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.