On Wednesday, the 22nd of August, I had the chance to be present for one of the first public unveilings of the Fourth Edition of Dungeons and Dragons. Myself and a group of journalists (mostly from tabletop trade publications, but a few websites as well) sat for a presentation on the newest thing from Wizards of the Coast. We didn’t know for certain that we were about to see the new edition of D&D, but I’m pretty sure everyone in the room was thinking along the same lines. Again, in the interests of full disclosure, I’ll point out that this presentation was done at a fairly nice steak restaurant. We were fed right after the presentation was done.

My initial reaction was the same muted anger I think a lot of people felt when they first heard the news. Over the course of just the presentation, though, I found myself swayed. I was easily swayed for a couple of reasons:

1. I am not that big a fan of the 3.5 rules. Almost every argument I’ve ever had with a player has been over a rules dispute, and any effort to clarify edge cases and make flow work better is a win for me.
2. On the flip side of that, I have a lot of respect for the D&D R&D team. Chris Perkins, James Wyatt, and Bill Slavicsek are righteously smart people, and it’s been an interesting disconnect to be frustrated by the D&D game rules, but agree so heartily with the Design and Development column on the Wizards website.
3. Likewise, the changes to the D&D mechanics they’ve introduced in more recent books have all been stuff I’ve really enjoyed. Players Handbook II is a gold mine; I’m about to start playing in a campaign, and three of the four characters are using classes out of that book because they’re so well done.

So even just after the presentation was done, I was hopeful, and I’ve grown even more hopeful in the last two weeks. Why is that? Well, let me walk you through the presentation I was given. I’ll try to lay out their play just the way they did. Then I’ll lay out what they’ve released about the setting since then, primarily in the form of the Design and Development articles, and the Playtest Notes pieces. They’ve actually already given us lots of hints about what the new game will be like, and the differences are quite stunning. I’ll also offer up a few opinions of my own, suspicions I have about what things are going to be like. Hopes, as it were.

I’m doing this as much for me as for you, but I hope that you find this amalgamation of information to be helpful. This is what D&D 4th Edition is going to look like. I hope.

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Massively late, massively huge, Massive Update for August 16th - 30th is now up.

The Big Story.

It’s a strange tale, from this past week. You’ve probably heard of Gods and Heroes, the upcoming MMOG set in Roman times developed from Perpetual Entertainment. It’s going to use this neat minion system and has a boatload of interesting animations. It was looking good on the business side, too, with a publishing deal all worked out with Sony Online Entertainment’s “Platform Publishing” imprint. And now … the official word from Perpetual is that they are the sole publisher of Gods and Heroes.

“Perpetual Entertainment has replaced SOE’s Platform Publishing as the official publisher of Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising. Previously, the two companies had been in a co-publishing agreement. SOE Senior Brand Manager Debysue Wolfcale characterized the move as clarification of the actual roles each company play in the development of the game. SOE continues to handle marketing and retail distribution for the title, the same roles they held before this move. The altered relationship clarifies for the community and the press that SOE has no active role in the development of Gods and Heroes, SOE explained, and that all credit should go to Perpetual Entertainment.”

There’s plenty of commentary to be had, from angsty snark at Warcry to some considered words from Lum.

If you’re having problems weeding through the GDC Austin site, you’re not alone. Check out the big old gigantic pdf version of all the keynote and panels (cleverly hidden on the front page in a corner) for a sense of what’s going on.

If you’re wondering specifically when the keynotes are, here you go:

• Michael Morhaime 9:30 AM Wednesday in Ballroom A
• Sulka Haro 9:30AM Thursday in Ballroom A
• Hiromichi Tanaka 11AM Thursday in Ballroom A
• Minho Kim 9:30 AM Friday in Ballroom A

Here is my schedule for the event, what I is going to, and so on:

Wednesday -

• Morhaim Keynote 9:30 AM
• Everything I Needed to Know about Writing I Learned from Star Trek 11 AM
• Community Management 101 1:30PM
• Identifying, Engaging and Empowering Community Influencers 3PM

Thursday -

• Tanaka Keynote 11AM
• The Zen of Online Game Design 1:30PM
• Playing Nice With Alternative Media 3PM (COME SEE THIS ONE!)
• Writing, the BioWare Way 4:30 PM

Friday -

• Kim Keynote 9:30 AM
• Where are the Biggest Online Gaming Opportunities? 1:30PM
• Town Hall 3PM

There’s a lot of space in here because they put half-hour breaks in between each thing … good for socializing, I guess. I also have interviews and stuff to work through that you’re not interested in.

