"It releases some of the bottled up passions inside you." #OnThisDay 1980: Fantasy roleplaying games such as Dungeons and Dragons were a very serious business #GeekPrideDay pic.twitter.com/v1B4juEJU8

— BBC Archive (@BBCArchive) May 25, 2023

 

New Scenery from Wizkids!

As reported on ICv2:

The 24 sculpted pieces come fully assembled and fully painted, and many of them feature interchangeable pressure-fit accessories that allow players to customize the scene.  This set includes 4 pillars, 1 fallen pillar, 3 small pools, and 1 large pool.  Interchangeable accessories include 4 banners, 4 torches, 1 mounted deer head, 3 large pool rock pieces, 2 gargoyle statues, and 1 brazier.  MSRP for the set will be $39.99.

Betrayal At Baldur's Gate coming soon from Avalon Hill!

Just announced a couple of days ago, a new Betrayal game set in the Dungeons and Dragons universe should be with us in time for Halloween!

Contents: • 1 set up box • 1 rulebook • 2 haunt books (Traitor's Tome and Secrets of Survival) • 42 tiles • 1 Elfsong Tavern start tile • 1 Catacomb Landing start tile • 6 prepainted plastic adventurer figures • 30 plastic clips • 8 dice • 1 Turn/Damage track • 86 cards (45 events, 22 items, 13 omen, 6 player aid) • 215 tokens (62 monster tokens, 54 adventurer power, event, haunt, item, obstacle tokens, 36 adventurer tokens, 18 NPC • tokens, 18 quest tokens, 14 item and item pile tokens, 13 monster tokens)

WotC's upcoming Temple of Elemental Evil storyline for D&D 5e

WotC has announced the new storyline event for Temple of Elemental Evil. 

There's a board game, there's minis, the whole nine.

January 20, 2015 – Renton, WA – Today, Wizards of the Coast announced the newest Dungeons & Dragons storyline and accompanying product offerings for both digital and tabletop RPG players. Coming off of the biggest and most exciting year yet for Dungeons & Dragons, the Elemental Evil storyline starts in March and runs through mid-summer. During that time, heroes are needed in the Forgotten Realms to discover and defeat secret cults that threaten to annihilate the Sword Coast by harnessing the powers of the elements of fire, water, air, and earth. 

The product line-up includes the release of a new downloadable module—Neverwinter: Elemental Evil—for the highly acclaimed free-to-play Dungeons & Dragons MMORPG from Cryptic Studios and Perfect World Entertainment. Serving as an additional way for fans to experience the storyline, Neverwinter: Elemental Evil brings a new playable class—the Paladin—and increases the game’s level cap to 70. Neverwinter is set in the Forgotten Realms, and the new expansion launches in early 2015. Cryptic also recently announced Neverwinter on Xbox One will be available in early 2015 as well. 

Characters in the D&D tabletop roleplaying game can help prevent devastation to the lands and people of the Forgotten Realms in the Princes of the Apocalypse adventure by Wizards of the Coast and Sasquatch Game Studio. Princes of the Apocalypse is available on April 7, 2015 and includes an epic adventure for characters levels 1–15 as well as new elemental spells and the element-touched genasi as a new playable race. In addition, a free download will be available in mid-March that includes more new races plus the player content available in Princes of the Apocalypse, just in time for the start of the Elemental Evil season of the D&D Adventurers League. 

Other products tied into the Elemental Evil storyline include the Temple of Elemental Evil Adventure System Board Game and pre-painted collectible miniatures, both from WizKids Games. WizKids has also partnered with Perfect World Entertainment to bundle in-game items for Neverwinter with the Temple of Elemental Evil Adventure System Board Game and miniatures boosters. Rounding out the tabletop RPG game products is Gale Force Nine’s new Dungeon Master’s screen featuring Elemental Evil art, as well as unpainted, resin miniatures that tie into the adventure, all slated to release beginning in March.

If you're curious what the big deal is about the Temple of Elemental Evil you might wanna check out the retrospective from the Grognardia blog from 2009.  It's a storied megadungeon from the Gary Gygax, one of the creators of D&D, and it's roots run deep into the could-have-beens of early development on the game. Just by mentioning Hommlett in a game I recently ran caused talk of the Temple even though I had no intention of introducing it into the game.

Homage Cover: Wolverine and D&D

Releasing today, the new issue of Dungeons and Dragons features an homage to a classic Frank Miller Wolverine cover.

To keep the love of his life, Khal must lead Fell's Five against a sinister new threat in the Underdark. But this 'threat' is someone near and dear to another of Fell's Five! Join us as John Rogers and Andrea Di Vito bring us the latest chapter in their thrilling adventures of swords and sorcery!

Community does Advanced Dungeon & Dragons

If you're a gamer and you haven't seen this, you must. Watch now. (Mike)

An Illustrated Guide to Roleplaying Game Monsters

RPG Creatures provides a wealth of beautiful RPG monster art and is great fodder for any Dungeon Master!

Gaming order today!

Some cool stuff today!

Got our pre-release of the new edition of GAMMA WORLD! We've got the box set and the 8-card booster packs.

A wacky, wily roleplaying game of post-apocalyptic peril.
Earth. After the apocalypse. Never mind the radiation—you’re gonna like it here.
 
The D&D Gamma World Roleplaying Game offers hours of rollicking entertainment in a savage land of adventure, where the survivors of some mythical future disaster must contend with radioactive wastes, ravaged cities, and rampant lawlessness. Against a nuclear backdrop, heroic scavengers search crumbled ruins for lost artifacts while battling mutants and other perils.
This product is a complete, stand-alone roleplaying game that uses the 4th Edition D&D Roleplaying Game system as its foundation. It appeals to D&D players as well as gamers interested in fantasy science fiction set in a bizarre, post-apocalyptic world.

