Showing posts with label news. Show all posts
Showing posts with label news. Show all posts

Thursday, August 18, 2022

The Launch of One D&D

Today Wizards of the Coast announced the next phase of D&D with the code name "One D&D."

One D&D

The playtest is being run out of the D&D Beyond Environment, so you will need a Twitch account to get access.

https://www.dndbeyond.com/one-dnd

The first playtest packet covers Character Backgrounds/Origins

What do we know so far?

The new core rules will be backward compatible with D&D 5 to the point of all existing D&D 5 materials work with the new rules.  This fits my prediction that rules were going to be closer to something D&D 5R or Edition 5.5.

They will be taking feedback, giving people time to playtest first. 

The new edition/revision will have new core rule books.  There will be a closer tie to the books and D&D Beyond as well as their own new digital service.   [source]

Wizards will also be including more features for inclusivity, so among other things I expect more species options as PCs and dropping the default alignment for characters, but maybe not necessarily so for monsters.  I think we have seen some of these changes for monsters in the Spelljammer Monstrous Compendium and Monsters of the Multiverse.

So to me, this feels like the changes 2nd ed did to 2nd ed revised, 3.0 did to 3.5, or 4e did to Essentials. 

Beth Rimmels over at ENWorld has a complete coverage of what is going on.
https://www.enworld.org/threads/one-d-d-takes-5e-to-new-digital-places.690754/

In any case, it is going to be fun to see where this new D&D goes.

Grabbed the playtest. Looks like we get a "Primal" spell source for Druids now. No Goblins though as a playable species!

Tuesday, November 9, 2021

These are the Soul Cages

I know I am running behind on this one.  Super busy at work and the last few posts here have been ones I have been sitting on for just this time.  But I am going to pause on today's scheduled post to do this one instead.  Plus the Internet is down in the Chicagoland area as of this writing, so I might as well do this.

Back on Halloween, the news came out that Pathfinder Drops Phylactery From In-Game Terminology. Instead of using "phylactery", It is a Greek word to describe the Hebrew word "Tefillin" which Jewish people will keep small scrolls of the Torah.  They have decided to go with the term "Soul Cage."

Maybe not these Soul Cages exactly.

As you can imagine the RPG folks on the internet freaked out.  Especially it seemed to me people that at the same time claimed they don't or no longer play Pathfinder, let alone Pathfinder Second Edition, the game, and the only game, this effects.

Personally, I find it confusing that so many roleplayers out there have so little imagination.

Nor do I even see what the trouble is.  So a company, Paizo, drops a term they are uncomfortable with.  THEY feel it is disrespectful.  At no point have I heard they changed due to a complaint. They did it as a creative choice.  Are some gamers now suggesting that a company can't change the terms they use to better suit their products/games?

No. This is fake outrage from the same lot that gets mad any time anyone decides to deviate from the holy writ of Gygax. 

Personally. I have been using Soul Cages for years. I was even talking about it with liches and succubi over a decade ago and as recently as this past year. I am likely to keep using them too. 

Don't like the term? Fine. Don't use it.  Want to keep phylactery? Fine, keep it. It likely isn't going to change in the game you are playing now anyway. But honestly, unless you are playing Pathfinder Second Edition, why do you even care?

Monday, November 24, 2014

How Dungeons & Dragons Became A Game Changer

I am moving offices today and don't really have time for a full on post.

But this came across my newsfeed today and I thought I would share it.

http://artery.wbur.org/2014/11/24/dungeons-dragons

Very interesting read.

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Jean Wells 1955-2012

Jean Wells, one of the early pioneers of gaming and long time TSR developer has passed.

Here are some of the links that can better explain her contributions than I can.
http://poleandrope.blogspot.com/2012/01/jean-wells-1955-2012.html
http://www.facebook.com/groups/121390094630920/permalink/172923566144239/
http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2012/01/rip-jean-wells-1955-2012.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Wells

Among her other contributions to the game and to the hobby she was also famous, or even infamous, for her original B3 Palace of the Silver Princess module.

B3 was one of the first adventures I bought to run as a DM and read and reread that adventure 100s of times.
A sad day in gaming indeed.

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Introducing my other blog

I have started up another blog.

This one has more to do with my academic and work-related interests than anything to do with gaming.
Sometime they might cross paths, but nothing at the moment is coming to mind.

The URL is an easy one:
http://timbrannan.wordpress.com/
It is called, originally enough, Tim Brannan's Education Blog.

I am hoping it will grow and be as successful as I deem this blog to be.

I am not slowing down my posting here though.  My Education blog is going to be low bandwidth for a while.  But every so often I get something I want to post and it is not really appropriate to post here.

Stop by and have a look every so often!

Thursday, June 23, 2011

I recommend...

I read a lot of books.
LOTS.

