Dungeons and Dragons Online Module 7 Rears its Head

Massively has some great coverage of DDO's new Module 7 that is making its debut today. In addition to the breakout news, Massively has a great summary of coverage leading up to the event. Let's just hope they didn't forget the dragons this time.

Comments

Where links go to die

[CogDissident]

Ugh, a page that has 20 links to the various articles, most of them short one paragraph blurbs about it. And we get to read them in a tiny column smushed between two sides of ads? I was going to read it, but no thanks.

Main page needs to have most of the info, not just a bunch of links that say "here are things we said before, we're lazy and don't want to type".

Irony?

[argStyopa]

Interestingly, D&D4th edition is coming out in what, a week?

This is a radical departure from the previous iterations of the PnP game, making it much more CRPG-like. Not worse, just significantly different. So will the online game be running the PnP rules, while the PnP game is running MMO-style rules?

Re:And this is noteworthy because...?

[Divide By Zero]

It's the first to add a character class, I guess. Previous mods added new content, new features, new hooks, but this is the first to feature an entirely new class.

TSR forgot the dragons once before

[Khopesh]

Let's just hope they didn't forget the dragons this time.

As a matter of fact, this isn't the first time that has happened. Back in the early 80s, TSR (then-makers of D&D) had a brain-storming session to determine where the game should go. They concluded that they had tons of dungeons but not much by way of dragons. So somebody got the kooky idea that dragons could be the focal point of a world, and there would be annoying klepto midgets, loopy mad scientists, exploding humanoid dragons, knights that rode dragons instead of horses, and the gods would suck and then die. The Dragonlance world resulted.

Frankly put, the Kender and Tinker Gnomes were an awful addition to playable races - they make great non-player characters, but the genre was already riddled with an over-capacity of socially inept players; why egg them on? Dragonlance ruined gnomes in D&D, ultimately leading to their exclusion from playable races in 4th edition. Hopefully, their new role as "monsters" will remove the notion of "all gnomes are tinker gnomes" and we can see them returned in 5th edition.

Re:TSR forgot the dragons once before

[Bieeanda]

Actually, gnomes are just omitted from the Player's Handbook. They and a decent number of other races in the Monster Manual have rules for use as PCs, and there are persistent rumours that they'll be getting the full-blown PC race treatment when the PHB2 comes out in June 2009.

Re:TSR forgot the dragons once before

[aeschenkarnos]

Without "tinker", what are gnomes other than short dwarves?

What I gleaned, but didn't read in the article

[scumdamn]

Apparently there's a game called DnD Online that is an MMORPG or something and their new module is called Module 7. It adds a monk class and some other crap that is linked to from the page o' links that TFA resembles. I didn't even know there was a DnD Online. I'm still playing Neverwinter Nights 2 multiplayer with my wife and friends (you can find it and the expansion at Target in the clearance aisle for five to ten bucks). I think I'll stick with NWN2 until a game comes out based on the 4e rules, frankly. They seem to be a little more compatible with CRPGs anyway.

Re:What I gleaned, but didn't read in the article

[scumdamn]

I didn't hear about it because I prefer to play well crafted single-player games than MMORPGs. I've bought 3 copies of the OC and 3 copies of MoTB and only spent about 60 bucks. With that, my wife and a bud of mine can play as much as we want, join persistant worlds, etc. and pay no additional monthly fee. So yeah, I just hadn't heard of DDO. Sue me. :)

Re:Roll for Initiative.

[tulmad]

I rolled a 42.