My favorite Gazetteer is definitely the Principalities of Glantri written by Bruce Heard. It is probably the gaming product I have used the most throughout the years, so you can probably imagine how cool it is for me to see that the man himself, Bruce Heard, has a blog.
Without further ado I present the link.
http://bruce-heard.blogspot.com/
Update: He’s on Twitter as well https://twitter.com/#!/Ambreville
Coolest handle ever!
I just got an email from Wizard’s of the Coast about updates to the community:
FEATURE UPDATE – APRIL 7TH
From: Wizards
Received: Wed, Apr 7, 2010 at 11:28am
Today we have a new Magic theme. Go to Profile > Theme Selection to see it.
We are also adding RSS feeds to the forums later today. You can subscribe to feeds for entire forums or individual threads. Look for the RSS icon in your browser. (We will be adding RSS to blogs – no date for that yet, but it’s on the list.)What’s next:
- Some Facebook and Twitter connections: Post photos and blogs to Facebook from your profile page. Automatically cross-post status updates to your Facebook and/or Twitter account.
- Drag & Drop for your home page: Customize your home page by adding or removing modules and rearranging them on the page
- Wiki link fix: Stay tuned for more information on this. We will be updating the Wiki parser to fix a few bugs, including a fix to how linking works. As part of this update, we will bulk update existing links to match the new structure. We will send more details before the change, to give you a chance to review and give us feedback.
Outage reminder:
Tomorrow we will have about 3 hours of down time for our sign-on system from 6:00 AM PDT until 9:00 AM PDT.
This will affect login to the Wizards Community site, D&DI, Wizards Help site, and Gatherer comments. The Wizards Community site will remain up for viewing content, but you may not be able to post.
~The Wizards Community Team
All in all it looks pretty exciting, so go sign up if you haven’t already.
I just stumbled across some Twitter accounts belonging to Wizards of the Coast, so I thought I would just share them real quick.
I have never been a huge fan of 5th Age Dragonlance. After finishing Dragons of Summer Flame, I was left very disillusioned because I thought it was a huge waste to leave the world godless. I felt there was finally an opportunity to move the world forward without Raistlin and the other inn-fellows.
Fortunately, Dragons of Summer Flame prompted a friend of mine and me to rewrite Dragonlance the way we wanted to. The funny thing is, that we actually debated killing off Takhisis and Paladine.
Anyway, I pretty much left Dragonlance after reading Dawning of a New Age. I still kept in touch with what was going on in the community, but we never played in the 5th Age or bought any of the products that were released.
Years later, I am the only left of my old group, who has even the slightest interest in Dragonlance, or role playing games in general, and I see Dragons of a Fallen Sun released. Needless to say, the War of Souls trilogy brought me back to Dragonlance, and I even purchased some of the new rule books, the best ever made I might add.
See, I never even enjoyed the War of Souls. For me, it was a question of finishing up the series, so the world could move forward with the remaining gods, magic and everything else that make up the Dragonlance setting I enjoy. This is also the reason why I never reread the War of Souls trilogy, unlike every other Dragonlance series I have bought. Until now that is.
Honestly, Dragons of a Fallen Sun is still not my favorite. I don’t get that familiar Dragonlance feeling when I read it, which I got when I read Dragons of the Hourglass Mage. However, I do enjoy reading it this time around.
I guess the 5th Age was a good thing for the setting, It presented a a much needed reboot of the setting, and it produced some of the best rule books ever made. Heck, we even got a kick-ass Taladas trilogy, that was the perfect backbone for a Taladas rule book. Alas, the license was never renewed thanks to Wizards of the Coast, and in a few short months, the novel line will end. In other words, Dragonlance will officially be dead as disco.
Of course, the passionate community will ensure that Dragonlance will never truly die, and maybe one day Raistlin will find our world, and bring us there.
I for one will go on reading Dragons of a Lost Star, and maybe even get around to finishing up the rewrite project I started during my Christmas break 1995.
