This is beyond the D&D Encounters: Dark Sun that will be starting June 9th and running for 15 weeks, as well as the Dark Sun adventure that is coming out during FreeRPG Day on June 19th!
BTW, the Dark Sun encounters: Fury of the Wastewalker is a very interesting adventure, I am running it for the local store. I cannot wait to see what Bloodsand Arena will bring...considering there is supposed to be a gladitorial arena map included with it!!!
The WPN just opened a Dark Sun Game Day scheduled for August 21st. So if you are interested in getting a taste of a new Dark Sun adventure, make sure your local organizer has this scheduled for you!!!
This is beyond the D&D Encounters: Dark Sun that will be starting June 9th and running for 15 weeks, as well as the Dark Sun adventure that is coming out during FreeRPG Day on June 19th!
BTW, the Dark Sun encounters: Fury of the Wastewalker is a very interesting adventure, I am running it for the local store. I cannot wait to see what Bloodsand Arena will bring...considering there is supposed to be a gladitorial arena map included with it!!!
The store I work at JUST got those Free RPG Day books in, so I got to look at Bloodsand Arena (and in a couple weeks, take it home, woo!).
Bloodsand Arena does indeed come with a bloody awesome, and friggin' HUGE map of an arena on one side, and two maps (part of a city, part of a mine by the looks of it) on the other. Seriously, it's massive. I want to say it's the same size as the Encounter's maps, but the arena takes up the whole side it's on.
You also get the nice, colored, laminated character sheets for the characters previewed in DDXP.
That's all I'm going to say, however. No actual spoilers whatsoever. So sorry. ;)
I'm also digging Fury of the Wastewalker. Although...I am going to have to modify the goblin encounter. Goblins are extinct on Athas, as far as I'm concerned. At a minimum, they'll be re-skinned (dunno if I need to do anything else, but they absolutely will NOT be goblins).
I told my Encounters group about it and they all seem pretty psyched about it. I'm glad it's on a weekend... a Saturday to be exact, because I have a feeling I'll be running more than one session over the course of the day.
Season 2 is the first season we've sanctioned at my local store and it's growing pretty rapidly. The first week we had a table of 5, which is respectable for a first-run. I've been getting e-mails like crazy since last session and it looks like I'll have in the neighborhood of 8-12 for this next session.
Sooooo, yeah, no interest, sorry.
wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4news...
(is anyone else having a problem extracting them from the zip file?)
wizards is handing out the pre-gen characters for free rpg day here:
wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4news...
(is anyone else having a problem extracting them from the zip file?)
I'm having issues as well. There is a thread here where someone commented on using a free un-zip utility that worked for them but it hasn't worked for me.
Does anyone know if Wizards is going to require us to register WinZip to download files here in the future? Is this an one-time accident? The registration fee runs from $30 to $73 depending on the bundle you choose. As a D&D Insider paid customer if they are going to use these proprietary compression schemes they need to supply us with some kind of license to use WinZip with the DDI software.
Thanks to user ascottbay on the heads up about the free software 7-Zip. Version 9.15 was posted today and it works to deflate this file. 
Please note to Wizards: It is still not cool to use non-standard zip compression especially without a link to a freely available deflate tool. PDF files generally are already compressed as well so using anything except the most basic and standard zip algorithms is foolish and troublesome to your paying customers.
Good Gaming.
Please note to Wizards: It is still not cool to use non-standard zip compression especially without a link to a freely available deflate tool. PDF files generally are already compressed as well so using anything except the most basic and standard zip algorithms is foolish and troublesome to your paying customers.
Unfortunately there is no standardized ZIP compression scheme for them to use. Such standards were only begun to be debated in April of this year. However, most schemes are compatible with one another and most do follow one particular standard.
The issue you may be running into is that Microsoft's built-in implementation of those schemes is the problem here, as it is lacking a significant number of "pieces" nearly all other ZIP compression schemes account for (and I'm betting it fails to implement other bits correctly given their on-going track record with CSS and web standards in IE).
It is likely WotC zipped the folders with one of the standard archival products, like WinZip (note: whose implementation IS the standard, and actually SETS it), WinRAR, or similar.
When I have archived data for dissemination in the past, I have had issues with MS's built-in ZIP functionality failing to read my zips, too, no matter which of the programs I've used. It is a mistake to blame WotC for Microsoft's issues with keeping their implemention of ZIP scheme compression updated and functional.
Addendum: WinRAR won't open it, either. Now I'm wondering if they zipped it with 7-Zip, which I HAVE had weird "nothing else opens it" issues with in the past.
Does anybody have the extracted file I could download somewhere instead?
Addendum: WinRAR won't open it, either. Now I'm wondering if they zipped it with 7-Zip, which I HAVE had weird "nothing else opens it" issues with in the past.
WinZIP developed a new compression algorithm, called "PPMd", and slipped it into their newer versions of WinZIP. 7-Zip, as of version 9.11 beta supports that new algorithm, while other products, like WinRAR haven't gotten it out yet. If WotC, like most companies tend to be, shuns officially using an open source product like 7-Zip over using the official standard product like WinZIP, used WinZIP, they would have potentially unwittingly used the new compression algorithm with their files, and will most likely continue to, as this was a trick done by WinZIP, most likely to attempt to lock people into using their product more.
Grummore, check here. There are links near the bottom for the Mac OS X ports of 7-Zip.