Category Archives: Weekly Assembly

Greetings! It’s been a while, and with Sandy romping across the eastern half of the US last night, that got me to thinking that we probably have enough links to share. I hope the linked Kickstarters haven’t expired yet – there are some good ones in there. Here’s hoping you and yours are safe. Enjoy!

At Home

Articles posted here on The Gamer Assembly.

Away

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

• The Story of the Haunted Guard Post by T.W.Wombat at Wombat’s Gaming Den of Iniquity: Here’s what happened in the first adventure of the RPG for Kids. I think they did quite well, and everyone had a blast.

• Plugging a Couple of Lightweight RPGs by T.W.Wombat at Wombat’s Gaming Den of Iniquity: I’ve been playing with and working on a couple of very cool lightweight game systems, so I thought I’d give them a shout.

• Kids RPG: Lessons Learned and Ideas for Next Time by T.W.Wombat at Wombat’s Gaming Den of Iniquity: Notes to self: some things worked well and some really didn’t in that RPG for kids. Try these tips for the next game and see how they work.

• I used to date an adventurer like you by ~thedandmom on deviantART by thedandmom: Skyrim pinup art. Ideal for displaying on a T-shirt.

• Supplement Review: Midgard Campaign Setting, Part 1 by Fitz at Game Knight Reviews: Take a look inside the Midgard Campaign Setting. It’s so big and dense, even the review needs to be broken into parts.

• Modern Assembly: Analyst Theme by Brian Liberge at Stuffer Shack: Do you want your Modern PC to never miss a clue? The Analyst theme has your PC’s name written all over it.

• GenCon Report 3: Playing New Games by Brian Liberge at Stuffer Shack: Brian tells us about his new game experiences at GenCon this year. He played Dread, the Midgard Campaign Setting, his own Modern Assembly hack of D&D 4e, and Project Ninja Panda Taco.

• Bishop – Marvel Datafile by Brian Liberge at Stuffer Shack: Take a look at this version of Bishop for Civil War. He’s got his traditional plasma rifle, but not his cybernetic arm.

• The Story of Red Ax is now being told by Brent Newhall at Brent P. Newhall’s Home(page): Bodyguards, assassins, and slaves blend in this tale of social inequality in a felinoid society. If you like the first issue, share it and watch for a Kickstarter to help fund issue 2′s production.

• Rebuilding Zanzer Tem’s Dungeon… by Adam Page at Daily Encounter: Follow Adam’s journey to build Zanzer Tem’s dungeon in 3D plater terrain from the map contained in the Easy To Master D&D Boxed Set featuring Dungeon Cards.

• Dressing up Zanzer Tem’s Dungeon by Adam Page at Daily Encounter: Adam talks about planning, specifically all the moulds he needs to cast pieces for Zanzer Tem’s Dungeon.

Product Announcements

New products and special events announced this week.

• BareBones Fantasy Role Playing Game – DwD Studios at DriveThruRPG: BareBones Fantasy is out! If you’re in the market for a lightweight fantasy RPG that’s remarkably complete with some inspirational random tables for plots, dungeons, obstacles, and rewards, look no further.

• Emergence: A Sci-Fi/Fantasy Roleplaying Game by Emergence at Kickstarter: Fantasy, modern day, and SF genres crash together as 1982 Earth discovers a portal to a resource-rich fantasy world. And if you ever wanted to play a 1/4 elf, 1/4 orc, 1/2 human with power armor and a castle, Emergence is for you.

• Sagas of the Icelanders Roleplaying Game | Indiegogo at Indiegogo: This Apocalypse World hack explores the relationships and daily challenges of Norse settlers in Iceland around 900 AD.

• BORDERLAND KEEP: Deluxe Edition by Tom Tullis at Kickstarter: This Fold-Flat terrain lets you print out as many towers and wall sections as you want, then fold them flat for easy storage and transport. Layers let you customize terrain with gargoyles, stains, statues, or ivy.

