking back here for when the polls open, and check out the nominees here!
• Wizards announced the 4th Edition Forgotten Realms Player's Guide for September. Of most interest is the introduction of two new races, the Drow (oh no) and the Genasi (elemental humanoids--I've had a soft spot for them ever since I played a custom Steam Genasi in Planescape).
• Chaosium announced a 1920s Call of Cthulhu sourcebook for August, Secrets of Morocco. The Secrets series is always top-notch quality and jam-packed with useful information, so I'm looking forward to this.
• The new Magic: the Gathering set, Eventide, came out recently. An excellent article was posted on the set's journey through art, rules, design and development.
• Three weeks remain until the release of Hunter: the Vigil, and previews are still in full force on White Wolf's website.
• Fantasy Flight Games is gearing up to release their A Game of Thrones CCG Core Set, with daily previews.
More to come, day by day!
Christie's, apparently, in 2003 sold a beautiful Ancient Roman green glass d20 (what, you thought we invented them?) , with a distinct and different symbol on each face. Scholars don't know what game it was used for, but we do.
Of course, it's XVMMCMXXV (17925) dollars, but this is the ulimate gamer bling and I'm sure there's at least one gamer who's filthy rich out there who snatched it up.
...Right? It had to be a gamer. Or else I might cry.
[Via: BoingBoing]
Whether grognards like myself like or hate the new edition (and there seems to be quite the mix), the fact remains that Wizards of the Coast is the big fish in the small pond of the role playing game industry. The flagship rpg product, the one everyone knows and everyone recognizes, is Dungeons & Dragons. As I mentioned in my last entry, I tried the game this past weekend with the introductory adventure and quickstart rules, having only the Players Handbook in hand. I'll discuss that experience later and in some detail because I think there are probably a lot of gaymers who are still in the process of making a decision on 4e.
Today I surrendered and bought the books - cancelling my online order (it was delayed in shipping until at least July 10th) - and buying the books from my friendly local gaming store (which, as I've said before, is not all that friendly, though at least the cashier is a hot little number). They kindly gave me a substantial discount as a longtime customer, for which I'm grateful, since the cost of the books is hurdle to starting in the new system. For what it's worth, while I always support my local gaming stores when I can, you can probably already find cheap copies on Ebay. Why? Because while I rather like a lot of aspects of the new edition... most particularly that I think my players have more fun playing it than 3.5... many others who had high hopes have not.
So if so many people hated it, why am I making it the game of the week? Because there must be some balance. For every person who has told me they hate 4e, I've also had someone tell me why they love it. It's not perfect, and thanks to Paizo, it doesn't need to be. Those who want to continue with the 3.5 system and rules that flow from that system can continue with Paizo's Pathfinder system, or just use 3.5 as is or with Monte Cook's book of his own house rules (which I featured here some time ago). For those who need the official system, who must have only what is endorsed by Wizards of the Coast - congratulations. I pronounce the system somewhat sound, playable, and fun. It may not be perfect, substituting streamlining of effects for flexibility in places, but it has its own qualities to recommend it, which I'll discuss in depth in the coming weeks in a new feature that will replace Scrying the 4e Crystal Ball.
This game will not be D&D for everyone. It slays sacred cows (magic missile can miss, and yes that just feels wrong to me, too), and it changes many aspects of the game. Wizards seem more playable at low levels than they were, fighters seem more playable at high levels than they were. Much of the game is now about the team rather than the character, and you'll have to work at making your character unique, because the rules will not do it for you. But I think, despite great early trepidation, that the game is a good one. Try it out if you can. If 3.5 is definitely your choice... think about trying Pathfinder. I'm still reading the alpha release of their rules, but they look like they're doing something interesting over at Paizo too.
And girls who like girls who like breastplates!
Game of the Week
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