Miniature Monday: Starships

I dug out my starship models because I've been designing a starship combat game.  Some of these I haven't published photographs of before...

Review: Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition

Now that I've had plenty of time to play the game and digest the book contents, I'm going to start the review of it.  Since D&D has had its core rules split into multiple books since its inception and the books these days aren't particularly small, this is a three part article.

First things first.  Wizards of the Coast has provided players with a free 'basic' set of rules here.  It includes the four iconic character classes (cleric, fighter, rogue, wizard) and all the basic stuff you need as a player to play.  It also has a second document that includes all the basic information and tools that a Dungeon Master needs to run the game, including magic items and monsters.  So, if you read this article and think to yourself that you'd like to try D&D 5th Edition, you don't have to plunk down your cold hard-earned cash right away.

There's all sorts of commentary I could go into about why Wizards did released free starter rules but that's not really the purpose of this article.  I could also go into a long discussion about edition numbering and how many editions of D&D there really have been (lots, as it turns out), but this isn't really the place for it.  I know there were quite a few complaints about how Wizards of the Coast released the books over a span of months instead of all at once.  Let's put it into perspective here; releasing all the core books at once is not normal in D&D's history and AD&D 1E players had to wait three years to get their Monster Manual, Player's Handbook, and Dungeon Master's Guide (in that order no less).

Today I'll cover the Player's Handbook. See you after the break.

Miniature Monday: Eldar

Hey, now that I'm not sick as a dog and have finally settled into my new apartment, let's try updating this again.  First up, let's get some miniatures posted.

Player Buy-In

Yeah, I've been sick some more.  And then I had a severe brain drain where I lacked any good ideas or energy to write articles.  I'll get the D&D articles I promised up when I get a chance to sit down and write them as well.  But today I want to talk about player buy-in.

Chargen Lab: Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition

Well, today's character hails from D&D 3e.  The rules for D&D 3e can be found at the d20 SRD page, though I'm afraid character generation is omitted due to the terms of the Open Game License and d20 System License.

Chargen Lab: AD&D 2e

So now onto a character generated in AD&D 2nd Edition.  This is a bit more complicated than the Rules Cyclopedia and 1st Edition characters, so there's more explanations to be had.  Bear in mind that the character I wrote up is a more complex character than the typical 1st level character.

Chargen Lab: AD&D 1st Edition

Continuing a series of characters generated under the various editions of Dungeons & Dragons, here's one generated under AD&D 1st Edition.

Chargen Lab: D&D Rules Cyclopedia

I thought I'd do some articles on character generation in various editions of D&D  to lead up to Monday's official release of 5e.  I would like to say that it is the same character so that we can compare and contrast the various editions, but differences in the chargen methods across editions make that impossible.  We'll start with the D&D Rules Cyclopedia, because that's what's on my desk at the moment.

D&D Retrospective: Basic Dungeons & Dragons

Once upon a time, there were two Dungeons and Dragons; it was in a time before Pathfinder and D&D 4e were competing for supremacy.  One was called Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, the other was simply Dungeons & Dragons.  Sometimes it was called 'Basic' D&D because of the existence of 'Advanced', other times it was called BECMI D&D.  Or it was named after the people who edited the rules for a given edition.

It might surprise younger readers that Dungeons & Dragons had five editions between 1974 and 1994.  These were evolutionary changes rather than revolutionary, small fixes and clarifications to the game rules instead of vastly different versions of the rules.  Want to know more? See you after the jump.

D&D Retrospective: The Fall of Dungeons & Dragons

Dungeons and Dragons was the best-selling RPG from 1974 to 2011.  That, by itself, should speak volumes about the popularity of the game; a thirty-seven year reign at the top.  But what happened?  What became the best-selling RPG from 2011 to present day?

The Pathfinder RPG, published by Paizo Publishing, knocked D&D off the top of the heap.  And that is an interesting story in itself.