• Martial Power 2 Review‏ You might be asking yourself why you need a second Martial Power book,especially as classes are getting more options in DDI. Well, here’sthe big factor for me: I find the “builds” of each class to be one ofthe more interesting parts of the game. In the original Martial Power,there were a few snoozer builds alongside some awesome builds. InMartial Power 2, all the builds look fun and portray differentconcepts.
• Review: 4E Iron Gazetteer from Open Design‏ Why wait for some Wizard to give you the details on 4E dwarves? Check out his gazetteer and get your dwarf on!
• Review – Blackdirge’s Bargain Bestiaries: Dragon-Blooded If you thought dragons were bad news, then you might want to check out this Review of Blackdirge’s Bargain Bestiaries: Dragon-Blooded, with terrible new monsters that are half-dragon and half… something else.
• Cover design for Amethyst‏ Goodman Games has posted the cover design for Amethyst, their 4E techno-magical setting coming out in April. “Open your spellbook. Load your gun. Make a choice.”
  

• Monday Monster on Kobold Quarterly‏ Make Monday mythic with this vicious covey of epic Pathfinder hags, certain to cut at the threads of a hero's fate...

• Book review of Synthetic Worlds The RPG Examiner reviews Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games by economist Edward Castronova.

New for EN World Subscribers

The premier magic point system for d20 spellcasting!

Magic defines fantasy. It is the magical that makes a normal story into a fantasy that delights listeners, readers, and gamers by making all the impossibilities we can imagine become real. Dreams of magic can make even the most mundane day something to cherish, like a poem evoking the charm of the everyday world.
But sometimes, just like poems, magic can become stale and clichéd. Through repeated exposure, its novelty can wear off, and certainly, thirty years of magic missiles and fingers of death have been enough to render many fantasy gamers jaded. At its core, saying, “My love is a dove,” in a poem is as trite as, “I cast detect magic.”

Elements of Magic opens the world of magic to you, letting you create almost any type of magic-user you’d like. Magic is an artform, like poetry, and any good poet is never content to merely recite the works of others.

Elements of Magic is modular, able to fit whatever role you want it to play. It can be added to an existing campaign that already has wizards, sorcerers, clerics, and druids, perhaps representing another, higher sort of magic, or it can wholly replace the existing magic system, providing a whole new feel to your fantasy gaming. You will need a d20/OGL core rulebook to use these rules, but this book will let you ignore the old, clichéd spells presented in those books, and create your own works of magical art.

Elements of Magic eliminates the spell memorization and preparation system entirely, replacing it with something bold, new and flexible. This book uses a spell list and magic point system, allowing you to build spells modularly, and letting you decide what the mechanics actually mean.

Elements of Magic is a rules module designed to replace the "fire and forget" spell system of the d20 Core Rules. The d20 spell system, while balanced and usable, is not flexible enough to model the magic users from most fantasy books and movies. Few wizards have ever memorized or prepared a spell, and even fewer forget them immediately afterwards. In Elements of Magic, each character has only a single spellcasting level, no matter how many types of magic she learns in her career. The Elements of Magic gives characters many times the options of the standard d20 rules. Individual spells are replaced by spell lists. Instead of learning a fireball spell, for example, a mage could learn the Evoke Fire spell list, which is very flexible as to its usage and appearance. Nor is the mage limited to fire evocations – with 20 elements to choose from, she could learn Evoke Lightning to stun and damage your foes, Transform Light to make them evaporate into a dim glow, or even exotic combinations of spell lists, such as Create Force/Drain Time, to lock them in a bubble of stasis. It would take thousands of standard spells to duplicate the effects of the spell lists in this 94-page book.

This is the revised edition of the best-selling and critically acclaimed sourcebook from EN Publishing!

As the result of some illuminating discussions, I believe I now understand the crux of why some people have taken offense at our message to Privateer Press. I'd like to publicly address what appears to have happened – due to the complexities involved, a bit of explanation is called for.

