1001 Bobs

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.

Broken Time Finn © Apis Teicher, 2009

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