The Most Useful D&D Features, Essays, & Interviews Selection Ever

All Features

This page lists many of the most useful articles, features, and interviews on EN World, along with the various projects I'm involved in. Also, please do check out EN5ider and TRAILseeker, two online Patreon 'magazines'.

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Resources My forums are very active. If you have a question or a topic you wish to discuss, it's a great place to start! Keep an eye on upcoming D&D releases on my D&D 5E Release Schedule page. This page is for "official" stuff only. The Reviews Section is designed to aggregate ratings and comments on RPG products. Feel free to quickly rate and comment on a product you've got! OGRE is my Online Generic Randomizer Engine. You can use it to create and share random tables and generators. Looking for a game? My game locator database allows you to search for gamers in your area on a nifty map. It has tens of thousands of people on there. Downloads: the downloads area contains many sections, and I heartily encourage you to add your own content! Main downloads page Character sheets: Hundreds of fan-created character sheets covering all sorts of RPGs (and, of course, all editions of D&D and Pathfinder). Please upload yours so that everybody can share it! Conversion Library: Conversions of pre-3E adventures to D&D 3E/3.5. Not that these are conversion notes, not the actual adventures themselves. You'll need a copy of the adventure in question. I held a $1000 RPG contest in which contestants were invited to create an RPG in one week. These are the entries. I held a D&D Next adventure contest in which contestants were invited to create a short adventure for the new edition of D&D. System Reference Documents: System Reference Documents (SRDs) are compilations of Open Gaming Content, usually released under the terms of the Open Gaming License (OGL). I have several of them hosted here. Features From TSR to WotC: A History of D&D is my compilation of links, articles, and interviews which chart the companies thorugh the decades. Fascinating reading. TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History is a chart I made chronologically lining up the histories of all three companies. Wondering where those ex-WotC employees are now? I have collected together a list of some notable people who have left or have been laid off over the last decade. This is a typewritten D&D review from 1974 by Arnold Hendrick. I have a list of D&D retroclones and older D&D editions. Want to know who to follow on Twitter? I list many industry folks here. Pronunciation Guides: D&D Pronunciation Guide Oriental Adventures Pronunciation Guide Ryan Dancey on the past, present, and future of D&D. WotC, DDI, 4E, and Hasbro: Some History: A followup to Ryan Dancey's EN World column (above). Who is sitting at your table? A look at player types by Ryan Dancey. Mike Breault on Lorraine Williams Adventure Game Industry Research Summary (RPGs) v1.0: the major survey conducted by WotC. Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR. Interviews Ciro Alessandro Sacco conducted the Ultimate Interview with Gary Gygax. Ciro also interviewed Dave Arneson at length. Kevin Kulp interviewed WotC president Greg Leeds about the 2009 decision to withdraw PDF versions of products from sale. Gaming Tonic interviewed WotC's Mike Mearls when D&D Next was first announced. I interviewed Ryan Dancey of Goblinworks about the new Pathfinder Online MMO Kickstarter. I interviewed Bruce Cordell shortly after he joined Monte Cook Games about Numenera and more. Fiddleback interviewed Monte Cook and Shanna Germain about Numenera when they attended his local game store. What is THE STRANGE? Monte Cook, Bruce Cordell, and Charles Ryan talk to me all about their latest giant Kickstarter! I interviewed Paizo lead designer Jason Bulmahn about the Pathfinder Advanced Class Guide and class design topics in general. I interviewed Kobold Press' Wolfgang Baur and Steve Winters about their two Tyranny of Dragons intro adventures for D&D 5th Edition. Other Projects My YouTube channel contains interviews, features, and more. Even an animated series! EN Publishing is my little publishing company. I've published over 200 products over the last decade. You can get them at RPGNow, DTRPG, or Paizo. You can also check out the three adventure paths I've published: War of the Burning Sky ZEITGEIST: The Gears of Revolution SANTIAGO: A Myth of the Far Future What's O.L.D. is N.E.W. is a pair of roleplaying games I'm authoring. I am the owner of the ENnies, the Gen Con EN World RPG Awards. These take place every year at Gen Con, and I'm very proud of them.

Collectors Guides Echohawk has put together what can only be described as an exhaustive and comprehensive list of D&D products, devided into editions and settings. Original D&D 1st Edition 2nd Edition 3rd Edition 4th Edition D&D Next D&D PDFs Miscellaneous Al-Qadim Birthright Blackmoor Dark Sun Dragonlance Eberron Forgotten Realms Greyhawk Kingdoms of Kalamar Lankhmar Mystara Oriental Adventures Planescape Ravenloft Spelljammer Eric Noah There are various features and interviews on Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News (Archive). Features: 3E Attacks of Opportunity Explanation -- a LOT of people struggled with AoOs initially; Eric put this page together to explain them. 3E Combat Examples Adventure Contest Conversion Library Review of Dragon #274, the first all-Third Edition issue Eric at Gen Con 2000: Reports from the release of Third Edition Interviews: Ryan Dancey: the D20 System and the Open Gaming Movement (March 19, 2000) Interview with WotC's Ryan Dancey about the status of Third Edition shortly before release (May 26, 2000) Interview with Scott Matthews, President of Fluid Entertainment (May 27, 2000) Ryan Dancey on the Role of Luck at Wizards of the Coast (June 1, 2000) Interview with WotC's Monte Cook, author of the Dungeon Master's Guide (September 30, 2000) Interview with WotC's James Wyatt, author of The Speaker in Dreams and co-author of Defenders of the Faith and Monsters of Faerun (March 3, 2001) Interview with Rob Kuntz, formerly of TSR, Inc. (May 10, 2001) Look at these screenshots of the messageboards from August 2000 and August 2001. April Fools Editions: April Fools 2000 April Fools 2001 April Fools 2002 -- we replaced EN World's front page with a mockup of Eric's old page, as though nothing had ever changed.

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[PieAndDragon]

Nice collection. I remember some of those interviews when they came out and reading some of the 3E bits.

I especially recommend the one from Ryan Dancey about acquiring TSR and D&D

 

[Zarithar]

Some of the links appear to be broken. Didn't test all of them but the collector's guide to 1e brings up an error.

 

[Yaarel]

Looking for a game?

Currently, there is no way to know if the listed gamers are still active, or contactable. Is there someway to protect privacy while signaling that messages will get thru?

 

[Yaarel]

The links to various SRDs all date to year 2013, meaning recent developments like D&D 5e SRD and so on remain absent from the list.

 

[EthanSental]

Wow - the Leeds interview on pdfs -

We cannot share sales figures, but I can tell you that we conservatively estimate the ratio of illicit downloads to legally purchased copies was 10:1.

Can i publicaly thank all those cheapskate pirates for the crud we are in as far as WoTC PDF availability....thanks!

 

[Ath-kethin]

Looking for a game?

Currently, there is no way to know if the listed gamers are still active, or contactable. Is there someway to protect privacy while signaling that messages will get thru?

You can click on a user's name and it will show you their most recent post. That might not necessarily indicate active vs. not, but if their last post was five years ago it's a decent bet they won't respond to any message you send them.

I recommend checking that BEFORE sending them a message, incidentally, not that I did the exact opposite several times before thinking to check it myself or anything.

 

[collin]

Some of the links appear to be broken. Didn't test all of them but the collector's guide to 1e brings up an error.

I experienced the same problem when I tried the Eberron link.