If you haven’t had the chance to listen to the second PvP / Penny Arcade podcast where they play Dungeons and Dragons, you’re missing out. I highly recommend it if you’ve ever wondered exactly how a tabletop gaming session goes. If you’re familiar with tabletop gaming, listen because they’re just a ton of fun!

I also recommend you listen to a recent episode of the Penny Arcade “Downloadable Content” podcast in which they do nothing but talk about D&D. Honestly, I got really excited listening to them talk about Gabe’s game, because their enthusiasm for the experience is something I and many of my tabletop friends feel regularly. It was more than a bit engaging to hear that enthusiasm on a podcast from guys I respect.

The podcasts dovetail nicely with Wil Wheaton’s series of posts to his site this week all about DMing a first session for his son and friends. It’s broken up into five parts, with the final part offering up some really very sound DMing advice for folks who may not have tackled the noble pursuit all that often in the past. He and Gabe (in posts to the PA site) are doing a great job of demystifying a hobby that I fear has a lot of weird baggage and miscommunication associated with it.

All this is a lengthy way of saying that I’m really very enthused with the reaction 4E is getting among these nerd culture icons. It’s my fervent hope that Scott, Jerry, Mike, and Wil talking so fervently about the hobby will get more people involved, more people interested, and maybe make this fantastic new edition of the rules a bit higher profile in the domain of general geekery.

If you want to play and haven’t yet, tomorrow’s actually a great day to start. It’s one of a number of Worldwide D&D game days happening this year! Just head over to the official Wizards of the Coast website to find information and locations near you. They’ve got a great event tracker on the site that will be able to set you straight on what’s happening in your area.

In prepping for a new campaign I’m working on (a 4E translation of the Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path from Paizo), I’ve been trying to make use of the “Bonus Tools” offered by Wizards of the Coast. I say trying because, frankly, they’re kind of embarrassing. I developed web-based applications in college that had better functionality than some of these things; at the least they were more user-friendly.

Encounter Creator

• Incredibly intensive application for a Flash product; can’t run it on my laptop.
• Tons of monsters aren’t tagged properly, resulting in the sorting mechanisms being useless.
• Given that the box of monsters is super full because of this, the slider mechanism needs to be helpful; it’s not. It’s far too twitchy. Clicking once on the ‘down’ or up arrows on the slider doesn’t work. The mouse needs to be held down and the monsters move slowly.
• All options are dropdown boxes, not checkboxes, so you can only sort on one descriptor at a time (EITHER Solo, Elite, Minion, or Standard, not more than one descriptor.)
• There is not a single piece of information about their stats displayed in this application. All we know about each monster is what tags they deigned to apply to them. You have to have the compendium open at the same time to make it useful.
• There’s no way to specify if you want a Solo or Elite version of any of the monsters that aren’t already specified that way. You also can’t apply Elite templates to any monsters.

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Has anyone noticed that the d20 is gaining a lot of ’street cred’ of late? I’ve been tabletop gaming for the better part of my life, and know a bunch of guys and gals that can claim to have been playing or running D&D since the white box days. That said, tabletop gaming has always been very much a sub-sub-culture. The videogamers look on us as slightly off wonks who would rather ‘put on their wizard hats’ than throw down with Chun-Li. And there’s some truth to that, of course, but I’ve long thought that hobby tabletop gaming was worth the effort. I love running games, and the times I’ve been able to play have always been a lot of fun (limited though they may be).

Recently though, the Fourth Edition resurgence has really made an impact. 3E did this to some degree too, but I think the still-inaccessable quality of the rules made it a harder sell. And, of course, back in the early noughties the web was only dimly waking up. It was alive and kicking, of course, but it wasn’t the vibrant part of our everyday lives the way it is now. As a result, I’m really getting to see the impact of 4E a lot more closely, and it’s a good one.

