Ok, back with my final 4e update from GAMA Trade Show. I haven’t had time to keep up with the scoops, so much or all of this might be old info. Hopefully you’ll find it useful to have in one place, in any event. I’m going to give a month-by-month breakdown rather than do it by product lines and technologies.

I got to look through all three core books for about an hour, as well as the DM Screen and H1. It’s all a blur, though, so I’m not going to talk much about my impressions, though I’ll try to answer questions in the comments.

April

• Delegates have a downloadable quickplay 4e adventure to run at stores.

May

• Retailer marketing kit includes a window cling, 24×37 banner, pre-order counter card, pre-order catalog, and a copy of H1, Keep on the Shadowfell.
• H1 Keep on the Shadowfell: Levels 1-3. This comes in a reasonably sturdy folio, and includes two books and three double-sided poster maps. The first book is the adventure, written and formatted in a style similar to the more recent 3.5 adventure releases, but the 2-page spread has been modified to not be so intrusive, and maps are shown in miniature during encounters rather than occupying their own chapter at the end. The second book is a Quickstart book with all the rules you need to play and five pre-generated characters.
• Unhallowed: 4e conversion for this DDM set.

June

• PHB: Eight races, eight classes, 150 feats, 200 magic items, skills, rituals, paragon paths, epic destinies, and hundreds of powers. Personally, I hate the “powers” terminology for D&D characters.
• DMG: Focuses on how to build encounters, adventures, and campaigns. It has about 20 monster templates, with advice on customizing them.
• MM: 500 monsters, from aboleth to zombies, and over a dozen conversion blocks to allow monsters as PCs.
• H2 Thunderspire Labyrinth: Levels 4-7. Like all the adventures, it will be in a folio, be 96 pages, and have a $29.95 price point.
• Eberron: 4e support for the setting begins on DDI.

July

• DU1 Halls of the Giant King: This is the first of the 4e tilesets, although Bill made sure to mention that these products are pretty much edition-free. These tiles will all have oversized features, befitting the creatures they’re named for, and also allowing for easy use with the Against the Giants D&D Miniatures set release.
• Against the Giants: DDM release with large and huge miniatures, including a gigantic yuan-ti anathema that looks like a vaguely humanoid creature composed completely of writhing snakes. Booster price is $21.99.
• Character Record Sheets: No mere character sheet, it also includes blank power cards (there’s that irksome word again). It has a landscape option so it better fits on the table with battlemats, dice, and minis, and the sheet is color-coded for ease of use.
• All-Star: 4e conversion for this collection from previous DDM sets.
• H3 Pyramid of Shadows: Levels 8-10.

September

• Adventurer’s Vault: New name for the Tome of Treasures, which didn’t get past the trademark search. It contains hundreds of new magic items.

October

• Martial Power: This is the first power source book, and will cover new options and powers for fighters, rangers, rogues, and warlords. This series replaces the Complete books in 4e.
• P1 King of Trollhaunt Warrens: Levels 11-13. The first of the paragon path adventures.

November

• Draconomicon: The book is all about chromatic dragons (metallics will likely get their own book), and features three new dragon types.
• DU2 Streets of Shadow: I’m not 100% sure of this release date, but I’m sure it’s already in the catalog. Bill was even less sure, saying that he’s already working on 2010 products, which is how out of the loop he is.
• Leatherbound Special Edition: Like the 3e versions, these are just premium versions of the core books.
• RPG Starter Set: Like the old basic game, but they’ve left the minis out of it so they could keep the price point down. Instead, you’ll have a tile-thick cardboard flat with monster and hero tokens.
• Demonweb: DDM release in standard booster form, featuring drow, demons, and “more mind flayers than you can shake a stick at.”

December

• Manual of the Planes: “This sets into motion the cosmology outlined in the PHB.”
• P2 Demon Queen’s Enclave: Levels 14-17. Perfectly timed to use your Demonweb DDMs.

2009

• Another paragon path adventure, as well as the epic adventures. There will be a complete 1-30 adventure series by the end of 2009.
• Harbinger: 4e conversion for this DDM set comes in May.

Not Sures

No doubt the release date info on these is out there already, but I’m about to go collapse from the long week, so I’m not going to dig around to look it up. The Forgotten Realms books are coming out this year, sometime in the fall I believe.

• Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide: This book has the exact trade dress of the core products, which is their strategy. Bill said it was absurd for people to think that Forgotten Realms isn’t D&D, and so the game is going to maintain a more tightly focused look and feel across its book lines. It has monsters and foes (maulagrym to Manshoon, as they put it), and advances the FR timeline 100 years in order to accommodate all the new elements of 4e, such as dragonborn and warlocks.
• Forgotten Realms Player’s Guide: They mentioned that this will include a new core class, the swordmage, which sorta runs contrary to the idea that annual PHBs will consolidate all the new rules.
• Forgotten Realms Adventure: Scepter Tower of Spellguard, for levels 2-4.
• Eberron Setting Books: Sometime in 2009.
• New DDM Starter Set: It has a clear front so you can see what minis you are getting, and has a price point of $14.99.

A bit of extra news I didn’t get to in the other blogs, based on a Q&A session at the end of one of the panels. DDI, at least the programmed bits like Dungeon Builder and Character Visualizer, is a Direct X 9 application, which means it will run on Windows XP and Vista, but not on Mac OS. Sorry all you Mac users, you’re not eligible for the complete enhanced gameplay experience of Dungeons & Dragons Insider.

Battery…failing…must…shutdown…