I’m serious. This post contains 42% more announcements than usual.

I didn’t want this Random Ramblings installment to only contain announcements because it would be boring. I want these to be really boring. Just joking. Seriously, though, I hope you at least get something out of these because they’re fun to write and I want to keep posting them from time to time. Anyway, I’m getting out of track now. As I said, since I don’t want this post to contain only announcements I’ll share some of my news as well.

I ran a game!

Last Saturday I managed to run a D&D session and it was amazing. Once more, it’s proven in front of my eyes that D&D, and tabletop RPGs in general, have healing powers among all the other positive things they provide. I’ve been overwhelmed by studying the last couple of months. When I finished my bachelor thesis the semester had already started so I had to push myself to catch up. No breaks for me. So by running this game helped me calm my mind a lot. But time to move on to announcements (new and old).

Shadow Realm Monster Manual

What’s the Shadow Realm, I hear you ask. It’s a lovely place in the Yu-Gi-Oh! world were people battle and the loser leaves their soul behind. But that’s not the important here. The important is that some kind people decided to create D&D 5e versions of Yu-Gi-Oh! monsters. That means more monsters for you. And as a cherry on top, it’s free. Would you like me to review this monster manual? Moreover, would you be interested in me hunting down some of the team and interviewing them? The possibilities are endless. You just need to ask.

The PDF is as big as the official D&D 5e Monster Manual, standing at 324 pages. That’s pretty amazing for a community project. You can find the files here:

• Google Drive
• Scriibd
• Mega.NZ

D&D 5e New Errata

The core rulebooks have reached their tenth printing so I guess it was time to celebrate. Complimentary errata documents for everyone! The changes have been implemented on the gift set books and, of course, will appear in future printings as well.
You can find the new errata here. By the way, would you be interested in any commentary on the errata? Let me know.

D&D Basic Rules PDF Update

Now with illustrations! The Basic Rules PDF has been updated (and you can find it here). It has been combined into one PDF. As I said, it now contains illustrations by Richard Whitters, a very talented artist whose work you’ve most probably seen all over the D&D 5e books.

DriveThru and RPGNow are merging

This has been known to the publishers on RPGNow for a few weeks now. Yesterday, everyone got an announcement email. I’ll just put the whole thing here for your viewing pleasure, in case you haven’t had the chance to read it.

Dear customer, 

Starting in February 2019, when you visit RPGNow, you will be directed to a similar page on DriveThruRPG. 

It may surprise you to know this, but since RPGNow and DriveThruRPG merged back in 2006, they have shared all the same tools and digital inventory. On the front end, they looked and behaved like two separate sites, but essentially they have just been two faces of the same site for many years. The only real differences were the color schemes and logos. 

You might have some questions about the coming change, so we’ve done our best to anticipate and answer them below. 

How will this affect me? 
In almost every way, you’ll be unaffected. Your entire library of purchases from RPGNow is already available to you on DriveThruRPG (as it always has been!), and you can log in to DriveThruRPG using the same account you’ve always used on RPGNow, just as you could before. 

Even your old bookmarks to pages on RPGNow.com will still work: They’ll automatically be redirected to the same page on DriveThruRPG. 

But where will I go to get my gaming purchases? 
No worries. As far as buying titles, the publishers and catalogs available on DriveThruRPG and RPGNow have always been identical, so anything you’ve bought on RPGNow before, you could also have bought (for exactly the same price) on DriveThruRPG. 

In short, you’ll still be able to get the same stuff, from the same publishers, using the same tools you’ve always used. You’ll just be finding them on a slightly different-looking storefront. 

Why is this happening? 
Here’s the big picture: In the 12 years since RPGNow and DriveThruRPG merged, the growth of RPGNow has tapered off constantly, while DriveThruRPG has grown strongly, year over year, since it launched in 2004. We’ve reached the point where RPGNow rarely draws new customers or publishers and sells only a small fraction of the volume of titles purchased on DriveThruRPG. 

To be honest, we have known this moment would come for years now. We’ve just finally decided it’s time to put the RPGNow brand out to pasture.

My comment on this is that, since I haven’t published anything on RPGNow, I’m pretty much unaffected by the change. And from an engineer’s perspective, that’s the way to do it. I hope there won’t be any issues indeed and that the publishers will face no problems.

RPGenerations: Tabletop Knights is still going

I’ve already talked about this Kicstarter project, but I’d like to give it a quick shout out again. The comics looks really well drawn and are actually funny. The project is almost funded and there are 10 days left. You should give it a look.

Any closing statements?

And I think I’m done for this installment of Random Ramblings. I know my posting schedule doesn’t resemble an actual schedule even at the slightest. I’m having a rough time at the university because of the amassed work. So I must thank you for being here even when I’m more random than my ramblings. However, I can guarantee I’ll be back with a couple more short posts. 

In the meantime, feel free to share with me your thoughts about any of the topics mentioned above. And you can also let me know of topics you’d like me to cover. That would be even more awesome!

And until next time, have fun!