I just finished Christopher Hitchen's "God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything" (it was a great book) and I have a new tablet with Nook, Kindle, Kobo and a generic e-reader apps all installed.  I have about 30 new books that I got for free; and not stolen mind you, but given to me and asked to read.

But I have bought one book.

Fellow blogger, Eden Freelancer, old-school publisher and my usual verbal sparing partner, Jason Vey has released his first novel, Broken Gods.


You can find it here, http://www.reliquarypress.com/Reliquary_Press/Welcome.html
Or at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

I have the Nook version and can't wait to start it.  I read a first draft of it and I like the world Jason is building here.  If you are a fan of modern supernatural then this should be added to your list of things to buy and read.

I'll update you all as I am reading it.

But don't wait for me.  Go out and buy a copy.

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Jim Ward is ill

To many of us old enough to remember the old guard one name always stood out to me; Drawmij.   Drawmij was a one of the many characters of Gary's home game that became immortalized in the pages of Greyhawk.

The real Drawmij, Jim Ward is not doing as well.

According to this post, and many others in the blog realms, he is ill and the hospital bills (as they do) are rising.
There are a lot of things that you can do to help, the Dragon'sfoot page details some of them, but another would be to buy something from his DriveThruRPG store.  
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/index.php?manufacturers_id=2191&affiliate_id=10748

You can read more here:
http://poleandrope.blogspot.com/2010/11/please-help-jim-ward.html
http://greyhawkgrognard.blogspot.com/2010/11/jim-ward-needs-our-help.html
http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2010/11/warden-is-declearing-medical-emergency.html

and some more recent updates:
http://poleandrope.blogspot.com/2010/11/update-regarding-jim-ward.html
http://blackmoormystara.blogspot.com/2010/11/james-ward-on-way-to-recovery.html

Jim gave us Metamorphosis Alpha, which in turn gave us Gamma World and even recently spoke to WotC about it all.

Here is hoping that Jim gets better soon.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Featured Reviewer and PDFs

Well I am now a featured Reviewer over at DriveThruRPG.com.



This basically means that I buy a lot of PDFs but now I will also be reviewing them more.
Currently I have 62 reviews up. So if you want to know what I think of a game, then you can swing on by.

I like PDFs.  I can carry dozens of books with me if I want and when I want to print something, I can just do the sections I need.

If I get something interesting I'll pass it along here.

Saturday, March 27, 2010

The Week in Review (and then some)

Back from vacation.  I had the Blog on Auto-post all week, so sorry if I did not get to respond as quickly as I would have liked.

So what do I know?

- Gary Con.  Sad I missed it.  I really wanted to go but was on a plane at the time.

- TARGA/DnDWPS dust up.  That was a bunch of suck.  I am going to miss Chgowiz's blog, having met him in person recently.  I still like TARGA and what they do, and I still enjoy the hell out of Zak's blog.   I just find it all odd really.  Reminds of the time my mom told my brother and I that she hated it when we watched horror movies full of killing. She said she would rather see us watching porn because at least that was some positive.  So we went out and brought a bunch of porn home.  I think Dad was happy.  So people that play a game that is basically about "killing people and taking their stuff" have some issues with some occasional dirty talk and maybe a boob?   Not getting it. Sorry.  But that is all I want to say on the issue, I don't want to add fuel to a fire that is almost out.

Reminds me of another story.  I was supposed to go to a party to meet up with a bunch of the people that I hung out with and lived with in college (this was back in like 1990).  But my buddy Scott and I had gone out and proceeded to start drinking without everyone first.  We drank, listened to the Who for a while and were generally in a really fantastic mood (it was "springtime in Carbondale!" three words that held so much meaning back then, and "Face Dances" is much better when you are little off).  We showed up at the party and we were smashed and happy and loud and there had just been a HUGE fight between one of my roommates and his girlfriend and everyone there was so not in the mood for me or Scott.  That's what I am trying to avoid here.  We left and finished drinking on the steps of the local Lutheran Church because we felt at the time the Lutherans were the most accepting of all the local churches. Especially of a drunk atheist and neo-new agey whatever Scott was at the time.

Oh, and put me in the crowd as someone that would like to see Chgowiz/Mike bring his blog back.

- Vampyres. Yeah that was fun.  I love that stupid little flick. Might be a reflection of my immaturity or (as I prefer to think of it) my esoteric tastes in horror cinema.  Plus I got to try it out in a bunch of systems.  Might be a bit before I do that again; doing a bunch of systems at once.  I have nothing else up my sleeve unless I want to drag out Willow & Tara again, and you all might be tired of hear about them from me.

- Succubi week. I post my Sympathy for the Succubus post right before and then I see a bunch of other posts.  Mostly related to succubus pic from the Monster Manual.  Cultural Zeitgiest? Collect Subconscious? Naw. Doubt it, more like it is gamers for the most part are pervs.

