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Welcome to Time Stop, your one stop shop for fourth edition Dungeons & Dragons news. This week I’ll bring you the latest news out of Wizards of the Coast, the podcasts that you don’t want to miss, a couple of articles from the RPG Bloggers Network, several resources to help your Dungeons & Dragons game, and finally a couple of web comics that have featured D&D recently.
WotC News
- The first piece of news out of WotC this week is that the new pricing for DDI will be going live as of midnight Wednesday night, July 1st. If you want to take advantage of the current pricing then you need to go order your subscription now!
- Details on the new Monster Builder tool were just released. The Monster Builder will be the first of the new Campaign Tools that WotC after one of their recent surveys.
- WotC is holding a competition… to design shoes.
- A preview from the upcoming Divine Power was released last week that details how Domains will work in 4e.
- What Monster are You?
- A new D&D Podcast was released a few days ago. In this episode they discuss the role of customer service in D&D 4e.
Podcasts
This week I will be featuring Podcasts that I think you should be listening to in general, rather than specific episodes like I have done in the past.
- Return to Northmoor is an excellent podcast where Time White and Kim Stone guide the listener through creating an adventure in one episode and then in the next then feature clips from the actual play of that adventure.
- Role Playing Public Radio also divides their episodes between actual play and other content. In RPPR’s case they record advice episodes and full length actual play episodes.
- RPG Circus is a very new podcast but it off to a good start. It features bonemaster from The Bone Scroll, Zachary from RPG Blog II, and The Dice Monkey.
Articles
- A Butterfly Dreaming recently posted their one year review of D&D 4e.
- The Origins Awards were given out this past weekend and Critical Hits has posted wrap-up.
- Dragon magazine recently published an article by Chris Tulach titled “Adventurers of the Realms” for DDI subscribers. The article details Tarmalune and the Windrise Ports including two new backgrounds and several feats. For those interested in the upcoming Living Forgotten Realms mini-campaign “Embers of the Dawn” the article has some good information about the area the mini-campaign focus on.
Resources
- Did your players just wander into a village that you have no plans for? Then the Random Village Generator is here to help you.
- Need a mass of cheap minis? How about making some shrinky dink gaming minis?
- Are your dice always spilling out over the table? Unclebear suggests using a double dog dish to hold them. One side of the dish holds the dice, while you can roll your dice in the other side.
- Perhaps you need a dungeon master screen, but don’t like the one made by WotC? Johnn over at Campaign Mastery has 11 Homebrew Dungeon Master Screens for you.
- Ever need a 1-inch grid to overlay a map? Or perhaps you want hex grids for you overland map? Then just grab a Free Online Graph Paper / Grid Paper PDF and print it out onto some transparency film.
Web Comics
Penny Arcade and PVP have both featured Dungeons and Dragons in recent comics. For Penny Arcade is has been single strips posted here and there. For PVP there is a storyline beginning here. Additionally, you can read the adventures of Binwin Bronzebottom in the last couple of Sunday PVP comics. Just yesterday is was announced that Penny Arcade and PVP will be recording another set of podcasts for WotC. From Scott Kurtz recent tweets and pics, it seems that the recording may have already begun. If you missed the previous podcasts featuring actual play from Scott, Tycho and Gabe then head on over to WotC’s site and they can be found in the Podcast archive labeled “Penny Arcade/PvP”. Both sessions have 8 episodes, the first released on 5/30/2008 and the second on 2/18/2009.
Milambus, aka Jake Fitch, has been a lifelong player of video games,card games, and board games. With the recent release of the Fourth Edition of Dungeons & Dragons he finally decided to start playing tabletop RPGs. He keeps informed on all the latest news from WotC, and RPG bloggers/podcasters and then shares that information with you. 
Glad to see the Graph Paper item there. I just posted about them this week, though I did leave out the idea of transparency for overlays, which I had thought about because of a tweet from @MikeMearls earlier this week.
Great round-up! I follow quite a lot of feeds and there were plenty of new things to check out.
Thanks
Great roundup! I’m a bit bummed that the Open Design Podcast with WotC’s Bruce Cordell did not make the cut…
Maybe next time!
@Paul I claim no originality for any ideas posted in a Time Stop article =) I know I got the link from someone, it may have been you.
@Ethalias Thank you. I try to provide good links each week.
@Wolfgang Nice to see you here, I love the magazine.
I’m sad to admit that I haven’t listened to Open Design Podcast yet. I have it downloaded on my phone and its in my queue, I’m just weeks behind on both podcasts and some blog articles (I have a Chrome window open with 50+ articles that I need to read.)
I’ll try to listen to it this week, and hopefully I’ll be able to recommend it in my next Monday.
The open design podcast is a jem. Give it the utmost priority!
@Milambus – No harm, no foul, want to spread the knowledge. It’s a very good site. And as I said, I’d overlooked that particular use of the site in my writing (part of trying to be ‘brief’
)
Also, forgot to mention thanks for the reminder about DDI. For some reason I thought I had a couple more days, will have to go extend my sub a bit tonight.
my podcasting habit is just starting to form…I will definitely be giving open design a trip in the player on the ride in to work!
another awesome Time Stop roundup Milambus!