• A Tragedy in Five Acts by Matthew McFarland at Kickstarter: A five-person RPG where players compete for tragedy points and the right to narrate the ending. Based on Shakespearean tragedies. Winner of the 2011 Game Chef competition.

• Spears of the Dawn RPG by Kevin Crawford at Kickstarter: An African-themed fantasy RPG built on the Stars Without Number system.

• SHAKER: An RPG by Brenda Brathwaite & Tom Hall by Loot Drop at Kickstarter: This computer-based first-person RPG offers the Old School RPG pen & paper game as a reward. Interesting.

• IRPMUS Ultimate Role Playing Game by Notting Hill Games at Kickstarter: A rollicking fantasy improv system. “It’s like D&D meets Whose Line Is It Anyway?”

• d20Monkey: First Edition by Brian Patterson at Kickstarter: The first year of the webcomic d20 Monkey is being cleaned up, reformatted, and published in book form. Throw in 40 pages of bonus content and a one-of-a-kind Boner Fairy plush doll and it becomes hard to pass up.

Notes From Abroad

Other interesting articles and cool links.

• KHORGHIL FANTASY MAP by *Khorghil on deviantART: All campaign maps should be this cool. I love the names organically growing out of the landscape.

• Zanzer’s Dungeon Map: A classic TSR map, ripe for repopulating and repurposing.

• About | National Game Design Month: If you have time this November and don’t want to crank out a novel, crank out a game instead. NaGaDeMon is on.

• Deities And Demigods Is Totally A Book You Should Be Using Because This at Playing D&D with Porn Stars: Here’s a way to adapt the old school Deities & Demigods into a cult and follower generator.

• The H.P. Lovecraft Institute of Software Design: It’s hard to tell if this blog is fiction or subtly twisted reality. Anyone in the software industry should enjoy reading the entries, chilling though they may be.

• Bildwirkerey von Bayeux: A historic tale construction kit. Create your own medieval storytelling art using drag-and-drop images from the Bayeux Tapestry. Very cool little generator.

• Play With Intent | Emily Boss & Matthijs Holter: Playing with intent calls for moving beyond the traditional idea of rules into the realm of pure shared creation. Download the guidebook here. Definitely food for thought.

• Reality Makes the Best Fantasy: Graveyards and Final Remains at Troll in the Corner: What happens to the dead in your game? After they’re raised as undead and destroyed by your PCs, of course.

• 7 Habits of Highly Effective Players, Part 2 at Thoughtcrime Games: Talking about your character’s thought process is a great tool to increase characterization without falling into the trap of metagaming.

• Muddy Colors: 10 Things… About Talent: Originally written to describe the author’s experience with oil painting, this article exposes talent as a myth. If you want to do something like, say, write RPGs, then act like you can do it and learn from every experience you have. Fabricate your own talent.

• Talkin’ About Edits and Expectations at Machine Age Productions: How to set expectations and work smoothly with your editor.

• Cyberpunk 2020 Handy Utilities: Programs for Players and Game: For those of you looking for quick and random character backstory, check out this online Cyberpunk 2020 lifepath generator. The events are generic enough to apply to any setting.

• Discussion About Discomfort Mechanics at Google+: Here’s an interesting discussion about how instituting systems to prevent discomfort at the table can backfire by people assuming that the group doesn’t trust anyone to act like an adult.

• Mini-Review: Take On Magic Items at RPG Musings: Aaron takes a look at a PDF of 24 magic items for Dungeon World from Jeremy Friesen of Take On Rules.

• Raising the Bar at Room 209 Gaming: A look at the assumptions around having the party meet in a tavern and how those assumptions limit player choice before the game even begins. Collaborative character creation, such as the system in Infinite Earths, does wonders to avoid this cliche.

• Armor by Class at Untimately: Here’s a simple system that makes class skill just as important as equipment when wearing armor in OSR games. Thieves can wear Plate, but Fighters will get much more of a benefit from it.

