The Eldritch Mr. Shiny's page

My first venture into Fourth Edition D&D took the form of an open play event, using the new Red Box Starter Set. Five of the pre-generated characters were selected by the players in the group, and we set to work.

The first thing I noticed was that the PCs were not only more or less dropped directly into the dungeon, but were railroaded into the first encounter. The first encounter, along with every other encounter in the module, seemed to drag on for an unnecessarily long time, and was much past the party's level of ability. The final encounter ended in a total party kill, as did the final encounters of all but one of the other three groups running the scenario (the one group had one out of four PCs survive).

Also, the dungeon seemed to be hastily designed, with nonsensical encounters, oddly designed trap scenarios, and mix-and-match flavor. All in all, my impression of the Essentials Starter Set was one of wasted potential--what I played was a rushed, poorly thought-out, slapdash attempt to re-create the old-school red box feel.

Fantastic Maps: The Temple Mound, from Rite Publishing, is a no-frills, two-map pack detailing the interior and exterior of a large, open encounter area. While slightly plain-looking in appearance, the Temple Mound map allows for a variety of scenarios to take place, and can be adapted to any number of games and settings.

The first installment of my favorite comic of all time, by my favorite artist of all time. Published by the only company I trust. Bliss.

Tight artwork, tight story, solid graphic design, cool.

Oh, hell yes. I absolutely LOVED kobold quarterly. It really remided me of the old (pre-Wizards) Dragon magazine, mostly because of the b&w artwork and text-heavy articles. Pictures aren't all that they're cracked up to be. I don't think I'm going to regret this one at all.
My only "complaint" is that there's no print version. Even so, it's still definitely worthy of the five stars I gave it.