Bob World Builder has posted a video about Wizards of the Coast walking back from OGL 1.2 and leaving OGL 1.0a in place untouched.

Wizards of the Coast announced that they will not destroy the jobs of thousands of indie RPG creators...and they personally emailed me about it?

VGChartz reports that Wizards of the Coast has cancelled five video game projects.

The spokesman stated that fewer than 15 people at Wizards of the Coast will be laid off with this change and will be given the chance to apply for new roles at the company.

The cancelled games will impact independent studios including Otherside Entertainment and Hidden Path Entertainment. Both were working on games for Wizards of the Coast.

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Thanks Couchpotato!

Gizmodo states that Wizards of the Coast will be further restricting the original OGL for D&D and competitors such as Pathfinder.

Despite reassurances from Wizards of the Coast last month, the original OGL will become an “unauthorized” agreement, and it appears no new content will be permitted to be created under the original license.

[...]

This is no mistake. According to the document procured by io9, the new agreements states that “the Open Game License was always intended to allow the community to help grow D&D and expand it creatively. It wasn’t intended to subsidize major competitors, especially now that PDF is by far the most common form of distribution.”

This sentiment is reiterated later in the document: The “OGL wasn’t intended to fund major competitors and it wasn’t intended to allow people to make D&D apps, videos, or anything other than printed (or printable) materials for use while gaming. We are updating the OGL in part to make that very clear.”

Paizo Inc., publisher of the Pathfinder RPG, one of D&D’s largest competitors, declined to comment on the changes for this article, stating that the rules update was a complicated and ongoing situation.

@Game Developers Wizards of the Coast has formed a new AAA focused game studio called Skeleton Key which is being headed by the former head of Bioware Austin.

Wizards of the Coast, the role-playing game company behind Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering, has opened a new game studio called Skeleton Key. 

The Austin-based studio will be overseen by former BioWare Austin boss Christian Dailey, who'll serve as studio head. Its first game has been described as a "triple-A" project, although it's unclear what platforms or release window the studio is targeting. On its website, the studio states it wants to create titles that use "immersive gameplay" to tell "unique stories."

"[I'm] excited to be starting this new adventure with the company that has created so many of my favorite toys and games growing up," said Dailey, who'll also be taking on the role of vice president at Wizards of the Coast, in a press release. "We are looking forward to growing our studio team with more talented creators who share our passion." 

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PC Gamer reports that James Ohlen will be leading a multimedia studio which will be focused on original IP.

What exactly the new outfit will be getting up to hasn't been revealed at this point, but a rep said that it will a "multimedia studio," with "freedom to develop different expressions." Interestingly, and also a little bit disappointingly as a big Baldur's Gate fan, it apparently will not be a D&D project: Wizards of the Coast said the studio "will focus on the creation of original IP outside of the Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons brand."

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Wizards of the Coast has published a crossover between the two worlds of Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering. PC Gamer reported that an Amazon posting leaked the new setting.

That’s not true anymore. A product listing went live Sunday on Amazon showing off Guildmasters’ Guide to Ravnica, a Dungeons & Dragons setting supplement for playing on Ravnica, one of Magic’s most popular settings. Today, Wizards of the Coast confirmed that the book will release on November 9th in game stores, November 20th to the public. They also confirmed, and immediately released, a digital guide to adapting older D&D setting Eberron to 5th Edition D&D.

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@RollingStone Wizards of the Coast has plans for new games, movies, TV, comics.

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D&D
Dungeons & Dragons, the other castle at Wizards of the Coast, received its latest update - the Fifth Edition - about three and a half years ago after two years of large-scale beta testing. “It really helped us refine the rule set and open up the world of players,” Cocks says. “After three and a half years, we had our best sales in November. It sold out and we’ve been struggling to restock. It’s a great engine of play.”

Cocks’ personal history with D&D echoes the history of a lot of folks who are helping to fuel the game's resurgence. He started playing when he was 10, in 1983, and recently returned to the game to play it with his son, who is now 10. “Everyone raised in the ‘70s or ‘80s when D&D was a cultural phenomenon, are rediscovering the game with Fifth Edition,” he says. Adding that those same early players also have in many ways taking over a lot of powerful, creative positions in Hollywood. “The sweet spot is 35 to 45,” he says. “They grew up playing D&D and were inspired to be storytellers by it.”

The resurgence is also being helped along by the popularity of tabletop, gameplay streams by folks like Wil Wheaton and others. “They create webisodes based on D&D campaigns,” Cocks says. “They create these dramatic arcs over the course of play. And we see millions of people consume this content. It shows that it’s fun to get a group together and go on this adventure and act silly as you socialize together.” For the first time, he adds, people asked about how they got into D&D, listed watching videos online as a bigger source than recommendations from friends.