The Dragonlance Forums have a thread about the Raistlin Chronicles. Now, don’t get too excited, because it is just a reprint of The Soulforge and Brothers in Arms.
The cool thing is the artwork, which, even though it is not entirely canon, is quite cool. At least I like it quite a bit, Weis does not, and some of the people over at the Forums do not either.
Check it out here.
By the way; did you sign up for the Wizards’ community?
…and there was much rejoicing.
Wizards has just started a public beta test of their new community, which replaces the old horrible message boards. Taking a page out of the Facebook playbook, Wizards now allow you make more personal profile as well as adding friends. There’s also a blog engine, which I personally found pretty interesting. Unfortunately it doesn’t appear to be working, so I will stick with Blogger for now. To be honest I am not sure I will leave Blogger at all, since this old crappy blog engine is starting to grow on me.
I am really excited about this new community, because I feel that we really need a strong online presence, if our game is to survive. The Greyhawk people have done it for years, and the Dragonlance gang is rooted in the Dragonlance Nexus and the Dragonlance Forums. I really hope this signals a renewed interest in our game.
In the coming months I will blog a little bit more about the Wizards community and how I see the Interwebs as a catalyst for renewed interest in D&D.
By the way, I am McJuel @ Wizards so go add me as a friend.
Thalintas over at the Dragonlanceforums just posted a review of Dragons of the Hourglass mage. He has an early release of the book, which means that it is still not in stores yet, but it does give him the opportunity to provide us with some insights into what the book is about.
The post is actually kind of sad, since he bids farewell to the original Dragonlance world created by Weiss and Hickman. I couldn’t agree more with Thalintas, so here’s a short excerpt form his post and a link.
…Dragonlance as a series may continue in some form or another. But Dragonlance as the child of Weis and Hickman, the novel series born in 1984 with a group of friends meeting up in an Inn–that series ends with Dragons of the Hourglass Mage. The novel takes 25 years of plot development and setting growth, and synthesizes it into the endcap to the Holy Six. With it, all questions, all loose threads, all storylines that stem from the Heroes of the Lance are finally complete. And if you can close that final page and put that book down without tears in your eyes, well sir, you’re a better man than me.
Source: Thalintas @ Dragonlanceforums
I hope the book reaches the northern shores soon, since I am itching to get my filthy hands on it. Of course, it will most likely be the last Dragonlance book I ever buy, so it is a bittersweet sensation. However, for the time being, I will focus on the positive side of things, and look forward to the most anticipated Dragonlance book ever, as far as I am concerned.
In case you didn’t know, and if you are a Dragonlance fan I am sure you do, Dragons of the Hourglass Mage will be released on 4th August.
I am on vacation when the book is released, so I am planning taking a couple of quit days in the shade reading it. Since it will probably be the last Dragonlance novel I will ever buy, I plan on thoroughly enjoying it.
If you plan on purchasing this book, I recommend that you do it through The Nexus, this way you can help keeping the Dragonlance community alive.
And while I remember, The Nexus has a fan page on Facebook along with a blog. Good stuff.
When I started this blog, it was meant as a past time thing. I never really expected to keep blogging here, but for some reason I have kept posting over that past couple of months. Not that I really write anything worth reading, but still…
I recently installed Google Analytics on my blog, and now I can actually see that I get some hits. That really surprises me. I guess this means that I should publish some of my homebrew game material on the blog, so hopefully I can post something this weekend. Friday is a holiday here in Denmark, so I don’t have waste time at my incredibly exciting job as an e-business consultant.
Anyway, stay tuned, I might just post some content in the upcoming days.
I just started a mini project here on the blog that will never die. I am trying to find as many interesting RPG blogs as possible, and syndicate them here on my own blog. Hopefully I will one day have enough to create an OPML file for your downloading pleasure.
So far I have only managed to find three blogs, that are serious about as well as remotely relevant. Well, considering the authors I guess one could argue that they are very relevant. So anyway, if you have a good RPG blog, or know of one, please don’t hesitate to shoot me an email, or leave a comment.
