Sword and Board

They will be publishing limited edition versions of the 1st edition Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual in April! I'm kind of surprised by this. I will be buying one of each. In addition, some of the proceeds will be going to a statue of Gary Gygax in Lake Geneva. Kudos to WotC for this!

1e PHB
1e DMG
1e MM

Now if we can get them to do Unearthed Arcana, so that there will be copies without their covers falling off, life would be perfect.

WotC sends Cease and Desist letter to website

Now it will be interesting to see if they come after the clones. The clones are definitely more direct competition than a site that indexed most of the 3e materials. If they do, I expect most clones to disappear. Even if the publishers are ok via the OGL, Hasbro has very expensive lawyers that can ruin their day. Who is willing to hire a lawyer to prove that he has the right to publish OSRIC, S&W, or LL?

In addition, WotC has started removing all their "classic" material from their website (3e and before). I recommend grabbing what you can if you want it.

I saw this on Bat in the Attic. WotC has made a game for smaller kids to play D&D called Monster Hunters. It's available as a free pdf download. I've looked through it, and it's pretty cool. I'm glad they are reaching out to kids with their games. I think it's also pretty evident that many gamers are old enough to be parents these days. I wonder how many teenagers are still playing, or have the demographics shifted largely to the twenty-something crowd?

I know many of the old school gamers are old enough to be parents, and more than a few are grandparents nowadays. If I'd gotten married when I was 20, I'd have an 18 year old kid now. It's kind of scary ;).