What's going ON!?

Late last week, it was announced that Wizards of the Coast was pulling the license to publish Dungeon and Dragon magazine from Paizo Publishing, the company that WotC spun off to handle printing the magazines in the first place. WotC wasn't even doing a "okay, you made 'em better, so we're gonna start publishing them now" approach. They're cancelling them, and going to an e-zine format. I cried foul then, because I like being able to read magazines whereever and whenever I want, and I despise reading "book text" on a computer screen.

Then, I learned that WotC is cancelling Margaret Weis Productions'/Sovereign Press' license to print anything Dragonlance. I better go pick up the 3e Dragonlance material that I want to get my hands on, before it's all out of print. Hopefully, this won't affect the movie, due out this fall. I am crying foul again.

In reading about this, I've learned something else: WotC pulled CodeMonkey Publishing's license to convert material for eTools and whatnot earlier this year, too. Call it what you will, but *I* see a 4e announcement at next year's D&D XP (their February con), with a possible release in August 2008 (at GenCon). Oh, and I figure that it will be even more miniatures-centric than it is now. *eyeroll*

Boy, am I glad I got all that 1e stuff last year. And picked up the Castles & Crusades stuff. And got into Dragonlance 3e gaming. I have 3 systems that will work fine for gaming. None of them strictly require miniatures, either. (I like minis, but as placemarkers, not pieces on a gameboard.)

mearls, two things: I'm curious to hear your take on things (recent events in the industry) in your blog, and I wanna give you props for the D&D podcast. I love listening to it! :)