Since MetalJim needs to give you something to gossip about…

So, the calendar has turned over to August.  We are still waiting for a major news update on the health of the D&D Insider applications.  I stated quite emphatically for several months before the release of 4^th Edition that the only thing I really cared about was a working tool for filling out character sheets, especially since it would help me to generate pre-gens for one-shot modules.  I am still waiting, and understandably a bit frustrated.  A check to the forums over at WotC only offers a few hints that we will get some sort of news update at GenCon (about a week from now), and we will hopefully get reports of “working” software being demoed from the floor there.

By the way, while I was cruising forums looking for news updates, I discovered that there had been something of a real life tragedy associated with the recently announced demise of WotC’s Gleemax service.  It seems that a WotC manager associated with Gleemax went off and killed his estranged wife and then shot himself.  Seems to have happened not too many days after the big Gleemax announcement came down the line.  This probably doesn’t have any real material effect on the health of other digital products at WotC, but it can’t be good for team morale.

In other D&D news… WotC apparently wants to sell you decks of “power cards” for each of the 8 core classes in the current Player’s Handbook.  These will retail in a box something like a “starter” deck of Magic Cards, with one deck for each class.  The idea of such power cards is that a player can buy the deck for his favorite character class, and then place the cards for his known daily and encounter powers next to his character sheet, flipping those cards over as they get used. 

In the “too little, too late” department, lots of folks on the Net have already released templates for versions of their own power and item cards.  As for me, I want an all-in-one system linked to my character sheet, so that I can print a page with the “power cards” for things that my character actually knows, with “to-hit” and damage numbers based on my character’s current stats and level.

In still other D&D news… WotC quietly issued some fairly major errata to the way that the stealth skill works in 4th edition.  Now, you can only make a stealth check at the end of a move action, and only if you have total cover, superior concealment, or no line of sight to the relevant enemy.  It seems like this clarification does help to resolve most of the problems that had kept people on the Net up all night, and helps to resolve situations like rogues and rangers popping up from behind cover to shoot, and then re-stealthing themselves.  You can read the new stealth rules for yourself by heading over to the D&D Insider site, launching the Compendium, and typing in “stealth” (yes, one aspect of the D&DI package is sort of working as intended).

One last note – I recently got to try out the D&D Minis skirmish rules version 2.0 in the privacy of my own home.  Some things definitely do work better in this version — no need to worry about commander effects or morale checks, easier diagonal movement, and a slightly more flexible system for warband building.  The downside – the game feels more “luck driven” than before.  Smart warband building and good placement tactics definitely help, but not as much as they used to.  A few timely critical hit rolls can almost always swing the tide of battle, especially since criticals do double damage while also short-cutting defenses like concealment and incorporealness.  Making the game easier to teach comes at the expense of making the game feel more like a light beer and pretzels game.  If you already own a bunch of suitable “proxy” minis (like a lot of the older DDM version one minis), then the best way to test version 2.0 out for yourself is to buy the $15 starter game (which has five perfectly good minis, rules, and two battlemats), then download something called BIFUR, which is a database that allows you to build warbands and print out the needed stats on a single sheet of paper (no more annoying stat cards to sort out and file).

I don’t actually want to buy any more D&D minis, even though I was addicted to that plasti-crack for quite some time.  Stupid things just keep getting more expensive, but the quality of the sculpts and the paint jobs has actually gone BACKWARDS from the highwater mark of the series a year or two ago.

Feel free to add your own bit of D&D gossip to the comments below…