Probably the most visible impact is the PvP/Penny Arcade/Wil Wheaton triumvirate of d20 goodness. That first session with Scott Kurtz, Jerry Holkins, Mike Krahulik, James Wyatt, and Chris Perkins was … well, as a longtime gamer it was a ton of fun to listen to. But more importantly I think it was a ton of fun for PEOPLE WHO HADN’T GAMED before. A lot of people, frankly, didn’t know what we did when we sat down to game. Having it ‘live’ in their headsets with a bunch of really nice, normal guys made it not only approachable but really appealing. I honestly wonder how many new D&D players that single podcast spawned.

And, of course, the PA guys have really been following that up. Comics, posts, commentaries on the experience. Gabe starting his own campaign was probably a watershed moment for more gamers. “If he can do it, etc.” Wil has done a lot on his site as well, talking excitedly about his experience and continually talking about nerd-adjascent awesomeness. Good, rich times.

I’m not going to ruin this by being a “where were you five years ago” snipe. I think it’s great that so many people are coming to tabletop gaming, and I wish WotC the best of success. If you yourself are interested, here are some links you might want to check out:

• Dungeons and Dragons
• Shadowrun
• Gnome Stew
• Robot Viking
• Gaming Report
• Board Games With Scott

Tomorrow marks the beginning of Dungeons and Dragons Insider’s for-pay service. Here are the terms they eventually decided on:

• 12 Months $4.95 per month
• 3 Months $6.65 per month
• 1 Month $7.95 per month

That’s … close to what I would have agreed to. I’m going to prepay for a year so I’m going to be getting the $5 a month fee, which is what I think it should be for everyone regardless. Ominously, they note: “as we begin rolling out our client applications, those prices are subject to change.” Blech.

More funly, go check out Wordle for some word art I made today:

• Player’s Handbook
• Dungeon Master’s Guide
• Monster Manual

[Well, this is interesting - longtime GSW friend and MMO fiend Michael Zenke has been talking to some of the folks at Red 5 - recipient of almost $20 million in VC to make what is presumably meant to be a WoW-beating MMO - and they have some interesting, high-level thoughts about persistent online worlds. Can they pull it off? We'll see!]

Ed Stark and Dave Williams are veterans of the tabletop gaming industry. Between the two they’ve had a hand in publishing major revamps of pen and paper roleplaying systems, popular trading card games, and a number of board games.

Between the two they’ve had a hand in the revamp of Dungeons and Dragons to the 3.0 rule set, the Legend of the Five Rings RPG, the West End Star Wars Roleplaying game, and numerous card- and board- games.

Last year they joined the still-running-silent, VC-backed MMO developer Red 5, based out of Orange County, California – the World Of Warcraft veteran-founded company has been in existence since 2005, has $18.5 million in backing from Benchmark Capital and Sierra Ventures, and most recently announced former Oracle exec Michael Weingartner joining the firm as VP of engineering.

Gamers with Jobs Conference Call Special Edition – August 14, 2008
D&D 4th Edition design, reception, lessons learned, plans for D&D Insider and more!

Live (sort of) from GenCon, Michael Zenke and Julian Murdoch interview the core design team from Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition.

On this first day of the biggest Role Playing event of the year, Mike Mearls, Lead Designer, Scott Rouse, Senior Brand Manager, and Rob Heinsoo, Lead Mechanical Game Designer from Wizards of the coast, sit down with us to talk about design philosophy, beta testing, the future of D&D Insider and what lies ahead. We dig deep, getting into what’s worked, what’s been a surprise, and what lessons they’ve learned along the way.

Gamers with Jobs Conference Call Episode 92 – July 9th, 2008

A New Audio Sponsor From Mick Mize, Playing D&D 4.0 Online, The Cross-Pollination of RPG Gaming, Diablo III, Your Emails and more!

This week Michael Zenke joins us as we educate our listeners in the finer points of pen and paper roleplaying games, the crossover with video gaming and what kind of D&D 4.0 games we’d like to see. We also tackle some saucy new emails on Spore, Diablo III, tossing rabbit’s salad and more.