On The Dark Rain-Slicked Precipice of Fourth Edition (Penny Arcade Play 4e)

I read this on Penny Arcade. It sounds like a very cool, different (in a good sense) way of promoting the upcoming fourth edition D&D game. Sayeth Gabe:

Wizards of the Coast came to us months ago and wanted to run some ads for 4th edition. They wanted to do something more than just banner ads though and they asked us if we had any cool ideas. What we came up with is probably one of my favorite projects to date. Tycho and I sat down at a table with Scott Kurtz from PvP and a DM from WOTC and we played 4th edition. That probably doesn't sound awesome to you except that we also recorded the entire thing as a podcast.

So you have Tycho who is the old pro, you have Scott who hasn't played since he was a kid and you have me the complete newb. If you've played D&D before but you're curious about the changes in 4th edition the podcast will cover a ton of the new rules. If you've never played and your curious if it's something you'd like, I think this is a really good example of the game. For me personally is was an extremely positive experience. There was some frustration at first as I tried to wrap my head around the rules but once I got into it I had a really good time. I think I actually enjoyed the adventuring/role playing portions of the game more than the actuall combat. The comabt was fun but it was the puzzle solving and interaction with the rest of the party that really made the game for me. At any rate if you're curious about D&D in general or 4th edition specifically I think these podcasts will be helpful and hopefully funny.

The podcast is split into chunks. The first chunk is live now. I'm downloading it as I type to listen to later.

Penny Arcade has quite a wide readership- one that overlaps some of the tabletop roleplaying crowd but also extends to other hobbyists (computer/console games, card games) that might not otherwise get exposed to D&D. If I weren't so determinedly lazy, I'd push out a Venn diagram of these deep relationships. Since I am so lazy, I won't but I will say that this is a novel method of publicizing the new rules beyond the hardcore crowd that is already all too aware of the new edition. Kudos to the suit at Wizard who came up with it.

In somewhat related news, some version of the core books has leaked onto the 'net. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised but I am. I've already pre-ordered the full boat but I couldn't help taking a peak at the leaked PDFs. I like what I see... but that's a story for another post.