Weekly Assembly: Cons, Vids, and Selling Out

At Home

Articles posted here on The Gamer Assembly.

Away

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

• 50 Games in 50 Weeks: Shadowrun 4E by Brent Newhall at Dr. Worldcrafter: A brief recap of playing Shadowrun 4E for the first time at Origins.

• The Places of Pyre: The Nobles’ District by Brent Newhall at Dr. Worldcrafter: A tour of the richest part of the abandoned city of Pyre.

• Modern Assembly: the Academic Theme by Brian Liberge at Stuffer Shack: A Modern Theme for bookish heroes.

• Going Last 76 by Brian Liberge at Going Last Gaming Podcast: News, Local Happenings, and an Interview with Rich Green and Brian Liberge about the Midgard Bestiary for 4e.

Product Announcements

New products and special events announced this week.

• To Slay A Dragon: a traditional adventure for PATHFINDER RPG by Morrus at Kickstarter: Morrus and EN Publishing jumps onto the Kicksarter bandwagon with this Pathfinder adventure. It’s in three parts: a village filled with all sorts of sandboxy trouble to get into, a trek across the wilderness, and a dungeon crawl to find and slay the dragon.

• Penny Arcade Sells Out by Penny Arcade at Kickstarter: Penny Arcade started a campaign to eradicate advertising on their site. Other stretch goals include more comics and reviving the DLC Podcast.

• PennyGems II, a Pale Imitation by Dave Howell at Kickstarter: PennyGems is back! Now with more colors and more sizes.

• Goalsystem Delves: Dungeon Skirmish Role-Play by Scott at Kickstarter: In the mood for a miniatures game with an OSR feel to it? What about a tactical RPG? Or better yet, how about both? Take a look.

• Necronomicon: Cthulhu Mythos – A New Miniatures Line by Impact! Miniatures at Kickstarter: Tasty Lovecraftian miniatures, including a sculpt of H.P. himself.

• Pirate Goblins Box Set at Indiegogo: Arrr! Here be goblin pirates!

Notes From Abroad

Other interesting articles and cool links.

• Engine Publishing sales figures, June 2010-June 2012 « Engine Publishing at Engine Publishing: In the spirit of transparency, Martin Ralya published Engine Publishing’s sales numbers for the past 2 years.

• Retainers at Untimately: Need a retainer? Here’s a quick add-on for OD&D covering combat and non-combat retainers, plus trained animals.

• Indie+ Panel Playlist at YouTube: Did you miss any of the Indie+ panels? Here’s the playlist of those panels that were recorded last week.

• Getting Cultured at Occult Moon: Different cultures in your game should have different flavors and advantages for PCs from that culture. Here’s a system to help you organize your game’s cultures.

• Storytelling! at The Writer Next Door: Following one GM’s thought process from idea to integrated game, in this case a tournament game recently run at DexCon. It’s long and well-written.

• So What? at Oaths and Fates: As Rick Marshall gets back to his series on the history of Wizards of the Coast, he stops briefly to explore why he’s recording this story.

• Practical Thoughts on Starting in the Middle at Rhetorical Gamer: Here are three methods for working more detailed backstory into your game, letting you skip to the meaty middle of your campaign.

• Seal Evil at Untimately: A rite for OD&D and OSR games allowing characters to imprison evil creatures that they can’t quite handle yet.

• The OD&D Engine at Untimately: Breaking down and analyzing the resolution mechanics contained in the three books of OD&D.

• Character Creation, No Funneling Involved at Gothridge Manor: Explore group character creation in DCC through discussion instead of a rules-mandated creation path.

• MUTANTOR!!! wtf? at Giblet Blizzard: What the heck is Stonepunk? Leaving your neolithic tribe to make your own path in a mutant-infested cancerous world. If you’re intrigued, go devour this brief overview of MUTANTOR!

• Kids – the Future of Gaming at Amanda Valentine: Kids aren’t a different species of human. In many cases, they’re gamers just like the rest of us. Here are some great stories about kids at their second Origins interacting with designers, booth folk, and cosplayers.

• When I Use Dice at Some Space to Think: On decision-making, storytelling, trust, and randomness.

• D&D is old-school, Chainmail is new-school at Blog of Holding: The original Chainmail rules introduced some concepts that are common in more modern games.

• The Hat Squad at Grubb Street: Jeff Grubb wasn’t even planning on attending PaizonCon at all this year, and he ended up on 2 panels.

• Secrets of TSR at YouTube: Here’s the video of the panel that ran at PaizoCon 2012. Panelists: Jeff Grubb, Pierce Watters, Rob Lazzaretti, Dave Gross, Wolfgang Baur, Stan!

• The Medieval Kingdom at The Fascinating World of Charles Ryan: An excellent primer on feudalism and the way it was in medieval times from Charles Ryan.

• Dungeon Robber rules ready to download at Blog of Holding: Download and play the beta test rules for a boardgame played on the random dungeon generator poster.

• Working with magic systems at Parenthesis Press: Thinking about systems of magic in relation to the action economy and magic’s place in the game world.

• Social Morale at The Nine and Thirty Kingdoms: Extending ideas of morale from simple fear in the face of battle into reactions among followers when deciding not to do what they think is right.

• Closed Combat at Project Perko: Looking at the advantages and disadvantages of “open” and “closed” rulesets in combat.

• Paladins with expense accounts at Blog of Holding: Tempt your paladins by letting them control some of the church’s wealth. Hilarity ensues as embezzlement forces questionable moral choices in the face of the church’s inquisitors.

• 2 Cents for Raggi at Telecanter’s Receding Rules: Marketing copy is fine, but if you want our money please tell us what your adventure is about in your Kickstarter description. And please mention celebrities on your creative team involved so we can get excited about who you managed to hire for the project.

• One Page Encounter Maps: Dungeon Cells at Roving Band of Misfits: Use this map of dungeon cells tonight with one of the adventure ideas provided. Also vote on how big of a map you find useful with respect to cutting and pasting.

• Joining the Party: Miniatures by Tracy Hurley at Wizards of the Coast: This month’s Joining the Party column looks at dungeon Command, painting minis, and a whole slew of community links.

• Medieval Demographics Made Easy: Numbers for Fantasy Worlds by S. John Ross: Rules of thumb for population, agriculture, and merchants in medieval times. Bookmark this one – it’s a great reference.

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 Triskaidekaphobia Redux Edition to see the Dungeon Master’s Union tee shirt, different ways of tracking initiative including homemade initiative cards, and comparing gaming from the designer side and the player side.

• Roving Band of Misfits publishes their Weekly Roundup column every Sunday. This week's ENnie Nominated Edition gives us parenting tips as GMing tips, sewer prospecting in 19th century London, and a table of random insults. And congratulations on the ENnie nomination for best blog!

• 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 Britain’s Atlantis, the working Tesla Gun, and a collection of Creative Commons cartography.

• 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 the Indiegogo fundraiser for A Thousand and One Nights, and part one of Fiasco for Geek and Sundry’s Tabletop webseries.

• Critical Hits aggregates their Twitter feed and publishes it on Sundays under Critical Bits. This week’s Critical Bits mentions WotC’s cancellation of their Virtual Tabletop project, Geek and Sundry’s agreement for all games featured in Tabletop to be sold at Target stores, and auctioning off the recently-unearthed TSR archives to support the Gygax Memorial.