• Kickstarter Opportunity Costs at Quest For Fun!: A look at how expensive pre-ordering books through Kickstarter actually is for a retailer.

• Be A Better Player at Truly Rural: A series of articles designed to teach ways to be a better player and increase your usefulness at the game table.

• Prismatic Art and Glimm at Glimm’s Workshop: Need art depicting a gnome spellcaster? Take a look at Glimm as drawn by Brian Patterson of d20 Monkey for the Prismatic Art Collection Kickstarter.

• An Inspiring Ms. Marvel: A great memory about posing for pictures with a little girl while cosplaying as her favorite hero Ms. Marvel.

• This short movie about cyborgs running amok in Bangkok’s red light district is totally worth your 5 minutes at io9: Spend the 5 minutes on this cyberpunk vid. Totally worth the time investment.

• Make Politics Interesting in Your Fictional World at World Building Academy: Here’s how to inject politics into your game world in ways that make sense and make good stories.

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 Sunday Knight News Halloween Edition to see Dragonlance AD&D modules run under D&D Next, 5 resolution mechanics that don’t use dice, and an answer to the question “Is tabletop gaming good for you?” (Spoiler: Yes.)

• Roving Band of Misfits publishes their Weekly Roundup column every Sunday. This week's Two Year Anniversary Edition gives us a list of horror RPGs to try for Halloween, a Danish school using LARP to teach their entire curriculum, and ways to make undead creatures even more creepy.

• Gaming As Women gathers links in their This Week in the News series of articles on Sundays, collected under the News category. This Week in the News features using real-life monsters in your game, an article on Zombie LARP for The Guardian, and a few misconceptions about diversity in gaming.

• Intwischa publishes a collection of links for the week every Monday. Take a look at Links for the Week of October 22 to find maps of both geography and information, using plot ideas like ingredients for your campaign recipe, and managing the tension between PC freedom and party plot progression.

• Critical Hits aggregates their Twitter feed and publishes it on Sundays under Critical Bits. Apparently Gato has been bored to tears since early October. Poor Gato. We’ll keep an eye on him.

Longest September ever, so it’s been a little sparse around here lately. Take a look at the links we’ve found, and please let us know if we missed anything. Enjoy!

At Home

Articles posted here on The Gamer Assembly.

Away

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

• Design Diary: Brian Liberge on the 4th Edition Midgard Bestiary by Brian Liberge at Kobold Quarterly: Hear from the designer about working on the 4e Midgard Bestiary. Steer clear of putrid haunts.

• Schrödinger’s Gun GMing: The GM Paradigm by T.W.Wombat at Wombat’s Gaming Den of Iniquity: Traditional GMing focuses on the mechanics of the world and the story. What happens if we think about GMing as directing player creation instead?

• App Review: Midgard Atlas for iOS from Open Design & WyvernX by Fitz at Game Knight Reviews: Read about what the Midgard Atlas app does right, and what features would be great to add to the next rev.

• The Actual Games on the Shelf by Bob Smith at The Games on the Shelf: Here’s a look at several board games on Bob’s shelf, each with a mini-review.

Product Announcements

New products and special events announced this week.

• Nova Praxis – A Transhuman Sci-fi FATE Role-Playing Game by Mike McConnell at Kickstarter: Take a look at this self-contained hard SF FATE game. Governing via the instant feedback of social media? Interesting idea.

• Nightfall by Fun Tyrant at Kickstarter: Nightfall brings old-school fantasy horror to 13th Age as its first third-party supplement.

• The Reliquary by RKDN Studios at Kickstarter: Sixty flavorful new items are being published for Savage Worlds, 13th Age, and Pathfinder.

• Hillfolk: DramaSystem roleplaying by Robin D. Laws at Kickstarter: Hillfolk, a game of epic personal interaction by Robin D. Laws, brings new dramatic insight to character-driven roleplaying. Take a look at all the series pitches in the stretch goals.