First of all, I'm not a lawyer. I don't even pretend to play one on TV. I'm a software developer that also has to deal with business matters for a tiny company. Like many others, I don't always consult our attorneys on the text of every message before it is sent. The message to Privateer was not vetted by our attorney, and I didn't recognize a critical language issue in the message, which led to a major problem.

Last week, we sent a message to Privateer Press, in which we sought their assistance in addressing both abuse and misuse of our Army Builder trademark on their forum. Since Privateer owns the forum, contacting Privateer was the proper course of action. Specifically, there were two issues concerning the use of our trademark on the forum that we sought to address.

First, there were multiple references to tools that used our trademark in their official name. For example, one such tool was officially named the "Warmachine/Hordes Army Builder". Such tools represent an infringement on our registered trademark, and we're within our rights to seek help from a forum's owner in addressing such cases.

Second, there were instances where our trademark was used in a generic manner on Privateer's forum, such as "I'm looking for an army builder to do X". These posts represent an improper use of our trademark, but they are not an infringement. As such, we cannot reasonably expect assistance in addressing these uses, and we did not expect to have Privateer alter or remove them from the forum. We sought to educate the public as to the fact that "Army Builder" is a trademark, i.e., a proper adjective which modifies a noun, as in the "Army Builder® roster construction tool".

Referring to roster construction tools generally as "army builders" is improper, and if we fail to speak up about it, our trademark could become generic. Perhaps worse, we could potentially have to seek a future injunction against someone for unwittingly infringing upon our trademark. More importantly to Privateer players, awareness of the trademark would hopefully avoid its future use in fan-created tools, which would in turn avoid the need for us to seek removal of such tools.

The core problem was that, in the message to Privateer, I used the term "improper" in a few places where I should have been using the term "infringing". This transformed a perfectly acceptable request for Privateer to address the few infringing uses of our trademark (i.e. people using the name Army Builder in their own tool names) into a wildly unreasonable request to address merely improper use of our trademark. Not being a lawyer, I didn't catch that pivotal distinction when writing the message.

So why wasn't this problem recognized more quickly after there was public reaction? The intent had been for infringing uses of our mark to be addressed, and that's what I believed we had actually done. I even posted as much in a number of places discussing this issue, including on Privateer's own forum (prior to the thread being deleted). Consequently, I didn't notice the terminology error until now.

There were a few additional errors in the message due to misunderstandings on my part, for example, using the term "dilute" to refer to a loss of trademark distinctiveness, never meaning to imply a cause for action under the Trademark Dilution Act, and citing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act directly, when what was appropriate was to simply make an analogy to it. I also believe, in retrospect, that the language I used was unnecessarily stern. However, the core problem was using the term "improper" instead of "infringing".

Unfortunately, the interpretation that was clearly visible to others just didn't register in my brain, since I was stuck on what I thought I'd written and not what I actually wrote.

So, to everyone who took offense at the message, I sincerely apologize for this gaffe. It was an honest mistake, which turned a reasonable request into a very unreasonable one. I truly hope that this clears these matters up for anyone who took offense and that from here on we can keep any fighting confined to our respective gaming tables. I also hope that this explanation enables Privateer to understand that what we sought was a significantly more measured response than what they perceived as required.

Sincerely,
Rob Bowes
Lone Wolf Development

• Free Mark of Hubris Game Enhancement: Allies Alea Publishing Group presents this free game enhancement, for the Mark of Hubris adventure, detailing allies in 4E and quick rules to implement them into an adventure. It includes the statistics for Harriet Blackpike, featured in Mark of Hubris, and Besnik Slovene, who enters the scene in the next installment of the paragon tier adventure path, the House of Hubris.
• Sick Twisted Derro More underdark goodness in the form of 4E rituals for derro.
• Death Dealer now in Stores‏ The Adventures of Frank Frazetta’s Death Dealer is now in stores! This level 7-9 adventure from Goodman Games features dark fantasy, magic, and savage combat – plus a Frazetta cover!

