hey so it turns out there is a nation-wide (maybe worldwide) D&D Next campaign going on Right Now (AIFG) and D and I have gotten in at lvl 3. He's a Bronze Dragonborn Paladin of Bahamut and I'm a Rock Gnome Bard. I forget the name of the campaign but we're investigating dragon cultists and we'll be playing about three encounters each Wednesday night. We showed up at the local comic & game store and found around 25 people in the back room. They sorted us into four tables and we each played separate "instances" of the same leg of the campaign. I can provide more details if anyone is interested.

Horde of the Dragon Queen. I've been reading some play reports, but getting out to the local Game store once a week is unfortunately impossible for me. Same reason I never got involved in Pathfinder Society.

I do think it's very cool that the attendance has been really good for a lot of places. It bodes well for the hobby.

you don't have to go every week! If someone is missing they just juggle people around.

While I couldn't get into the podcasts, I did just watch the Acquisitions Incorporated video from Pax 2012 and found it highly entertaining. Of course, Wil Wheaton chucking his treacherous d20 into the audience reminded me of my brother, who is a notorious dice-chucker.

I carefully selected the dice to accompany me to my first official game store campaign.

My trusty pink and black D20 is so far serving rather well but I have a couple in reserve in case pinky decides to take an evil turn.

I'm loving "advantage" and "disadvantage" where you roll 2 D20s and either take the higher or lower roll. Halflings have a 'lucky' ability where they get to reroll any 1. A halfling rolling two D20s can still reroll any ones. My next character will probably be a halfling.

I'm loving "advantage" and "disadvantage" where you roll 2 D20s and either take the higher or lower roll. Halflings have a 'lucky' ability where they get to reroll any 1. A halfling rolling two D20s can still reroll any ones. My next character will probably be a halfling.

Lightfoot halflings can attempt to hide if they're just behind someone bigger than them. And second level rogues can hide as a bonus action. I like where this is heading.

My 5e Monster Manual got delivered today. With a couple exceptions, I'm really liking the art. Haven't taken an in-depth look at any of the monsters yet.

While I kind of miss the loss of the old dragon 2E/3E age categories, I like the fact that I won't have to basically build a full-fledged NPC any time I want to have my players fight a dragon. 4 different ages seems a sufficient spread, to me.

I'm still waiting for mine (delivery times are a little longer to this end of the world). However, Ryan fought zombies on the weekend, and I can say that I really like the 5e version. (They get a Con saving throw when they get reduced to 0 hp, unles it's from a crit or radiant damage. DC is based on the damage. If they pass, they stay at 1 hp.) Makes fighting them an interesting experience.

Yeah, we fought some when we did a playtest with the basic rules this summer. It was very unnerving when they wouldn't go down.

5e and Next are the same thing, right?