Two and a half years in the making, EN World is reborn! For those of you who don’t visit it or haven’t heard of it, EN World is the premiere D&D/RPG community on the Web. It bills itself as a place for news and reviews, and while you’ll find better syndicated gaming news elsewhere, their reviews database is incredible. In my opinion, there is simply no better place to go to ask questions about D&D or d20, to play by post, or to just sit around and chat about games and things.

The newly relaunched site includes a technology upgrade, blogs, a new look, and many more features. Some of the new features are being rolled out over the next few days (not the next few months, like some people we know, but things are looking great so far. I especially like the new Submit a Scoop interface, although I’ve already posted a few suggestions in the Meta forum over there.

So if you haven’t been, or haven’t been in a while, I’d suggest you take a look at the new EN World 2 and see if you can’t fit it into your daily browsing (after The Gamer Dome, of course!).

Last Saturday was Free RPG Day as many of you were aware. I only had one local store participating, and they had a two-book limit, so Mrs. Droid and I grabbed:

• Revenge of the Kobold King - A Pathfinder adventure from Paizo.
• Treasure of Talon Pass, associated dungeon tile, and miniature - Wizards of the Coast’s trifecta of free RPG goodness. They were very generous this year.
• The Harn quickstart rules and adventure - Strangely, Columbia Games didn’t bother to advertise this on their website.

I hope you guys were able to get some good stuff. I would have loved to have the DCC gazetteer, HEX (Hollow Earth Expeditions) quickstart rules, and Trail of Cthulhu adventure, but alas such was not to be. I suppose I could swing by and see if they have leftovers.

So, what about that “x100,” you ask?

Well, how about a getting free access to a prolific RPG company’s entire backstock? That’s exactly what you’ll be able to do once the massive project that Mongoose Publishing has just undertaken gets finished. Called The Grand OGL Wiki, its mission is…well, I’ll let Matthew Sprange from Mongoose do the talking:

We produced a great deal of OGC under D20. Most of these books are now out of print, with just PDF copies available - by the end of the year these will disappear too, as it is not realistic for us to remove D20 licensing off every product we produced over the years. Just too many!

However, it seems a shame to have all this material simply disappear, so. . .

If there is any interest, we would be prepared to make the vast majority of our D20-based content available freely. In the past, there has been talk about an OGC Wiki of sorts, and I think we can kick such a project off in a sizeable way.

If a volunteer (or volunteers - you might have to be some sort of maniac to go through all this material solo!) were to come forward and create a suitable web site, we would happily supply electronic versions of our D20 lines for translation of OGC to such a web site. We would be very free with the material permissable, allowing you to effectively cut and paste large chunks of ‘fluff’ text alongside the OGC.

This would include all the Quintessentials, Slayer’s Guides, Encyclopaedias, Ultimates - potentially, even some Babylon 5 material, if someone is prepared to remove all the licensed text (no Conan though, as that is still current!)

Mark Gedak indicated some interest and has started the project over at our old friend the Wikidot (I tried to warn him ). Here are some links to get you started. (They could use some help…after all, they’re extracting OGC and text from probably 100 pdfs or more.)

The EN World thread that started it all.

The Grand OGL Wiki homepage.

Update: Since I originally posted, several other companies including Paizo Publishing(!) have signed off on their content joining the Grand OGL Wiki. It’s becoming a movement…this could be the biggest thing to come out of the OGL!

I really hope they can pull it off, and they’ve got a pretty good start going! Some smaller publishers are joining in the effort, but hopefully we’ll also see some other large ones get in the game once they decide their 4.0/GSL strategy. In any case, kudos to Mongoose Publishing for such a gesture…it’s an RPG geek’s dream come true!

Propagandroid is away from the internet tonight, and I know he’d want to share this news with everyone.

You can find the Game System License for Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition here: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20/welcome

Here’s a link to the 4e System Reference Document as well.

I’m sure Prop will have a great deal to say about this, but for now, go read that link!

Ok, I know you aren’t going to believe me, but there’s a technical issue not of my making that’s delayed the big announcement. I was all set to publish the announcement when I went to check one last time…kabloom.

So, here’s a few links I’ve run across on the Web over the weekend, and perhaps I’ll make the big announcement later tonight or tomorrow morning, assuming the technical issues get fixed.

First, you could have your 4e core books by the end of the week! Apparently, Buy.com is sending out preordered copies. This fellow already has his and is all over the net blabbing info.

Lizard has written a very balanced review of his first session of Keep on the Shadowfell. He’s been a very vocal critic of the runup to 4e, but is also a talented designer and writer, and has given it a fair shot.

The Spoils CCG canceled! According to icv2, although I couldn’t confirm it on any of the Spoils or Tenacious websites, Tenacious Games is closing its doors due to a funding snafu. That’s what they get for counting on investment from a poker player, eh?

Crisis averted! Many people thought Wizards of the Coast was going to skip Gencon this year, because they hadn’t submitted any events by the time the event schedule went public.

According to Flames Rising, Wizards of the Coast will continue its sponsorship of Gencon this year!

Whew!

Breaking news from the West Coast, Upper Deck Entertainment has laid off about 50 staff today in a cost-cutting measure. A list of names has yet to be posted, but keep checking back for more updates as I get them. This is a sad day for games. Let’s hope this doesn’t affect the awesome World of Warcraft Miniatures game that’s coming out later this year.

Peace to all our fallen brethren, you’ll always have a spot in The Dome.