• "The Last Days of Magic" by Ian Rosales Casocot
• "The Apollo Centennial" by Gregorio Brillantes
• "Subterrania" by Luis Joaquin Katigbak
• "Kaming Mga Seroks" ("We the Xeroxed") by David Hontiveros
• "The Kite of Stars" (The one-act play adaptation of the Strange Horizons story) by Dean Francis Alfar
• "Menggay's Magical Chicken" by Nikki Alfar
• "Espiritu Santos" ("Holy Spirit") by Pearlsha Abubakar
• "Suman" ("Rice Cake") by Corinna Esperanza Nuqui
• "A Monumental Race" by Arturo Ilano
  

• A round-up of Science Fiction in India.
• New Scientist tackles a question that never seems to get old: Is Science Fiction Dying?
• Booksquare talks about Social Networking and how it relates to promoting books/authors.
• Edward Champion covers the National Book Awards.
• This'll sound like spam but it's not: get credit at the Anthology Builder for answering their survey.
• Benjamin Rosenbaum gives a gender breakdown for the upcoming Tumbarumba.
• More P. N. Elrod on piracy.
• Jim C. Hines on The Dangers of Switching Series.
• Bruce Sterling has an essay on Steampunk for Gogbot.

From USA Today's best-seller list (you can find out their basis here):

1. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
2. New Moon by Stephenie Meyer
   
3. Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer
   
4. Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer
   
5. The Shack by William P. Young
6. The Christmas Sweater by Glenn Beck
   
7. The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama
8. Too Fat to Fish by Artie Lange & Anthony Bozza
9. Just After Sunset: Stories by Stephen King
10. Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama

Tons of giveaways this Fall! If you are receiving this article by e-mail you could win Dungeons and Dragons books:

• November 10th: Adventurer's Vault (who won?)
• November 25th: Draconomicon
• December 10th: Manual Of The Planes

Learn more about this contest

How good is the D&D Character Builder?

When I tried the D&D character builder at GenCon I was impressed.  The first major software release by WOTC is now available for beta testing.

Note that you have to subscribe to D&D Insder to download the software.  Dungeon magazine and Dragon magazine are worth the subscription price so the extra tools and software coming up are big bonuses.  That’s how I see it anyway.

Beta version limitations

You can only level up to lvl 3 on the beta character builder.  I had some printing issues as well while testing the software and I’d be curious to know if it’s my printer or the software - probably the printer.  Anyone had printing issues?

Many books, one character builder

There are many great features on the character builder.  All the powers from all the published books and online articles are available in one place.

Houserules rule

You can also change pretty much anything and everything on your character.  Rules tweaks will only mark your character as houseruled.

Power cards

The software lets you print your character sheet complete with power cards - which is very neat.

Horizontal character sheets

The character builder gives you a few options for your character sheet layout.  I like horizontal/landscape layout for character because they take a little less room on the gaming table.

The best review is at Critical-Hits.com

I’m an entertainer, but the guys at Critical Hits are journalists and they came up with the best D&D character builder review.

What do you think?

Do you think you’ll be using the character builder?  What do you think of the beta product?

Coming soon - Dungeon Mastering Online Tools
Watch the video overview on DungeonMastering.com

mshea has added a photo to the pool:

mshea has added a photo to the pool:

Moon-Spinner has added a photo to the pool:

Moon-Spinner has added a photo to the pool:

It was funny. What?