NEWS: Dungeons and Dragons 4.0 Announced...

GEEK: Dungeons and Dragons 4.0 Announced...

Bush praises Wizards of the Coast's "Bold support of abstinence only initiatives."

Without it there would be no World of Warcraft. Without it Jack Chick would just be a fundamentalist freak, rather than a fundamentalist freak with a cult fandom, and Tom Hanks wouldn't cry in the dark whenever anyone mentions the words mazes and/or monsters. Without it Rivers Cuomo's fan base would have a collective 50% less body fat. Most importantly, without it I would have had a real job between the years 2000 and 2005, when I fed my family (barely) writing books about buried treasures, hideous monsters, and elven maids with improbably large breasts.

Yes, today it was leaked that Wizards of the Coast will be releasing a 4th edition of the venerable Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game, which for 30 odd years has lurked in the dankest corners of the pop culture basement, inspiring freaks and geeks to acts of d4 heroism, to songs about of all sorts to swing singlehanded fuel the explosive growth of the Slim Jim, Cheeto, and Mountain Dew brands. Well, they didn't really so much announce 4th ed. as announce they were announcing something, and then forget to hide the new forum they'd cleverly disguised under the name "D&D 4th Edition Forum"

For those of you curious (and bereft of hope) enough to care, here's a screenshot of the now removed forum.

The official announcement is scheduled for tomorrow, at
GenCon Indy 2007, a 4 day celebration of all those things I find far cooler than any 34 year old man ever should.

So if you, like me, felt a strange disturbance in the force today, a tingle in your spider-pants, and a desperate need to hole up in the library with pencil, ruler, crinkled graph paper, and an annotated edition of The Bloody Crown of Conan... now you know why.


Patrick Y invented italics, actually, back in the summer of '02, but traded away the patent for a pack of Wheat Thins, and a favor to be named later.

Fun.

I might have to play somes games of this again in order to celebrate!

I am still playing 2nd edition every week. I am not ready for this powerful tome.

First off, it's Cuomo. Secondly, those lyrics are wrooooong. Lastly, w00t, new D&D!

Damnit. I knew I shouldn't have written this while a beer was actually in my hand.

Damn

Now what am I going to do with all these 3.5E books!?

I roll to attack you.

If there was no D&D, how could I identify so disturbingly with this little gem:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmgLOKRl5J0

I roll to attack you. What is your dex?

You know, I have D&D ranging from a basic D&D boxed set (not the original, of course, those things are worth enormous amounts of money on eBay as my stepfather proved not long ago. Sold the sucker for something like 4 grand to an Australian guy. They still have another copy. Go being long-term geeks.) up through 3rd edition. But I just don't think I'm going to be buying into this one.

It's not that I don't think they're probably going to improve the game - 3rd edition was in many ways a *huge* leap forwards in playability and coherence. But I just don't actually *play* D&D, these days. Well, I never did that much, and it's getting increasingly expensive to maintain parity. I don't think it's worth it anymore.

Every other week for me. I'm sad, I was promised Kittens of Doom by the DM next time we game...

Roll for initiative, meat!

That's why I just stuck with the 2nd Edition...greedy bastards.

I'm soooooooo glad I didn't buy the 3.5 books...
I'm JUST gettng used to the changes from 3.0 to 3.5 and now there's a 4.0
Alas...

wow, their forum admins must have <10 int eh? *rimshot*

i just hope they fix the stupid 3.5 crit change.

I don't understand it!

*kills it*

I totally agree. It's harsh. :/

I still forget about all the sparkly new coolness about Rangers and Bards and thus always forget to play them.

But you know... we're not all 34 year-old fat men playing in basements. In fact, my gaming squadron consists of about 8 people between 19 - 23 who are all fairly attractive people (3 out of 8 are girls, too). Not to mention I know OTHER gaming squadrons that have about that same ratio, only most of them are even prettier. (No girls in that one though, for shame.)

My point is, we're not all Trolls, Ogres and Athacks. (Some have fancied me quite a Nymph myself. )

Ahhh, I'm so jealous, Morgan's at GenCon Indy!!!

I'm stuck here at school.

Why hello there

"gaming squadrons"? I've always heard groups that play games gaming groups, but maybe they didn't have squadron licenses?

Anyway, yeah this perception that role-players are all complete misfits hasn't really been true since the 70s and 80s. It's fairly mainstream now.

Fuck! Now, more pissed off customers who shelled out thousands of bucks for 3rd ed and 3.5. I'll have to listen to people complaining about this shit every day for years to come.

And no doubt this new release will further push D&D back into its position of dominance in the RPG market, to the despair of those of us who would rather play something a bit more interesting. Ho hum.

There is no crying in D & D !!

It all depends if 4th Edition is open source. I've heard it isn't going to be, which would mean that other companies can still produce content for 3.5 but not 4.0. This would keep me playing 3.5 for a long time.

Personally, 4th would need to be be a HUGE improvement for me to want to re-buy all of my books. I've been playing since 1977 and have been through all editions. I like 3.5 much better than 2.0.

One of the possible changes is a simplication of the skills; i.e. stealthy instead of move silently, hide in shadows, etc. Also there would be no skill points, just trained, untrained.

We shall see.