4th & Dragon : Dungeons and Dragons...and stuff

You can now download full PDF digital versions of both Dungeon and Dragon magazines from Wizards website.

After knocking Wizards yesterday for the Compendium, I guess I have to turn around and praise the bejeezus out of them for these magazines.  I personally think they did a phenomenal job, despite all my reservations based on the past year without digital compilations.  I think the art is sharp and clean, the layout is clear and legible, and the format--oh the format--is outstanding.  I love the new landscape magazines.

Be warned if you want to print these though.  Dungeon runs to 109 pages and Dragon to 85.  If this is what we’ll be getting with the subscription cost, this has seriously swung me back the other direction.  I only wish these were still in “Brick and Mortar” stores still.  I’d buy paper subscriptions in a heartbeat.

Once again proving that Wizards has the print production side of their publications down pat.

This post at Wizards forum is from the lead developer, Ken Troop.  In it, he answers some of the criticism from the dozens of negative responses that have been posted here, there, and everywhere.

I wanted to quote the most important bit.

Rules vs. Content – The Compendium, from my vantage point, has always been intended as a “content” compendium and not a “rules” compendium. Ironically, internally we called it a Rules Compendium during the initial concept stages, but even then it was not intended to actually list, say, combat rules. It was only intended to cover what I think of as “itemized” content – items, powers, feats, skills, classes, races, etc. Ultimately, we thought of this as a tool to help players plan, optimize, and create their characters first and foremost, and we had eventual plans to add monsters to help DMs.

That said, there’s certainly been enough feedback from the audience to warrant us discussing what makes sense to add in the future. I offer no promise of “rules” elements to come…but additions of that sort will be considered for future updates…ultimately, I hear the people saying, “this tool would be far more valuable for us [DMs] if we were able to look up conditions, etc.”

Including conditions and monsters is great and will make it more useful, but if they decide not to include the combat rules, it will be a stupid, shortsighted decision.  Plus, I think that first paragraph is total bull.  It was clear that in the initial concept stages they were intending everyone to have access to all the rules from the books they owned.  When that went away, maybe they shifted gears to focus on helping players only, but that’s not the initial concept.  That’s where design led them.  I think calling it a compendium is asinine.  Perhaps a dictionary is in order.

Summary of the rest of the post: monsters will come eventually; a bug report feature will be coming soon; they don’t have a clue why searches aren’t working correctly; in a week or two (probably longer...) they’ll have a show-all function; long-term possibilities include multiple sorting, Boolean searches, and internal hyperlinking; the reason it launches in a separate window is because they don’t trust their new content management system, which is ultimately why the compendium is two weeks late to begin with.

In today’s Dungeon Magazine article, Gary Astleford has given us a taste of a 4th Edition Dark Sun.  Okay, so it’s only 2 pages long, but hey, it’s something!  Inside you’ll find three hazards from the world of Athas - a dew frond, a sand cactus, and a spider cactus.

In other news, Wizards of the Coast has announced a new Adventure Path following on the heels of one of my favorite adventures of all time, The Red Hand of Doom.  The first adventure will be featured in July’s Dungeon Magazine.

In a bit of non-D&D news, developer Sean K. Reynolds has signed on with Erik Mona at Paizo to work on the new Pathfinder RPG.  Reynolds is best known for his work on the 3rd Edition Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, with numerous credits across the FR books.  DragonAvenue member Lune interviewed Reynolds which was published here in June of last year.

Reynolds appeared to love 3E when it was around, as is evidenced by his blog, his articles, and his bulletin board, and is understandably skeptical about 4E.  He posted as much on his blog, so it really doesn’t come as much of a surprise to me to hear that he is going to continue developing material for a system he helped design.  That said, his presence at Paizo makes me ten times more likely to actually purchase a Paizo product.  I’ve thought highly of his work since I first started playing 3rd Edition.

This is a good move for Paizo.

Check the press release and Sean’s blog for more info.

Wizards has posted various images from the core rule books as wallpapers.  The only problem is that the largest resolution is 1280x1024 which is a bummer because my mac is 1440x900 and my PC is 1920x1200.  Oh well, I am a huge fan of the artwork in the core rulebooks and I’m happy they posted these.  My favorite image from the DMG is below.

Chris Pramas has posted a guide to using the Pirate’s Guide to Freeport with 4th Edition.  It covers levels, races, classes, and the points of light concept in general.  As Chris explains, Freeport is a rules free campaign setting, so fitting your 4e game into Freeport should be relatively painless. 

Freeport is Green Ronin’s signature city setting with classic fantasy elements, cruel-hearted pirates, and Lovecraftian horror come together in the rum-fueled metropolis known as the City of Adventure.

Wizards posted an article (better late than never) about the recently launched D&D Insider Compendium.

The D&D Compendium was created as an online tool to make browsing the various options quick, easy, and fun. Every race, class, skill, feat, power, paragon path, epic destiny, and magic item that appears in an official 4th Edition D&D product can be found in this online database.

The lack of rules is a major bummer.  At the very least, they should offer the entire PHB in a searchable format once the subscription model starts.  Also, it’s interesting that they used the word “browse” since you can’t actually browse content.  You have to search and then “sift” through the results.  However, they do go on to say:

The function we plan on introducing the soonest is the ability to “Browse All” within a category (races, classes, feats, powers, etc.). Using the “Browse All” functionality returns all the items in a given category, without the need for any keyword entered in the text search. “Browse All” represents a middle step to help bridge the time before all the filters for every category are in place.

In other words, we’re not done.  We don’t know when we’ll be done.  But we hear your complaints and have put in on the to-do list.  Yes, I’m very cynical of anything Wizards does online, but I find it ridiculous that a “Browse All” feature represents a middle step.  Give me a computer, some Diet Dr. Pepper, a copy of all the rules, and a break from my day job and I’ll make a better compendium inside of a week.  I’m not exaggerating even a little when I say that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of D&D players that have the skills to bang out a better product in less time. I just don’t understand what is going on behind the curtain over at Wizards.

Each category (races, classes, feats, powers, etc.) will have its own set of filters that allows you to fine-tune your searches. Want to know all the feats that your 11th-level dragonborn warlord is eligible for that has a Strength 15 prerequisite? The D&D Compendium will tell you. We’ll be unveiling these filters one category at a time, and we’re prepared to continue tweaking the capabilities and structures of the filters as subscribers tell us what’s working and what isn’t.

Emphasis in above quote was mine.  Your going to implement a simple, important, and essentially make-or-break feature one category at a time?  What the heck?  Why not just fix the dang thing and make it all work?  I can’t think of any technical or logical reason why they would implement this feature over time. The D&D Insider Compendium is something I might expect a D&D fan to put up in their free time.  The fact that this was actually developed by Wizards blows my mind.

Further, the errata is not included (at least as of yesterday), nor is the magazine content.  They did say that the magazine content will be added after the monthly compilations are done.

I do love the 4th edition system so far, but I can’t imagine how this thing is going to recover enough to make me want to pay for it.  The monthly fee may get me more stuff than just the Compendium, but given the simplicity of creating a searchable database of textual information, I cannot fathom how they pull off the rest of the things they’ve previewed.