1001 Bobs

Apr 20 – 29

With this update falling on a Wednesday we have a few more exciting pieces of news from Wizards of the Coast to include in this post. Not only have Dungeon and Dragon magazine delivered some great pieces with the Prince of Frost and the Remains of the Empire adventure, but the D&D Character Builder and Compendium have been updated. Probably the biggest piece of news this week, however, is that WotC is giving away D&D for Free! Read below for more.
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Apr 13-25 – Blogroll

Okay so this is stretching beyond a single week in April and covering most of the third and fourth week. It is also three days behind when I first promised it. As I’m working to gain my legs in the blogging rhythm layoffs at work and other events in real life sometimes throw you for a loop. Well enough of that, on to the reviews. I think I’ll lay this out in a top ten format and aim for 10 articles to highlight in a week.

From villains to dungeons and on to campaigns, this week(ish) features a huge variety of DM advice columns from the RPG blogosphere.

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Apr 13-22

Presenting my third review article this week, we move on to Wolfgang Baur’s projects Open Design and Kobold Quarterly.  This is an exciting week for both as 4E content accelerates as Halls of the Mountain King moves into the 4E conversion phase and Kobold Quarterly releases more 4E content then ever before. It looks like votes from last week are in and the 4E Halls will be for levels 8-11 ushering in Paragon play.

Note I am going to leave out the duplication of content and announcements.

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Apr 13-21

Continuing from Monday’s look at DDI, we turn to the updates for Dungeonaday.com over the past week. As this week is setting the tone for future updates you’ll see some of the dates change as we progress through updates so that I get caught up to the new schedule.

Monte Cook’s Dungeonaday.com continues this week with the first few rooms on Level 2 ~ The Font of Dreams!  Monte also has a number of posts to the Blog, a new free roaming encounter, a new listen check podcast, and the first of Jason Bulmahn’s articles for the site.

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Apr 13-19 ~ DDI

After several posts each Monday that are 2000-3000 words in length, I’ve decided to try and change my strategy a bit by spreading it out in many posts. For this week I’ll start with a review of the DDI articles from the past week. Tomorrow watch for a follow up with insight into the Dungeonaday.com articles and the day following will showcase Open Design and Kobold Quarterly.  On Thursday then will be the Blogroll and Podcast feature.  That should keep me busy this week. I’ll look to add the other pieces on the Quasi Elemental Plane of Ash and a review of KQ9 this week if possible.

Without further ado, today we look back over the Dragon and Dungeon magazine contents of the week. It has been a very fruitful week with many great articles for DDI. Several follow up on articles presented last week, including the White Lotus Academy and the Get Familiar pieces. Orcs and Devas get top billing in Dragon and Mike Mearls explores Skill Challenges in his ongoing column.
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Apr 6-12

As mentioned last week, I’ve decided to switch it up this week and give the blog posts of the week top billing. I think I’ll cycle content like this regularly to mix it up.  The two biggest news pieces in the RPG world this week hit blogs pretty heavily. First and foremost, Dave Arneson, co-creator of D&D  passed away on April 7th.  A sad day for the roleplaying community as we all collectively said good bye to the man who gave us character based roleplaying, hit points, AC, and many other staples, not to mention helped create what has become a gigantic world-wide entertainment industry.  AP ran a story on his passing which the NYT amongst others picked up, the well-spoken Kennith Hite delivered an eloquent obituary, OotS produced a comic in memory, and Kobold Quarterly ran an interview that they had just completed. RIP Dave and thank you for the gift of Fun!

The other large piece of news that has hit this week, called PDFGate online, is Wizards of the Coast’s decision to remove all PDF products from all channels on the Internet, specifically RPGNow/DrivethruRPG/OBS and Paizo without warning to customers.   This comes at the same time as WotC sues 8 people for illegal distribution of their PDFs all through Scrybd.com.  It strikes me as a poor business decision on WotC’s part as PDFs are an integral part of the marketplace now as many other publishers have capitalized on their move by offering deals on PDFs. ENWorld has had the greatest coverage of this event, including an interview with Greg Leeds, President of WotC as well as public copies of the court fillings.  With these two unfortunate events, I agree with others that regret that they are no longer able to purchase any of Dave Arneson’s books.

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Ash Mephit

The ash mephit is a small winged humanoid composed of ash particles. An ash mephit is from the Quasi Elemental Plane of Ash in the Elemental Chaos. The stifling plane is difficult to breathe in as the cloying cold ash seems to seek out warmth. This impish creature enjoys suffocating beings with its ashes.

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Mar 30-Apr 5

Highlights from this past week include a new playtest article from Player’s Handbook 3 (3 already OMG I just got 2!), many April fools jokes including the hilarious Witchalok and stats for the Flumph amongst others. Writing this on Monday without including Monday news is a bit difficult, especially given the questionable move of Wizards to remove all PDFs of their books from all online channels including downloads of past purchases. This move was apparently in reaction to piracy, the problem is that they are closing themselves off from perfectly legal sources of revenue and will likely have no affect on piracy. Indeed those who prefer to have PDF copies of their material will no longer have a legal method of getting those files even though they have paid full price for the hardcopy.
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The ashbeast is vaguely cat-like beast the size of a panther or cheetah composed by gray ashen particles. The particles shift as the ashbeast moves, often making it difficult to focus on. An ashbeast is from the Quasi Elemental Plane of Ash in the Elemental Chaos. The stifling plane is difficult to breathe in as the cloying cold ash seems to seak out warmth. An ashbeast hunts breathing creatures seeking to suffocate them and drag them off to feed.
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