Another World Wide DnD Day Oh Joy

Last night while I was joyfully baleful polymorphing players into snakes as they explored the depths of Yaun-ti hell, conversation rolled around to the World Wide D&D Game Day on the 21st of March. What WotC has planned looks fun, but our favorite game store moved and got lost on WotC’s mail-dar so is not planning anything that day, which means a 3 hour drive to get near a store sponsoring the event. I really want to see how the bard and the barbarian turned out. I guess I’ll have to wait until my book arrives.

I am trying to imagine how they will run 11th level 4e PCs for new players…

DM: Ok, here is your character, and here is your stack of power cards and ooh ya the game still uses dice. Today you get to keep the dice, just one though.

New Player: How do you play?

DM: Well, I place a monster mini here, and you place your character mini there, and I roll a die then you throw down a card, and tell me what happens, then you roll a die. We do this until my monster is dead. Then you get to rest, and go through the monster’s treasure, then we do it again with a different monster.

New Player: What about stuff outside of combat? Is there still role playing?

DM: It is not all combat, silly, there are times when I make you roll a bunch skill checks to do things that used to happen just by role playing, but now you don’t have to role play any more. We just roll dice, or you throw down power cards. Isn’t this great!

New Player: So how much is this going to cost me?

Store guy chimes in: This is the great part, you only need some dice and the Players Handbook ($30), because WotC placed nearly everything you need in it, but to really enjoy the game, you should also get the power cards ($10 for each class PHB only so far) and the subscription to D&D Insider (They have a great $5 per month package deal) and I suppose you’ll need internet access; oh and a computer ($30 per month and computers are cheap these days from $400 to $800). Come to think of it you’ll also need additional builder books to enhance play, but only one book a month (~$30 each). I suspect on average the game will not cost much more than $800 dollars a year to play that’s only $66 bucks a month. In this economy, what a deal! I suppose, if you want to be the DM, you know, the guy that places the monsters, it should cost only about $100 more a year to run the game. Oh, but today you get a free dice, and a mini to start you on your way. How does that sound?

Grumble grumble…

I am excited about the Players Handbook 2. I am not so excited about the price of playing though.

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