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.
