Player's Handbook 2

This is from USA Today's list of the top 150 books this week:

And the Wall Street Journal's nonfiction list:

An open letter to sweetdragon.livejournal.com

Stumbled upon this post regarding a young woman's budding interest in D&D. I'm not going to go through the rigamarole I'd have to in order to post a reply directly, so I'm posting here to vent my spleen, as it were, in regard to the following comment:

I now find myself downloading the 4th Edition Player's Handbook (Yeah. Downloaded. Fuck you; those things are expensive.)

Dear Sweetdragon,

I'm really glad to hear that you've been enjoying playing D&D, and particularly that you're engrossed enough in it to create such an extensive backstory for your character.

But I'm deeply saddened that you don't think that enjoyment is worth your money.

I worked for three years with a team of the best game designers in the world to produce the game you're downloading. I'm more proud of my name on the front cover of the 4th Edition D&D Player's Handbook than I am of any other book I've worked on. Oh, but maybe you haven't seen the front cover?

The book retails for $35. I spent about that much taking my family to dinner and the $3 movie theater on Saturday night. Sometimes I spend it on just dinner. Two full-priced movie tickets plus popcorn and drinks will put you back about that much. It seems to be the going rate for maybe two hours of entertainment. Or I guess you could almost buy two DVDs, and have four hours of movies you can watch whenever you want to.

Or you can buy the D&D Player's Handbook and play D&D with it for the rest of your life. How many hours of enjoyment is that illegal PDF going to give you? You don't think it's worth your money?

OK, times are tough and money's tight for a lot of people. But look. You can buy a legal copy of that PDF from RPGNow for just $25. Or you can get the book from Amazon for only $23, or get the three core books as a gift set for $66.

I hope Talia has many grand adventures and manages to overcome the evil within her and attain the holiness she seeks.

And I hope you do the right thing and stop stealing my work.

Thanks,

James Wyatt

What class are you?

D&D Home Page - What Class Are You? - Build A Character - D&D Compendium

Fantasizing about vacation

For a couple of weeks now, I've been thinking about taking a vacation—a real vacation. Most of the time I've taken off from work in last couple of years has been time I needed to catch up on writing the various books in the Draconic Prophecies trilogy. I started writing Storm Dragon in June of 2006, so they have been consuming my life for a while now. I've been dreaming about going to the beach somewhere and doing nothing at all for like a week.

Then Amy points out that I can't do nothing at all for more than like three days, tops, before I start going batty.

Earlier this week, I was thinking that I'm not really a workaholic. I mean, I work a lot. But not compulsively, you know? I work a lot because I have a lot to do. As soon as I don't have a lot to do, I won't work as much any more, right?

Well, here's how I've spent the roughly 34 hours since I finished Dragon War:

• Went to lunch with the family, browsed Best Buy (bought a video game for my son), had dessert at Cold Stone Creamery.
• Took Amy on a date—Thai food for dinner, a brief stop at Barnes & Noble where I picked up a fairly mindless read (Practical Demonkeeping by Christopher Moore), then Inkheart at what has apparently recently turned into a second-run theater near my office.
• Read the whole book I bought last night.
• Played some of the Clone Wars: Lightsaber Duels game we bought yesterday, as well as some Mario Kart and some Wii Play.
• Went to Ikea and bought a dresser, then cleaned our bedroom and put away all our clothes.
• Slept about 11-1/2 hours last night, with some interruptions.

Now I'm getting antsy. Shouldn't I be, you know, frantically writing to try to get something done?

Unfortunately, the answer is yes. I'm still behind at work, and I should be working this weekend to catch up. So the question is, will I get my work computer tomorrow so I can do that, or will I force myself to relax for one more day before plunging into another long work week?

But unfortunately, I think this proves that even three days is optimistic, and maybe I am just a little compulsive about work.

But for now, bed and another book.

Dragon War is finished!

The final draft of Dragon War, the third book in my Draconic Prophecies trilogy, is done and off to the editor!

114,528 words of dragony goodness.

And I am off to celebrate! :)

Rob Heinsoo wrote:

The 12345 Party: I think everybody should have a party celebrating their twelve-thousandth-three-hundred-and-forty-fifth day of existence. By my figuring, it happens when you’re 33.82 years old, which you should be able to fudge as necessary.

Me, I’m just looking forward to my 23456 Party when I’m 64 and a quarter.

I remember thinking that it would be fun to have a third-of-a-century birthday party. It would have been on January 7, 2002. It is particularly strange for me to realize that I was contemplating this seven years ago, when I had only been at Wizards for 2 years.

Excuse me? Where has the last decade gone?

In other news:

This means that when we go to Jeremy's house to play D&D on Saturday, we'll have one PH2 for me and my sorcerer, one for Amy and her deva invoker, and one for my son and his deva swordmage. I guess maybe that's one more than we really need.

Maybe.