Hi. I’m Bill Slavicsek, R&D Director for Dungeons & Dragons and Book Publishing here at Wizards of the Coast. Every week, with the help of the various key people throughout the D&D Insider team, I’ll continue to bring you the latest news and information that you’ve come to expect from this column—and that’ll be in addition to my regular monthly feature for subscribers. Let’s get to it….

D&D Character Builder Open Beta

The D&D Character Builder Open Beta is scheduled to be released soon, probably in the later half of this week (we’ll put up a specific announcement shortly). For those of you who are D&D Insider subscribers, here are some of the new tweaks in the Open Beta version of the CB:

• New content from Martial Power (except animal companions).
• New content from Dragon 368.
• Implemented a Summary page, allowing you to better export your character into a text file that you can, for example, post on the forums.
• Fixed numerous bugs and made other small tweaks. Note that many of the reported bugs are being fixed for the full release version, not the Open Beta.

For those of you who are not yet D&D Insider subscribers, the D&D Character Builder Open Beta is a great opportunity to see the wonderful functionality and value of D&D Insider – for free! So check it out.

Ain’t It Cool News agrees:
“The character creation and leveling up experience just got quicker, easier and more enjoyable. This app changes everything. It delivers on an eight year old promise in every way we had hoped for. I CANNOT wait for the full beta. Dear god, I cannot wait.”

D&D Character Builder

There’s no change from last week’s report. We’re still on track to offer all 30 levels to our subscribers early in the new year. It won’t be available the first few weeks in 2009, but we’re working toward a time slightly after that; the closer we get to the date, the more details we’ll be able to share. We know how much you want the full 30 levels, and we’re working to get them into your hands as soon as possible.

In the meantime, here are a couple of screenshots of what a 30th level character will look like.

Mike Donais’s 30th-level ranger (click for larger view):

One of Quarrel’s sheet of Power Cards (click for larger view):

Dragon and Dungeon Magazines

Here to provide you with a snapshot of the week ahead, we turn to Chris Youngs, editor-in-chief of Dragon and Dungeon.

Wednesday 12/10: The Scales of War Adventure Path continues with “The Temple Between,” by Ari Marmell. Capping off the heroic tier, this adventure forces the heroes to confront the true threat facing Overlook and Elsir Vale. If they fail, the entire region could be overrun and cast into darkness. Plus, in Dragon we present an exclusive playtest of content from Adventurer’s Vault 2, currently in development. Check out some new magic items in this playtest, and seize your chance to be part of the D&D design process!

Friday 12/12: A new Dragon feature launches! Lords of Chaos details primordials—epic-level threats that seek to overthrow the gods and destabilize all the planes. In this first installment, author James Wyatt presents Mual-tar the Thunder Serpent, chained by the gods at the dawn of time—but served by forces that would see him free. Plus, new paragon paths for regions of the Realms, to support the Living Forgotten Realms campaign.

Mual-Tar’s Temple:

Monday 12/15: We preview the invoker from Player’s Handbook 2. This new controller class has mastered the original source of divine power, and will introduce summoning to D&D 4th Edition. Plus, Roll vs. Role is back in Dragon, with a special holiday edition of the article series--and Confessions of a Full-Time Wizard.

Wednesday 12/17: “Touch of Madness” premieres in Dungeon, which kicks off a three-part adventure series for the paragon tier that sends the PCs against the terrible monstrosities and perversions of the Far Realms. Plus, a new Dungeoncraft and a new Save My Game!

You can find the December Editorial Calendar here.

Compendium Release

We’ll be releasing new D&D Compendium content on Monday, Dec. 22nd (our normal release date would have been Tuesday, Dec. 23rd, but we moved it back a day due to the upcoming holidays). Here’s a peek at what’s coming:

New Content:

• Manual of the Planes
• Dungeon 160
• Dragon 369
• Adventure: P2 Enclave of the Demon Queen
• RPGA – The Gibbous Moon
• RPGA – A Thin Gray Line
• RPGA – At the Foot of the Lighthouse

New Functionality:

• The text search box for the Compendium will support the Boolean expressions: and, or, and and not.
• Monster Filters now contain:

• Source
• XP ranges
• Allows multiple selection of keywords in dropdowns

• Items Filters now contain: Source.
• Added Epic Destiny powers.
• Set tab with the most results as the default displayed for keyword search return.

Latest version of the Compendium Monster search filters:

Latest Ampersand Column

If you’re a D&D Insider subscriber, you can check out my monthly Ampersand column here. It offers some exciting preview content for the druid, coming out in a few months in Player’s Handbook 2.

Changes

In addition, in this month’s Ampersand I discuss some of the recent internal changes at Wizards. Here’s an excerpt (for those of you who aren’t yet subscribers):

“On Tuesday, Wizards of the Coast consolidated its digital game organizations, and made a few adjustments in other areas of the company. This resulted in the elimination of certain jobs around the company, including a number of names you may know.

What does this mean for D&D? While the loss of people we’ve known and worked with for a long time is sad, Wizards continues to be an innovator and leader in hobby games, and our vision for D&D remains the same. We’re committed to the growth and success of our core brands. We’re committed to D&D 4th Edition, and our slate of roleplaying game products, miniatures, and novels. We’re committed to D&D Insider, and to constantly improving and increasing the number of digital offerings, including Dragon Magazine, Dungeon Magazine, the D&D Compendium, and the D&D Character Builder. Our products, whether digital or physical, will continue to be the best in the industry.

While we’ll miss those who have left the company, and we wish them well, I continue to lead the most talented team of game designers, game developers, game editors, and book editors ever assembled. James Wyatt oversees the design team, which includes veteran staff such as Rich Baker, Bruce R. Cordell, Rob Heinsoo, and Mike Mearls. Andy Collins oversees the development and editing teams. Chris Perkins oversees the D&D Insider magazine team. Kim Mohan continues to serve as Managing Editor. All told, I have 30 people working in the building every day to bring you the best D&D RPGs, miniatures, novels, and magazines, and I’m very proud of each and every one of them.

Ken Troop, Didier Monin, and others still keep the technical aspects of D&D Insider on track and rolling along. And there’s a host of other Brand, Marketing, Sales, Art, Production, and Logistics staff that provide the behind-the-scenes support necessary to bring each product—whether physical or digital—to you each and every month.

That’s all still in place. That’s all still here. In these challenging times, D&D continues to perform well. From the amazing launch to the release of the latest products, the D&D audience grows and thrives.

As far as 4th Edition and D&D Insider is concerned, we’re just getting started.”

Finally, Tiny Adventures

Tiny Adventures, Wizards’ D&D Facebook game that you can play for free, continues to go strong! It was recently named as one of the top 5 Facebook games from Popular Science! You can check out that link here.

“…it will have you on pins and needles to learn if you survived that last booby trap or goblin ambush.”

Those are the highlights for this week. Jump over to the forums with any feedback.

Until next week,

Bill Slavicsek
R&D Director