Hi everyone, it's Stephen Schleiker. Thanks for joining us again this week on Critical

Hit. All of you critters, Major Spoiler Rights. Don't worry, I'm not going to call you

what Mark Marin calls his listeners. No, we love you much, much more than that. So last

week or a couple of weeks ago, depending on when you're listening, hello future people,

we talked about the new dungeons and dragons stuff, D&D Next. Over at the Major Spoilers

Podcast, you can listen to that. That's episode 574. It's the one right after 573. The

one right before 575. It didn't get a numbering that week. So a lot of people are looking

for that in the Major Spoiler's Podcast Network Masterfeed. That's the one that you

want to look for. We talked about dungeons and dragons next. And then immediately, Wizards

of the Coast announced basic dungeons and dragons. Basic D&D is a PDF that covers the

core of the game. It's equivalent to the old D&D rule, Cyclopedia, so it doesn't have

quite the same scope. It runs from levels 1 to 20 and covers the cleric, the fighter,

the rogue, and the wizard, presenting what Wizards of the Coast views as the essential

subclass for each. It also provides the dwarf elf halfling and human as race options.

This sounds very familiar for those of you that were in the beta. Here's the best part.

Basic D&D is a free PDF. I'm excited about this. It means anyone can download it from

the Wizards of the Coast website. And it means that dungeons and dragons can get into

even more hands than ever before. So that's really cool. That, I don't know when that's

going to be available. I'm going to guess it's going to come out probably in July because

that is the launch of the D&D starter set. That's the basic D&D rule book that gets

you all set up. It's part of this new tyranny of dragons line that they have going on in

D&D next. And again, the D&D starter set will include a 64 page adventure book with

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