As a video game developer, it helps to be well-versed in what’s going on in the game industry. Of course, this doesn’t just apply to video games; that’s why every few months, we hold Analog Game Night, where we all get together and play board games and card games and relax and have fun. But I’ll post more on Analog Game Night another time. This post is about that other analog game some of us at Powerhead play: Dungeons & Dragons.

A group of us at Powerhead have an ongoing D&D group, and we play it every couple weeks. We have an ongoing campaign set in Eberron, run in a round-robin style: each week, a different person runs the game, picking up their own threads of plot. It’s almost like an ongoing TV series with a bunch of different plots all ebbing and flowing through each episode, and it’s worked out really, really well so far.

Of course, with the looming release of D&D 4th Edition, we’ve been very interested in all the developments and the tidbits of info that have come out since it was announced. Three of us actually went to D&D Experience last week, a convention in the DC area where they previewed a bunch of 4th Edition material. We played all the various 4th Edition previews, and speaking for myself I really liked how simple and streamlined it all seemed.

Last night I actually ran a 4th Edition (4e) preview/playtest for a group of coworkers at Powerhead, including a number of people that had never played D&D or haven’t played since 2nd Edition or earlier. We used the preview characters from D&D Experience, and I built an adventure using the monster stats that have found their way onto various D&D forums. It helped a lot that a couple of us had already played 4e at the convention; we knew how things should flow, and I was even able to include a Skill Challenge in the adventure inspired by one of the preview adventures.

It was a little unwieldy with 7 PCs (I built a 1st-level rogue PC to add to the mix, using info on the D&D site), and we only got through half the adventure, but I enjoyed it, and I hope that some of the players did as well. Part of the goal of this was as practice for me, creating a 4e-style adventure and running 4e monsters. Pacing of combats is definitely a little different than in 3.5, but I think it’ll improve as we play some more.

Anyway, to sum things up, D&D is fun and we like to play it, and I’m looking forward to playing the new version when it’s released (and maybe even before, again).