I've been looking for some DnD material on the Web. There's not much out for 4.0 yet, but there's a lot of nice little communities and open source tools.

Here's a few that I find are really worth it:

GameTable

A nice tabletop software that allows you to share maps with remote players. I have hope that this - in combination with online chat software - will allow our group to playtest 4.0 a bit before we actually switch.

Geeked On Dungeons and Dragons

A forum that I would like to adopt that likes to speak about miniatures and DnD. They're talking more about the miniature game than DnD and - as most veterans of an older version - don't seem to welcoming of 4.0. They've been welcoming to me at least :)

Massawyrm Has Played Dungeons And Dragons 4th Edition!!

A nice article about the joys of 4.0 (along with Part 2 and Part3) This article pretty much says what I feel that playing 4.0 will be like. A nice read for DMs and players alike.

Players Pre-4th Edition Handbook

Nice informative information on 4th editing if you're planning on moving up. It was pre-release info so I'm not sure that everything is exactly as in the rule books but nice nonetheless.

Of course, you can grab whatever DnD related link I think are worth checking out from my del.icio.us account here: http://del.icio.us/themaze75/dnd

A few weeks ago, I got my Dungeons and Dragons 4.0 Player's Handbook (PHB for short).

To tell you the truth, I wasn't really looking forward to 4.0.

We've been playing with 3.5 for a while now and I managed to get over the frustrations of moving to 3.0 from ADnD and the griping agony of switching to 3.5 what felt mere moments after having purchased 3.0 books.

While the bulk of my frustrations with 3.0 was simply due to my comfort with ADnD (and the nice few books I had), I appreciated it from a game designer's point of view. Not that I'm a professional game designer, but I love game design and am a professional software designer (which basically means that my job consists in creating boring by very useful "games").

My group got their hands on a few PHBs and I just couldn't resist - my curiosity was too strong.

We haven't played any 4.0 yet - we have a 3.5 campaign on the way and we're still exploring the idea of switching to 4.0.

I've had to cast aside the pain from leaving my comfort zone - it seems that nothing in life that you really want sits within your comfort zone (otherwise you would already have it).

Once I managed to do this to some extent, I was quickly seduced by the elegant, streamlined rules and the new flavors the 4.0 brought.

The downside to converting our campaign:

• One of our member's race - the gnome - is gone.
• One of our member's class - the bard - is gone. And I'm that particular member.

Since I've long passed the age of throwing fits, I've jumped into the rather intriguing quest of finding a class that fits my character's stats, skills and attitude while working in tandem with the rest of the group. Not to mention trying to find story elements that would justify why Quendy would drop his mandolin and strike up a pact with the fey.

I am also looking forward to introducing the new rules to my better half. I have a feeling that the simpler rules will alleviate the confusion of battle and stimulate creativity.

I'll try and document my journey to 4.0 (and Quendy's journey from bard to warlock) as it progresses.