• Updating Products: The Rogue's Gallery Tavern's Barmaid‏ Rite Publishing is working on updating Evocative City Sites: The Rogues Gallery Tavern (which is available for free to EN World subscribers) to the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. Originally this series had had no statblocks for any system so Rite Publishing has posted them for your amusement. Once Rite Publishing has finished this file will be updated automatically from the current version to the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game compatible version.
• Scorpion Goddess The desert goddess is given some wicked lore for 3E/Pathfinder at the Kobold Quarterly site.

• Pre-Release Review – Death Dealer: Shadows of Mirahan The Death Dealer is coming! Check out this Pre-Release Review of Goodman Games new adventure, Death Dealer: Shadows of Mirahan, based upon the comic inspired by Frank Frazetta’s famous artwork.

• Faradian of Questhaven‏ A Pathfinder conversion of a monster from the adventure path Rituals of Choice, with art by Arthur Wang.
• Curses! by Mark Gedak‏ Rite Publishing brings you a few new cursed items with which to vex your Pathfinder Roleplaying Game players.

• Baelor Miniatures Stone Wall For use in D&D 4E, or any game that requires several 1 inch square stone wall sections, this pack includes 8 segments.
• 100 Street Vendors of the City State Adventure Games Publishing has released 100 Street Vendors of the City State in PDF format. Designed and approved for use with Castles & Crusades, the 66-page full-sized PDF includes 100 detailed street vendors that can be used with the City State of the Invincible Overlord or any other fantasy city.
• Using the Waxwork movie in your role-playing game‏ The RPG Examiner explains how the premise of Waxwork, with its pocket dimensions of horror, can be used in your campaign.

Lone Wolf demands people stop using the term "Army Builder" in conversation

There are two things that need to be done. First of all, improper references to the Army Builder trademark on the forums must be addressed. This can be achieved in either of two ways, or potentially a combination of both, at your discretion. The first option would be to remove such posts. Since this could appear harsh and potentially disrupt forum discussions, an acceptable alternative would be to revise such posts to utilize a generic term (e.g. “roster construction tool”, “list createor”, or “points calculator”) in place of the “Army Builder” name.

The second thing that needs to be addressed is that your forum users must be educated about the term Army Builder being a trademark and only applicable to our brand of products. This is necessary to avoid an ongoing problem and mitigate the future need for removal of improper posts. I’m sure you would also prefer that the forums continue to run smoothly and without interruption, so your assistance in getting forum users to utilize appropriate terms will benefit us all.

In order to comply with this request we are compelled to take immediate and drastic action. As a result of this letter we are more than happy to remove the presence of “Army Builder” from the forums as requested. As we cannot control how this registered mark might be used in every sentence and in every post we will be required to remove it from appearing on this forum. From this moment onward the phrase “Army Builder” can never appear again on this forum, in any form, so as to ensure that no perceived harm or implied dilution come to the Lone Wolf Development property of the same name. Furthermore, because past forum posts could still be referenced, in an effort to be complete we must delete entire offending threads. We know how much time and effort went in to creating all of the assets this dedicated community has made available on these forums, and we sympathize with you about the ensuing loss. We apologize for the burden and inconvenience this forced moderation places on you.

In the future, any attempts to reference “Army Builder” will be benignly changed to “iBodger”, our officially recognized and supported iPhone application for Force Creation. I thank you for your understanding in this matter.

Brent Waldher
Licensing and Contract Manager
Privateer Press, Inc.

"...we are legally required to police our trademarks. We don't make the laws, but we do have to abide by them. Whether you agree with those laws is immaterial."

"So what happens with internet forum sites? Does a trademark owner need to individually contact every person on a given site and convince them to use a trademark properly?* And what if an individual refuses to cooperate? How does this impact free speech? With regards to free speech, anyone is personally allowed to observe or ignore trademarks in what they say to others. However, what is said on an internet forum is ultimately under the control of the site owner. As such, when there is a problem with users on a forum site, the correct action is to contact the site owner and enlist their assistance. Site owners are obliged to assist, especially where infringement is taking place, or could be deemed as complicit and face possible liability."

