D&D (or WotC) Heading for the Auction Block?

By now, everyone's heard that WotC didn't renew Paizo's license for Dragon or Dungeon magazines. Now, we find out that the Dragonlance license isn't being renewed. Coincidence? Quite possibly, but who knows?

My theory (which is just as half-baked and lacking in evidence as any other floating around the 'Net) is that WotC is consolidating its D&D assets to sell off the property. Or Hasbro is preparing to sell off WotC.

The September issues of Dragon and Dungeon (out in August) will be the last. The Dragonlance movie is supposed to come out in September (according to IMDB). If successful, it could prove a boon to the property.

Is this a good thing? Given the hate so many fans have for Hasbro, it could be. It's certainly better than the alternative - 4th Edition released early and the d20 license killed.

Anyway, just a thought...the only people who know what's going on aren't telling.

Stop Stealing Bandwidth - Use Imgred!

Not that you are, necessarily, or intentionally. But if you want to embed an image from another site, use "imgred". It's a pretty cool service. Basically, just put "http://imgred.com" in front of the URL of the original picture. Imgred gets a copy of that picture and hosts it on its own servers so you aren't using up someone else's bandwidth.

The URL of the service should be obvious. Not sure what they get out of it, but it beats the hassle of copying the images to your own site or Flickr or wherever. And it's certainly better than using the bandwidth someone else is paying for.

Mini-Review: The Dungeoneer: The Adventuresome Compendium of Issues 1-6

I recently bought a pack of Dungeoneer magazines on eBay; The Dungeoneer was published by Judges Guild ages ago, during the Original D&D and AD&D 1st Edition days. I get a kick out of a lot of the old stuff so I pick up Judges Guild material from time to time.

Anyway, this is the first item in the pack that I read through. Wow...a complete waste. Not even worth scouring for ideas, given all the other RPG books and files (PDFs, etc.) that I have. Granted, this stuff was put together in the 70's, but that doesn't make it any more useful. There a few good ideas (such as an NPC Idiosyncracies article), but these have been done time and time again, and anything more recent is less likely to require much mechanical conversion. The overt sexism is quaint, too; a product of the times, I suppose.

Was this stuff good back in 1977? Quite possibly, except for some of the truly ridiculous elements like the DNA Monster or the Tin Foil Monster. But is it worth having today? Not at all. Only a diehard collector would want this (or someone who doesn't know better...like me!). I sold it at the local game store auction, so apparently someone wanted it.

Some Nifty Free Software I've Recently Found

Below are a few free utilities I've recently started using. I thought I'd share them here:

EmEditor: For some time I've been a fan of EditPad Lite. It's a great editor; far better than Window's Notepad. However, I had a problem running it under Vista on my new laptop (review of that to follow). Basically, when I would try to "flip" through my running apps (using Alt-Tab or Win-Tab), EditPad wouldn't go away even though I was supposed to be on a new app. I don't know if that was a Vista issue or one with EditPad, but in any case I needed an enhanced editor that would work well under Vista (and XP, since that's what I run on my desktop). After a little searching and playing around I found EmEditor. It can do everything EditPad could, it's got a clean interface (one of the reasons I don't use editors like TextPad is that they're too "busy"), plus it has color-coding based on the type of file you are editting (HTML, XML, C#, etc.). Like EditPad Lite, there's a more powerful version available that you have to pay for, but for a free editor, EmEditor is very good.

PrimoPDF: This is a free PDF creator which I just used to create the new Mythosa PDF. It works like most PDF creators - it installs as a print driver, so you print your document using PrimoPDF. It's small, quick, and doesn't have any ad banners or other annoyances. Also, unlike CutePDF (which is good, don't get me wrong), you have a few options you can select ahead of time, like print quality and security features. I recommend it if you want a cheap way to create PDFs quickly.

EverNote: This is a cool note-taking application, though I'm still playing with it to get a feel for how I best want to use it. Like the other programs here, it's a "lite" version of a more powerful application you pay for. But, again, for a free program, it's pretty slick. It's even more useful if you have a tablet PC, which unfortunately I don't (though you can still sketch things with your mouse). You can download EverNote here.