And as with Magic, Wizards is starting to plumb the depths of the game’s rich lore and history. “We are looking at TV series or movie deals as well as more web-based content and actively pursuing a larger slate of video games for D&D,” Cocks says. “Right now we have a slate of four to five coming in 12 to 18 months and five or six set for 2020 and beyond across a variety of genres.” While that may sound like a lot, since 1987 there have already been more than 100 games based on the slew of D&D properties, he noted. “At its core, D&D has a couple things going for it: A rich lore and rich history and six or seven different worlds. That’s a rich vein to be able to tap into. Also, the history associated with it means that when you play D&D it feels very authentic because it’s a mature property and has had so many iterations of it. The secret to D&D is that really the rules are just guidelines.”

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The Verge reports that Wizards of the Coast will release a D&D toolset on August 15:

How D&D Beyond brings Gary Gygax’s role-playing game into the digital age

The toolset launches on August 15th

In March, Wizards of the Coast announced at PAX East that it would be bringing the traditional pen-and-paper role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons into the digital age with a new tool: D&D Beyond.

Wizards of the Coast describes D&D Beyond as a “digital toolset” for players using the game’s 5th Edition rules. The company partnered with Curse, a Twitch-owned company that builds other gaming-management tools, with the intent of making it easier for players to manage their characters and games. The program will launch on August 15th, and when it does, it’ll include a searchable database of the game’s rules, plus a platform for building characters and monsters, for keeping track of the items they pick up during the game.

Adam Bradford, Curse’s product lead, explained that while resourceful gamers use plenty of home-brewed digital tools, D&D Beyond will be a platform with “all of those elements, all with the entire library of official Dungeons & Dragons content fully integrated.”

Bradford says when the platform launches in August, “Players can play with digital versions of every official D&D sourcebook with the compendium. They can build a character using that content in addition to a custom magic item created in our homebrew system. That homebrew magic item can then be shared with the community for other players to use in their own games.” He says there’s more planned down the road: the platform will be tweaked to include monsters and encounter builders, as well as combat tracking for characters during games.

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Thanks Lucky Day!

Gamebanshee posts a press release  from WotC on the Fourth Edition ruleset soon to make its appearence. Here's an except listing some of the features: 

 June 7th sees the global launch of Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition with the addition of a new online, interactive element, allowing traditional play formats to be enhanced with unique web tools and content. DDI (D&D Interactive) is a suite of tools being rolled out with the launch of 4E, designed to make managing the game a bit easier, and allowing fans to play with one another remotely. The service includes some free elements, as well as some elements available as part of a paid subscription. Among the elements are:

* Two online magazines (Dragon and Dungeon), which have been published as paper magazines for 30 years but are now moving online. Dragon has traditionally been focused on the game and the players, while Dungeon is focused on dungeons, adventures, and being a Dungeon Master (DM).

* A rules database that allows you to look up rules, powers, classes, creatures, and so on, to be updated with the release of each new supplement.

* A character generator that allows you to build, advance, manage, and maintain your character. It autofills character features from the rules database, and you can print out your character as a conventional character sheet.

* A digital tabletop that allows the DM to build a dungeon or other environment and then control the movement of virtual miniatures on it. Along with voice chat and other features, it allows players to play the game over the internet, as well as share their dungeons and adventures with other gamers.

* A very sophisticated character visualizer that allows you to create 3D models of your characters. These can then be used as illustrations on your character sheet, exported if you just want a cool picture, or converted into a custom virtual mini of your character for use on the digital tabletop.

Slashdot seems to be closely following the progress of the 4th Edition D & D ruleset, and here posts a series of questions from their community members about the forthcoming release, with answers from the WotC development team. Here are a few examples:

How long will this edition last? by Erwos:
It upset quite a few folks when D&D 3.0E transitioned to 3.5E relatively soon after release, and made some people's investments in D&D become basically worthless overnight. While I appreciate that it's sometimes time to spawn a new edition that's incompatible with the old, it felt like 3.5E should have been an errata to 3.0E, rather than a totally new set of books. I understand that WotC can't commit itself to any firm "we will not release another edition for X years" guarantee, but it would be nice to hear some sort of assurance that we won't see a repeat of the 3.0E->3.5E debacle. What's the plan? What lessons have you learned?

WotC:
I don't think it would be unreasonable to argue that the transition from 3.0 to 3.5 happened a little too soon. Would Wizards of the Coast have released 3.5 if we knew at the time that 4th Edition was coming? My guess is probably not. We would like to have 4th Edition last 8 to 10 years just like previous editions.

