Well the first day of Gencon is officially over I guess. Sure plenty could still happen yet today, but most organized things are essentially finished. D&D 4th edition was announced along with an amazing array of online products to enable game play between people no matter where they may be. Yup, that's right they demonstrated a desktop "table-top" for your character to play in. Map building environments and customizable digital miniatures along with auto-updating rules so that you might not have to buy every book they put out in order to actually play using all the rules. New streamlining for certain past hangups (ie grapple) and timelines for production and distribution that predate Gencon next year topped the list of items of interest as well.
Personally I'm not a big D&D fan, but this looks pretty darn compelling. I hope that it works on my mac, and that they release something similar for Star Wars in the not too horribly distant future. I guess you had to be there, but this looks really good. Additionally, some of you may have noticed that Dungeon and Dragon are both putting out their "final" issues currently. WotC indicated that these products will essentially make an ongoing digital appearance as what I believe (if I was not mistaken) is a subscription basis.
I'll say it again, I'm not a huge D&D fan, but this was interesting enough that I might actually join up. If they do this for star wars, it means we could get the gang back together again! That'd be a nice change of pace. I only really get to do any role-playing at Gencon once a year. :-(
This post needs more photos. Especially of the cosplay ladies. ;-)
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Hishgraphics: A View From The Tenth Freaking Floor