• The House of Dr. Chamberlain – Brent P. Newhall’s Musaeum by Brent Newhall at DriveThruRPG: Check out the new self-contained horror-themed adventure by Brent Newhall, now available for purchase.

• One Shot – A Roleplaying Game of Murder and Vengeance by Tracy Barnett at Kickstarter: A self-contained role playing game of murder and vengeance built for players. Pull the trigger and tell the entire story in a single game session.

Notes From Abroad

Other interesting articles and cool links.

• Structure First, Story Last. at Thoughtcrime Games: Don’t create the story during design. Design a space for the players to create the story while playing.

• When a GM loves an NPC at RPG Musings: How to identify and work around the dreaded “precious snowflake” NPC.

• The Fish Tank as a Mystery at Gnome Stew: Think of a situation as a stable aquarium filled with piranhas, then toss the PCs in and watch the water churn. Then use this five-step process to generate adventures around mysteries.

• Kickstarter for RPGs at Across A Table Madly: Take a listen to this interview with Tracy Barnett of Sand and Steam on his Kickstarters for School Daze and One Shot.

• Game Crafting: Project Initiation at Loremaster: A look at process management for game projects and a few things to think about as you start your project.

• Playing with good intent at Deeper in the Game: Everyone at the table needs to want to play the same game. Problem players intend to play a different game when they sit at a table, whether it’s finding fault with the rules to prove how clever they are or fighting for social dominance with the rest of the players.

• ACKS – Domain Level Review (Carpathia) – Part 4 at The Lair Of Lubidius: Take a look at this series of articles about building a domain from the ground up in ACKS. Given my interest in domain-level games, I had to pick up the rules.

• Map of Earthsea at Tower of the Archmage: What’s better than a map of Earthsea? A map of Earthsea drawn by Ursula K. LeGuin.

• Trade Goods at Telecanter’s Receding Rules: Need to figure out what the caravan is hauling when the party hires on as guards and starts asking questions? Roll on this fantasy-themed table of trade goods and prepare to figure out how heavy a barrel of honey is.

• Geeks welcome! – Lifestyle – Boston.com: Here’s a primer covering some of the gaming resources available in and around Boston.

• A Social Media Campaign for Your RPG Campaign at Gnome Stew: Use your favorite social media tool to keep your players hooked between sessions.

• With New Opportunities Comes New Etiquette by Robin D. Laws at Robin D. Laws: In these days of unlimited availability, none of us has the time to keep up with our friends never mind complete strangers looking for free publicity. Think before you blindly reach out to a creator you admire.

• The Future of Talking About Games at Playing D&D with Porn Stars: Zak looks at how Google+ has taken the deep interaction baton from forums, and how that changes the way gamers exchange ideas online.

• Twilight: 2000 – 28 Years After the Apocalypse at Geeky & Genki: A review and remembrance of this classic post-apocalyptic military game.

• The Case For Maps And Minis at RPG Musings: Use maps and minis to augment your imagination and keep track of what’s happening in your game, especially for players who need something visual to connect with the imaginary action.

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 “Dirty Old Wizard” pick-up lines, an online tool to mark up modern maps, and 20 unique groups of entertainers.

• Roving Band of Misfits publishes their Weekly Roundup column every Sunday. This week's Columbus Day Edition gives us spell research and martial training for D&D 4e, game plots inspired by a trip to France, and making a portable wargaming table.

• 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 one of RinCon’s coordinators, a plug for Roll20, and changing how plyaers use technology in tabletop games.

• Intwischa publishes a collection of links for the week every Tuesday. Take a look at Links for the Week of October 2 to find a series of articles on megadungeons, struggles with power and balance, and ending your campaign before it drags on and goes stale.

