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. :)

So, it’s outside the bounds of this site’s normal topic but I have to share: D&D is going 4.0. 4th Edition, rather, the first major revamp of the rules since the game was launched as D&D 3.0 back in 1999. I had the chance to sit in on the press announcement last night, and I’ve had a bunch of time to acclimate myself to the idea already. As a result, my thinking is now more excitement and enthusiasm than anger/confusion. That said, I can understand why you’d be cranky having just read my words.

Cranky, that is, if you’re a current player. If you don’t play D&D, your thinking is probably … ‘huh’? Well if you’re here, you’re likely a MMOG player. MMOG players have a lot to look forward to with 4th Edition, as … “releasing next year will be new Web-based tools and online community forums through the brand new DUNGEONS & DRAGONS Insider (D&D Insiderâ„¢) digital offering. D&D Insider lowers the barriers of entry for new players while simultaneously offering the depth of play that appeals to veteran players.”

Essentially, there is going to be a ‘virtual tabletop’ that will allow players to voice chat with each other. The DM can manipulate an online tile-based map, laying down monsters and traps and such, and officiating for players. There’s no actual gameplay built into the game; it’s not a videogame. It is, though, the most interesting thing to happen to D&D since the 99 rules reboot.

Here’s the schedule for product releases next year:

• February 2008 - First look at D&D XP in Virginia
• April 2008 - Miniatures Reboot, Keep on the Shadowfell Adventure
• May 2008 - Player’s Handbook / Character Sheets
• June 2007 - Monster Manual
• July 2007 - Dungeon Master’s Guide

The official PR text is after the cut. You can expect more fully formed thoughts on the subject … probably at Slashdot. I’ll link it here. An exciting day at the Con of Cons.

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This is completely not MMOG-related, but I thought I’d share something that occurred yesterday. You may find it of some interest; if not, that’s why RSS feeds are so easy to read.

Twenty months and twenty eight days ago, myself and several of my friends began a Dungeons and Dragons campaign called “The Shackled City”. A series of adventures published in the module magazine Dungeon proved very popular, and so they were released as a hardbound book with stats updated and some plot smoothed out. I was extremely taken with the story, and at the end of August 2005 we embarked on what would prove to be one of the finest roleplaying experiences of my life.

Some background here: I’ve been playing tabletop RPGs since I was ten. My first game was (sigh) the Palladium title Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness. I played a kung-fu ferret, or something, and a good time was had by the nerdy. By the time I reached high school I’d been dubbed the GM for the folks I played with, and ran D&D, Shadowrun, and Rifts games for several different cliques between 1990 and 1994 or so. I wasn’t that polished, they weren’t that focused, and so they didn’t last that long. Except for an occasional game run for a friend in Illinois during high school, I hung up my GMing license between the start of high school and the end of my college education.

Before I’d even moved back to Madison after my senior year at Evergreen State had ended, I was planning a new campaign. That outing, called simply ‘Cormyr‘, got my GMing legs back under me something fierce, and lasted almost two years. I’ve since run two Shadowrun campaigns and a D&D/Eberron campaign, and when I went into Shackled City it was with a degree of confidence in both myself and my players. They were all RPG vets, my gigs as a GM since getting out of college had been generally successful, and the material (so I thought at the time) was fairly interesting stuff.

We dove in just a week after getting back from Gen Con the year before last, and have been playing (for the most part) every Sunday since.

Last night was the last session of the game. It wasn’t even a ‘real’ session, just a denouement for the characters and players, a look ahead to what the now incredibly powerful and wealthy PCs would do with their spare time, political connections, and ample financial assets. We also did a ‘director’s cut’ of the game, where I went back and explained the numerous additions and changes I’d made to the as-written modules. D&D modules, as you may or may not be aware, tend to be long on action and short on actual roleplaying/storytelling directions. Despite this, and what some people might tell you, D&D is first and foremost a game about playing a role. Combat is fun and all, but if there’s no reason for the characters to fight you might as well be playing nethack.

This campaign will go down in my life as a worthwhile accomplishment for a number of reasons. It seemed yesterday as though the players left the game with a high degree of satisfaction: first and foremost the goal of anyone running a tabletop game. If the players aren’t having fun, you’re doing it wrong. Another reason: we have a ridiculously complete record of the whole damn thing. Thanks to the tireless efforts of Alan De Smet (Alan in the comments here on the blog) and his brother Brian, the Shackled City Wiki alternates between the third and fourth entry on Google for the term ’shackled city’. The website documents the entire experience, from session one onward, and (as long as the site lives) will provide me with context for some of the in-jokes I expect to be with me for as long as I live. Apparently, you say the phrase ‘Unicorn-humper’ once, and you’re marked for life.

Most of all, I’m going to look back on this worthwhile accomplishment from the context of confidence building. When you’re in the thick of things, dealing with the game on a weekly basis, it’s easy to get caught up in the minutiae of dice rolls and stat blocks. Looking back on the last year and half or so … I think I’ve done a good thing.

If you have some spare time on this, a weekday holiday in the States, go read over the adventures of seven friends and their wacky alter-egos. And ehh … if you read the quotes … please try not to judge. :D

Reviled by the religious right and misunderstood by many, Pen and Paper (or Table-Top) roleplaying plays an important role in the subtext of Massively Multiplayer game design. This week I’ll be attending the annual Gen Con game convention on the occasion of Dungeons and Dragon’s 30th anniversary. As such, I thought it might be useful to reflect on what pen and paper gaming means to mmogs, to people in general, and to me.

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