Dragonlance D&D Game Blog

Wizards of the Coast made an interesting announcement Monday, the ripples of which affect much of the official gaming content to be coming out over the next several months. First, and foremost is the announcement that the next D&D module will be called Curse of Strahd . This represents the forth module to come out for 5th Edition since its launch (not including the module that was included in the Starter Set). Those previous modules have all touched on classic D&D adventures/themes, including Tyranny of Dragons/Rise of Tiamat (the evil dragon goddess Tiamat), Princes of the Apocalypse (Elemental Evil), and Out of the Abyss (Demons). Therefore it shouldn't come as a surprise that Strahd, the main villain of one of the most popular modules of any edition ( I6 Ravenloft ) should be the center of the latest offering. While the original I6 module has been updated several times before for various editions of Dungeons and Dragons, see House of Strahd (2e) and Expedition to ...

Sadly, since I had to cut my Gen Con trip short, I wasn't around for the Saturday seminar where the folks from WotC announced a bunch of new products for 2011. But I did eagerly follow every Twitter link and blog post I could find. I had some initial reactions to the announcements, but decided to sit on them for a while before writing down my thoughts, and I'm glad I did, since some of my initial reactions changed the more I thought about it. One thing that didn't change was my sub headline for this blog post: 2011 - The Year Everything Changes Technically you could say that things are changing right now with regards to D&D 4e, but it wasn't until I saw the product list for 2011 that I realized that what we'll be seeing in the upcoming months from WotC for 4e sets the stage for the "new normal". What I'm specifically referring to are the game changes that will be part of the new D&D Essentials line. We've known about the Essentials line for...

Having been home from Gen now for two days (I had to cut my visit short as I had family obligations on Saturday), I thought I should jot down some of my experiences, and thoughts. Originally I planned to draft a long post covering all the things I saw, played, and thought during the three days I was there (from early Wednesday through late Friday), but rather than one catch all post, I've decided to write up a number of short posts, all under the "Gen Con Aftermath" title, on various topics related to the convention. Up first was the first game I played at the con... the new Castle Ravenloft board game. The first thing to note is that many of the game mechanics are based on the D&D 4th Edition game. Heroes are based on the races and classes from D&D--for the game, I played a Dragonborn Fighter, while the other players had similarly familiar races and classes. Each character had a stat card (on very thick card stock--the same as the dungeon tiles sets). On one side...

Big thanks to WolfStar76, who attended the 2010 Products Seminar at D&D Experience and jotted down some notes on what's coming out this year. 2010 Product Seminar Notes Some things have already been released, like Dragonborn and Underdark, but there's plenty of new items on the horizon, including all of the previously announced hints at GenCon 2009 . Since I'm still running a 3.5 game, my biggest interest is in the tile sets, particularly Harrowing Halls, the first 3D set, as well as the Dark Sun tile set (we can all use more dessert sets!), but I'm also interested in the Hammerfast location/adventure book and The Slaying Stone, a new 1st lv adventure. Maybe I'll be running some 4e before year's end... What new products are you looking forward to? Is there anything that's more interesting now that you might not have been so interested in before? Leave a comment and let me hear from you.

Ok, so GenCon 09 has come and gone, and once again I wasn't there (boo). My last convention was the year 3.0 came out, back when the convention was in Milwaukee, and the Safe House was still a restaurant to visit at least once during the trip. I've been following blog posts and tweets from various people and once again, it sounds like everyone had a good time this year (PS, if you're at a game convention and don't have a good time, you may want to rethink your choice of hobbies). By far the largest amount of posts were the various product announcements from WotC. Everyone went into the convention wanting to know what the new setting for 2010 would be, since no previous WotC communication went beyond announcing Forgotten Realms (2008) and Eberron (2009). Even though I am an ardent fan of the Dragonlance setting, I felt it was too soon to update that setting to 4e (and since the 3.5 update was handled by a 3rd party, Margaret Weis Productions, WotC doesn't see big rev...

When the original Dragonlance characters were first being developed, Sturm Brightblade was first called Santos Silverblade. Later, the name was changed to something more stern, in accordance with the character's personality. Also, Tracy Hickman, one of the key architects of the Dragonlance project, originally used the name for one of the dead siblings of the vampire Count Strahd von Zarovich in his classic 1st edition module, Ravenloft .