The Weekly Assembly: Futuristic Fighting Edition

Welcome to another week of gamer-flavored linky goodness! As always, if you want to promote a link or make sure we don’t miss something in The Weekly Assembly, feel free to drop by and chat.

Now on with the linkitude!

At Home

Articles posted here on The Gamer Assembly.

• January’s theme at The Gamer Assembly is The Beginning of the End, in honor of the end of the Mayan calendar cycle.

• Check out 3 Generations After the End, aka 3GATE, our system-independent post-apocalyptic setting which we’re developing this month.

• 3GATE: Sanctuary, the Domain of Shedra the Witch by Brent Newhall shows us a country led by a beautiful necromancer who demands total obedience to her and her priestesses.

• 3GATE: The Forests by Chris Jackson allows us to glimpse some of the dangers and denizens of the magic-laden forests where technology breaks down.

• 3GATE: Technology Is Magic by Brian Liberge explores ways to work with the D&D rules to model a culture that worships technology instead of any sort of divine god.

• 3GATE: Enemies by Brent Newhall presents writeups for more intelligent and crafty bad guys to grapple with across the wastelands and behind fortified city walls.

Away

Content from people involved with The Gamer Assembly posted elsewhere across the Internet.

• How To Tame Your Dragon Mount by Brian Liberge gives several options for D&D 4e character builds who can eventually earn the ability to ride a dragon.

• An Introduction to a Swords and Wizardry homebrew world by Chris Jackson is the first article in a series on an exploration of “old school” D&D, by using the rules of Swords & Wizardry to develop a campaign setting for use with that system.

• The Perfect Light RPG? Dread. by Brent Newhall reviews the use of Jenga as a resolution mechanic, or rather as a character death machine. Tension and horror work their magic in this rules-light RPG.

• The Two Empires and the Free City by Chris Jackson begins the exploration of the world of Secaelia, designed for use with Swords and Wizardry, Labyrinth Lord, or OD&D.

• A New Kind of Ship for D&D 4e by Brent Newhall offers a combat system for ships in space over at Troll In The Corner. These rules have been excerpted from his Voidjumpers of Space setting, and they can be used for normal seafaring ship combat.

Notes From Abroad

Other interesting articles and cool links.
Wizards of the Coast went public with their announcement about the next edition of D&D on Monday 09 January 2012. We’re collecting D&D Next links in our wiki. If we’ve missed any good ones that you’ve read, feel free to let us know in the comments or join us in the chat.

• Striking a Pose and Follow-up to the Fantasy Poses from Jim C. Hines shows us how rich chiropractors would be if everyone defaulted to sexy cover-art poses. Warning: contains images of a balding white guy topless.

• Dungeon Bastard: Edition Wars (YouTube) sums up gamer tolerance by asking two questions: “Does this game have Dungeons? Does this game have Dragons? Great, then I want to play this game!” Also, a d6000 weighs 2.8 tons and looks like a Volkswagen with acne. Best 150 seconds I’ve spent this week.

• While I was on YouTube I saw the sci-fi short Archetype (Youtube) by Aaron Sims. Great story, but 7 minutes isn’t long enough to explore this world of combat robots and the problems inherent in producing effective models.

• The Gamma World Monster Index at Roving Band of Misfits gathers all the Gamma World monsters into a single spreadsheet listing Origin, Type, Level, and Role for your organizational delight.

• Wizards is reprinting premium editions of AD&D core books. ‘Nuff said.

• The Art Of Boss Design: Tips From A Combat Designer at AltDevBlogADay thinks about designing boss monsters from a video game perspective, but these same ideas can work in a tabletop RPG as well.

• The Geography of Games by Will Hindmarch at http://gameplaywright.net argues that different RPGs can be seen as different cities. Is Chicago really better than Seattle?

• Gamer Resolutions by Tracy Hurley covers a smattering of what gamers are working toward in the new year with some suggested sites to help keep those resolutions.

• Lead Developer Mike Mearls Answers Questions About “Dungeons and Dragons Next” at MTV Geek

• The Rules of Chaos at Game Knight Reviews has some thoughts on playing chaotic characters.

• Survey of Methods of Advancement at Take on Rules surveys methods for advancing characters in different RPG systems.

• Ashoka The Great over at Troll In The Corner gets the creative juices flowing with an example from history of a great leader who converted to a new religion. Ashoka is the first post in the “Reality Makes the Best Fantasy” series, a series of which I hope to see much more.

• For you loyal ‘mech jockeys out there, go download this free BattleTech 16 month calendar PDF. Remember: heat sinks are for the weak.

MetaRoundup

A roundup of roundups featuring links of interest to the tabletop RPG community.
Please let us know about other weekly roundups in the comments!

• Game Knight Reviews comes out with News From Around the Net articles on Fridays. Check out this week’s roundup to see Steampunk Disney Princesses, a block of links about D&D Next, and a link to an actual play writeup of Warrior, Rogue & Mage using Google+ Hangouts.

• Roving Band of Misfits publishes their Weekly Roundup column every Sunday. This week’s Impending Schedule Change Edition covers Implements as Weapons, digital tools, and the difference between judge and DM.

• Critical Hits aggregates their Twitter feed and publishes it on Sundays under Critical Bits. This week’s Critical Bits points out D&D Playtest news, Green Ronin news, and the final two expansions for the deckbuilding game Dominion.

• Weekly D&D (now defunct) curated by Mike Shea updates every Wednesday. It looks brand new, but it already has links to some great content, including D&D Next articles, a list of recently-published articles from the Wizards site, and a link to WotC’s Map-A-Week archive.