Well, we finally got some news out of WotC yesterday about third party publishing for 4th edition D&D.; The things I most want to comment on I can’t at the moment because of a NDA. Guess I’ll have to wait until WotC itself makes more details public. What I can say is this:

Good news: There will be no $5,000 fee.

Bad News: There also won’t be any “phase 1” publishers, so in October absolutely everyone can pile into the pool at once. That’s going to be a rough month, and it’s also when we have the Song of Ice and Fire Campaign Guide scheduled. Ugh.

Good news: GR is one of a small group of companies that are getting early access to the rules.

Bad news: We still haven’t seen the new license. However, they claim we’ll see it very soon now.

So basically WotC are keeping the 4E marketplace to themselves from May to October, which makes sense from their POV. This does mean that there will be no third party material at GenCon. On the one hand this is a missed opportunity because GenCon sales are always great, but on the other hand product rushed out for GenCon likely would have been sub-par so maybe it’s for the best.

That’s all I have to say about it for the moment. When we get a chance to look at the license and the rules, we’ll be able to assess what we might want to do.