The problem stems from an issue called "trademark genericization". If a trademark is allowed by its owner to become a household word that is used to generically refer to the domain of the trademark, then the trademark can be declared to have become "generic".

Some people have characterized it as a formal Cease & Desist letter, but it was actually a post to the admins written by me and not by our attorney.

"We are counsel to Lone Wolf Development, owner of the ARMY BUILDER(r) trademark..... Our client's mark has been in continuous use since 1998, is well known... [etc.]"

Legend of the Five Rings 4th Edition Designer Diaries

• January 8: The Anatomy of a New Edition
• January 20: The Philosophy of 4th Edition
• February 3: Correcting the Mistakes of the Past
• February 17: Timeline Neutrality and Finding the Clan Themes
• March 3: The "Feel" of Rokugan
• March 17: Designing Skills
• March 31: Designing Advantages & Disadvantages
• April 14: Designing Schools - Bushi
• April 28: Designing Schools - Courtier
• May 12: Designing Schools - Shugenja
• May 26: Designing Secondary Systems

Game Night, Chapter Twelve (The Burning South)

• Imperial Gazetteer Review A review of the 4E Imperial Gazetteer, an excellent complement to the recent Underdark release.
• Clever Classes: The Jester Alluria Publishing has just released a new arcane controller PC Class for 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons.

• Trap Tuesday at Kobold Quarterly Why hack up the party when you can juice up the monsters? Check out this selection of boon traps for Pathfinder, sure to put a bounce in the enemy's step...
• Free Tracking Sheet for Pathfinder Ranger‏ KQ offers up a PDF tracking sheet to complement the spell-less Pathfinder ranger variant presented in KQ#11.

• Interview with Jon-Enée Merriex, Producer for Sword of the New World‏ The RPG Examiner interviews Jon-Enée Merriex, Producer for Sword of the New World, a MMORPG set in the Barogue period of Europe where magic and monsters are real.
• Heroes of the Jade Oath (Arcana Evolved) Hardcover/PDF Preorder "The folks over at Rite Publishing are positively giddy over their newest product, Heroes of the Jade Oath. They're so excited that they just can't wait to get it into the hands of gamers everywhere, so they've created a special bundle that brings you the BETA Playtest PDF now, plus a copy of the hardcover BETA print edition when it's released in march."

• Combat Advantage #10: The Rawl COMBAT ADVANTAGE is a bi-monthly supplement for the 4th edition of the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game produced by Emerald Press. If you don't have your EN World subscription yet, you can grab it here for just $3 per month and gain a bunch of nifty site perks, regular exclusive content, the entire War of the Burning Sky campaign saga (for 4E and 3.5) and much more!

In the early days of human civilization, the rawl were plentiful and voracious. Sprawling across the open landscape, they claimed many of the premier locales needed by the humans to build their cities and they never feared to spill blood defending them. Without the advancements and knowledge of humans, however, they were quickly wiped out and forced to retreat into the mountainous hillsides of forbidden valleys. Today, they exist in small numbers and many explorers consider them a myth.

The rawl is a new player race designed for 4e. Huddled from the outside world by the mountains, they are brutal opponents sporting sharp blades of hair on their backs and arms. Slicing through armor and injecting their victims with twitching poisons, their solitude has been interrupted by the prophecy of doom forecast by the spirits. Presented as a fully detailed race, this edition of CA includes rules for creating rawl player characters, as well as standard monster stats.

• Gamma World 4e Wizards web page The official web page for the upcomnig game based on the 4E system.
• Review – Blackdirge’s Bargain Templates: VenomousTired of the same old boring monsters? Check out this review at Neuroglyph Games of Blackdirge’s Bargain Templates: Venomous, and transform dull mundane critters into deadly poisonous elites!

