Monthly Archives: June 2012

Many great things this week for Marvel, including interviews with Cam Banks and piles of datafiles. Also some new things for D&D 4e like Blackguard Vices and what comes in a pack of thieves’ tools. Enjoy!

At Home

Articles posted here on The Gamer Assembly.

Between working on the setting and prepping for Indie+, who has time to post?

Away

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

• Juggernaut and Diamond Lil – Double Datafile by Brian Liberge at Stuffer Shack: Two tough as nails mutants for your Marvel game!

• Magneto – Marvel Editable Villain File by Brian Liberge at Stuffer Shack: The Master of Magnetism!

• Mystique and Layla Miller – Double Datafile by Brian Liberge at Stuffer Shack: NPCs for your Marvel Game with a mind toward House of M!

• Season 4 Episode 12 – It hits you in the Arm | RPG Circus by Brian Liberge at RPG Circus: Hit Locations and Narrative Combat, Ignoring the Math When Creating Content, and How 3D Printers may change gaming.

• A look at the Duergar race by Adam Page at Daily Encounter: Want to play or run some evil dwarves in D&D 4E? Here’s an in-depth article with stats and suggestions.

• A Troublesome RPG by Brent Newhall at Dr. Worldcrafter: Brent describes a simple RPG that encourages players to think about narrative and dramatic trade-offs.

• Making D&D 4e go BANG! by Adam Page at Daily Encounter: Here’s how to add flintlock pistols, muskets, and blunderbusses to your D&D 4e game.

• Blackguard Vices by Adam Page at Daily Encounter: Adding the vices of Seduction and Gluttony to the list of the Blackguard’s path choices.

• The Thieves Toolkit by Adam Page at Daily Encounter: Thieves get a standard kit. But what does it contain that helps them to open locks and tinker with devices?

• House of M Milestones by Brian Liberge at Stuffer Shack: Milestones and hints for running a House of M Event.

• Cloak – Marvel Datafile by Brian Liberge at Stuffer Shack: It’s a file for Cloak!

Product Announcements

New products and special events announced this week.

• Ace of Aces rotary series limited edition reprint by Richard Loomis at Kickstarter: Remember the World War I aerial dogfighting game played with books that gave you what you saw from the pilot’s seat? You know, the precursor to the Lost Worlds fantasy combat books? Flying Buffalo is Kickstarting a reprint, complete with heavy-duty sewn books instead of flimsier glued books. Very cool.

• Project Ninja Panda Taco by Jennifer Steen at Kickstarter: Its a new RPG about Masterminds trying to take over the world with the help of their minions!

• Master Plan Podcast 2012 by Ryan Macklin at Kickstarter: Ryan Macklin looks for funds to support a new season of his Master Plan podcast, a series of interviews and insights into RPG design.

• This Just In…From Gen Con 2012 at Indiegogo: Raising funds for the 5th year of on-the-spot podcasts chock full of interviews and event reporting from this year’s GenCon.

• Hit Seekers – A Math Game in the Music Industry by Aaron Vanek at Kickstarter: An educational LARP set in the music industry designed to engage students with real-world mathematics.

• Appendix N Adventure Toolkits (DCC RPG Modules) by John Adams at Kickstarter: Like the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG from Goodman Games? Then you’ll love these adventures from Brave Halfling Publishing. Does my shovel get a bonus against the undead?

Notes From Abroad

Other interesting articles and cool links.

• 55 Small Ads at Jeffs Gameblog: A selection of the best classified ads from older issues of White Dwarf, suitable for use as bulletin board fodder in your campaign.

• Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG Actual Play at The Iron Tavern: A recap of an online game session of Dungeon Crawl Classics using Tabletop Forge.

• look at all these numbers: skills at evil baboons or perhaps mandrills: A look at skills and success rates from the Rules Cyclopedia, D&D 3.x, and Dungeon Crawl Classics.

• Marvel Two-In One! Cranium-Crushin’-Conversation With Jeff Grubb And Cam Banks Simultaneously! at Playing D&D with Porn Stars: Simultaneous interviews with the creators of two versions of Marvel RPGs.

• Interview 24: Cam Banks on Marvel Heroic RPG at The Walking Eye: Some great insights into how Marvel got put together in this interview with Cam Banks.

• Notes From The Idea Factory: Rants, Culture and Classes at Troll in the Corner: Where the heck does a racial bonus with weapons come from? Do elves get longbows in the womb?

