After long and careful consideration, I have decided that I am putting plans for creating new D&D encounter packs and campaign packs on indefinite hold.

Given the new, semi-randomized distribution found in the latest and all future D&D Miniatures sets, I have been unable to engineer a method for producing nonrandom packs economically. Since my stock of older sets has dwindled too much to support any expansion of the existing product lines, the whole concept becomes considerably less tenable. (True, there are second-hand sources of miniatures, but they tend not to be as reliable or efficient over the long term. As such, these are best used to fill the occasional gap in inventory instead of wholly replacing the purchase of factory-sealed cases.)

This isn’t necessarily permanent, but for the time being, these resources are far better spent supporting the Star Wars Miniatures encounter packs and campaign packs or even — as I suggested in my posts about the random cargo generator — in the production of non-miniature gaming products.

I look forward to having more news on this front as we get closer to Gen Con. Until then, thanks for your patience and patronage.

The response to the random cargo generator has been overwhelming — it turns out that just about every GM has wanted something like this for years. (There’s a nice discussion on the topic in this thread on the Wizards of the Coast message boards.)

Now, in an effort to further automate your gaming experience, I’ve been fiddling around with a mobile version of the cargo generator. I’ve only tested it on a couple of mobile browsers, so if you encounter any difficulty, please take a moment to report it, either on the WotC message board thread or as a comment on this post. (I’m particularly interested to see how well it works with an iPhone, Blackberry, or other smart phone because it’s meant to work as if it were a very simple app, so if you have one I’d appreciate any feedback you can provide.)

If interest remains high, I can see myself making more of these gaming applications, and I’ll make sure I do it with an eye toward making them mobile friendly so you won’t have to carry a laptop to your game to be able to use them. (”Is that an adventure in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?”)

After getting a little annoyed at the fact that you can find a wide variety of treasure generators for D&D but no equivalent for Star Wars, I set out to fill this niche and hopefully save all the GMs out there a little time during their game prep (or a quick response when the heroes unexpectedly ask about the contents of a cargo bay).

My random cargo generator includes some useful commentary below the generator itself, so make sure you scroll down for a few good tips and a little background information.

Enjoy!