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Seems the best year for Dungeons & Dragons will only get better. Dungeons & Dragons Art & Arcana: A Visual History is a big, comprehensive book about D&D's art history that's coming on October 23rd 2018. The publication will feature more than 700 pieces of the art created for Dungeons & Dragons during its over 44 years long existence. Among the authors there are two RPG historians and writers (Michael Witwer, Jon Peterson), a director of the 2009's movie Fanboy (Kyle Newman), and a person who was the voice of Emperor Palpatine and Darth Maul in Star Wars' iconic productions, Star Wars: Rebels and Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Sam Witwer). Inside the book that will come in various cover designs, including Special Edition similar to the new Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks, we'll find a visual story of D&D starting from its very roots. It includes the most legendary pieces of art ever done for D&D, some less known artworks, and even the works of Gary Gygax's and Dave Arneson's first concept artists, who weren't professionals at that time (Greg Bell, Kenan Powell, Tracey Lesh): Dungeons & Dragons: Art & Arcana is a 448-page book that covers art from all 5 Editions of the game, its supplements, adventures, Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance novels, material accumulated from decades long publication of Dragon and Dungeon magazines, classic advertisements and merchandise. Plus concept sketches, large-format canvases, rare photographs and one of a kind drafts from revered D&D illustrators, including lots of material that was never published before. According to sources, this product may end up as the most comprehensive compilation about the art of D&D ever created, reaching from early Gygax years through TSR, Fiend Folio and Games Workshop periods (yes, GW was actually publishing D&D before they created Warhammer) and then using the best of what Wizards of the Coast gathered in their libraries and allowed to dabble with. So yes, we can safely expect a lot of classic Jeff Eesley, Tony DiTerlizzi, Larry Elmore and other big names. But probably the most thrilling could be the possibility of learning about the creative process and ideas, the whys and hows that shaped the form in which we visualize and imagine D&D from the very beginning to our present days. Where to buy: Amazon | Barnes & Noble Exclusive Edition | Penguin Random House Canada | Walmart More information: LINK | LINK Some interesting editorial reviews:

Roleplaying games have quite a few years already, and there's been some great music created for them over the years. What gaming soundtrack do you appreciate the most and why? 🙂 I'll start with something that many years ago completely disarmed me with its sheer beauty, uniqueness and atmosphere. This comes from Matt Uelmen, and back it the day it was a shock that one could create such a great, dark and gritty hybrid of classic medieval fantasy with modern sound, using haunting samples and overdriven electric guitars. Diablo I maybe wasn't an RPG. But I've spent countless hours with my friends playing it, almost every day after it was released. We even carried our heavy computers to each other's houses, with those old-fashioned CRT monitors - man, that was some exercise. But it was also the only way to play Diablo on LAN, and almost nobody had Internet back then. And it was a great experience, killing the Butcher and skeleton king Leoric countless times, reaching catacombs and then Diablo in hell. Later there was an expansion adding the "subterranean jungle" levels and some more dark corridors leading to Na'Krul (which *somehow* I've killed with exactly 2 fireballs! Had it recorded on tape to prove). But it wasn't the same without such a great soundtrack that was created originally. In my opinion, Diablo II and Diablo III never reached this level of musical craftsmanship that helped to make the first game such a huge hit. Heck, almost no other game since then could compare, in their whole history. That says something. There are other gaming soundtracks that I love for different reasons, so the above may not be necessarily my number one, but it's certainly in top 10. And what is your favorite soundtrack? Is it from a new game like The Witcher or Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, some classic oldschool thing like Planescape: Torment, Baldur's Gate, Heroes of Might & Magic III? Or maybe it was some retro, SNES, Amiga title? What would you recommend for an RPG gaming session?

My favorite class is Bard. He is a Jack of all trades always prepared for any situation, and cheerful and crazy enough😂

Paladin...and it has entirely to do with how overpowered it is in PF compared to 3.5. Smiting, healing, tanking and supporting can let you either steal the scene or give a ton of help to the party.

Greetings. Zoro Gallade here, a DM with...admittedly some clever ideas and pretty good at managing frantic play-by-chat campaigns on Discord. And I do mean frantic. I mean, we ran all six books of Way of the Wicked in a matter of a few months. And yeah, my favourite system is Pathfinder. I really like all the kinds of micromanagement you can do in it, it feels quite unique. Hit me up if you're interested.