• The LV Series of Modules (MASSIVE OBLIQUE PROMETHEUS SPOILER ALERT) at Playing D&D with Porn Stars: Viewing the Aliens movies and Prometheus as one huge dungeon crawl in OD&D or Call of Cthulhu, GM’s choice.

• d100 Demonichaos! at Wampus Country: Need names of demons or other servants of chaos? Now you have a table of name elements to string together however you choose.

• The Ghost of Arneson and D&D Next at Hidden in Shadows: A look at the striking similarities between what Mike Mearls is saying about D&D Next and what Dave Arneson said about D&D in general.

• (Adam West voice) “Actually, Robin…” at Playing D&D with Porn Stars: Zak points out a couple of weak points in the assumptions behind Robin’s Laws of Good Game Mastering. The second point resonates with me: the players are not obstacles to overcome.

• The Gang’s All Here – DC’s Royal Flush Gang at Exploring Infinity: Take a look at these Marvel Heroic Roleplaying datafiles for DC Comics’ The Royal Flush Gang.

• Jeffs Gameblog: The Mutant with the Bionic Nose at Jeffs Gameblog: This quick table from Metamorphosis Alpha lets you replace pieces of your characters with bionic components.

• Power Levels at Untimately: Looking at bounded accuracy and speculating about how increased power levels will work in D&D Next.

• The Circle Of Laugh at Critical Hits: Some gamers want a serious tone in their games. And some people are serious GMs but goofball players. Where’s your balance?

• Cthulhu 101 with Jon Hook at Flagons and Dragons: A podcast talking about Cthulhu for an extended period of time? Bring it on.

• the trapmonkey cleric: basing perception checks on wisdom at Blog of Holding: Why should rogues have a class ability (noticing things) be tied to their typical dump stat (Wisdom)?

• dnd 4e – In an even fight, how many rounds does a typical monster need to drop a PC? at RPG Stack Exchange: If you’re into line graphs and number-crunching, here’s a great exploration of PC survivability at 1st level across all the editions of D&D.

• Design Diary: How to Get Inside a Project at Sand & Steam: When you’re starting to write an RPG book, which comes first: Setting or System?

• Turn! Turn! Turn! To Everything There is a Season at Stargazer’s World: Creating your own game world calendar, and thinking about how closely to mirror real-world calendars.

• Happy Jacks RPG Podcast Season 08 Episode 01 at Happy Jacks RPG Podcast: Long podcast, but a great bit early on about what should be in the curriculum to teach RPGs at a high school or college level.

• End Game at Gothridge Manor: Many campaigns don’t conclude – they simply end for various reasons. Take a look at a few and thing about how to avoid these problems when planning your campaign’s endgame.

• new 5e info from mike mearls’ q&a at Blog of Holding: Mike Mearls held an Ask Me Anything (AMA) event on Reddit. Here’s the new info about D&D Next that came out of that monumental Q&A session, painstakingly distilled into a readable format by Paul at Blog of Holding. Thanks, Paul!

• Kaijuville: Free RPG Day 2012 downloads: For those of you who didn’t get out to Free RPG Day on June 16th, here are a few links to downloadable versions of some of the goodies given away.

• New Gary Gygax Setting at Swords of Minaria: One of the stretch goals for the Appendix N Adventure Toolkits is a setting developed with Gary Gygax just before his death.

• Dice Pool Assembly Strips at Margaret Weis Productions, Ltd.: In this forum post, Duck Call Lass provides these handy guides to help you build your dice pools in Marvel Heroic Roleplaying. Download and try them out.

• Cursed Broom Closet at METAL vs. SKIN: An interesting deathtrap to fit into your next dungeon, filled with endless storytelling and muted party members.

• Kickstarter… Or Not at A Walk in the Dark: An adventure designer wrestles with running a Kickstarter project to raise publishing funds.

• Why Small Presses Don’t Do Free RPG Day at Ryan Macklin: Ryan Macklin looks at Free RPG Day from an indie publisher perspective. Short form: For publishers, it ain’t free by a longshot.

• Time to Retire “Indie” (.png file): Written in reference to Indie Comics, this idea makes a certain amount of sense for Indie RPGs as well.

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 Friday Knight News articles on Fridays. Check out this week’s Summer Edition to see the perils of being on the Town Guard, a repository of mythical creatures and legendary characters called the Encyclopedia Mythica, and seven Beholder illustrations horrible to behold.

• Roving Band of Misfits publishes their Weekly Roundup column every Sunday. Except this one. Hope the vacation recharged your batteries, Benoit!

