Games

Something that may be of marginal interest. A size comparison of various fantasy worlds that I created: At top-left is Westeros/Essos (the HBO version of the latter) from George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire . Next to it on the top line is J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth, with Ansalon from the Dragonlance world next to that. Below them is Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time map (which was tricky to get right, as the distances given in the books are sometimes contradictary). At bottom-right is Raymond E. Feist's Triagia (on the world of Midkemia), the setting for most of his Riftwar fiction. At bottom-left is Faerun, the principal continent of the Forgotten Realms world. Something that is surprising here is how small Middle-earth is compared to these other, later-created fantasy worlds.

Wizards of the Coast have confirmed that a 5th Edition of the popular Dungeons and Dragons roleplaying game is in development. No release date has been set, but the game will have a lengthy development period in which fan feedback will be welcomed. The 4th Edition of the game was released in 2008, itself only five years after the previous version of the game (3.5E, a revision of the 3rd Edition originally released in 2000), so this is a fast turn-around for a game that spent almost a dozen years between the first two editions, and almost the same between the second and third. Normally fans would be up in arms over this, accusing Wizards of the Coast and their parent company, Hasbro, of trying to fleece them. However, a grim resignation seems to have met the news. 4th Edition, to put it mildly, was not a universally-acclaimed success. Previous editions of the game had built upon what had come before: 2nd Edition was a streamlined version of 1st Edition, with new rules brought in to cl...