I Read Some Things: Week of January 5, 2015

I read some things this week. After the jump, you can read them, too.

Wizards of the Coast created an online version of the D&D Basic Rules. It’s better than nothing, and definitely better than DungeonScape nee Codename: Morningstar. It doesn’t compare to the 3.5 or Pathfinder SRDs, but its really not meant to.

ENworld discusses the content of the DM Screen. I haven’t used a DM screen in a long time, so I couldn’t tell you if this is good or bad. Based on the comments, the reviews seem mixed, but then, they would be. I imagine new DMs will find it useful. Old DMs can never be appeased anyways.

The Orr Group–the team behind Roll20 virtual tabletop–released its latest (Q4) report on the tabletop industry Roll20 usage. There are almost 26,000 active campaigns on Roll20. That’s a big deal. The share of D&D 5E games on the platform nearly doubled, from 12% in Q3 to 20% in Q4.  That’s a bigger deal. Also maybe a big deal? Pathfinder, D&D 3.5E, and D&D 4E all declined as a percentage of active games, though Roll20 is growing in popularity such that it would be difficult to call this cannibalization. My reckless prediction: the next edition of D&D will be “optimized for virtual tabletops,” or at least include a section on considerations for running virtual games, in the Dungeon Master’s Guide. Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me if that was part of the second or third DMG in 5E.

It looks like Paranoia is getting another edition via Kickstarter. The Kickstarter campaign is closed because I’m over a month late on this one, but I’m a fan of the original, just learned of the 2004 edition, and am definitely going to keep tabs on this.