• Keith Davies maintains In My Campaign and on Mondays he publishes a collection of Links of the Week including recommended Kickstarter projects and interesting YouTube videos. Take a look at this week’s collection which includes the Campaign Relationship Generator, a Torg hack for Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, and elven demographics gone crazy.

• Gaming As Women gathers links in their This Week in Gaming and This Week in Feminism series of articles on Sundays. Both series are collected under the News category. This Week in Gaming features an interview with Jennell Jaquays on the early days at TSR, and how story is the first casualty when writing for video games.

• Critical Hits aggregates their Twitter feed and publishes it on Sundays under Critical Bits. This week’s Critical Bits mentions the Civil War release for Marvel Heroic Roleplaying.

It looks like the Product Announcements section is a keeper. So many RPG products out there are either being released or preparing for Kickstarters. If we’ve missed your project, feel free to let us know in a comment below or in the webchat. And now, on with the most-ever links in a Weekly Assembly post!

At Home

Articles posted here on The Gamer Assembly.

• Free RPGs for Free RPG Day by Brent Newhall at Gamer Assembly: So many RPGs are available for free, and we decided to gather a small list in honor of Free RPG Day.

Away

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

• Pyre, the Whispered City by Brent Newhall at Dr. Worldcrafter: Welcome to Pyre, a deserted fantasy city filled with deathtraps.

Product Announcements

New products and special events announced this week.

• RPG of the Month Club by James Kato at Kickstarter: How would you like a new RPG PDF delivered to you once a month for a year? JEN Games wants to do just that.

• Welcome to GM Games!: Gothridge Manor has spawned a new site to handle the commerce side of the house. Hop on over and subscribe to The Manor at the new site. Welcome to the blogosphere, Gothridge Manor Games!

• Durance by Bully Pulpit Games at Kickstarter: Bully Pulpit is at it again, Kickstarting a low-prep Fiasco-like RPG set in a penal colony on a planet that the group creates far from civilized space. Revolves around power, control, servility, and savagery.

• Westward: A Steampunk Western RPG, a Cinema6 Experience by Brettski at Kickstarter: An established human colony on a new world that’s slipped back into a Wild West mentality with a Steampunk tech level? Yes, please!

Notes From Abroad

Other interesting articles and cool links.

• ICT: The Black Mage at Some Space to Think: Ongoing noodling and design thoughts about Index Card Tactics, this time covering elemental magic.

• Time Travel Games at Project Perko: How do you make a time travel game that isn’t a historical railroading game?

• Long-Form Generational RPGs: Someone on RPG Geek is looking for systems that explicitly support growing old, having children, managing businesses, or playing with stables of related characters over many sessions.

• I got your D&D Next Monster Manual right here, and so do you at Greywulf’s Lair: Reverse engineering D&D Next monsters by comparing them to the same monsters with D&D 4e stats.

• New Series for Beginner Game Masters. at Critical Hits: Chatty DM proposes a series of articles for beginning GMs covering topics like game selection, using published modules, introverted and extroverted GMs, and seeing the game from a player’s perspective.

• 2001 Space Pod in Diaspora at FATE SF: Nice stats for a space pod in Diaspora. Check out the rest of the site for FATE-powered SF goodies.

• The Languages of Sexuality, and how they relate to game design and game play at Gaming as Women: Great thoughts about using sexual language in game design and during play.Comparing the same scene in different systems using different language really changes the feel of what’s happening.

• The Sleeper Gene by Robin D. Laws by Robin D. Laws at Ancient Scroll: What if an erectile dysfunction drug contained a mind control component that the manufacturer could trigger? And pay no attention to those black helicopters.

• Funding the Dream – A Game Whisperer Podcast for Kickstarters: An interview with Marc Miller about the Traveller 5 Kickstarter. Some great insights into the Kickstarter funding process and game publishing.

• Reality Makes the Best Fantasy: Conventions, Festivals and Social Gatherings at Troll in the Corner: Brainstorming about using conventions, festivals, celebrations, and other social gatherings in your game.

• A Very Special Mandatory Paranoia Fiasco at Bully Pulpit Games: Citizen! Downloading of this free Paranoia-flavored Fiasco playset is mandatory according to Friend Computer!

• FATE – Skill Point vs. Refresh Progression/Ratio in Dresden Files RPG? at RPG Stack Exchange: Asking about skill points and refresh gained through experience vs. granted at character generation in the Dresden Files RPG.

