Ten months after announcing a general price increase, Reaper Miniatures is reducing the prices on most new figures to be released beginning March 30th. The new prices will be as much as 30% less than prices would have been calculated under the previous formula. Reaper explains that the primary reason for this adjustment is the falling commodity price for tin, the major cost component of most miniatures. At the same time, Reaper acknowledges that its previous price increases were driving many potential customers away from the hobby.

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Wizards of the Coast has announced that they will be holding three “D&D Game Day” events to celebrate the release of the second set of core books (Player’s Handbook 2, Monster Manual 2 and Dungeon Master’s Guide 2 – clever naming scheme, no?). Each games day event will feature exclusive adventure content with pre-made characters so that store owners can get games up and running quickly. So if you’re jonesing for a game, this may be quick way to meet some new people and pick up the new rule books!

• Player’s Handbook 2 (releases today) event: March 21st
• Monster Manual 2 (releases May 19th) event: May 23rd
• Dungeon Master’s Guide 2 (releases September 15th) event: September 19th

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Over the last few years, a number of electronic gaming products were under development, such as Microsoft’s Surface (said to be ready to go in 15 months from now, but geared more toward sharing information between your portable appliances and the tabletop):

and Phillips’ Entertaible (now put on hold, indefinitely):

These were touch or scan sensitive tabletops that interacted with objects placed on them with various cool effects.

The topic is now being revisited with a new wave of products that are a generation ahead of the old ones: they’re  modular. Here are two examples:

At the recent TED conference, David Merrill talked about his prototype interactive blocks, called Siftables.

And Frantz Lasorne is in the process of creating something called Augmented Reality Toys:

Augmented Reality Toys (Work in progress) from Frantz Lasorne on Vimeo.

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