Announcing the Co-Hosts of the 2014 ENnie Awards
The
ENnie Awards is proud to present the co-hosts for this years ceremony to take place on Friday, August 15: Bill Cavalier and Jen Page!
We are excited to have such luminaries co-hosting the event and we look forward to seeing you there.
Bill Cavalier aka THE DUNGEON BASTARD -- Born during a rare convergence between Asgard and the Elemental Plane of Badassitude, Bill Cavalier aka THE DUNGEON BASTARD has inspired thousands of gamers with his peerless wit and brash advice. Whether it’s choosing a race (anything that ends in “warf”), choosing a weapon (anything ending in “axe”) or choosing a snack for your game (anything ending in “jerky”) Bill fearlessly offers his professional ADVENTURE COACHING to the unenlightened masses who seek counsel at
www.dungeonbastard.com. He puts the ‘A’ in “AC”, the ‘natural’ in “Nat 20″ and the Dagger of Venom in the ribs of the half-elven bard. Bill is honored to grace the stage alongside the incomparable Jen Page this year since — like any good powergamer — he made Charisma his dump stat.
Jen Page -- If there was such thing as real life ‘Experience Points’, Jen Page would be racking up the geek stats. She’s modeled for various game art including M
agic: The Gathering, Dungeons & Dragons and
Forgotten Realms. Her likeness appears in three different graphic novels and she’s been made into a mini, twice. She’s also ambitiously pursuing her own art contributions to RPGs including illustrating maps, mythical races and monstrous creatures. She enjoys genre writing for film, web series and short subjects. Her acting career embraces gamer and sci-fi/fantasy interests such as the explosively visual smash-hit
Project London and the beloved
Gamers films. Catch her this year in
Chop Socky Boom, season 2,
The Coffee Table, season 2 and lending her voice to the CGI feature film,
Dead Salvage. She looks forward to co-hosting the ENnies this year with a certain Dungeon Bastard, knowing full well she’ll need to make some successful Sanity Checks.
D&D Next Adventure Contest Closed!
A nice selection of
D&D Next Adventure Contest entries! The judges Kevin Kulp, Sean K Reynolds, and Keith Baker) should have fun reading those throughout March. Some of the production values on them are much higher than I'd have expected. During March, only the judges can download the entries. They'll all be available for free in April though. Good luck to all the contestants!
Dungeons & Dragons News
Here is what we learned about the Warlock:
Warlocks have spellcasting, and invocations.
Spells: At higher levels, the highest level spell they have is level 5, and they don't get many spells. At 2nd level he has two spells. BUT, he has spells per Short Rest rather than spells per day. So each time they take a short rest, they get all their spells back. The spells they get don't scale much, though a few do like burning hands. He used burning hands. He also had, hellish rubuke, command, and charm person (so he seems to know four spells at 2nd level). He has cantrips too. In this example, his character had: eldritch blast, thaumaturgy, and minor illusion. In sum, he can use spells more frequently than other casters, but less potent.
Invocations: Unclear if they start with them or get them at 2nd level, but at 2nd level the sample character has two invocations: One lets him cast disguise self at-will, and the other helps him improve his eldritch blast. Invocations are always based on abilities or traits.
He is a diabolic (or infernal) warlock, which means he gets temporary hit points when he drops someone to 0 hp with an attack.
At level 3 the class chooses one of: blade (warrior-like), chain (pet), or tome (caster-like).
It's a little bit of a fusion of the 3e and 4e Warlock, with some elements of the 3e Binder class and the Pacts from 4e.
They also mention, "Traits, Flaws, and Bonds" of the characters. By playing to his background, one player gained an inspiration point. He was told that when doing something related to his "traits, flaws, or bonds" he can spend the inspiration point to gain advantage on a check.
On Twitter I asked Mike Mearls about Inspiration Points, and he said:
"It's basically a micro-reward a DM can hand out for good roleplay or any other reason. Spend it to gain advantage on a roll."
I asked about the Traits, Flaws, and Bonds issue, and whether it was part of the Storygame module. He replied:
"They're not a storygame thing - just roleplaying elements that a DM can reward mechanically." "With caveat that to me, storygame is much more about plot control in the game for players."
Reviews
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Today, March 4th, the anniversary of 
A couple of articles recently have surfaced in which the authors talk about reviews guidelines for staff reviewers at OBS (the company which owns DrivethruRPG, RPGNow, etc.). The first was 
Fan of the 
Cubicle 7's The One Ring RPG has a whole bunch of cool looking stuff planned for this year:
Working out the XP of creatures
With D20 you ballpark as well- they give you guidance for the XP things are worth- within a range- its art rather than science- this whole 'calculation'
Peter Holland Today, 04:15 PM