• Gaming Periodicals at Rogue Warden: An overview of various gaming periodicals past and present, including Dragon, White Dwarf, Autoduel Quarterly, Adventurer’s Club, Kobold Quarterly, and many others.

• Traveller session #3 at Jeffs Gameblog: A writeup of an ongoing Classic Traveller campaign.

• Evasion & Armor at Untimately: Variant rules to handle evading blows and using armor to reduce damage taken for D&D Basic/Expert.

• This Is My Game: Ladybits Edition, ft. Plura at This is My Game: An ongoing series featuring descriptions and illustrations of characters played by women.

• Indie Talks Episode 4 – Joshuha Owen and Charles Jaimet at Troll in the Corner: Ben Gerber talks with the folks behind the Tabletop Forge application for Google+ Hangouts.

• Ego Check: Monte Cook, Game Designer & Author at Id DM: Take a gander at some great RPG industry and game design insight from an industry veteran.

• Questions for Game Designers: Ryan Macklin at Thoughtcrime Games: Insight into what makes a great RPG from the mind of Editor Extraordinaire Ryan Macklin.

• 11 Table Rules For Speed by Johnn Four at Campaign Mastery: Johnn Four writes an in-depth article about combat speed, along with 11 rules for speeding up combat. I particularly like the “snacks after combat” rule.

• Update and a New Idea (Familia Draconum)! at Sand & Steam: The first inkling of an RPG based around exerting power while hiding your draconic legacy.

• The Greatest Pirate Who Ever Lived: Read the story of how prostitute Zheng Yi Sao married a pirate and went on to rule the seas.

• ProjectPerko: Social NPCs at Project Perko: Here’s a system to keep track of your purely social-interacting NPCs’ attitudes.

• Wilderness Rumors at Untimately: Here’s a quick system to introduce random rumors when your party goes exploring in a sandbox game.

• From Diablo 3 to D&D: Treasure Pygmies at Dread Gazebo: Jerry gives us a way to introduce these anarchic kleptomaniacs from Diablo 3 into your D&D game.

• Is This How Burning Wheel Is Supposed To Go? at Playing D&D with Porn Stars: Or “How Elven Grief and Dwarven Greed prevented us from starting the adventure.” Sounds like a compete blast, so yes, that’s how it’s supposed to go.

• Every RPG: A handy flowchart to walk you through your next game session. Packed with complications and humor.

• How should D&D Next be published? at Greywulf’s Lair: Making the case for D&D Next to be published in a BECMI series of books, but in five colors for easy recognition.

• Those Who Would Be Kings Actual Play: Group 1 & 2, Part 11 at 1d4cast Podcast: Listen in as two groups operate simultaneously in the same campaign.

• Let’s Do The Time Warp Again at PsychoSys: Easy rules or hard rules, why does it always take an hour to roll up a character?

• The Metagame is the Game? at What a Horrible Night to Have a Curse…: A fair look at the approaches to metagaming in each edition of D&D.

• Indie Talks Episode 1 – Tracy Barnett at Troll in the Corner: The Indie Talks podcast kicks off with Tracy Barnett. He talks about School Daze, open licensing, being slapped by your muse, and Twizzlers as the ultimate game snack.

• The dark side of Kickstarter at Stargazer’s World: Michael Wolf takes a look at some ways that even successful Kickstarters may disappoint backers. Caveat emptor.

• Dice Inform the Story at Difficult Terrain: A reminder that, when the dice fail you, treat that as part of your story.

• Hangouts killed the Group star (or so I hope) at Gaming as Women: One gamer’s experience with RPGing via Google+ Hangout.

• Design Diary 4: Terminology – Creative Directions: Cam Banks takes us on a tour of Marvel Heroic Roleplaying’s lexicon of game terms.

• Talking To Yourselves at Critical Hits: Sometimes you need to talk to the PC you’re playing to figure out what’s not working. While it may seem like you’ve snapped, talking to yourself and allowing the character to change may get you back to playing something fun for both you and your PC.

• Controlling How Much Detail is Needed for the Game at Gnome Stew: Great GMing advice on sketching a scene and letting the players ask for more details.

• Flash Creativity: A boy, watching a tabletop RPG game, wants to play. When told he can’t because he doesn’t have a character, he takes about a second to find a creative workaround.

• The Game Mechanic: A Future Near You (Part 1) at Troll in the Corner: The Game Mechanic looks at futuristic weaponry available today and gives us stats to use them in Savage Worlds.

• Backstory; do I really need to know this? at Threat or Menace: On finding the balance between jumping into a story and understanding the motivations behind a character’s actions with copious amounts of backstory, some of which may be relevant.