- Blog Persona vs Real Life. This is an interesting one. I have a some people that read this blog on the website and others that read the redirect from Facebook.  On Facebook I have friends, family, co-workers, people I know from the gaming world because I like their stuff, people from the gaming world because they like my stuff and a bunch of others.  So, how should I "present" myself?  I mean I have people at work now telling me they had read my blog and commented on some of the things I have said.  Sometimes I even get a call from my mom and she comments on something I have said.  All I have really have to say about all of that is, well, you people are supposed to know who I am by this point. ;)
I am not planing to put anything here that I wouldn't figure my mom, my wife or my boss would read and get me into trouble.

- Books & Reviews.  I FINALLY got around to reading some the books and products sitting on my "to read" pile since before Christmas.  Expect a round of reviews to start coming in.

- What Scares you the most?  During my feverish time while I was sick it came to me what scares me the most.  Look forward to a post on that too.

- Orcus.  I am going to agree with Zak on something else here.  Orcus is the most Metal of all the Demon Lords.  If I ever get a chance to re-run going to Orcus' plane in the Abyss it needs to make "Tomb of Horrors" look like "Candyland".  Then I am going to ask James Raggi to tell me how to make it more metal.  This would fill that desire I have to an adventure that has EVERYTHING in it that all those critics in the 80s said D&D was about (and were wrong).  Childish of me?  Maybe I think it is actually that part of my brain that is attracted to medical dramas and really bad movies that part that says "how bad can this get? And then what can happen to make it worse?".  In other words, I want to turn it up to 11.
Maybe I could make it something like an OSR community thing.  Contribute one thing you would find in Orcus' lair, I don't care how sick, twisted, cruel or profane. Or I could just listen to Iron Maiden for about a week straight till something pops in my head.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Wait? Is it 1982 again? More anti-D&D crap.

So the old "Dungeons and Dragons causes violence" meme has reared it's ugly head again.  This time from the particularly lazy journalism of Ms. Laurel J. Sweet and the Boston Herald.  Ms. Sweet put forth that golden chestnut that somehow playing the game Dungeons and Dragons is somehow linked to violent murder. In particular the ones Amy Bishop is accused of.

Now let me be clear here.  What ever Amy Bishop did or didn't do in her personal life is unimportant when dealing with the fact that she murdered three people, supposedly because she didn't get tenure.  We could just as easily blame the University tenure track or the pressures of a publish or perish environment.  I am sure people will blame the gun companies too.
Here is a novel idea.  Let's blame Amy Bishop.  She is the one that pulled the trigger after all.  Apparently she kept pulling till the gun jammed.

But my ire is not directed at Amy Bishop.  We have a court system, juries and a judge for her.  No mine is on the lazy, so called journalism of  Laurel J. Sweet.  Yeah I linked her name again.  Wonder why.

To make the claims or even allusions she is making are either laziness, a misguided attempt to push copy or a hidden conservative agenda.   She published not just one, but two articles on this.  At the risk of giving her exactly what she wants here are the links.  Use a browser that blocks ads if you wish to make a statement:

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/20100215oddball_protrait_emerges_suspects_family_pals_offer_clues/srvc=home&position=0
and
http://news.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1233150

So. why do I get so worked up about these things?  Well frankly stupid people piss me off, but smart people enabling stupid people to do more stupid things is worse.

See here is how it works.  Lazy journalist looking for a good byline writes fluff piece about D&D leading to murder.  Next thing you know some shit-for-brains religious fuck-wit then quotes the article as "expert testimony", then that person gets quoted as "reading up on all the latest literature", then it is used as "evidence" in a Wikipedia article and you get a snowball of stupid rolling down hill.

Next thing you know someone is digging up old Pat Pulling again and TLN is showing "Mazes & Monsters" in heavy rotation.

Ok to be fair I have no idea if TLN has ever shown "Mazes & Monsters".

It irritates me because it is lazy, and stupid.  Obviously the Boston Herald is trying to push copy and Ms. Sweet is only too happy to help.  But it is bad journalism.

I had my run ins with the D&D Satanic Panic of the 80's.  I was lucky to have had parents that were smart enough to know better than to listen to fundies and to trust their children.  Later on I dealt with Jack Chick personally and, if I may be so bold, came out the winner in that one.

The time I now spend playing D&D with my own children has been fantastic.  I have met some of the coolest people through this game and others like it.  It is a great past time full of great people who deserve better than being painted by the sloppy brush of Laurel J. Sweet.

Agree with me?  Why not let Laurel J. Sweet know yourself.  Reasonable, intelligent emails only.  Or even just something to convey your disappointment in a polite manner.

Don't give her anything else to write about.