• Critical Hits aggregates their Twitter feed and publishes it on Sundays under Critical Bits. This week’s Critical Bits mentions the 2012 Golden Geek awards, a talk with Greg Costikyan about the Star Wars RPG, and the Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition Deluxe Kickstarter.

Yes, it’s a Wednesday and not a Monday, but we tripped across Intwischa’s links of the week recently and decided we had to share. That and we hit critical mass in the article database. So take a gander, click through, share some traffic, and feel free to let us know if we missed something significant to your RPG interests. Enjoy!

At Home

Articles posted here on The Gamer Assembly.

Away

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

• It’s a GenCon Circus by Brian Liberge at Thoughts from Brian Liberge: Catch up with what Brian has been doing lately. Interviews, podcasts, and the Boston Festival of Indie Games.

• On Path-Changing and Little Intentional Deaths by T.W.Wombat at Wombat’s Gaming Den of Iniquity: The mid-life crisis will be blogged. Taking inspiration from character generation to change gears in life.

• Domain Game: What To Do? by T.W.Wombat at Wombat’s Gaming Den of Iniquity: Explore domain actions for the Domain Game, including creating and destroying holdings, agitating for change, and producing or refining trade goods.

Product Announcements

New products and special events announced this week.

• The Round 10 Tabletop RPG System by Nicholas Kory at Kickstarter: A tabletop RPG engine that plays well for all levels from rookie to expert and that isn’t stuck in a single play style or setting seems to be a holy grail of sorts. Round 10 thinks it unlocked the secret.

• Boston Festival of Indie Games: On Saturday September 22, 2012, indie game designers will descend upon MIT for a free festival of tabletop, digital, and LARP games. If you’re in the area, head on down and play some games!

• Dungeon Crawler Minis :: Tidal Wave (DCM) by Gifted Vision at Kickstarter: After the Reaper Kickstarter, do you really need more minis? Signs point to “Yes”.

• Dungeonlands: Tomb of the Lich Queen by Aaron Acevedo at Kickstarter: The first product in the Dungeonlands line, Tomb of the Lich Queen takes Pathfinder or Savage Worlds PCs on a quest to free an angel trapped for thousands of years.

• September Blog Carnival: Running Games In Established Settings at Dice Monkey: The RPG Blog Carnival is on for September. Write a little something about your favorite published setting and join in.

• The Coriolis Defect RPG by Jay Little at Kickstarter: “The Coriolis Defect is a roleplaying game where characters have the ability to rewind time, allowing them to re-load the story from a ‘save point’ earlier in the narrative.”

Notes From Abroad

Other interesting articles and cool links.

• First Play: Conquest of Nerath at KoffeeKlub: Here’s a review of one of the D&D boardgames. Random dungeon treasure and conflict from the very first turn makes this Risk-like game surprisingly replayable.

• Of Cults and Moons and Sandboxes and Toys at The Crazy GM: A quick primer on the history of Occult Moon and its generic line of RPG supplements called Toys for the Sandbox.

• Mini-Review: Midgard iPad Atlas at The Iron Tavern: The maps in this campaign atlas app look very cool. Congratulations to Kobold Press for raising the bar on RPG supplement iPad apps.

• New Spell – Brewer’s Best (OSR) at Tenkar’s Tavern: Need an upgrade to your Create Water spell?

• freelancer aspirations: superior implements at A Man’s Brain-Attic: Another tale of a freelance RPG article submission. Spoiler: This one doesn’t end with a check.

• Player advice for horror role playing. at Shortymonster: Playing an effective horror game means going beyond the Social Contract and agreeing to an Emotional Contract.

• Getting your Magic Chocolate into your Techie Peanut Butter at The Wisdom Frog Croaks: Take a look at the Magitek Engineer class for your OSR games.

• A Verbis Ad Verbera (A Word and a Blow) [New Game] at Sand & Steam: Here’s the kernel of a narrative-heavy RPG where you play countries instead of people. Great stuff.

