community answer

quick post today, for anyone who was curious the map in that community episode I posted about the other day was from.

Queen of the Demonweb Pits

The series of modules that introduced the Drow (or dark elves if your not familiar) to D&D. This was long before R.A. Salvator made them popular with Drizzt Do'Urden and the Icewind dale series of books. It also introduced the spider goddess Loth the final boss of the module. This was one of the most classic of the early D&D modules so much of D&D that came after started in this series with G1,2,3 known as the against the giants modules then followed by D1,2,3 known as the drow modules. I was really pleased that they threw in that little piece of real D&D history as an easter egg.

Roleplaying Cliches

I found this list a few years ago, I didn't write it but its been so long ago the forum I found it on is unknown to me. possibly the old 3rd edition forums at wizards. who knows. anyway on to the list. thanks to Michael Westside who found the source http://willforshire.forumakers.com/t34-dd-cliches

Avenging Wallflower. These players play characters with a vast amount of unheralded, unseen power and go out of their way to be meek and unassuming, at least until a dramatic confrontation occurs in their vicinity. Whenever active, outgoing characters do something interesting near them, they will feel an unholy compulsion to leap into action, screaming and blowing things up with their incredible
powers, simply to interfere in the process and thereby feel that they've done something. It's quite common in Anime, and I've seen about a thousand 'I'm a dragon ploymorphed into a halfling'.

Community

The TV show Community on NBC recently aired an episode focused on Dungeons and Dragons. I found the show very humorous and fairly factually accurate (which for TV is a rarity) I had a major nerd moment when I could identify which module the map in the fake TV module actually comes from +10 nerd points if you can do it a well here is a screenshot of the module in question.

Hint its from 1st edition and its a classic!

I found the guy in blackface pretending to be drow a bit cringe-worthy probably because I know people who do that kind of thing. Anyway here is the video. http://vimeo.com/24954002

Neverwinter

Cryptic Studios has announced an October 4th release date for their new dungeons and dragons game Neverwinter. If you've played D&D games on the computer at all that name should ring a bell as one of the most successful D&D themed franchises in history.

Cryptic is known for MMO type games (City of Heroes / Villians, Star Trek Online, and Champions Online) Neverwinter will be their first foray into non online games. That fact makes me very nervous about this property. Its no secret that in the 3 years since 4th edition was released no D&D themed game has done the system justice. I find this odd since one of the most common criticisms people have about 4th edition is it feels like a video game more then a role playing pen and paper game.

This dragon looks scary enough

One thing that is a point in favor for cryptic they are introducing a feature called "the foundry"

" Players can create and share their own adventures using The Foundry creation toolset, " http://crypticstudios.com/

The addition of a creation toolkit may help this game last many years after it stops selling copies at Walmart. The same way the creation tools in Neverwinter Nights and Neverwinter Nights 2 did.

Dont jump!

The last D&D game was a big disappointment. Daggerdale felt more like a torchlight clone (which is itself a clone I know) than and true D&D game. It was pretty bad even for downloadable console content. Its probably no mistake that wizards released the Neverwinter campaign source book a few months before this game came out. they are probably hoping if its a success it will boost the source book sales as well.

Game Masters Book Review - First Law Series

I recently finished reading Joe Ambercrombie's First law series of books. If you are into fantasy novels at all and haven't read these books do yourself a favor and head to your library, bookstore, or kindle store and get the first one The Blade Itself today.
The story has about 4 main characters all of them neither villains or heroes but somewhere in the shades of grey that make them dynamic personalities. The first is Logan also known as "The Bloody Nine". Hes a barbarian with a missing middle finger (how he got the nickname) who is one of the most fear killers ever who himself loathes killing. Second you have Glokta who is a torturer with a heart of gold that himself was tortured to the point even though he is only 30 his body moves like that of a 90 year old man. Third you have Jezel who is the callous noble fop who through events out of his control must learn to cope with problems he was never ready for, and hes a bit of a coward. Fourth you have Bayaz a mage with secrets and plots that may or may not have the best intrests of everyone around him at heart that's just a small sample of the characters that Ambercrombie deftly weaves to life in his first trilogy of books. The characters are totally believable the plot twists are unexpected and the villains might not be as bad as you thought at first.r