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Sometimes the dice aren't in your favor. Every now and again you just can't slip past that gelatinous cube. Occasionally bargaining a room rate with that Elvish innkeeper ends with your rogue's head on a pike. In these instances, you may feel compelled to eat the die. More »
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A monster doesn't need limbs or appendages to be great. No, sometimes all the being needs are ample curves to strike fear into the hearts of its foes. Here are ten of our favorite circular beings, and be forewarned that there's a NSFW creature or two among the bunch.

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Speaking of crossover comics, IDW Publishing is following up their "zombies versus Transformers, G.I. Joe, Star Trek, and Ghostbusters" miniseries Infestation with an even nuttier sequel. From IDW's press release: More »
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Most people are probably familiar with the Forgotten Realms setting of Neverwinter, from the hugely successful Neverwinter Nights game from 2002 — but it's actually a well-established city inside that universe, and Ground Zero of Wizard of the Coast's big push at Gen Con 2011. More »
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In the faraway year of 1993, a study in The British Journal of Psychology provided a (somewhat obvious) personality profile of RPG enthusiasts. And guess what? They like to read. More »
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With Conquest of Nerath, Wizards of the Coast conjures another successful board game, this one with an entirely different game engine than their prior dungeon adventure efforts. If you enjoyed conquering the world with plastic armies in endless games of Risk as a kid, imagine that game infused with fantasy flavor, strategic depth, exciting random events and a variety of unit types. So, imagine something way better than Risk. More »
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"They [the studio and the network] were so upset about the crime of this episode having been written. The note session as a whole was preceded by a 45-minute period of them walking around the lot whispering to each other. They told me they would come up to my office and meet me privately. When they came up, I had the director and all of the writers in the office with me, because I was terrified. They sat down, and they said, ‘Look, where do we start?' I couldn't believe this was happening. I was like, ‘This is opposite of how you should feel right now. This is a great episode. We're going to get a 1.7 no matter what. We will build our ratings in other ways. The episode is not about credit cards; it's not about Hilary Duff. It's going to get the same numbers. There is a cultural build to a hit show. We have to prove to people that we're capable of good things so they can trust us, so that we can have a relationship. One day we will either be a highly rated show or we'll be canceled. It will not have to do with this moment. This episode is good, the story is good, these characters are good. Anyone who doesn't tune in because the commercial says they're playing Dungeons & Dragons, it's not my fault. It's not on me." More »
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Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale, released this week, provides a fun (if somewhat predictable) dose of RPG action based on D&D 4th edition rules. Team up with friends to save the Dalelands from the Zhentarim threat, and see how many times you laugh out loud at the stilted dialogue. More »
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Just in time for 4/20, Ziggy Marley's THC-themed superhero drops by comic stores to trick crooks into thinking they're dying (so they'll call 911 on themselves). Plus, new Peter Bagge and a metric bongload of new graphic novels! More »
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An article by Uri Kurlianchik was posted to the official D&D Tutorials Archive. Titled "D&D Kids: Punishment," it has ignited fierce controversy among D&D players and parents for suggesting that in-game punishments are necessary for dealing with unruly children. More »
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Community has continually won us over with their genre episode exploits, from the Right Stuff space spoof to the action flick parody in "Modern Warfare." So when the students of Greendale revealed that their next episode was taking on the world of Dungeons & Dragons, we readied ourselves for a full alternate universe. We expected giant winged Abed monsters, or Jeff sporting a tunic while fighting off sex-starved elf maidens. Thankfully, we were wrong. Once again Community flipped the scales and delivered a stripped down, but glorious, game of D&D. And by doing so exposed a mainstream audience of non-gamers to the lush and deeply imaginative world of role playing. More »
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Where does the time go? For some of us, that's a question involving time-loops and FTL drive. But for a lot of us, the explanation has more to do with massive books, bursting DVD sets and addictive games. More »
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Community, the show that has lovingly harpooned every genre staple from zombies to superheroes, is taking on Dungeons and Dragons next. Next Thursday NBC will air their fantasy role playing game special episode. Donald Glover is Bing Bong the Archer. More »
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One of our favorite series of 2010 gets the axe this week. Boo! But to ease our pain, there's a ton of new comics, some 2000 AD trades, and a fun-looking series about parallel universe body-swapping. More »
