Live from Origins 2003: a spy in the house of Wa

Yes, I actually did go to the WotC booth and look at the D&D3.5 books. I’m not intimate enough with D&D to be able to say what’s changed – I can verify they still have lots of rules in them – but the new covers are nice. Also for sale at the show, and I don’t think it’s been in stores yet, is the Dragonlance campaign setting book. Purple cover: weird. Didn’t get a close look at that either, because I was too busy grilling a Wizards rep about D&D Miniatures. The “Entry Packs” – why do they have to come up with their own damn names for everything? – will have quick start rules that make use of the point values on the figure bases, and possibly do something interesting with the alignments thereon as well. Will the full rules be a separate book? Well, says the rep, there’s no “will be” about it – the full rules for D&D Miniatures are… D&D3.5. Whether this constitutes some kind of admission on WotC’s part that D&D3 is a skirmish miniatures game at heart is left as an open question for the more cynical among you. Would I ever think that, oh gosh, no. I believe the planned release date he told me was October.