As Powerful As 10,000 Suns, or something.

So I'm not sure if this is really Gencon related, in all honesty, but if you haven't seen the new over on WotC's main Dungeons and Dragons site, there's exciting announcements all around.

Highlights include:

New setting for 2010 D&D 4E is the Dark Sun setting of old (seen to the right here, picture from original Wizards article linked above). We'll see books for it start next year in the tradition now for 4e to release a PHB and Campaign guide and probably an adventure or two specific to the setting. A neat hint at what this means mechanics-wise was hinted at in the article. It appears that there will be a new way to use some fighter powers or a setting-specific fighter build or something new and neat for the fighter class. I'm sure this is just a hint of what's to come for Dark Sun, but I've always loved the idea of the setting and can't wait to find out more as I haven't ever had a chance to game in it before.

New dungeon tiles - not only are we getting some forest and outdoor dungeon tiles, but it also looks like we'll see some 3-d terrain tiles as well. A little concerned if they'll be some cheap looking cardboard you have to punch and build yourself or if not, what the price might be if they look nice and are plastic, way to go pessimism!

D&D Heroscape - not sure about this one yet, but it does seem like a neat way to get more D&D minis out in the world. Kind of an odd choice, but time (and more images) will tell.

!BEST ANNOUNCEMENT TIME! In my opinion, the best announcement is a one-sentence throwaway. One year from now, they'll be releasing a "high-end" board game that everyone plays cooperatively called "Castle Ravenloft". No other information is given, but that alone whets the whistle so much! Way to go Wizards to make me excited when I was beginning to get bored by your big announcement that next year should be known as the "year of 3's" like this was the "year of 2's." Get some better PR people already; you got a ton of cool stuff coming out that may not sell as well as PHB 3, but is way neater and should get a hell of a lot of use.