This weekend is looking to be somewhat dominated by Magic, with D&D getting a look in on Sunday.
Friday evening, Good Games Ballarat are running a Mirrodin block draft… that’s right, the old Mirrodin-Darksteel-Fifth Dawn block. Somehow, Mark has managed to get hold of some old booster boxes, so that’s what we’ll be doing whilst waiting for the Mirrodin Besieged prerelease to get underway. (I’d normally be playing D&D, but with Martin away, it frees me up for this interesting experience).
At midnight, the very brave (or stupid, or young) will be participating in the Mirrodin Besieged prerelease. I’m not that young any more (38. Eek!), and I rather value my sleep. So, instead I’ll be using Saturday to play Magic quite a bit: certainly the 11am and 3pm sessions. 7pm as well? I’m not sure. Perhaps boardgames if there’s anyone around, but another prerelease session isn’t out of the question… if anyone is still around and wanting to play. Mick or Josh should be running D&D for those interested at that time as well.
Sunday afternoon is the second session of our D&D campaign in the Epic Tier, which should be entertaining. It’d also be less work if the Character Builder were working properly. It’s not: every single “to hit” bonus on Greg’s sheet is wrong, whether they’re an implement or weapon power. For some reason, it just can’t handle all the feats and special abilities. It’s gross incompetence from Wizards, and I no longer give them any slack when it comes to their digital tools: they managed to stuff up the new online CB so badly when they first released it. We’re several months later now, and it still isn’t working properly? Incompetence.
The rest of the year from Wizards is looking bizarre. They’ve cancelled several products and I’m really waiting for their explanations at D&D Experience on the weekend – as well as details as to what is coming up. New products have appeared on their catalogues, but at present the year is looking like this:
January: D&D Dungeon Tiles – Caverns of Icewind Dale. Not the most exciting product.
February: Deluxe DM Screen. Useful, not exciting. Wrath of Ashardalon. D&D boardgame; sequel (of sorts) to Castle Ravenloft and should be interesting. Shadow over Nentir Vale: Fortune Cards. Ah yes, D&D goes collectible. Let’s see if Josh and Mick are interested…
March: Nothing. That’s right: Nothing.
April: Heroes of Shadow. Been pushed back, made hardcover, and should entertain my players.
May: The Shadowfell: Gloomwrought and Beyond. Less about the Shadowfell, more about a major city in the Shadowfell. I’m not sure how I feel about that… the city might work. Would love random encounter tables for the city.
June: Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale – with any luck, some Epic monsters, which are sadly lacking in the first Monster Vault. Dungeon Tiles: the Witchlight Fens – we can hope for good wilderness tiles. Conquest of Nerath boardgame: Very, very interesting… if they can make it complicated enough and not a Risk-clone. (Risk is a dreadful game).
July: Nothing announced.
August: Neverwinter Campaign Setting – to tie in with the computer game. Isn’t Neverwinter somewhere in the Realms? Perhaps no longer. Madness at Gardmore Abbey – this is interesting: an adventure that may be in a boxed set. Heroic… and I love good adventures. We can hope!
While I haven’t bought much in the way of 4E product recently (though I’d pick up more PHBs and DMGs in a heartbeat) I also find the scheduling changes concerning, and the items left pretty underwhelming. For the first quarter of the year all we’re getting is tiles, yet another DM screen, a board game and the highly controversial Fortune cards. One of the big charms for me in playing D&D was that basically every month there was a new hardback whether it was a monster book for GMs, class/race options book for players or whatever – now it’ll be Easter before anything “real” comes out for me.
Heroes of Shadow is the only thing on that list which especially grabs me. I suppose Neverwinter as it’s own campaign setting is also interesting if only (as you say) because it used to be a Realms location but this may be porting it out. But it’s nothing compared to the release lists of a year or two ago and doesn’t look anything like as varied as the mid to late 3E release lists.
I appreciate that a hardback book a month, while still less than TSR was churning out, is perhaps a lot to ask in the current economic climate – especially since 4E books aren’t great casual reads like some other RPG products, part of why I haven’t purchased many lately – but I think it is pretty grim tidings.
Like you, I’m very curious to hear what gets said at DDXP.
George Q
Sunday afternoon is the second session of our D&D campaign in the Epic Tier, which should be entertaining. It’d also be less work if the Character Builder were working properly. It’s not: every single “to hit” bonus on Greg’s sheet is wrong, whether they’re an implement or weapon power. For some reason, it just can’t handle all the feats and special abilities. It’s gross incompetence from Wizards, and I no longer give them any slack when it comes to their digital tools: they managed to stuff up the new online CB so badly when they first released it. We’re several months later now, and it still isn’t working properly? Incompetence.
Missed this on the first skim, but: yeah, that’s pretty poor.
The lack of virtual tabletop software as long promised from DDI was a bit of a pathetic turn of events, and seemed like yet another ETools like disaster and proof they couldn’t ultimately be trusted to produce computerised product. And e-Dragon and Dungeon have had some issues too – the insistance on using huge, ink-hungry and printer-buffer-intensive PDFs for documents and making some pay-to-read documents out of previously free columns soured some.
However, the Character Builder was the shining example of DDI done right. It was a fantastic tool that I got lots of use out of, and I ended up subscribing several times to DDI for a month or two each time just because their DDI updates were worth the cost to me. I almost couldn’t imagine making 4E characters any other way – certainly not high level ones. It finally got a lot of people to say, “Yeah, OK, Wizards can make a computer product that’s worth it”.
I appreciate that “Buy for a month and get use of the character builder forever” wasn’t an ideal business model but moving to a purely online tool is a real step back for me, and it sounds like the version new hasn’t won any converts. Unfortunately, if they can’t make it work, then I think DDI is in real trouble because one of the few items almost everyone agreed was good will be lost in the corporate anti-piracy shuffle.
George Q