Origins 2009

[brettday]

Origins is coming up again, June 24-28. I signed up to judge some of the DnD stuff for the RPGA, which is a pretty good deal: judge four events to get a free pass to Origins for the weekend, seven to get a free room at a local hotel (or, if you don't need a room, a $60 gift certificate to the Origins dealer's room / food stalls in the convention

Comments

[brettday]

I disagree about the business stuff-- not that it isn't shystie; because it is, but that it's harming the game. They cannot touch the first three core rule books on your shelf; nothing they release will ever damage the game described therein. There is nothing wotc can do that DMs and players can't decide to just ignore.

And, besides, I'm hopeful that they planned ahead on 4E a bit-- I know the team working on it had been at it for years before the game came out. They knew they were going to want to put out books like Adventurer's Vault well before any of the other books were sent to print. I'd bet they planned ahead and specifically decided to put the more generic items in phb and save the crazier stuff for AV. Does that make AV "unbalanced"? Compared to PHB items, perhaps, but not neccessarily in the context of the full game. As long as they're building monsters and traps and such with knowledge of what is coming out, and we know they're working at least a year ahead on future releases, it should all be good. I'm not saying that they *won't* release books that would break 4E, just that those sort of books tend to come out late in the product cycle -- see Unearth Arcana or The Magic Of Incarnum -- when the richer veins have been exhausted and the A-list game designers are already working on the next edition. I think we're at least five years away from having to worry about that.