This week we’re talking about Getting Excited and Making Things in various forms. Enjoy the links and let them inspire you to explore and create!
At Home
Articles posted here on The Gamer Assembly.
- March’s Blog Theme at The Gamer Assembly is “Gaming in the Modern Age”. Have an RPG article idea set in Information Age earth? Contact us for guest blogger opportunities!
- Campaign Season is upon us. Sign Up for our military-themed RPG Blog Festival hosted here at The Gamer Assembly. It runs from 19-26 March 2012.
- Only 39 Gaming Days Until PAX East! If you’ll be in Boston on Easter weekend April 6-8, you owe it to yourself to attend the best gaming con. Three-day passes have sold out, but you can still pick up day passes. We’ll be there running the “Fix Your RPG Problems with the RPG Doctor and Gamer Assembly” panel on Saturday, April 7 at 12:30pm in the Merman Theatre. Will we see you there?
- The Call To Assembly, Volume 1, our collection of the first 2 months of Gamer Assembly posts is now available as a free PDF at RPG Now and as a not-free printed magazine at Lulu!
- Useful Charts: Treasure by Party Level and Sly Flourish’s DM Cheat Sheet by Chris Dundon provides a Google Docs version of the handy random treasure table from the 4e Essentials DM’s Book and a link to Sly Flourish’s monster stats cheat sheet.
- Do Something Original by Brent Newhall challenges us to come up with something new for our games that hasn’t been done to death.
Away
Content from people involved with The Gamer Assembly posted elsewhere across the Internet.
- 4e as Lame Duck by T.W.Wombat at Wombat’s Gaming Den of Iniquity urges people to keep on creating all the way through this between-editions gaming lull.
- The Call to Assembly Is Here by Brian Liberge at Suffer Shack gives a shout out to the Call to Assembly.
- What Are Retroclones Good For? by Brent Newhall at Troll in the Corner delves into why he decided to write Dungeon Raiders in the first place.
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.
- The Singer-Songwriter Uber Alles? lets us know that it’s every bit as awesome to use published materials in your home game as it is to write everything yourself.
- Win a Copy of the Marvel Heroic Roleplaying Basic Game (the PDF) from Dice Monkey by commenting and tweeting before Tuesday February 29th! Be sure to check out the review of the game while you’re there.
- And speaking of Marvel, check out Fred Hicks’s post about Accidentally Designing Marvel’s Action Order System. Great preview for those who haven’t read the system, plus insight on strategic uses of the “you next” initiative system.
- A Richer Tapestry of Sexual Expression from Sarah Darkmagic encourages further discussion about sexuality and sexual privilege by talking about the “male gaze”. Also be sure to read her tips on finding a group in her Joining The Party column at Wizards of the Coast.
- The Days Of Wonder CEO explains how the iPad version of Ticket To Ride boosted sales of the board game over at Penny Arcade. Interesting thoughts about they synergy between the digital and physical forms of a single game.
- Steve Winter starts a series of articles analyzing D&D magic over at Kobold Quarterly in his Howling Tower: Magic is Ruining My Game. Also check out his entertaining story of how the players define the campaign at his personal blog, entitled It’s Out of My Hands.
- If you like Fourthcore, go download the free Anniversary Edition of Revenge of the Iron Lich to get all the edits, clarifications, and layout improvements to the first Fourthcore adventure.
- Goons: One Line Monsters at Daily Encounter inserts a level of complexity between D&D 4e’s Minion and Monster descriptions by describing a monster in a single line of text.
- Nukemap will show you just how far the fireball from a 350 kiloton nuclear warhead will extend from ground zero. Ideal for modern doomsday games or Twilight: 2000.
- Classic RPG Realms has been doing some D&D analysis and navelgazing lately. Check out the insights and ideas in If D&D Ain’t d20, Then What Is It? and Spreadsheet Comparisons of D&D Systems, followed by a jaunt into GURPS with The Second Most Popular RPG of All Time.
- Strange Magic offers some quick optional rules for Heavy Arms and Armour in B/X D&D.
- Undead: I Don’t Like Level Drain at The Other Side gets rid of powerful undead creatures’ level drain abilities in favor of straight ability drain.
- Somehwere Between Living and Dying discusses an alternative way to handle the Dying condition in 4th Edition, allowing for some player action below 0 hit points.
- Over at The Forge there’s an interesting thread by Ben Lehman talking about his experience producing ANIMAL CRIME that should interest potential game publishers.
- Given the resurgence of OSR topics lately, How to Publish a Fanzine by Mike Gunderloy published by Loompanics might be of interest.
- Jared von Hindman paints us an instant classic jpg from the ongoing Pirate vs. Ninja battle.
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 evil GM tricks for over-resting PCs, an opinion piece about Kickstarter projects, and a free downloadable compass rose.
- Roving Band of Misfits publishes their Weekly Roundup column every Sunday. This week’s First Special Ops Gameday Edition gives us what AD&D got right, Inception-style skill challenges, and 10 psionic rituals for Dark Sun.
- Critical Hits aggregates their Twitter feed and publishes it on Sundays under Critical Bits. This week’s Critical Bits mentions D&D’s PAX East schedule, making a stained glass d20, Marvel links, and Rich Burlew’s interview about the $1.2M Kickstarter for Order of the Stick.