50 Days and Counting

I pre-ordered on Amazon. They have that lowest price guarantee going on. Last week the price was $12 and some change. So, I decided to wait for the weekend, after payday, cause, you know, I'm not made of money. Well, Saturday it was back at $17+. I passed on that, not knowing for sure what the price would do. I felt pretty safe in the idea it would come back down, but didn't know it for a fact. And since a hold will be put on my account, I wanted to hit that price at a low point. Cause, you know, I'm not made of money.

Happily, the price today was $12.65 (or so), and I was a go. Green light. Execute. Now the waiting begins.

There is something I want to mention, 'ere I go. I've seen a lot of hubbub about there being no character generation rules in this set. It comes with 5 pregens, with canned progressions thru level 5. I'm mostly ambivalent about it. I'm getting this for two reasons:

• I want to get a real sense of what the new edition should be. Art, layout, etc.
• I'm a fanboy. Even though 4E turned out not to be my cup o' tea, I always wished I would have entered it with it's red basic box.

As far as what I can and can't do with it in the interim until the "big books" come out, that seems like much ado about nothing. There will be a 48-page pdf (free) containing the meat of character generation from the PHB. If that isn't enough, I have the final playtest pack printed and spiraled (booklet sized, no less). So, I think most of us should have enough of our bases covered to survive until the DMG finally hits in November.

By the way, this will be the last post carrying the "Next" label. From here on, posts relating to the new edition will have the "5E" label.