• Freelancer aspirations: the Cryomancer at A Man’s Brain-Attic: Insight into Wizards of the Coast’s process of article pitching, acceptance, and editing from a first-time freelancer.

• A Playtesting Edition of Dungeons & Dragons (1973) at Playing at the World: Take a look at a few features of the Dalluhn Manuscript and decide for yourself if it’s a playtest version of D&D from 1974.

• What’s in Development? at Schweig’s Game Design Journal: A preview of upcoming game projects from Peter Schweighofer on the creation of his new blog.

• Buy Jared’s dungeon paintings! And help out Jared! at Blog of Holding: Want to help Jared von Hindman out? Buy a print or two of his artwork.

• Thanks and Complaints instead of Success or Failure in RPGs by Daniel Solis at Daniel Solis: What if you assume all actions succeed, but you roll dice to determine if your character receives thanks or complaints?

• Difficulty Mode at Untimately: Exploring a system for different lethality levels within a single set of rules. Having a lethality dial you can adjust is an interesting idea, allowing for more flexible rules.

• Fear – Why It Is Difficult to Replicate in an RPG (and a method on how to do so)? at Tenkar’s Tavern: Fostering fear at your table is a much longer-term process than a single session in a spooky mansion.

• “Dungeons & Dragons: A Documentary” Kickstarter surges toward the finish line – National RPG | Examiner.com: Read some of the industry and blogger support of the Kickstarter for “D&D: A Documentary”.

• The Gassy Gnoll: Social Maps for Adventures? at Game Knight Reviews: Using Mind Map software to track social contacts and interactions in your RPG. Interesting idea, that.

• An Indie Publisher sales update – Something Went Wrong, 2 weeks later at Troll in the Corner: Some “behind the curtain” numbers on an inexpensive indie RPG being sold and given away on Drive Thru RPG.

• The PA Report – Dungeons & Dragons played with cards, controlled by Gary: the magic of Card Hunter at Penny Arcade: Card Hunter is an online deckbuilding game that evokes the feeling of early D&D. Look for the beta in a few months.

• Making the Game Out of the Game at Everything Will Be All Right: Thinking of rulebooks as literature instead of rulebooks as technical manuals opens up worlds of interpretation.

• 15 Minute Work Day at The Iron Tavern: Using the Conan story People of the Black Circle as a model for making dwindling resources part of the fun and challenge of an adventure.

• Momentum at Critical Hits: One GM’s struggle with self-confidence, anxiety, and getting the creativity flowing.

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 one blogger’s look at goals and motivations for his creation, articles about horses from both pro and con camps, and giving players a kick in the proactive pants.

• Roving Band of Misfits publishes their Weekly Roundup column every Sunday. This week's Tyranny Of Goblins Is Coming Edition gives us some thoughts on D&D Next, a look at skills, and character creation for the latest Lair Assault entitled “Kill The Wizard”.

• 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 ways to meet other geek parents, how American soldiers love tabletop games, and safe gaming environments.

• Intwischa publishes a collection of links for the week every Tuesday. Take a look at Links for the Week of September 18 to find ways to mine game ideas from other media or even real life, the use and overuse of archetypes, and stories about your first GM.

• Critical Hits aggregates their Twitter feed and publishes it on Sundays under Critical Bits. This week’s Critical Bits mentions the ENWorld interview with Mike Mearls, and the Roll20 Virtual Tabletop App goes open access.

Howdy, campers! Apparently the stars are aligned for the return of game companies. Both FASA and West End Games are making rumblings that they’re thinking of re-entering the marketplace.

To which I say, “Cool.” We’ll keep an eye on how those stories unfold. Until then, enjoy the links!

At Home

Articles posted here on The Gamer Assembly.

Away

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

• The Places of Pyre: The Depths by Brent Newhall at Dr. Worldcrafter: Explore the underground lair of the God-King of Pyre. The city may be dead, but can the God-King actually die?