• 160-page book with rules for character creation, game rules, and an adventure
• 2 sheets of die-cut character and monster tokens
• 2 double-sided battle maps
• Cardstock character sheets and mutation power cards
• Mutation power card deck
• Loot power card deck

We also received the pre-release of the new D&D Essentials DM's Kit. 

If you’re a Dungeons & Dragons player interested in taking on the role of the Dungeon Master, or if you’re an experienced DM looking for more game advice, tools, and adventure content, the Dungeon Master’s Kit has exactly what you need to build your own Dungeons & Dragons campaign and excite the imaginations of you and your players.
This deluxe box contains rules and advice to help Dungeon Masters run games for adventurers of levels 1–30. It also includes useful DM tools such as a Dungeon Master’s screen (with tables and rules printed on the inside), die-cut terrain tiles and monster tokens, and fold-out battle maps.
Game components:

• 256-page book of rules and advice for Dungeon Masters
• Two 32-page adventures
• 2 sheets of die-cut monster tokens
• 2 double-sided battle maps
• Fold-out Dungeon Master’s screen

We've also got restocks on MtG Zendikar, and Scars of Mirrodin, and restocks on Heroclix and we've got the board game Bang! back in stock.

Dungeons & Dragons Test Drive

D&D Curious? You should check out Wizards of the Coast's Test Drive D&D website for quick start rules and a couple of introductory adventures. All for free!

Castle Ravenloft Video

A walkthrough of the contents of the Castle Ravenloft game. Just got this game in stock today and it looks awesome!

D&D Comics are coming

From ICv2:

IDW Publishing, under license from Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast, will publish several all-new comic book series based on the Dungeons & Dragons Role-Playing Game.  The first new series will begin with a Dungeons & Dragons Issue #0 in August with new monthly comics and reprints of past series launching in November.

Tiny D&D Camera

This is the digital camera provided with our D&D Encounters kit. It's freakin' tiny. This would have been a cool spy camera in '80s television. I'll take some pics with it during our next Encounters session so you guys can see D&D in 100K pixel life-like detail. (Mike)

Player's Handbook 3 Game Day!

Player’s Handbook 3 Game Day
March 20th, 7:00 pm @ The Launchpad
Celebrate the release of Player’s Handbook 3 with a day of adventure! Psionic characters, skill powers, and hybrid classes abound in this essential rulebook. Test out the new classes and rules as you play a unique adventure and grab a copy of Player’s Handbook 3 while you’re here.

D&D Encounters

 The Launchpad will be hosting a season of D&D Encounters at the store at 7pm each Wednesday starting March 17th and running for 12 one-encounter sessions til June 2nd.

The first D&D Encounters mini-campaign takes place in the Forgotten Realms, with players exploring new areas of Undermountain, with their own characters, one they create at the store, or a pre-generated character provided with the kit.

Roleplaying in the Yet

A proof-of-concept surfacescapes demo using D&D 4e. Man, I love that some of the smartest people in the world are also total geeks. (Mike)

Surfacescapes Demo Walkthrough from Visual Story TAs on Vimeo.

D&D Meetup Group

Did you guys know there's a SJ County D&D Meetup group? Check it out here: http://www.meetup.com/San-Jaoquin-Dungeons-Dragons-Meet-Up/

I've joined up and will try to make it to one of their monthly meetings. It would be great to see the tabletop gamers in this area get united!

Hic Svnt Lupus

Doug ran his D&D game last night and our hearty band of adventurers set off on their quest into adulthood. After a long hike through craggy hills we discovered a pack of wolves had been stalking us for several miles. As we entered a small valley dotted with large boulders the wolves surrounded us.

Sometime later we emerged from the nearby woods, laden with bundles of wolf fur and festooned with grisly trophies. Our adventure continues. . .

Fighting the Ogre

A pic from Drew's 4e D&D game. The heroes were fighting an ogre pulling a cart full of explosives while town burned around them. Brutal fight with Jagger Killmane dishing out some serious damage and taking the majority of the abuse.

Were they imprisoned in a Dark Dungeon?

Over at Bleeding Cool Rich Johnston reports:

Today, a court in Singapore sentenced the fifty year old Ong Kian Cheong and his forty-six year old wife, Dorothy Chan Hien Leng for distributing a series of eleven Jack Chick comics, described as “seditious or objectionable” to Muslims.

Check out the full story and images from the religious tract here.

Most tabletop gamers know who Jack Chick is thanks to the inflammatory Dark Dungeons tract that exposed the truth behind the transformative powers of Dungeons and Dragons.

The New Way to D&D

"What Devilry is this?!"

Matt ran the inaugural session of his Dungeons & Dragons game this past Sunday and it was epic. Our motley band of adventures was dispatched to a strange and wild island off the coast of the safe and civilized lands we knew. Our groups consists of Stormfang (Shifter Paladin), Gok (Goliath Barbarian), Tinbok the Bastard (Half-Orc Fighter), Wychwood (Eladrin Rogue), and Phariom (Human Warlord).

Our first fight was with a degenerate cult of Dwarven cannibals during which our rogue, Wychwood (played by Bob) failed in his ambush attempt with two consecutive rolls of one. Wychwood's bad luck would persist with the other characters doing fairly well. But it was Gok (played by Daniel) who would be celebrated in song and verse that day. Daniel managed to roll eight 20s during the course of the night with three of those being consective rolls.

Gok waded into a room in a crumbling wizard's tower that held a group of large devil-spawned rats and their demonic master and left nothing but devastation in his wake. The rest of the party gave the barbarian a wide berth as his rage subsided.

Needless to say it was a great game and we're looking forward to next session with our adventurers poised to enter the dungeon below the wizard's tower.