Like the fine folks at Valve, I have a lot of work to do over the next few months. Reviews to right, features to push through my brain, etc. Playing the WoW TCG at PAX and with my wife over the last week has made me really really really want to play World of Warcraft again. But no.

I cannot do it. I am banning myself from WoW until (at the soonest) I finish Mass Effect … for the first time. It’s going to drop in November, so I figure that means I’ll be able to play around in Azeroth again sometime early in December. In the meantime I’m going to focus (on the MMOG side) on Guild Wars and EQ2. And I’m only on the second stage of Bioshock … must move faster!

1. The writeups from Gen Con are quickly becoming stale on my harddrive, but I’ll really super truly try to get them up sometime this week. I can only excuse myself by saying that when I get relaxed it totally throws off my work vibe. I really can only be a useful, contributing member of gaming society by constantly being in a state of taut readiness, ie: tired and cranky. I blame my wife.
2. If you really do want to know how my Gen Con was and what I thought of the games there, the Cliff’s Notes version is up on Slashdot: Gen Con 2007 in a Nutshell.
3. I am arrive-ed in Seattle. PAX happens tomorrow. I hope to see some of you this weekend. If you are here and want to beat me about the head have a chat, the usual channels are open.
4. Oh god. So good. Should have sent a poet.
5. Off to finish Massive Update. Going to die soon.

Gen Con stuff soon, I promise. Just wanted to take a quick moment to post about how happy I was to read about Julian Eggebrecht’s comments out of Leipzig.

Factor 5 president Julian Eggebrecht has said that games’ inability to include sexual content, satirical jokes and fantasy violence without degrees of censure are symptoms of a wider problem with ratings - and said that he didn’t feel the US Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) took the medium seriously as an artform.

“I would be happy if in games we could talk about homosexuality, but we’re not even at the point where we can admit that humans have heterosexual relationships, and that is a real problem - and it tends to show that games are not being seen, even by our own ratings boards, as an artform,” he told attendees at the Games Convention Developer’s Conference in Germany.

Just three weeks ago I wrote almost the exact same thing for my bi-weekly Escapist editorial, and it’s totally kickass to see someone with industry credibility putting their name on the line in a public forum like this. Can’t wait to see the ESRB’s response.

I have return-ed home safely and soundly. Actually, we had a really nice trip back. Left around 2:30 and was at my doorstep at 8:45 (which is 9:45 in the time zone I left). 7 hours is great time with Indy, and that included a stop for food.

To be honest, I had reservations about going this year. The year we got married the whole thing was kind of a blur of not-funness. Our friends were incredibly sweet, but the hotel we stayed in was teh suq. We were both also still so stressed about the hitching that we had a hard time relaxing. Last year wasn’t much better, with me in particular not having a very good time thanks to poor planning and bad event experiences.

This year was great. Had a couple of fun events, but the real enjoyment factor for me was being able to check out the videogames. When I heard that the con was planning to invite videogame companies more heavily, I was afeared we’d have an E3-ish experience on our hands. Thankfully, that was far from the reality. Except for Dell’s incredibly annoying DJ Show/Bus Tour/Demo station, the booths were all tasteful and obviously geared towards Gen Con attendees. And (duh) most of them were MMOGs. I got the chance to check out Gods and Heroes, Pirates of the Burning Sea, Fallen Earth, and Warhammer Online, along with the titles Pox Nora and Eye of Judgement. It was actually really well done, and I felt it was a useful addition to the event. I have high hopes that next year will see even more titles in this vein at the event. Just as an example, by that point mayhap Bethesda will be showing Fallout, and the Con of Cons would be the place to do it.

I did, however, come back diseased. Not physically, thankfully; actually, exercise and attempts at making myself healthier made for one of the most painless Cons I’ve had. No … my disease is mental. One of the many demos I took in at the event was the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game.

::sigh::

Thankfully, even thought it feels like the game has been around for a while, it’s still fairly new. For about 20 bucks, I picked up enough cards from the first two sets to give me a decent base for deck-building. (As long as you’re not buying brand new stuff, Cons are great places for deals.)

Katie is actually interested enough to consider playing with me, so we’re probably going to go a few rounds tomorrow. Expect more comments on that, as well as my full writeups from the con.

My biggest yay: I’ll have something ‘throw-down-ish’ to play at PAX. :)