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Everyone’s time comes eventually. Eventually bad tactics, story, or cold dice kill a character. I’ve lost a couple and I’ve killed a couple.

But what happens next? I’m not talking about the long tunnel with the bright light or passage to the Shadowfell, but what happens at the table. A character just died and there are two or three hours left in the session. What do you do?

What Came Before

This is the spiritual follow-up to an earlier blog where I mused about killing PCs, but did not really touch on the follow-up. This seemed like an omission, which I now correct.

Below are some options and discussion on what to do when a PC dies at your table.

The Watcher

The baseline action for a PC dying unexpectedly is that player sits around bored, watching events unfold.

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4th Edition was sold with the digital tools. Much of the initial hype was predicated on the suite of digital offerings. The initial presentation had demos of the tools. WotC cancelled the printed copies of Dragon and Dungeon so as to tie them into their electronic offerings. The print copies of all of the Core rulebooks advertised the existence of the e-tools & magazines wrapped up in a package known as "Dungeons & Dragons Insider" or DDI. The little red DDI logo is pretty synonymous with 4th Edition, being attached to users and articles.

But DDI had troubles before it even launched. While WotC continued as if nothing was wrong, months before the launch they scrapped everything that had been done and started again. When the tools were released they were good, but two never made it out

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It's time again for the contract-mandated Doom 'n' Gloom entry for "Jester" David's blog.

5e is coming closer and closer with the first playtest done and the second due "sometime". Last I heard the second round was the end of summer, so late August or early September, meaning it might be the last playtest before the books have to get finished and out to the printers. So there's still time for WotC to royally F-up D&D Next, producing instead what more cynical people have called "D&D Last".

But just how could WotC turn such a hyped and positive experience built around a framework of crowd sourcing and open playtesting into a poor edition and commercial failure?

I'll tell you.

Not Enough Testing

Despite the mass public playtest, this might happen. While WotC is being silent regarding

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Once again I take a crack at evaluating the D&D website. You can read my first two critiques here and here. 

Setting the Bar

What would the perfect D&D website do?

• Hub. It should be the center of the D&D community and the game.
• Information. It should educate players old and new and old.
• News. This includes reporting the latest information, hosting press releases and reports of large events, in addition to offering information on the game and game products.
• Marketing. It should be an advertising tool, a place to hype new products and sell books.
• Multiple-Platforms. The website should be navigable and usable on PCs, Macs, Netbooks, tablets, and smartphones.

When someone first hears of this strange game called "Dungeons & Dragons", which is a game without winners or losers,

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And now for something a little controversial: where 4e went wrong, and the mistakes WotC made.

This is a long one, be warned.

Now, this blog is not to bash the edition (much) or be unfairly negative to Wizards of the Coast. Instead, I’m viewing this as a way to establish what not to do the next time round, or at least what I think shouldn’t be done. It’s a “those who do not learn from history...” and such. Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about WotC and their potential mistakes (as seen by the territory my review of the Chaos Scar blog meandered into) and looking at where the last edition failed seemed like a good idea and worthy of blogging.

But did 4e Fail?

Without sales numbers this is impossible to quantify.

If you count 3.0 and 3.5 as one

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The second – and likely last – 4th Edition Adventure Path, the Chaos Scar, recently finished with the big Heroic-Tier-ending adventure: Heart of the Scar. Because the Path has just finished, I feel it’s a good time to assess the AP as a whole.

I was initially critical of said endcap adventure, as it was level 9-11 when there had only been a handful of prior adventures above level 6, making it seem unlikely players would be high enough to play in said adventure unmodified.

Was I right? How well did the AP work? Read on then judge for yourself.

Adventure Hook

The introduction to the Chaos Scar series can be found here, which includes the following map: 
 

The “mission statement” the Adventure Path, as outlined by the above article is:

If you’re

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More late coverage and discussion of GenCon news and rumours, specifically Mike Mearl’s GenCon talking point that WotC is going to be “supporting all of D&D”. Hey, if you wanted fresh news you’d be over on ENWorld.

This statement is being interpreted as opening up WotC’s equivalent of the Disney Vault and re-releasing old products, likely making them available as PDFs or an online equivalent. That is, if they’re not readying an action for when Print on Demand becomes even cheaper and higher quality. This is amazing and historic! Or would be if White Wolf wasn’t already selling PDFs, and announced last year they were working to make their back catalogue available for Print on Demand. (Yes, I’m a cynic who is pretty much dead on the inside.)

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In a recent DM Experience article it was mentioned that the Chaos Scar series is coming to a close, and WotC is wondering if they should do another series. That article took a poll on what world should be featured and Dragonlance won. Likely due to the lasting popularity of the novels and call to vote over on the Dragonlance Fourms.

Meanwhile, a following Rule-of-Three article said they were not rushing to make a new Adventure Path, as Scales of War was still available online. Which is fair, as SoW was a solid adventure and still works just fine.

Still, Scales of War is a beast, a full level 1 to level 30 Adventure Path which doesn’t really set out to explore a setting or do something new, as the edition itself was so very new at the time of publication.

Forging a New Path

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Okay, a little postscript here. I debated editing it onto the end of my review, but felt that might be missed by the people who have already read my blog. One point I missed in my review but which is worthy of note is the monsters. Gloomwrought came out hot on the heels of "Heroes of Shadow" so one might assume the two products are related: HoS would be the player product while Gloomwrought fills the DM's needs.Sadly, this is not the case. For example, I was hoping for monstrous additions of the races from HoS in Gloomwrought — such as the shade and the vyrlokka — but there were none. Neither were there mentions of these two races in the book, although one might expect the book on the Shadowfell to feature some information on the two new shadow races. Details of the vampire...