• Language of Game Design by Monte Cook at The Chapel Perilous: On looking for useful common ground to start a discussion about game design, starting with the lexicon.

• Hacking D&D at Untimately: An analysis of the OD&D booklets to find the essence of D&D.

• Rehashed Tables for Castle and Village Occupants at Magician’s Manse: Providing expanded tables to answer “Who lives in that castle?” for OD&D.

• Dissociated Mechanics – A Brief Primer at The Alexandrian: Exploring associative and dissociative mechanics in role playing games. It opens up two different and interesting ways to approach game mechanics design.

• Fantastic Tales Part 1 at Gamuzing: Fantastic Tales started as a Warrior, Rogue & Mage hack, but has started heading off on its own. Take a look at game design in process.

• GM Like A Drag Queen: Five Rules For Bringing The Drama. at Threat or Menace: Own your game and strut your stuff. Here are five tips to get you over the top with an awesome game.

• We Are Troll in the Corner: Ask Us Anything at Troll in the Corner: In the spirit of Reddit’s AMA events, head on over and ask the Trolls anything gaming that you’ve been wondering about.

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 Friday Knight News articles on Fridays. Check out this week’s Gaming Edition to see a plea for systems to handle social interactions on the same level as combat mechanics, remedies made from powdered mummy or other less-than-hygenic ingredients, and Bluetooth-enabled dice.

• Roving Band of Misfits publishes their Weekly Roundup column every Sunday. This week’s Free RPG Day 2012 Edition gives us a system for large-scale conflict in D&D 4e, a dice calculator you can use offline, and rules of thumb for creating a great story.

• Keith Davies maintains In My Campaign and on Mondays he publishes a collection of Links of the Week including recommended Kickstarter projects and interesting YouTube videos. Take a look at this week’s collection which includes monsters and powers for the Savage World of Athas, the Tabletop Forge Kickstarter, and having Legendary Sword Masters provide adventure hooks in your game.

• Gaming As Women gathers links in their This Week in Gaming and This Week in Feminism series of articles on Sundays. Both series are collected under the News category. This Week in Gaming features reactions to the Lara Croft trailer and how to be a feminist ally in gaming.

• Critical Hits aggregates their Twitter feed and publishes it on Sundays under Critical Bits. This week’s Critical Bits seems to be missing. Gato must have escaped again.

This week we’ve added Product Announcements to the lineup here in the Weekly Assembly. If you have a product coming out or a Kickstarter going live, we’d love to hear about it. Please enjoy this week’s collection of links!

At Home

Articles posted here on The Gamer Assembly.

We’re still developing the fantasy setting. Stay tuned.

Away

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

• Let’s Play an Interesting RPG, episode 9: Savage Mars session 1 by Brent Newhall at Dr. Worldcrafter: Playing Savage Mars, a Savage Worlds game set in the world of John Carter.

• Games as Social Space by T.W.Wombat at Wombat’s Gaming Den of Iniquity: Thinking about rules as the structure inside which games can happen, and why arguing about the wall color is less than optimal.

Product Announcements

New products and special events announced this week.

• Midgard Bestiary for 4th Edition by Open Design by Brian Liberge at Kickstarter: Brian has done a pile of work porting the Midgard Bestiary to D&D 4e. Here’s the Kickstarter to make it a reality.

• Tabletop Forge: The Virtual Tabletop for Google+ Hangouts by Tabletop Forge at Kickstarter: The title says it all. Donate to enjoy tabletop games run online by their creators.

• Zounds! is here! at Tales of the Rambling Bumblers: Joshua Macy released his free high fantasy RPG as part of the SFX! game system. It includes systems for playing at a domain level, which jazzes me.

• City of Clocks Industrial Fantasy Systemless Setting Book at Kickstarter: Any setting that includes a post-steampunk industrial fantasy elements and sentient constructs is a win in my book.

• Our Last Best Hope – An RPG to Save the World at Kickstarter: Here’s a GMless RPG about saving the world. Originally an entry in the 2012 Game Chef competition, it comes with three adventure profiles including Zombie Apocalypse.

• Dungeon World: A Game with Modern Rules & Old-School Style at Kickstarter: There’s now a Kickstarter for a full-scale Dungeon World release. They’ve already hit their initial target, so get in now for stretch goals!

Notes From Abroad

Other interesting articles and cool links.

• How To Be A DM at Lawful Indifferent: Solid advice for new GMs on the core thing to remember about GMing: give the players what they want, and make them work for it.

