Just because you are underground does not mean you have to miss out on all the unusual opportunities that come with exploring the underwater reaches of a vast water way. As the history of this region is explores you will no doubt find many ways to exploit this region for adventure. Your adventuring group just needs two things to make this possible; a reason to go and a way to exist there, hopefully we can provide both of those.

The news is out, Wizards of the Coast is working on Dungeons and Dragons 5e.  I am just not that excited though, call me strange but nothing I heard in all of the press releases make me think that “This might bring me home?” or “Have they finally learned?”.  Instead my first thought was “didn’t they tell us with 4e that it was developed with player feedback?”  Then I had a second thought regarding this news of open play testing was that didn’t Paizo do this with Pathfinder, while that has to be good but also makes you wonder who is the industry leader these days.

Will it be Open, resembling more of a feel to the OGL rather than the GSL?  Anyone else recall the disaster with 4e concerning the release of information regarding the GSL and what websites could or couldn’t do.  I am not still not sure what websites can do with regard to 4e but in truth I did walk away from it all.  I would rather not heard any empty promises or wait and see type announcements, either you have something worth being interested in or you don’t, as of right now you don’t.  That bridge was burned down.

How about 3^rd party software support, only software running around is available from your wizards.com subscription and doesn’t seem very friendly for adding your own rules to it.  I wrote a post about this when 4e was being announced that in this day in age to now allow such things should be considered criminal, don’t get me wrong I know Wizards of the Coast owns the IP and in the end they have the right to do what they wish but if they want me as a customer purchasing products each month it has to be something to consider.  I say this because the way Wizards of the Coast has handled software in the past has been more like “Over promise and Under deliver”.

Now I know this has been kind of harsh but there is some good from all this perhaps, with Monte Cook there I have to at the very least consider reading the material.  Monte Cook has been running his own show for a while now and knows the importance of establishing relationships with his customer base, being a solid game designer with a ton of credits to his name doesn’t hurt either, so there is hope.  If I have one desire for the upcoming months is that this hope doesn’t turn into hype.