When I ran my 4E D&D playtest campaign, I decided to make it larger than life. That meant going planer. The churning unpredictability of the planes, the potential for exotic locations, the alienness of its inhabitants calls to my imagination. The Plane Below: Secrets of the Elemental Chaos, which details 4E's churning elemental wastes, is just my cup of tea. Or it would be if it had retained more of the 3E cosmology. As is it's more like a cup of chia; worth a sip, but not as satisfying as I'd hoped.

Arthur Dent beverage metaphors aside, The Plane Below is a 159-page source book that builds on the foundation laid down by last year's The Manual of the Planes. The Elemental Chaos is 4th Edition's catch-all planar setting for D&D's traditional elemental planes, as well as the Nine Hells, the Abyss, and the rest of the rest of the D&D cosmology that isn't the Astral Plane or Ravenloft.

I’m one of those who loves the printed word. PDFs are handy, but when it comes right down serious reading, I want my books and magaines culled from dead trees.  As such, I was happy to see a review copy of Dragon Magazine Annual.

Although my D&D 4E playtest campaign has long since given way to an ongoing Star Wars game, I like to dabble in 4E. Not enough, however, to warrant getting a regular D&D Insider subscription, although I’ll happily admit that if they were still publishing Dragon and Dungeon in print, I’d still be a subscriber.

The Annual is for gamers like me, gamers who might read the occasional free article on Insider, but have been content to live offline for the most part. It also serves as a “best of” compilation, gathering together the most memorable and useful articles from the last year’s worth of articles.

In November I had the chance to do something I’ve never done before: play Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition. Technically that’s not true – I’ve played D&D 4E plenty of times as a Dungeon Master, including my gaming group’s playtest campaign. But I’ve never sat at the table as a D&D 4E player.

The last time the Blackrazor Guild played D&D 4E, it was a paragon level playtest. I was the GM, and I found it incredibly frustrating. Our initial run had been at the heroic tier; paragon seemed to only add to the complexity of the game. Coupled with Player’s Handbook 2 classes like the wild mage, I felt like the game was getting bogged down in an endless stream of if/then statements. It was like spaghetti code turned into an RPG, and by the end of the session, I was done. If we played again, I wanted to be on the other side of the screen.

"Six men came to kill me one time. And the best of 'em carried this. It's a Callahan full-bore auto-lock. Customized trigger, double cartridge thorough gauge. It is my very favorite gun." -- Janye, Firefly

That quote is the reason why Borderlands rocks. Sure, it's a competent shooter with some basic role-playing aspects thrown in, and yeah, it's got kick ass multiplayer campaign, but in the end, it comes down to the guns.

More specifically, it's about finding your very favorite gun.