• Meaning First at Untimately: Studying the differences between powers designed effects first vs. meaning first, and how it changes the style of play.

• Writing Style Tips at Chaotic Henchmen Productions: A handful of tips on writing concise and clear text in an adventure module: limiting passive voice, avoiding “seems” and “appears,” and more.

• I think we’re getting Dissociated Mechanics wrong at Jeff’s Gameblog: Examining game mechanics tied to the game world vs. mechanics arbitrarily imposed on the game world and exploring them in a 4e vs. OSR context.

• One Shot #20: My Top 5 Myths about the Games Industry at RPG.net Columns: Designing and publishing games is a far cry from playing games, as Andrew Peregrine explains in this honest look into the tabletop RPG industry.

• Maturity & Gaming at Untimately: Musing about the link between style of play and where you are psychologically along life’s path.

• The Writer Next Door: Kicking Fear In The Teeth: On getting past your fear and doing what you want to do in spite of it.

• The Future & The Past of Gaming at classicrpgrealms: Checking in with history as we design for the future.

• AD&D Players Handbook: Special Reference Work at classicrpgrealms: Introducing a series of personal commentaries on the original AD&D hardcovers.

• a new schooler reads Chainmail at Blog of Holding: A first-time reader of Chainmail jots down some reactions and thoughts.

• D&D: Sexy or Sexist? at Wizards of the Coast: “Why should gaming and D&D change when the rest of the world isn’t? Because we can. Because we can be better.”

• Why I Design Games by Alf Seegert: One game designer’s story and why he does what he does.

• Popular Myth-Conceptions: Subverting Mythology to Enrich Your Campaign at Game Knight Reviews: Here are a few examples of adapting mythology to fit into your campaign.

• Game Currency: There’s More Than Money At Stake by DNA Phil at Gnome Stew: Look at your game and figure out what your players keep asking for. That’s the currency that they’re interested in.

• Reality Makes the Best Fantasy: Eff the Good Ol’ Days at Troll in the Corner: How to add grognards and crotchety old-timers to your RPG. Also great questions for exploring history, familial relations with elders, and technological advancement in your campaign.

• Logic in RPGs by Monte Cook at The Chapel Perilous: Monte advocates for more “rules-loose” tabletop RPGs to avoid the limited action syndrome of computer games. Trust your GM to apply consistent logic in your games.

• Back to Basics: Normal Life as Fantasy at Gaming as Women: Find inspiration in everyday life to add rich details to your gaming world, like describing a meal of exotic real foods.

• Fail Often. Be Awesome Sooner: Stephen Blackmoore advises us to go down in flames as quickly as we can so we can get past the crap of failure and into the realm of awesome that much sooner.

• Generic Marvel Milestones at Exploring Infinity: Stuck for milestones in Marvel Heroic Roleplaying? Try these generic milestones ripped from pages of Marvel Comics.

• Off-the-Cuff Adventures by Steve Winter at Howling Tower: The Howling Tower column approaches the question of prep. What do you need to prep?

• Burning Wheel Headquarters plays Moldvay Basic by Luke Crane at Google+: After more than 16 sessions of play, I think [Moldvay Basic D&D] is a magnificent game. The previous editions have seeds of the hobby, seeds of greatness in them, but this edition is not only a game with digestible procedures, but it is a fully realized vision. A new vision. A vision of a monster-filled world, riddled with dungeons, ready to be plumbed by desperate heroes. It created a perilous world with death lurking around every corner in the form of this dangerous, unforgiving game.

• Roll For News – Episode 3: Need a 15 minute RPG news fix? Try this one with 3 interviews, including one with Joshuha Owen from Tabletop Forge.

• The Game Mechanic: Xanatos Gambits. » Troll in the Corner at Troll in the Corner: On making two-tier win/win plans for your smart villains.

• Now Accepting Applications For Membership! at Dungeon Bastard: The Badass Dungeon Crushers Association wants YOU! Take the entry quiz, download the membership card, and use your perks. “I’m crushing it.”

• Flying By The Fill In Your Gaps at Critical Hits: Vanir uses software development terms to explain the current state of the D&D Next Playtest. Spoiler: OH GOD BEES.

• Changing Your Micro-culture at Gaming as Women: What happens when you no longer want to play the same way as your peers, when you move from “let’s kill orcs and giggle about boobs” to something more substantive? Meguey takes a step back and talks about the steps of changing a micro-culture.

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 Friday Knight News articles on Fridays. Check out this week’s Gaming Edition to see the D&D Pronunciation Guide, how to turn a mundane magic item into an artifact, and using MadLibs as a template for your heroic journey.

• Roving Band of Misfits publishes their Weekly Roundup column every Sunday. This week’s Post Charm City Gameday Edition gives us 13 books that every nerd should read, seminars recorded from this year’s Origins, and the announcement of the Gencon Social.

• Keith Davies maintains In My Campaign and on Mondays he publishes a collection of Links of the Week including recommended Kickstarter projects and interesting YouTube videos. Take a look at this week’s collection which includes a layout experiment intended to describe a scene in the same order a PC would identify threats, the CLANG swordfighting video game Kickstarter from Neal Stephenson, and clinical trials for bionic eyes starting next year.

• Gaming As Women gathers links in their This Week in Gaming and This Week in Feminism series of articles on Sundays. Both series are collected under the News category. This Week in Gaming features an interview with Andy Kitkowski from Story-Games, the brutal and violent Lara Croft trailer from this year’s E3, and some of the harassment received by Anita Sarkeesian as feedback to her Kickstarter on Tropes Versus Women in Video Games.

• Critical Hits aggregates their Twitter feed and publishes it on Sundays under Critical Bits. This week’s Critical Bits mentions the winners of the 2012 Origins Awards, preordering Never Unprepared from Gnome Stew, and the updated D&D Next FAQ that allows online play.

This week we found a few examples of homemade crafts, most notably the sarcophagus build for the mummy and Cthulhu Barbie. And, as always, we have a pile of links running the gamut from making good art to undead plants to mythical adventure inspiration to hardcore game analysis to being happy about playtesting. Enjoy!

At Home

Articles posted here on The Gamer Assembly.

Nothing new this week, but we’re getting some great things organized for our setting.

Away

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

• 4 Reasons to Be Excited About D&D Next by Brent Newhall at Dr. Worldcrafter: Brent P. Newhall lists 4 reasons why the D&D Next playtest is exciting.

• Deadweed by T.W.Wombat at Wombat’s Gaming Den of Iniquity: A research report on a newly discovered undead seaweed. Includes stats to use it in your D&D 3.5 or Pathfinder game. Also uses elements from Gamer Assembly’s forthcoming fantasy setting. An entry in the May of the Dead Carnival.

Notes From Abroad

Other interesting articles and cool links.

• Three Best Practices of RISK: Legacy-Style Game Design by Daniel Solis at Daniel Solis: Daniel Solis chimes in with some lessons learned for game designers in the design of RISK: Legacy.

• Traveller 5th Edition by Marc “Traveller” Miller at Kickstarter: Marc Miller is Kickstarting Traveller 5 “The Ultimate Edition”. He’s already made the funding for a print run, and the stretch goals are starting to roll out.

• Adventurers of Old: Perseus at Sarah Darkmagic: A look at the story of Perseus vs. Medusa through the eyes of an adventure designer.

• The Inquisition: Do I Fit? at Troll in the Corner: One player’s story of jumping into an existing D&D game. Good for thinking about characters changing players mid-campaign.

• Hanafuda and the Seasonal Random Effect Device at Monsters and Manuals: How to use a Hanafuda deck to inspire random events in your game.

• Magic Disciplines at Untimately: How would you retool magic in D&D to easily handle a progression of spells? Here’s an interesting take on it – choose a magic discipline and then you never need to prepare spells in that discipline.

• The Closing of the Forge at Deeper in the Game: One game designer’s farewell and thank you to The Forge Forums.

• Protection from Chaos Part XI: The D&D Next Online Playtest Agreement at Loremaster: Rob Bodine, an attorney in Washington state, picks apart the playtest agreement and summarizes it in non-legalese.

• Introverted Wife: Cthulhu Barbie: Follow along as this Barbie transforms step by step into Cthulhu Barbie.

• Players, Trust Your DMs. DMs, Be Worthy Of That Trust at Life and Times of a Philippine Gamer: A look at the D&D Next playtest rules seems to suggest that the designers are trusting DMs to make more calls that aren’t in the rules.

• Fighters: Freedom to Improvise at Life and Times of a Philippine Gamer: Take a look at this list of suggested combat maneuvers or stunts suggested by the list of conditions in D&D Next. Be sure to read the comments for some thoughts on permissive vs. restrictive rules.

• The Fat Game at Playing D&D with Porn Stars: The challenge has been laid down: make a really cool RPG, fat with lists of mechanically interesting options and lore.

