Heroes of Magnimar

Hey everybody! Here's your chance to get one of your characters into the world of Pathfinder! Click here to check out a contest involving the upcoming relaunch of the Pathfinder comic book from Dynamite. The deadline is July 1, so act fast!

Pathfinder Legends

The first installment of Pathfinder Legends arrived today. I look forward to listening to the epic Rise of the Runelords saga on my way to work each morning. My commute to the office is only five minutes, so this should keep me busy for a while!

Tyranny of Dragons

Click here for an article discussing "Tyranny of Dragons," the first storyline for the upcoming D&D Next. Interesting stuff!

Pathfinder Comic Review

Click here for a nice review of the first issue of the relaunched Pathfinder comic book series.

Booty!

Once upon a time, in an alternate universe (or perhaps it was, like, 2004), I was a college literature professor and I was leading my students through Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain. The text was originally written in Latin, but we were reading an English translation. One of the students timidly raised his hand with a very strange question about a seemingly straightforward passage. As it turned out, the translator had used the word "booty," meaning "plunder" or "treasure." My student had thought it was a reference to a completely different kind of booty. True story.

Anyway, that's a long-winded introduction to the real reason for this post, which is to point out the awesome-looking campaign coins available on the Paizo site. Click here to see examples of fake coins that you can use to liven up your gaming experience. I may pick some up for my boys, who love that sort of thing. Who doesn't love booty?

Back on the Path

I took a break from the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game to play through the iPad port of Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition. Now that my sassy archer Zoe has defeated Irenicus, I've gone back to PACG and picked up where I left off, with The Hook Mountain Massacre adventure deck. It's been a couple of months since I last played, but the break has done nothing to diminish my admiration for this game. If you haven't tried it yet, you really ought to give it a shot.

Table Top Day

It's International Table Top Day, so do as Wil Wheaton commands and go play some board games!

Pathfinder: City of Secrets

Awesome! I just saw on the Paizo site that a nearby comic book store is hosting a Pathfinder: City of Secrets game event. Click here to see if there's a participating store near you!

Fighter Details

For anyone who was following the D&D Next playtest, here's a look at how the final draft of the Fighter class is shaping up.

D&D Attack Wing

Click here to check out the upcoming D&D dragon-versus-dragon miniatures game!

Pathfinder Legends

Give Paizo a lot of credit for their outside-the-(game)-box thinking. Now there's a new way to experience their award-winning Rise of the Runelords storyline -- through audio dramas on CD! The new Pathfinder Legends series is produced by Big Finish (creators of the Doctor Who audio adventures). Click here for more details.

Tolkien and Beowulf

This May, J.R.R. Tolkien's translation of Beowulf will be published, some 90 years after he completed it. Click here for the full story.

Tolkien, of course, is a figure who looms large over D&D and, indeed, over the entire modern fantasy genre. As a long-time Dungeonmaster and creator of numerous fantasy worlds, however, I've tried strenuously to distance myself from Tolkien. If you've played in any of my campaigns, you've probably noticed that halflings (derived directly from Tolkien's hobbits) do not exist, and unlike certain D&D worlds I could mention, there is never ever a character who resembles Gandalf. (*cough* Elminster *cough*)

Why the deliberate rejection of Tolkien? I'm not entirely sure. Although Lord of the Rings never resonated with me (it's one of the many instances in which this former English professor actually likes the movie better than the book!), I have a deep respect for Tolkien as an intellectual. He was a professor of Old English and wrote an article on Beowulf (titled "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics") that changed the way scholars view this poem. I'm very excited to read his translation of my all-time favorite literary work -- a work that has stimulated by creativity like no other over the past two decades.

Pathfinder Comics Return

Pathfinder comics return in May! The new series is called Pathfinder: City of Secrets (from Dynamite Entertainment), and it debuts on May 14. The comic will include RPG content as well as the awesome removable tactical maps that were discontinued from the previous series. Even better is the news that Paizo is teaming up with comic book stores nationwide to host in-store Pathfinder RPG events to get people interested in the game. Click here for more information.

Will You Miss It?

4e D&D is on its way out. Wizards will continue to sell 4e products until there's no longer any demand, but come summertime and the release of D&D Next, the 4e era will, for all intents and purposes, be over. How do we feel about that?

Personally, I'm not sure what I feel. 4e was a radical departure from the traditional D&D rules and it hasn't even been around for as long as my six-and-a-half-year-old son. Some say it did a lot of damage to the D&D community in that short span of time. That's a fair argument. I've enjoyed the tactical aspects of 4e, but I'm not terribly sad to see it go. I think D&D Next will be a return to what we all believe D&D should be. My only regret from the 4e era is that I never got the chance to play in a long-term campaign. Virtually all of my 4e experience was as a DM, so all those super-awesome optimized characters I cooked up in the Character Builder are now kind of meaningless. And as much as I love the shaman character class (under-powered but plucky!), I never got to play one in a real campaign.

How do you feel? Vote in the poll! (See the very bottom of the page.) And please do vote. This question is actually the prelude to a much more important question I intend to ask before the release of the next edition.

D&D Next News

News about D&D Next is starting to trickle in...click here for a summary of topics covered during a trade show presentation about the new edition. The key takeaway for me? Their guiding principle was "What would Gary and Dave do?" If that's true, it's very encouraging.

D&D Falls

Yikes...D&D has fallen all the way down to #4 on the RPG sales chart. Pathfinder is #1.

What's the Cost?

Click here for an interesting post (and subsequent forum discussion) about the inflation-adjusted cost of every edition of D&D over the years.

Gone!

Those mysterious, tantalizing listings for D&D Next products on BN.com are now gone!

Mark Your Calendars

It appears that the first official D&D Next product, D&D Starter Set, is going to be released on July 15, 2014. Click here for the BN.com listing, and here for the new D&D Player's Handbook, to be released on August 19.

Aaron Allston

Sad news -- sci-fi/fantasy author and roleplaying game designer Aaron Allston has passed away, at the far-too-young age of 53. See this link for a nice summary of Allston's prolific career.

Back in the late '80s and early '90s, I frequented a Texas-based BBS (remember those?) called Red October, a hangout for fans and friends of Hero Games. Allston was also a user of that BBS. It took me a while, but I eventually mustered the courage to email him and express my admiration for his work, and he sent me a very gracious response.