DnD Encounters - Session 1 (02/29/2012)

This season of DnD Encounters - The Elder Elemental Eye - started on Leap Day! I am going to write this one up quickly - that way I can say I was able to post a blog entry on Leap Day as well. No, I suppose I really don't lead an exciting life.

APBA Baseball Luncheon

I had lunch yesterday with some old friends, and I mean old too. I met several of these gentlemen 30 years ago when I first started at Bell Labs in Naperville IL in 1982. Some of them had started an APBA Baseball draft league the previous year, so when I saw the game first played they were in the middle of their second season. I joined in 1983 and have been associated with the game in some context almost ever since.

DnD Encounters - Session 0 (02/22/2012)

The DDI Character Builder (CB) tool was updated yesterday (read the release announcement here). The list of bug fixes is always interesting to me. Like last time most of the fixes are for some pretty esoteric stuff, but that means if you do find something incorrect that you really should submit a bug report. I haven't experienced any problems with the new CB, but apparently there are some questions about material that may not have been included from the new DnD book released this week - Heroes of the Elemental Chaos. I must admit the book topic doesn't look that interesting to me, but it does serve as the basis for the upcoming weekly DnD Encounters session - The Elder Elemental Eye.

Books/Authors I Like

I've been thinking about doing a post or two (or three) like this for a long time and at this point I'm just tired of thinking about it, so here goes. I always have something I am reading, occasionally something baseball or some kind of computer/technical manual, but more often than not I am reading some sort of DnD-type fantasy story. There are certainly enough of them in print these days and I do enjoy wandering the halls of my local brick and mortar book store where I can peruse the front and back cover, read the blurb, and maybe take a risk and try something that might appeal to me. These are some authors and books I have come across over the past few years that I have taken a chance on and have really enjoyed. Caveat: I don't necessarily know what's good literature but I do know what I like, so buyer beware.

Deities and DDI

I've been thinking about DnDNext and the DDI Character Builder (CB) tool and had started walking through some thoughts about choices in my previous post. I did want to expand that topic a little further but I decided to break it out as a separate post, specifically the use of the choice of a deity as part of the process of building a character. The option to choose a deity is available and the title of your chosen deity will be prominently displayed on the character sheet, but for the most part that is about as far as it goes.

More Choices (Electronic Version)

When 4E was released in 2008 Wizards promised an on-line character builder tool, a monster builder tool, adventure tools, and a video table component. There are still no adventure tools, the video table (VT) is still in beta, and after changing formats and several major overdue upgrades the character builder (CB) and monster tool (MT) are finally in pretty good shape. This was a classic case marketing disaster in the "over promise and under deliver" category.Wizards learned a hard lesson here, so one can understand why they are deliberately obtuse when it comes to providing firm dates for things in the future.

Choices, Choices, Choices

With the announcement and the pending release of the DnDNext playtest several of the blog sites I follow have put down their own wish list of what they would like to see as part of the next iteration of DnD. I've had some thoughts on this as well, but I wanted to think through them a little bit longer, plus I just didn't want to mimic what others had said.