Thursday, January 13, 2011

Death of the Miniature Dragon?

It's been well discussed elsewhere, but if you haven't heard the news, Wizards of the Coast is discontinuing miniatures for Dungeons & Dragons, as well as the monthly compilations of Dragon and Dungeon content, which in essence means the death of Dragon and Dungeon as magazines (online or off).

To put on my Abe Simpson hat, "I remember back in Nineteen Eight One or so when TSR - that stood for The Senile Roleplayer - put out the last set of lead miniatures for the original AD&D game came out - yep, they were lead then, in case the Russkies invaded, we could melt 'em down and turn 'em into ammo. Anyhoo, the last set was of a wizard's lair, and featured a large snake. My brother painted the snake bright red, and we lost the wizard, so it basically looked like a rather intelligent snake had a wizard's lair. And since we didn't cotton much to plotlines then, we just pretended that's what it was..."

So, we've seen Dragon and Dungeon die and be reborn before. We've seen official and unofficial minis. We've seen multiple edition wars. At the end of the day, we've all got lots of rules sets, great minis from Citadel and others still in production, and plenty of free content on the web in case things get worse. It's actually a good time to be a gamer.

Friday, January 7, 2011

Great interview with Marc Miller on DiceCast

How did Traveller come about? Was it something built rapidly after D&D came out, or in parallel? Why all the editions? Why did GDW fold?

All these - and more - are answered in a great podcast on DiceCast's blog containing an interview with Traveller's creator Marc Miller. Fascinating stuff!!!

http://dicecast.blogspot.com/2010/12/dicecast-special-holiday-interview.html

The whole thing is great, but the piece with Marc Miller starts shortly after the 10 minute mark. Other interviews cover WEG's D6 system, BESM and more.