Indexing Free D&D 5th Content

Given Wizards of the Coast's new, Super Intuitive web site, I figured I would index all of the PDF content for D&D 5th I could find for some ease of use.

Dwarven Forge: Caverns

From Dwarven Forge, the tabletop terrain studio that makes wonderful dungeon designs: A new kickstarter coming later this month, for cavernous tiles, made from similar material ("Dwarvenite") from their last round.

For an introduction:

Wizards Uploads PDF of Old Editions

Now via DriveThruStuff (formerly DriveThruRPG), Wizards is putting up old D&D content for a small fee! Check it out here.

Kickstarter: Dwarven Forge

I've had my eye on Dwarven Forge since Penny Arcade posted pictures of an elaborate painted dungeon, complete with accessories and terrain.  Dwarven Forge has always had gorgeous sets, hand-made from resin.  There are two things that historically kept me from buying in -- the hefty cost, and the heavy weight.  They're currently addressing both of these by casting out of a rubberized material called Dwarvenite.  Kickstarter is currently funding the new molds and the advancement necessary to do both -- and the rewards are steep.

City RPG: Part 2

On Wednesday, I laid out the foundation of the concept of a RPG where players defined a city and leveled it up in various ways based entirely on their actions. Today, I'm getting a hint deeper into the concept.

A City as an RPG

My usual group requested a campaign setting for D&D Next, and given our original DM's reluctance, I've been throwing together a gameworld. Given my love-hate relationship with Fantasy settings and running D&D in general, I decided to do something rather different with my gameworld -- let the players craft the world itself, while they learn the game's ropes.

Kickstarter: D&D/Pathfinder Miniatures

For quite a while, I've wanted a set of miniatures with interchangeable parts that covered humans in most of the armor available in Dungeons and Dragons or other fantasy games. It's been particularly difficult to find, and cost-prohibitive, as to properly assemble models representative of adventurers (and not just soldiers), one needs to cobble together a lot of parts and spend quite a bit of money.  Kingdom Death changes that.

Dungeons and Dragons for d8 Players

One of the challenges we came to see as my gaming group aged was attendance.  People got jobs, started families, and with that, had other responsibilities that they considered more important than attending a weekly (or bi-weekly) gaming session.  While they were clearly wrong, I've been challenged with how to accommodate a variable number of players while still providing content to those who can make it.

FLGS 2.0

While in high school, I watched hobby shop after hobby shop shutter its doors in my (original) hometown.  I couldn't understand why this lucrative and noble profession didn't flourish as I loaded box after box of steeply discounted RPG materials that didn't sell into my car.  It didn't occur to me until the dawn of Amazon that it was particularly regular that I couldn't find specific books in my friendly local gaming shop (FLGS).  I had more luck finding Vampire: Revised books in my local Waldenbooks than at my hobby shop.  For the next decade, I would primarily make my purchases online, not only not supporting my FLGS, but encouraging their obliteration.

It wasn't until I saw Games Workshop's sales figures for the first time that I particularly understood why.  Here are ten lessons I've come to learn about a successful FLGS thanks to Games Workshop stores.

Internet Killed the RPG Star

Ten years ago, a few dice, a pen and paper, and a stack of game books cut it.  You could amass a group with regularity, and attract new players.  It also helped that ten years ago I was trapped in a college dormitory for two days without power while a hurricane hit.  In the past decade, though, video games became infinitely more accessible, intuitive, and enticing than tabletop gaming could offer -- lush worlds, massive challenges, and other players immediately at your fingertips have almost completely marginalized tabletop gaming.

It hasn't helped that the big names in tabletop gaming have largely ignored new technology and refused to meet the demands of an ever more connected market.  It also hasn't helped that by and large, the electronic medium has done its best to minimize direct player to player interaction with things like words, instead reducing players to stale macros and random player generators.   Only a handful of years ago, I tried running a paper and pen Shadowrun game for a group of players who'd never touched an RPG before, only to be met with blank stares and players fiddling with phones because the pace of combat was too slow, and quite a few cancellations due to scheduling conflicts because traditional RPGs don't particularly support variable players or handle pick-up groups.  After thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that they were right.

Technology has developed quite a bit, but game developers have been reluctant to interact with it.  Publishers continue to make only books, while all of the pieces of software that enable a digital game table are largely third-party.  A large part of this likely has to do with the lack of overlap between electronic and tabletop game industries.  Many digital tools are fan-created and fan-supported, and likely not authorized by the actual developer.  These days, for example, I use a Pathfinder SRD application on my iPod (which avoids direct mention of Paizo or the game in its App Store description) to make a convenient rule index, while my roommate is dungeon crawling online using fan-made maps of 4th Edition D&D boxed content.  Virtual tabletop software is frequently complicated to set up, and Wizards' own D&D Virtual Tabletop for 4th fell flat on its face likely due to the complexity of designing appropriate software.  It does not help that the bastion of tabletop (the FLGS) is becoming less and less available (or profitable).

In any case, follow the jump to view what I feel will be essential to keeping tabletop RPGs competitive: