Dragon and Dungeon previews on the elusive D&D website

TerraDave

5ever, or until 2024
I managed to get into the D&D website (still at www.tsr.com), and got Dragon instead of D&D 4th ed.

And I was ready, before it crashed again. This is what it said.

Welcome to the future home of Dragon Magazine! We can’t wait until October to show you issue #360, but here’s a little taste of what you can look forward to:

Dungeons & Dragons 360
By Andy Collins, Rob Heinsoo, and James Wyatt

For thirty-three years, the D&D game has led the fantasy hobby gaming scene, and 4th Edition is taking the game in places its creators never dreamed. The 4th Edition lead design team speaks up in this article, sharing their sources of inspiration from editions past, as they look forward to the future.


The Ecology of the Death Knight
By Matthew Sernett

These foul undead have haunted many a campaign. Now learn their dark origin, and the source of their fell power.


Demonomicon of Iggwilv: Graz’zt
By James Jacobs
The Dark Prince revealed! Explore the dark secrets of the demon prince of seduction.


Plus Dragons of Eberron coverage, weekly Design & Development updates, and more!
In the mean time…
Check out Dragon #359, on stands now. Check out the contents at paizo.com.
 
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Likewise, Dungeon:

Welcome to the future home of Dungeon Magazine! Starting in October, this is your destination for the best in D&D adventures. Here’s a taste of what’s coming in issue #151:

Iggwilv’s Legacy: The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth
By Edward Albert, Ari Marmell, and C.A. Suleiman

One of the most ambitious projects to ever hit Dungeon, the classic 1st Edition module is freshly updated to D&D 3.5. Plus, the adventure features a new prelude and a follow-up adventure that takes the PCs to Tsojcanth’s lair.


Hell’s Heart
By Nicolas Logue

The three-part Eberron adventure series that began with “Chimes at Midnight” in issue #133 and continued with “Quoth the Raven” in issue #150 concludes in this chilling visit to Sharn’s sanitarium. A final showdown is brewing in the dark, depraved depths of the asylum, and if the PCs aren’t up to the task, the chaos inside the walls of Hell’s Heart could erupt to engulf the city.


Plus, Dungeoncraft [by James Wyatt], Save My Game, and even more!
 




TerraDave said:
Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth

In 3.5. But by the time I would be able to play that... :(

Just because 4th edition will be out by then doesn't mean you can't still play this. Just hold off on converting until your group has finished this. My 2nd edition group played for quite a while before converting to 3rd edition.
 


I'm thrilled that there's going to be a Demonomicon of Graz'zt. It's the one I've been waiting for.

Since these will be coming in October and paid subscription to DI will start in '08, does that mean people will get a free look at the online content that will be called Dragon and Dungeon and so will be able to decide whether they want to pay for it?
 

The ampersand

Bill Slavicsek's colum. The joke is that it is the "&" in between Dungeon and Dragon. And I think I have read it before. All this promo stuff is running together.

I always thought we should have a magazine called “&”. After all, it worked so well for Dungeon and Dragon that it just seemed to me that we were losing an opportunity to make use of the bit that brings it all together. So, until we figure out what to actually do with that recognizable little ampersand, I’m going to use it as the identifier for my regular feature here at D&D Insider.

I’m Bill Slavicsek. I’ve been the R&D Director for the Dungeons & Dragons game since Wizards of the Coast acquired the company. Before that, I was a Creative Director and Game Designer with TSR, Inc. And way back when, I ran the creative portions of West End Games. Over the years, I’ve worked on roleplaying games, board games, computer games, miniatures games, novels, and nonfiction books of all kinds, and you can see my work on everything from Star Wars to d20 Modern to D&D. I’m going to use this space to regularly talk to you about things related to D&D from the unique perspective of my Director’s chair here at WotC. Let’s start out by talking about 4th Edition D&D and D&D Insider.

At Gen Con this week, we announced that the 4th Edition of the Dungeons & Dragons game will debut in May 2008. We also announced that for the first time, the D&D game would consist of four integral and integrated parts. In addition to the physical products—the core rulebooks, supplements, adventures, miniatures, and accessories—the D&D experience would be enhanced by robust Community features (powered by Gleemax.com), a fully integrated Organized Play program that will offer benefits to convention and home play alike, and the digital initiative we’re calling D&D Insider.

Why 4th Edition and why now? Because the time was right. My R&D team has been watching the play environment since the release of the 3.5 rules, listening to what you, the players, have been telling us. Two years ago, I assembled a team of designers, led by Rob Heinsoo, Andy Collins, and James Wyatt, to review all the data we’ve been collecting and see if we could make the d20 Game System (the engine that powers the D&D game) better, more intuitive, and more fun. When I saw the first expressions of that effort, I knew we could make D&D better, stronger, faster, more fun. We could rebuild it. We could take the d20 Game System we all know and love and rocket it to the next level.

At the same time, we also began imagining a robust and exciting suite of digital features that could enhance and complement the roleplaying game. It became clear to me that we had two winning directions that would be even more powerful when we combined them, and that’s when we made the decision to move forward with D&D 4th Edition.

The future (only nine months away!) contains the same D&D we all play on a regular basis. It’s still going to be a tabletop roleplaying game. It’s still set in a medieval fantasy world of magic and monsters. It’s still the d20 Game System. But the rulebooks appear more vibrant, more visually stunning, and much easier to use. The game mechanics have been amped up to eliminate the game-stoppers, accentuate the fun factors, and make play faster and more exciting. In the future (now only eight months, 29 days, 23 hours, and 50 minutes from now!) D&D Insider provides its members with immediate access to Dragon Magazine and Dungeon Magazine, to enhanced and expanded content tied to the newest physical book products, to an amazing suite of digital tools to make Dungeon Master preparation and campaign management easier to handle, to a Character Creator that provides not only an interactive character sheet but a visualizer that lets you determine the exact look of the characters you create—and, D&D Insider provides a digital D&D Game Table that turns the Internet into your kitchen table. This amazing application, which we’ll talk more about as the weeks go on, allows you to supplement your face-to-face gaming 24/7, helps you find a group to game with if you don’t happen to have a face-to-face group, or lets you hook up with gaming buddies who long ago scattered to the four winds. Take a look at the prototype movie we showed at Gen Con to get a first taste of the D&D Game Table.

Wow. There’s a lot more that I want to share with you, but I’ve already exceeded my allotted word count for this first column. We’ll pick this up next time, when I describe a typical day in (and reveal a few secrets about) the life of an R&D Director—specifically, this R&D Director.

Keep playing!

--Bill Slavicsek

About the Author

Bill Slavicsek is the R&D Director for Roleplaying Games, Miniatures, and Book Publishing at Wizards of the Coast. All of the game designers, developers, editors, book editors, and D&D Insider content managers working on Dungeons & Dragons, Star Wars, and the WotC Publishing Group report into Bill’s R&D team.
 


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