• Preview: Never Unprepared at Stargazer’s World: Michael Wolf gives a review of Engine Publishing’s forthcoming book about GM prep.

• Finding Probabilities of Odd Die Combos at Gnome Stew: Here’s a method to figure out the percentage that you’ll roll a 14 on 1d4+1d6+1d10.

• How closely tied together are rules and setting? (And how… at Google+: Can you run a Steampunk game under D&D rules? Great discussion here about play style, setting, rules, and where these three intersect.

• My problem with Kickstarter at Stuffer Shack: Providing all these great RPGs to fund is doing a number on the RPG industry.

• Dude, where’s my first level? at Jeffs Gameblog: Jeff hopes for a little less power in future playtest versions to model the fragile characters in OD&D. Be sure to read the discussion in the comments about playing smarter instead of using more powerful characters.

• Shortlist For 2012 Diana Jones Award Announced by Robin D. Laws at Robin D. Laws: Here’s the list of things up for the 2012 Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming.

• Save or Die, and other “Bad” Game Design at Dread Gazebo: One Gazebo’s reaction to all the debate on what’s in or not in the current D&D Next playtest. It’s all about options in a modular system. “If something is defined as core in a modular system, you can just unplug that core and fill it with whatever you want.”

• National Game Development Month: Set aside some of June for NaGaDeMo, and design your heart out.

• On Six Things You Don’t Know About Save or Die at Hack & Slash: From an OSR perspective, you need to be pretty far down the rathole to hit Save Or Die effects, and they have a hard time actually killing your character.

• NEIL GAIMAN: Make good art: A Zen Pencils rendition of “Make Good Art” in comic form.

• Game Designers: Please hire professional editors. at Google+: Curt Thompson makes a plea for game designers to seek professional help to make their products professional. An interesting discussion follows exploring hobby vs. business and amateur vs. professional.

• This is an adventure: A story of an adventuring group told in four images of fantasy pack contents. Add your own details, but don’t forget the owlbear jerky and dwarven cigars.

• On the Wilderness Codices at Hack & Slash: An explanation of different types of wilderness travel encounters, how to handle them, and examples of each. Extremely hepful.

• May of the Dead Mummy at Terrain Wench Productions: A fantastic hand-sculpted sarcophagus and terrain using a mummy mini.

• Along Came a Spider: Choose Your Own Marvel Adventure at Exploring Infinity: What better way to introduce the concepts and game play of Marvel Heroic Roleplaying than a choose your own path solo adventure?

• Think Beyond Your Character Sheet at Wizards of the Coast: “If you play a Fighter and you never do anything but make attack rolls, that is your fault.” Try something different! The system of statistic checks can support whatever you and think of, as this Wizards Forum post reminds us.

• A New Horror Damage Idea at Ryan Macklin: Removing the numbers from damage and replacing it with a picture of the damage to PCs really ramps up the tension for your horror game.

• Caves of Chaos Player Map at Untimately: For those of you playing through the Caves of Chaos for the D&D Next Playtest, how about a map that doesn’t give away secrets? Also includes links to a few other maps of the Caves of Chaos.

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 Friday Knight News articles on Fridays. Check out this week’s Gaming Edition to see a detailed analysis of the Advantage/Disadvantage mechanic in D&D Next, character death causing player grief, and using Warhammer Quest cards to randomly generate a dungeon map.

• Roving Band of Misfits publishes their Weekly Roundup column every Sunday. This week’s Why I’m Taking a Hiatus Edition gives us the results of the One Page Dungeon contest, the influence of other genres on D&D, and paper treasures for your high fantasy game.

• Keith Davies maintains In My Campaign and on Mondays he publishes a collection of Links of the Week including recommended Kickstarter projects and interesting YouTube videos. Take a look at this week’s collection which includes a no-budget no-frills pencil and paper d12 dungeon generator, a Google doc of in-print 1st edition AD&D modules, and a fantastic collection of maps for RPGs.

• Gaming As Women gathers links in their This Week in Gaming and This Week in Feminism series of articles on Sundays. Both series are collected under the News category. This Week in Gaming features feedback to the Hitman: Absolution trailer, gender swapping in Kickstarter rewards, and how brand loyalty works with D&D Next’s business strategy.

• Critical Hits aggregates their Twitter feed and publishes it on Sundays under Critical Bits. This week’s Critical Bits mentions the upcoming Cyberpunk CRPG, a comparison of different D&D Next character sheets, and the myth of the rational reader.