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.
