So Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition will be coming out in eight days. You're probably wondering why I'm talking about this and not Tycho, seeing as I never played editions one through three. That's a good question, so here's what's up.

Wizards of the Coast came to us months ago and wanted to run some ads for 4th edition. They wanted to do something more than just banner ads though and they asked us if we had any cool ideas. What we came up with is probably one of my favorite projects to date. Tycho and I sat down at a table with Scott Kurtz from PvP and a DM from WOTC and we played 4th edition. That probably doesn't sound awesome to you except that we also recorded the entire thing as a podcast.

So you have Tycho who is the old pro, you have Scott who hasn't played since he was a kid and you have me the complete newb. If you've played D&D before but you're curious about the changes in 4th edition the podcast will cover a ton of the new rules. If you've never played and your curious if it's something you'd like, I think this is a really good example of the game. For me personally is was an extremely positive experience. There was some frustration at first as I tried to wrap my head around the rules but once I got into it I had a really good time. I think I actually enjoyed the adventuring/role playing portions of the game more than the actuall combat. The comabt was fun but it was the puzzle solving and interaction with the rest of the party that really made the game for me. At any rate if you're curious about D&D in general or 4th edition specifically I think these podcasts will be helpful and hopefully funny.


We ended up playing all day and then broke the podcast up into multiple chunks. The first of which went live today. Not only will WOTC be posting a new podcast each week but Scott and I will be creating a comic that follows the events of the adventure. There will be two panels accompanying each podcast, one drawn by me and one drawn by Scott. Today's podcast covers the start of the game as we name our characters and get our group set up. It also includes our first taste of combat and my very first official d20 roll ever. If you hit the WOTC site here you can grab the first show and see the first two panels of the comic. If you don't have one already, you will need to sign up for an account. It's free and pretty quick.

I know that utility software for the DS is a hit in Japan, and I know that people try to make these things go in the United States and elsewhere, but is quitting smoking something that people will actually do on the DS? I want to believe this is true, certainly. I want to believe that we are, in some ways, already toting around the ultimate, mutable living tool, a young lady's illustrated primer. It's a fantasy I can endorse. The challenge for them is going to be moving the product out of the core smoker demo into other markets, but that's not insurmountable.

During the writing of this strip, I was still in the grip of fever. I had spent the entire night consorting with entities of various kinds, slick with sweat, trying to figure out what to do with all the "excess nitrogen" (among other important tasks). After hours of recursive agony, I came to find myself in a canoe with a Native American. This seemed a little run of the mill as visions go, and I told him so. He seemed to find that amusing.

I had the mic for a little while in the video, and during that time I mention some fluff I wrote for the world. That stuff is now available over on the Greenhouse, right at the top.

So the chat about the game went really well. Thanks to everyone that showed up and participated. Tycho and I each took turns at the mic fielding questions about the game and PA. Here's the recording in case you could not make it to the live show.

As though fixed to some hissing mechanism, I receive a reliable drip of corporate PR every few seconds throughout the day. It's rare that I find this "content" worthy of you, and so I rarely present you with it. When Gabriel returned, knowing his abiding love for beautiful ponies and husbandry, I presented him with Ponystars - one of the bizarre gems I had sifted out of this endless accumulating ASCII. A product of the reconstituted Acclaim, I was confident the product would ensnare him, because in Ponystars one can:

Thanks to everyone that has taken the time to mail me their thoughts on the game. The response so far has been overwhelmingly positive. More and more reviews are coming out now and the numbers are falling right about where I expected. We got a 7.8 from IGN which I'm actually pretty happy with. I think Hilary had every reason to tear us a new one but in the end she actually said the game was good... yeah I know Hilary is a guy, old habits die hard. We got a 4 out 5 from X-Play which is another site I sort of expected to rip us a new one. One of our best reviews came from Destructoid. Rev gave us a 9.0 and said the game was fantastic which was really nice to hear.

I believed strongly in BioShock as an experience, and disagreed strongly with the idea that it should be corralled by a single console. It sold so well that Take Two apparently disagrees also, releasing the game a full year after sensible men and women had played it to completion. I don't remember if we're still angry at Bioshock for only being excellent, or for being too popular, or for breaking its ludic contract with the player, or something else - but at the very least, Playstation 3 stalwarts can stop hating it for no good Goddamned reason.

I just got back from Paris. I'll talk about the trip later after I've had some time to organize it all in my head. Right now it's still all sort of a blur. I have to talk about the game though.

For PC, Mac, and Linux, or on XBLA.

Being children of the eighties, of course we believe that every adventure should culminate as it has here. Not that this adventure has been entirely culminated, of course. We reserve the right to explore the Earth's hidden mysteries anytime Gabriel goes to France.

Here's Gabe's next communique... From Earth's ancient past!!!

Sometimes, the old magic is best.

Several people (3) asked about this set's whereabouts, and I am happy to announce that it just hit the store.

I guess Gabe wrote little intros for these pages. Hmm. Here's the second one: