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Then why are they selling this crotch-grabbing Tom Hanks figure?

"The unique combination of luck and strategy..."

corby stated that "Interplay is apparently the only company with rights to distribute games under the AD&D license" while this is only partially true.

I'm pretty sure that Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro split the Dungeons and Dragons lines into several different developers' hands. Interplay owns only Forgotten Realms (which includes the Baldurs Gate games, Icewind Dale, and Neverwinter Nights) and Planescape.

Due to a grandfather clause, SSI (the company to first publish D&D games, including Eye of the Beholder, Shattered Lands, Menzoberranzan, Strahd's Possession) can still produce Forgotten Realms games. They publish through Mattel, NOT Interplay. Take a look at the Pool of Radiance site for more information. Oh, and Pool of Radiance will also use the D&D 3rd Edition rules (and is the first and only video/computer game out currently to do so).

I believe that other companies (not Interplay) have rights to other D&D worlds, such as Dark Sun, Ravenloft, Birthright (Sierra owned this one a few years ago but the line may be dead), and Greyhawk.

"*boggle* ... get our words ...

Kudos to Jamie for investigating this further; the following was my original submission on this topic:

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The mind boggles. Police have apparently raided a student's dorm room due to his participation in a heavy metal music inspired gaming clan, "Bled For Days." The article goes to some length not to mention the exact game, including ominous references to a "war-like" "game of chess" where "it's not like we were going to kill you or anything". The game in question, of course, is the seminal Humans vs. Bugs vs. Yellow Psychic Aliens wargame, Starcraft. The presence of a web page listing in-game rivalries was apparently taken for death threats. For all the talk of "children" being unable to differentiate fake violence from the real thing, it seems to me that "adults" were the ones breaking into someone else's home, carrying loaded weapons, confiscating expensive goods while availing themselves of the opportunity to search for anything more valuable(i.e. drugs).

As hilariously pitiful as this seems, there's a real problem here. The tragedy is that, sooner or later, the credibility of authorities trying to fight real computer crime will be so stretched that even when society desperately requires their intervention, the police will find themselves unable to get even the slightest shreds of voluntary cooperation. A bizarre and ultimately truly dangerous attitude, the apathetic chuckle, has spawned over recent years by Zero Tolerance(and apparently, Intelligence, Accountability, or Political Responsibility) policies; the exact policies that have lead to first graders being suspended for pointing chicken at eachother and being expelled for kissing a girl on the cheek. People are willing to quickly accept these ridiculous and flagrantly neglectful abuse of power because "it's funny to laugh at...but I can't do something about it, isn't that someone else's job?"

This threatens the core legitimacy of what really are genuinely critical services; the police, the school, and the administrators all become jokes, not to be taken seriously. The immediate reaction my friends had to this incident at Kent State was, "The last time police at Kent State didn't understand what the students were up to, somebody won a Pulitzer Prize". Since the most damaging effect of any computer security violation is the long term degradation of trust in a given service, the ignorance these busts show eventually makes it harder to actually control and address genuine security issues, such as DDoS attacks. Instead of simply laughing and moving on, what can we, as a community do to prevent these kind of occurances in the future? Would something as simple as a confidential "reality check" group of experts, made available to law enforcement as consultants, be helpful? Would a set of guidelines, peer reviewed by the community, be useful? Instead of cursing the darkness, how can we praise the light?

From www.memepool.com:

Hasbro just bought Wizards of the Coast -- adding them to a harem which already includes Milton Bradley, Parker Brothers, Avalon Hill, Microprose, Playskool, and others. This means that a single company now produces Magic: The Gathering, Pokemon, Dungeons and Dragons, Civilization 2, Pictionary, Scrabble, Clue, Tinkertoys, G. I. Joe, Furby, the Supersoaker, and, um, wait, what's that game about acquiring all the properties on the board?

-Andrew

From www.memepool.com:

Hasbro just bought Wizards of the Coast -- adding them to a harem which already includes Milton Bradley, Parker Brothers, Avalon Hill, Microprose, Playskool, and others. This means that a single company now produces Magic: The Gathering, Pokemon, Dungeons and Dragons, Civilization 2, Pictionary, Scrabble, Clue, Tinkertoys, G. I. Joe, Furby, the Supersoaker, and, um, wait, what's that game about acquiring all the properties on the board?

-Andrew