Blogs

If you check the WotC product catalog you will see all three books, The Player's Handbook, The Dungeon Master's Guide, and The Monster Manual.

WotC states that proceeds will help support the Gygax Memorial Fund. The books will have all the original artwork, except for the covers which will be new. This is great for all those who want to see what the game used to be like. A nice walk down memory lane should help  people appreciate how the game has evolved from its early stages. It would certainly be fun to play a 1E game this Spring.

Again from Greg Tito's article:

"We'll have more information on the GSL as it relates to the next edition in the near future. Personally, I have a copy of 'The Cathedral & the Bazaar' on the shelf at work," Mearls said, admitting the landmark essay regarding open source software systems impacts his views on the subject. "From my days as a programmer and as a freelance RPG designer, the bulk of my work involved open platforms which did a lot for a game that relies so much on individual creativity."

Greg Tito has a new article up at The Escapist about 5E. I've been enjoying his coverage of D&D quite a bit lately.

Here is a quote from Mike Mearles

Here is the Wizards Community page for DNDNext.

Here is the official DNDNext team as listed on their community page.

Mike Mearls                Team Lead                           @mikemearls
Greg Bilsland              Team Producer                     @gregbilsland

Monte Cook                Design Team Lead                @montejcook
Bruce Cordell              Designer                              @brucecordell
Robert J. Schwalb       Designer                               @rjschwalb

Everything old is new again. Here is a Forbes article about Wizards of the Coast and 5th edition D&D. Also a NY Times article as well.

Additionally a vague announcement on the Wizards site itself. If you want a sneak peak go to D&D Experience convention in January.

Update:

It looks like WotC is very interested in player feedback at this point. The Forbes article says that players can go to http://wizards.com/dndnext to sign up to participate in player feedback. However that link does not appear to be active yet. After many of the "throwback" changes to 4E with Essentials, I feel that we can expect 5E to continue in that general trajectory and provide more of a 3.x feel in many ways. 

Lots of interesting reading in the following Escapist articles:

The Ghosts of D&D: Past

The State of D&D: Present

The State of D&D: Future

It also generated some really interesting insider perspectives and discussion over at ENWorld.

Here is a column (inspired by the Greg Tito Escapist articles) by Ryan Dancy and another post with even more material.

One of the Tyrian's favorite people, Rich Baker, has been let go from Wizards of the Coast. He has been a pillar of D&D, especially "The Forgotten Realms" for many many years.

Rich posted a blog entry here.

Alas, a change of plans.

Today, Wizards of the Coast eliminated my position. I have unfortunately been let go, after more than 20 years of employment with TSR/WotC.

I've really been enjoying Google Plus as of late. Partly because there are so many awesome gamers using the service. Today I stumbled on this really neat house rules post from Moe Tousignant. His house rules are based on a blog post by WoTC employee Greg Bilsland.

I created a nicely formatted Google Doc for it here.

A great deal of the document is focused on Fun Points

5. Every player can collect fun points. Fun points can be acquired for a variety of reasons all of which are listed below. Fun points can be used for two things:
   1. Modifying a D20 die roll: After any standard roll (initiative, skill check, attack, etc) a player may spend any number of fun points to modify that die roll. This must be done before the results of the roll are known. Making a roll a 20 does not result in a critical hit.
   2. Taking a roll on the Fun Point Table: A player can trade in 10 fun points for a roll on the fun point table (below). These give a wide variety of in game benefits.

The Fun Point Table is a 100 item long random table that you roll against. Its chalk full of fun stuff. One of my favorites is:

76. My Name is Enigo Montoya Keep fighting even while at negative hit points. You still make death saving throws.

You can get Fun Points for one time things, like creating a character background, creating a treasure wish list, and other character startup tasks. You can also get Fun Points for reading up on the rules regarding your character and general rules, as well as for things like showing up on time. 

Its just plain cool. I've used a similar system in the past to encourage players to get their character backgrounds completed. But it was far simpler than this creative and fun setup. Thanks to Greg and Moe for post this. I love it!

I'm not sure how much weight I put into the ICV2 sales numbers but its always an interesting perspective on the sales of RPG games. 

Paizo’s Pathfinder, #1 in the roleplaying game category, continued to gain momentum, with sharp differences in the number of releases between It and WotC’s category-defining Dungeons and Dragons. Some retailers told ICv2 of differences between the customers of the two games, with D&D 4.0 appealing to new players and people that don’t want to get super-involved in an RPG, and Pathfinder the choice of players that want to spend more time on playing.

Expectations are high for the holiday season. “We’re ecstatic about how the fourth quarter is looking right now,” a distributor told us.

Wizards of the Coast's D&D line was beat out by Pathfinder. Wizards did put out fewer titles during this time than Paizo, however they have been neck and neck for the last year or so. Overall it is good news for everyone though. It seems like the entire industry was doing better over all. 

I don't know how I managed to miss this, but the fabled Deck of Many Things has been in existence since April 2010! Rodney Thompson wrote it for Dungeon issue number 177.

Within the PDF provided it contains all the rules for the Deck as well as all of the cards to print. It has both sides of the cards so you can print them with a nice front and back. The following is from the introduction of the article

Of all artifacts to grace the world with their presence, perhaps none is more dangerous than the infamous Deck of Many Things. The artifact has appeared in every edition of DUNGEONS & DRAGONS®, and it first appeared in the GREYHAWK® supplement in 1975. Through each of its iterations, the Deck of Many Things has remained a dangerous and chaotic artifact. This 4th Edition update of the classic artifact retains much of the traditional version’s chaotic nature while bring- ing its mechanics more in line with what modern Dungeon Masters can use in their games.

I will be excited to see if they match up nicely with the newly released cards from Gardmore Abbey. Which we may be using tonight! Oh the excitement! I can barely contain myself.