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July 18, 2009

Word of Wizards - 18/7/09

Although there's barely been any new excerpts coming out this week, Wizards have not been lax at all to leave the website high and dry. There's still been great content, previews and interviews on the upcoming miniatures, novels and encounter stat blocks to use for your game.

First up, Wizards have posted up the Eberron adventure that was given out on Free RPG Day, Khyber's Harvest as a free download. So if you missed out on getting a hard copy of it or none of your FLGS were participating on the event, at least you can now get a soft copy of it. What better time to use it, now that the Eberron Campaign Guide will be released next week.

At the same time, the art gallery for Divine Power is also up. Despite there being a few recognizable reused art, it still has a great range of new art that will be useful as character portraits and illustrations.

This month's Vicious Venues is centered on the Sunfields, a patch of land owned by a jealous farmer. Although it might sound harmless at first but wait till the PCs cross the farmer and his not-so typical bees which can lead to a brutal encounter.

If having bears and bees tearing you apart isn't really your thing, then you might be interested in some pulpy encounters from Seekers of the Ashen Crown, the Eberron module that will be released next month.

This week's miniature previews was mainly blue. The color blue that is shared by the Talon Slaad, Slaad Spawn and the Storm Titan followed by the Frost Titan, Chillfire Destroyer and Rimefire Griffon.

There's even something for novel readers. This month's Spotlight Interview is centered on the novel department of Wizards which discusses about the process of creating storylines for D&D worlds such as Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance and Dark Sun and how game products and novels can influence each other. There also some hints on what is coming up in future novels like The Ghost King, the final book in Drizzt's Transistion trilogy and what will be in the newest Dragonlance novel, Dragons of the Hourglass Mage.

Speaking of novels, if you've read The Stowaway, written by Geno and R.A. Salvatore, you might be interested in finding out the 4E D&D stat blocks for the Stowaway's Stone and the half-demonic Asbeel.

One surprise that came out this week was the 4E conversion for the Exemplars of Evil which may be understandable since it was one of the products that was released during the limbo period when 4E was first announced. Hopefully there will be more conversion articles in the future.

But the biggest surprise (which I've saved for the last) is the screenshots of the Monster Builder. This feature that will be available for D&D Insiders will contain more than 2,000 monsters and 10,000 powers from all published materials by Wizards. It will also allow you to edit them such as adding levels to certain monsters and it will help you recalculate the attack bonus etc.

Find out all these and more from the rundown below for this week.

Monday (13/7/09)
GenCon 2009 Schedule
Divine Power Art Gallery
The Stowaway: Demon & The Stone
D&D Monster Builder

Tuesday (14/7/09)
Legendary Evils Preview 2
Khyber's Harvest

Wednesday (15/7/09)
4th Edition Conversion: Exemplars of Evil
Vicious Venues: The Sunfields
Seekers of the Ashen Crown Excerpts

Thursday (16/7/09)
Legendary Evils Preview 3

Friday (17/7/09)
Spotlight Interview: Novels

Next week will be the release for the Eberron Campaign Guide, Divine Power, Seekers of the Ashen Crown and the PHB Heroes 2 miniature set. Other than that we'll be starting to see the excerpts from Adventurer's Vault 2 and possibly another miniature tips and tactics for a monster from Legendary Evils.

This is the first week since I'm using this new format so if you have any thoughts on this week's rundown or the new format, feel free to drop a comment.

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