Yes, I have a working computer… I’m anxious to start gaming again, but I’ve got a lot of worky-stuff I need to get caught up on, next week is the holidays for us Christian-descended folks, and then I’m going away for three weeks. So, in other words I’ll be making a “Who’s in? What’s up?” post in about a month.
Dragon has started publishing some Class Acts stuff either with less fluff. Yay! While I like things like new, more specific wrinkles for Warlock pacts or particular schools of Wizardry, “Here’s some shit for Assassins.” is nice, too.
One of the new articles for today is called “Familiar Power”, full of new familiar-foo, including Wizard spells that gain additional effects when used in conjunction with a familiar… including a Utility spell that teleports you to your familiar’s location, turning them into their passive state in the process. That’s something I’ve had as a homebrew idea for a while now, so I was glad to see it become canon.
The new D&D book release for this month, The Plane Below, is a deeper look at The Elemental Chaos… I don’t see any great need to own this book personally, but I’m glad it exists and I love what it portends. Manual of the Planes is still my least favorite book among my D&D 4E collection, and the one I would objectively rate lowest in quality even compared to books I have no interest in like the campaign guides. I said at the time it came out that individual books were the way to go. I will definitely be picking up any Feywild and Shadowfell supplements when they come out, and will look at an Astral Sea one to see if it catches my fancy.
(Which it might… especially if they do more with the Spelljammer influence. Update: The cover of The Plane Above shows a Githyanki at the helm of an astral ship, with another one visible in the background. Here’s hoping.)
Possibly notable: The Plane Below makes mention of elemental wizards called “sha’irs” in a possibly apocryphal origin of the genasi. This was a magic-user kit in the 2E Al-Qadim setting. This is actually the second mention of an Al-Qadim character type I’ve seen recently… a write-up on Avengers mentioned the classic “old man in the mountain”-style holy assassin build from Al-Qadim. Is it too soon to hope that Arabian Adventures might be making a surprise post 9/11 comeback?
#1 written by Stormcaller December 19th, 2009 at 07:16
As best I can tell they seem to be trying to incorporate a broad range of old settings into 4th edition- between Sigil, the Spelljammers, and the Al-Qadim elements, I think they’re taking lots of old worlds and trying to make them fit into this new one, leaving the irreconcilable ones (such as Dark Sun) in their own separate box. It’s an interesting idea, in that it allows people to dig out old favorite supplements and build off of them without starting up whole new product lines that may not be self-sufficient.
Now, if those old product lines were up for sale again in pdf form, that’d be great. But oh well.
In other news, I’ve got an idea for a game world I’m bouncing around. If you don’t mind, at some point I’d like to get your input on it. If only to tell me whether or not it’s useless.
#2 written by Mazzon January 8th, 2010 at 13:08
Idle references to sourcebooks of the past, like keeping names such as Tenser and Bigby in spell names, is an easy way to thrum a chord in the hearts of oldschool D&D people, and the magic-users of the land’s end want to hold on to the image as the ‘first and foremost’ system so they want that.
#3 written by Belenos January 17th, 2010 at 15:33
I’d be tentatively in. Depends on the timing, of course. Sixteen credit hours plus full time job plus part time job plus time set aside for mental breakdown plus tinkering with electronics doesn’t leave enough time for die-rolling.