Friday, 3 July, 2009

[Morrus]

• [imager]http://www.enworld.org/newsimages/zeidan.jpg[/imager]Get Frozen! 0one Games' The Great City Cold Crypts revealed.
• New HackMaster Basic preview PDFs Kenzer and Company has posted several new HackMaster Basic PDFs, including the Quick-Start Rules and the character creation sheet, on their website.
• One Page Dungeon Contest winners Since late May, a panel of 6 judges has slogged through 112 entries and they have finally arrived with the final results.
  • Best New School Dungeon: Cry of the Gravegod by Heron Prior
  • Best Old School Dungeon: Valley of the Necromancer Kings by Andrew Gale
  • Best Overall One Page Dungeon: Secrets of the Old City by Simon Bull
• New Vintyri Mapping Tools The Vintyri project has released two new free and open RPG bitmap cartographic collections under the OGL. Symbol Set 2 is a collection of 349 raster symbols of buildings. The Fills and Textures collection offers 118 backgrounds for landscapes, roofs, etc. Seperate versions are available for Fractal Mapper 8 and Dundjinni users.
• Hexographer gets a new website, improvements The hex map making software now has an improved random terrain generator improved; plus text can now be rotated, and downloadable version available.
• Races of Violet Dawn Zeidian now available The Inner Circle released Ngakoi today which is the third product in their Races of Violet Dawn product line. It features a new race for your 4E game.
• Official D&D Updates:
  • Divine Heroes 3 D&D Miniatures This is the final preview for the Player's Handbook 2 miniatures. To wrap things up, we show off the Male Genasi Paladin, Female Human Cleric, and Male Human Invoker. It's a divine power hullabaloo!
  • Excerpts: Divine Power Feats In today's Divine Power preview, we present new feats for the paragon tier, including for each of the divine classes!
  • Excerpts: ECG Xen'drik & Religion In today’s Eberron Campaign Guide preview, we take a look at Xen'drik as well as examine the religion of Eberron -- including a look at Lady Vol!
  • DDI July Update Letter Today, we published a small set of updates for the Player’s Handbook, Forgotten Realms Player’s Guide, and Martial Power. These updates modify key portions of the game that weren’t working as we intended. The updates bring these mechanical elements back in line with the game’s base expectations, while retaining their flavor and utility.
  • Official D&D Updates These updates clarify rules questions, correct technical errors, and improve game play. While we make every effort to catch such issues before publication, the sheer volume of material published for the game ensures that a few inevitably creep in.
• "Monster Tool" on D&D Insider? WotC's Trevor Kidd says:

We’ve had a bit of time for the idea of Adventure Tools to settle in and I’ve heard and been involved in a lot of great conversations about what these tools could/should be. I wanted to take a few moments to give us all a better idea of where we are with this.

Of these Adventure Tools, the first that we’ll be releasing is what I’m going to refer to as the Monster Builder. We should expect the name to change by release. I don’t have dates, screenshots or beta keys to give away, but I’ve had the chance to play around with the tool recently and I really wanted to share some of what I saw.



To hit some highlights, here’s what this Monster Builder will be able to do:

• Search through and display monsters that appear in any of our books or magazines.
• Edit monsters so they fit into your planned encounter/campaign.
• Create, display, and print your own unique monsters in the official formatting style you see in our printed D&D material.

“But Trevor,” you ask, “You already have an Encounter Builder that helps me with my monsters. Why is this any better?”

Simply put, the Monster Builder has a lot of features that the Encounter Builder doesn’t have. Besides the ability to easily create your own monster, one example of these new features is the ability to grab an existing attack/power from one monster and drop it into another. For a more colorful analogy, this Monster Builder tool would be eating its cornflakes, and not even notice that the Encounter Builder had landed in its milk.

I've only had a little time to play around with this tool and I already find myself wishing I had it to manage my current campaigns. I believe the Monster Builder will change the way we put together encounters in much the same way that the Character Builder dramatically improved how easy and fun it is to make characters.

That’s all I’ve got for now, but I hope to have more information for you next time. If we’re lucky, that next time will include screen shots and some more features about the Monster Tool. Thanks again for all the great feedback concerning D&D Insider and the Adventure Tools, and I’ll talk with you soon!
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