D&D Next (DDN) has one overall design goal, bring the D&D community back together by making an edition that builds upon the best of all editions and can accommodate the myriad play styles and preferences that are out there. A tall order.

So, how do they get there? WotC's solution is build a rules light core that will support gridless play (which they call theater of the mind) that will provide the foundation for more complex rules and mechanics that can be layered on to add more complexity as desired.

The current public playtest (there were two rounds of private playtests prior) is just a small slice of the core mechanics (think modernized 1e and 2e AD&D updated for the modern game environment). Its going to change in the face of playtest reports. Once the core mechanics are solid work will begin on other layers that will add in gridded, tactical combat, a feat and skill system, alternate magic systems, etc. This will bring the game up to 3e (and Pathfinder) and 4e levels of complexity.

The crucial thing is, if DDN works (not a guarantee) DMs and players should be able to mix and match to play the version of D&D they want to play all under the rubric of a single system.

As I have said, this is the goal. Playtester input will have significant impact upon the end product (I can attest that many things changed after the private playtests). It is my hope that DDN will provide a common basis for folks to play again.

I for one am sick of the edition wars and edition warriors. I play D&D and I want to sit down with my friends and have fun kicking down doors, killing the monsters and taking their treasure, not arguing the merits and flaws of this system or that.

I am not a math major but my chosen field requires some understanding of math (go accountants!). My solution for complex graphs, math equations, and symbolic images was simple. I took a digital camera to class, asked permission to shoot digital photos with the flash turned off, and then transcribed the material from my digital images after class.

If I am taking text notes I would make a notation when I took a picture so I would insert it later. Otherwise, I would just listen and every once in a while shoot a shot of the dry erase/chalkboard.

I have set my technology challenged mom's system up on a 500 GB USB external drive and have NTI Shadow running in the background. Shadow copies whatever file you are working on to the external drive in realtime. If you accidentally delete a file, it keeps the last copy you have for a restore left on the disk. For mission critical files (family business) I copy a set to my laptop 1/week.

I really should ghost her machine if I need to rebuild after a crash.

1) The name was a Magic the Gathering in joke, inside baseball references do not meet the goal of one stop gamer social networking.

2) The neon puke green color scheme was barftastick...

3) Failed to deliver a functional, easy to use blog app. Its really a bad sign when your own employees were mirroring their Gleemax content on their personal blogs. What really blows my mind they could have purchased a blog program off the shelf that would have been working from day one, ugh.

4) Over promised, under delivered.

5) Unrealistic deadlines.

6) Database problems. They have been combining multiple databases with mixed results.

7) Brain dead support for the site. I used the combine accounts feature and it killed both of my accounts. When I asked what was going on and please fix it, I was told it was a know issue and to create a brand new account. When I countered that they should disable the feature they told me that would be a good idea. The feature still exists to chew up other peoples accounts.

8) DDI is behind schedule and needs the bodies being sucked up in the Gleemax sea of failure.

Good Luck WotC... you are going to need it to deliver digital content.