 

Magic Item Requirement by Blackeagle_Falcon:
One of the things I dislike about 3rd edition is that at medium and high levels magic items are such a big part of a character's power. A PC has to be decorated like a Christmas tree with various magical doodads in order to be effective. Running a campaign in a world where magic items are rare or nonexistant required a lot of house rules and adjustment on the part of the DM. Will it be easier to run a low or no magic item campaign in 4e?

WotC:
We're definitely reducing the number of magic items that a typical character will carry around. Magic items aren't going away--they're a great way for characters to specialize their tactics, shore up weaknesses, and otherwise differentiate themselves from other characters--but they'll be a smaller overall portion of a character's array of special abilities. In addition, we're being clearer to the players and DM what mechanical benefits we expect all characters to derive from their array of items, which makes it easier for a DM running a "low-magic" campaign to know what his characters are missing (so that he can either take that into account by reducing monster stats, or provide the missing benefits via other methods).

 

Complexity vs. other gaming systems by Mechagodzilla:
Has there been any thoughts or discussions on reducing the amount of books needed to play? Donating a bookshelf to every new edition is getting a little ridiculous for the casual gamer. I have 40+ books from first and second edition. I bought the Player's Handbook from the third edition, read the first thirty pages and went "bleh". I know it goes against the business model, but can you actually make a game that can be played with less than four books?

WotC:
The only book any player needs to play the game is the Player's Handbook. In addition, the DM will want a copy of the Dungeon Master's Guide and Monster Manual (to help him craft encounters, build adventures, and run an entertaining game). Players won't need the Dungeon Master's Guide to equip their higher-level characters, because the PH will have plenty of magic items for all levels. Players won't need the Monster Manual to adjudicate shapechanging or summoning effects, because those effects will be self-contained within the classes or powers that grant them. That said, a large number of D&D players want more options than the core rulebooks provide--so we publish additional supplements and sourcebooks to meet that desire--but the game's fully functional without them...

Slashdot has posted a look at the preview books that WotC is making available prior to the upcoming release of the Fourth Edition Dungeons and Dragons ruleset:

In just a few months the first books for the Fourth Edition of Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) will be released by publisher Wizards of the Coast (WotC)....To attempt to answer some of the biggest questions about this newest edition, WotC has learned from mistakes made in 99', and is previewing their game updates with a pair of softcover books. Called "Races and Classes" and "Worlds and Monsters", the two titles cover everything from character creation to the new default world's pantheon. More importantly, it includes a large amount of commentary from the designers ...Read on for my impressions of these highly entertaining (and vastly overpriced) chapbooks.

You can read the entire summary here.

Here's just a quick snip:

The process of making and growing a character seems to be the element they examine most closely in the commentary sections of the book [Races & Classes]. One subheading says it all: "Expanding the Sweet Spot". 3.0/3.5, it has often been noted, follows a power curve that starts somewhat underpowered and eventually reaches a point where players are too powerful to be seriously challenged. Though there's a lot of debate on this point, personal experience suggests the sweet spot for D&D 3.5 is about 5th level to 14th. Though many campaigns will never make it that far, it's frustrating to deal with mechanical weaknesses like that over the lifespan of a game. Fourth edition is a valiant attempt to rectify that by making all levels viable for play.

Gamebanshee has posted a press release from Wizards of the Coast, announcing a team up with Stainless Games. The press release is brief, vague and scanty on details but mentions that the UK developer of Carmeggedon will be working with WotC on a downloadable online game involving "one of the most treasured IPs in the games field":

Wizards Of The Coast Announces Partnership With Stainless Games

December 3, 2007 (RENTON, Wash.) – Wizards of the Coast, the world leader in hobby gaming, and a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. (NYSE: HAS), today announced an agreement with leading UK video game developer Stainless Games to produce an exciting new online downloadable game.

“Wizards of the Coast has created many of the most popular brands in roleplaying, trading card and tabletop strategy games” said Patrick Buckland, CEO for Stainless Games. “We’re proud to be working with one of the most treasured IP’s in the games field in a true partnership which will produce a real gaming revolution later next year.”

Details about the game will start to become available in early 2008.

Wizards of the Coast is a worldwide leader in the trading card game and tabletop roleplaying game categories, and a leading developer and publisher of game-based entertainment products. The company holds an exclusive patent on trading card games (TCGs) and their method of play and produces the premier trading card game, MAGIC: THE GATHERING®, among many other trading card games and family card and board games. Wizards is also a leading publisher of roleplaying games, such as DUNGEONS & DRAGONS®, and publisher of fantasy series fiction with numerous New York Times best-sellers. For more information, visit the Wizards of the Coast website at www.wizards.com.

Stainless Games is a privately owned company based on the South Coast of the UK. Although best known for the creation of the multi-million selling Carmageddon franchise, the company has most recently become recognized as one of the world’s leading companies in the burgeoning Console Download market. For more information visit the Stainless Games website at www.stainlessgames.com.