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In 1993, Dungeons & Dragons manufacturer TSR released the role-playing board game DragonStrike, which was designed to introduce D&D to a wider audience. DragonStrike came with this unintentionally hilarious instructional video. It's the best of the worst of video ephemera. More »
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Did you know that there's a new D&D movie in the works? It's called Book of Vile Darkness, and you can actually win a walk-on role. Not only that, you get to create the character you'll play in the movie. More »
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In this week's issue of The New Yorker, Sam Lipsyte's "The Dungeon Master" follows a group of teenagers who roleplay with a creepy, autocratic DM. The hilarious but jarring story illustrates how totally arbitrary dungeon-mastering can ruin a game. More »
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I love these sports team shirts, featuring creatures from the Dungeons and Dragons monster pantheon. You can pick up one of these tees for $20 a pop at MySoti - there's also a Mind Flayer team! [spotted on Fashionably Geek] More »
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What's on the stands this Wednesday? The strongarm police tactics of everyone's favorite mushroom-coiffed space cop, urban fantasy starring a man-boy wizard, and a new installment of Joe Hill's acclaimed supernatural thriller Locke & Key. More »
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This happens to me all the time. I'm trying to get somewhere on the train, when a giant Beholder comes along and destroys everybody's minds with psionics. By the time some competent magic users arrive, I'm already late. More »
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The artwork from this 1974 edition of D&D is eye-gougingly bad, but it harkens you back to an era when 20-sided die made kids worship Lucifer and life was all about playing hooky to go to the REO Speedwagon-Styx show. More »
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If you spent hundreds of hours playing Dungeons & Dragons in your youth, it turns out that time wasn't wasted. Three successful authors tell Suvudu that D&D gave them the experience points to write decent novels and stories. More »
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This week, Day One creator Jesse Alexander has been guest-blogging with us as part of our "TV Ate My Brain" week. Closing out the week, we talked to him about influences, the future of storytelling, and the importance of D&D. More »
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Need some nonfiction distraction? Check out these four new nonfiction books about everything from growing up as a Dungeons and Dragons geek to coming of age as a genetic mutant. More »
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It's not just Bender and the crew on Futurama who are getting busy with 20-side die in space. These are actual pictures from the International Space Station, taken of an experiment with satellite technology devised (of course) by MIT students. Want to see these autonomous, flying Dungeons and Dragons bits up close? Then click through. More »
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Jess Burgess looks out over Killian Court on the M.I.T. campus, where students created a giant 20-sided die last week as a memorial for Dungeons and Dragons creator Gary Gygax. 20-sided dice are a crucial part of that game. If you couldn't get over to Cambridge, Mass, to place flowers at the foot of the giant die, we've got some other ways for you to show your love for Gygax with 20-sided dice displays. More »
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Gamma World was role-playing game company TSR's attempt at a post-apocalyptic role-playing system. TSR hit the big time with the mega-successful Dungeons and Dragons franchise, but the company's history is littered with non-starters. Still, when it came out, Gamma World felt like a winner - edgy post-apocalypse adventuring humans, robots and mutated bunnies contend in the ruins of a future Earth. The rules themselves are more or less D&D lite - character stats, melee rounds, and randomized combat mechanics. You can play as a Pure Strain Human, of untainted genome, but the fun is in mutated humans, and even mutated animals with human intelligence - if you want to be a panda toting a Mark VII Blaster Rifle, you've got it. More »
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Gary Gygax, co-inventor of Dungeons and Dragons, will probably be best remembered as the man who brought role playing games into the lives of millions of teenagers in the 1970s, and who helped spawn an entire industry. If you've ever rolled an eight-sided dice in a game, it's thanks to him. While his bread and butter was swords and sworcery, he was also an avid science fiction fan (he even designed a scifi D&D module, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, whose artwork is pictured here). He worked on several scifi games, as well as writing several science fiction stories. With the sad news today that Gary passed away in his home, we take a long, triviatastic look at his love for gaming and science fiction. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=363649&view=rss&microfeed=true Ben X, a European movie about an autistic teen who spends most of his time online as a warrior in a World of Warcraft-esque fantasy game, is about to get a U.S. makeover. More »
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