• Quid Novi? Spes Magna Games is gearing up for the release of the next issue of Quid Novi?, their free email newsletter, on February 7, 2010. Subscribers will also receive a link to download Latina Facta, a short PDF presenting several new feats for 3.5/Pathfinder-compatible games. Each feat is inspired by a famous Latin phrase or quote.
• Restless Souls You shouldn't stop playing just because your character died. The Restless Soul template is designed for use by player character at every level of play, with custom feats, spells, that are changed out when you die and when you return to life; They are designed to be netural in regards to both challenge rating and level making for an optimal choice for any game where returning from dead makes the story more interesting.
• The Fright Isn't tax time approaching? Well, if that's not scary, maybe the PFRPG-compatible Fright is worth a good scare.

• Heroes of the Jade Oath BETA Trailer and sale‏ With the Preorder PDF and print bundle going live at Paizo.com, Rite Publishing has released a trailer showcasing the newest setting. Also in celebration all of Rite Publishing's retail Arcana Evolved compatible products are on sale for $0.99 cents.
• Handling Psychics in Horror RPGs‏ The RPG Examiner explains how to really mess with psychics heads.

There have been several questions lately regarding the future of the Star Wars Miniatures and Roleplaying Game and until now I haven’t had definitive answers to give you. After a lengthy evaluation, Wizards of the Coast has decided not to renew the Star Wars license with Lucasfilm. We’ve had a long and fantastic run, but with the economic downturn, we have made the tough decision to discontinue our Star Wars lines.

The license officially ends in May this year, with WotC product available through August. In the meantime, we have awesome new products still coming your way. This week, we released The Dark Times minis and Galaxy of Intrigue RPG. We’ll have more coming with Masters of the Force minis in April, which will have some of your most favorite characters along with rare creatures from the Dejarik Holochess game that have never appeared in our game. We’ll also release The Unknown Regions RPG in April, which includes entirely new planets and mini-adventures for each world.

We are finishing the line with a bang so look for special programs at your local game store to stock up on favorite sets before they go into the vault. We will continue to support our Star Wars forums on the Wizards Community site so you can reach out and chat with us and other fans.

While I know the news is disappointing, we wanted to make this announcement as soon as possible and thank you for being such great fans. It’s been a fantastic ride with the Star Wars community and working with Lucasfilm. We hope you enjoy the next several months of great products. You never know when we may circle back again!

Greg Yahn

Director of Marketing, Wizards of the Coast

• Follow the latest updates in this thread
• D&D Essentials Line
• D&D Encounters- New Organized Play

Greetings all and well met!

It's that time of the year again. The time where the ENnies staff and judges begin the countdown to GenCon and start getting all of our dire ducks in a row. With that in mind, I thought it would be a good idea to let y'all know where we're at and where we're headed.

1. This year's ceremony will be our 10th Annual affair and will be held on Friday, August 6th. The wheels are in motion to make this the best. ENnies. ever. More details to come!

2. One of the projects we're working on is to create a photo retrospective. If you have photos you would like to include in this retrospective, please e-mail them to photos@ennieawards.com. It will be a fun trip down memory lane for all.

3. Going forward, electronic submissions will work differently than they have in the past. For our new electronic entry guidelines, please visit The ENnie Awards -- How To Enter. For podcasts and blogs/online magazines, there are some additional guidelines:

- You must send a link to your site and specify one "must-hear" episode or one "must-read" article/issue.
- The judges will select another "must-hear" episode or one "must-read" article/issue that they all listen to/read.
- Each judge will then select another episode/article/issue.

This will mean that each judge will listen to/read three episodes/articles/issues, one of which is chosen by the podcaster/publisher, in order to get a sense of the entire line.

4. If you haven't seen the ENnies blog, it's high-time you take a look at it by visiting ENnie Awards Blog!

5. On the blog, we are keeping a running list of all submissions we have received. At the top of the blog is a link to a page labeled Submissions. This page will let you see exactly which publishers have submitted, what products said publishers have submitted, and a link for each product to give you a chance to get to know them better.

If you're an RPG fan, I highly recommend you go and see who's submitted and prod your favorite publisher to submit the products you want to see win an ENnie.

If you're an RPG publisher, this page will allow you to easily check what you have or have not submitted.

6. Speaking of publishers: This year, we are going to be more stringent with our deadlines. In the last few years, we have had publishers who have sent products that were postmarked after the submission deadline. Depending on circumstances, we have been lenient and allowed these items to still be judged. We have decided that it is in everyone's best interest to stick to the guidelines and only allow products to be judged that are postmarked before the deadline. This means that is in the best interest of the publisher to get a tracking number on their packages and keep an eye on it to verify delivery. It would be a shame if an excellent product was left out simply because it wasn't postmarked on time or because a publisher didn't check to make sure the product was delivered on time. This year, the postmark deadline is on, or before, May 8, 2010. This also applies to electronic submissions.

With this in mind, publishers need to remember that one of our judges, Megan Robertson, lives in the United Kingdom. This means that, for items shipped from outside of the UK, the transit time will be longer than normal. Please make sure to ship your items as early as possible to make sure that they arrive in a timely fashion and give her, and other judges, ample time to review them.

7. With of a completely packed personal schedule, Gertie Barden has decided to step back from her role as Assistant Business Manager and focus on more important things like getting married and going back to college to complete a second Bachelor's degree (crazy, I know!). She will stay on as a staff member, but in a less taxing role. Because of this, I have been asked to step into the Assistant Business Manager role and I have accepted. I will now be pulling double-duty and stay on as the PR Coordinator. Denise Robinson, the current Business Manager, has previously announced her retirement from the position after this year, so I will move up into that role next year. I want to thank both Gertie and Denise for recommending me to step into the new position and I promise to keep the ENnies as fun, exciting, and important as they are currently.

Well that's all for now. I will make sure to keep everyone updated on the latest happenings of the ENnies and, as I've stated before, I highly recommend you read the ENnies Blog to keep up on ENnies news and discussions by the judges. As always, you may respond to me here or e-mail me at pr@ennieawards.com if you have any questions.

Tony Law

• Neuroglyph Games First Product Release Neuroglyph Games has released its 1st D&D 4e Product - an Adventure module called A Curse at the Old Inn, and is available now free for download.
• Primary Dwarves The Child of the Mountain paragon path presents one option tailor-made for a dwarf shaman.
• Spell-Refracting Hazard This hazard takes arcane energies and blends, bends, spindles and mutilates them.
• Review – The Mark of Hubris by Alea Publishing If you’re looking for an adventure to propel your Adventurers from the Heroic into the Paragon Tier, you might want to check out this review of the new module from Alea Publishing: The Mark of Hubris!
  

• From Beyond by Mark Gedak‏ This week Rite Publishing brings you a way to add a Lovecraftian character to your Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.
• Box of Brown Mold Some variations on a classic trap, making it more.
• New Take on Plant Monster The brainstalk fungus is lethal without moving a muscle.
  

• Dresden Files RPG out in June
• Interview with Frank Carr (part 5)‏ Rite Publishing continues its interview with the author of Heroes of the Jade Oath, this time he discusses Quickling Pirate Ninjas, his favorite of the new races he introduces, and what his favorite Oriental Rpgs are. Showcasing a new illustration by Jason Rainville.
• Baelor Miniatures Releases the Bloodied Base The Bloodied Base is designed to go under the base of just about any Medium or smaller figure as a visual notice that it is Bloodied. You can use a little blue-tac to keep the base attached and easy to move with the figure. Available in packs of 5 from Armorcast. [Bases sold unpainted].
• Book review of Spawn of the Winds‏ The RPG Examiner reviews a different kind of pulp story from Brian Lumley, complete with dueling polar bears, flying ice princesses, and killer Eskimos. He also provides d20 statistics for the Spawn of the Winds bloodline.
• Feds say no fantasy for felons‏ The RPG Examiner shares his opinion on the recent Supreme Court ruling preventing prisoners from playing role-playing games.