• Marvel Girl – Marvel Datafile by Brian Liberge at Stuffer Shack: Check out this write-up of the psionic but not Phoenix-powered Marvel Girl.

• On the Psychology of RPG Groups and Table Space by Bob Smith at The Games on the Shelf: Placement and Posture around the game table, expanded from the Google+ article.

• Some thoughts on the psychology of RPG groups. by Bob Smith at Google+: Who runs the gaming table? The GM, of course. But what happens when you break down the subtle cues that enforce that authority?

• GenCon 2012 Wrap Up by Bob Smith at The Games on the Shelf: A GenCon 2012 after-action report from our own e4mafia.

• The Domain Game – Main Page by T.W.Wombat at Wombat’s Gaming Den of Iniquity: Here’s the cover page for the series of articles on the Domain Game, a way to play the kingdoms in your RPG.

• Relationship, Fact, and Opinion: A Character Development Tool by Brent Newhall at Dr. Worldcrafter: Need an easy way to socially tie the party together? Try this quick technique.

Product Announcements

New products and special events announced this week.

• Evil Hat to Publish Multi-Volume Designers & Dragons Edition at Deadly Fredly: Yes, the definitive history book of role playing, Designers & Dragons, is being revised into 4 volumes by decade and published by Evil Hat. Woo!

• Genesis Roleplaying System by Joshua Raynack at Kickstarter: A deckbuilding RPG? This looks like a really interesting system for those of us who like a little randomness without using dice.

• Tenra Bansho Zero – An Art and Culture-Rich RPG from Japan by Andy Kitkowski at Kickstarter: Want to play an RPG set in a magic-rich anime world with mecha? Look no further.

• The Great Khan’s One Page Dungeon Contest at Ramblings of a Great Khan: Two words: Viking Mega-Dungeon. Submit your adventure before October 1, 2012 for a fridge magnet and a chance to pick an old-school 1e adventure module from the Great Kahn’s archives.

• FASA Games, Inc. at facebook: FASA is coming back! Here’s a link to their Facbook page, asking you what you liked and didn’t like about old FASA products. Thanks to Sean Patrick Fannon for the signal boost, or I’d’ve missed it.

• Low Life Miniatures by Andy Hopp at Kickstarter: You need these oddball minis. I have no idea what you’ll use them for other than the Low Life game, but you need them.

• Gimme Your Weird Adventures Contest at From the Sorcerer’s Skull: Weird adventure seeds needed! Submit by September 17, 2012 for a chance to win a $10 Amazon gift certificate or a hardcover of Weird Adventures.

• Across a Table Madly 1: What’s So Great About Eclipse Phase? at RPG Musings: Those mad podcasters discuss Eclipse Phase in the first real episode of “Across a Table Madly”.

• tremulus: a storytelling game of lovecraftian horror by Sean Preston at Kickstarter: Take Apocalypse World, add Fiasco and FATE, then flavor it with Lovecraftian horror and you have tremulus. Pledge now and you’ll have the PDFs in time for Halloween.

• Drunk Quest by Jasn Painter at Kickstarter: You got your drinking game in my D&D!

Notes From Abroad

Other interesting articles and cool links.

• Friday Question : Fantasy Line Up at Gothridge Manor: Who would you draft from fiction or film to put in your 6-person party?

• Turning Reaction into Proaction – plotting techniques to get your players moving at Campaign Mastery: Here are some ways to get your players involved in developing and driving plots for your game.

• Eric Gibson of West End Games at Farsight Blogger: Remember West End Games? They published d6 Star Wars, among other things. Here’s a forum post mea culpa from WEG’s guy-in-charge.

• Cassini at xkcd: What would happen if the earth’s poles were shifted 90 degrees? Finding the answer and explaining the resulting biosphere changes involves some great food for thought for worldbuilding.

• The Year of the Game at Kickstarter: Kickstarter has released some stats on the massive increases in funding for game projects. Great graphs declare that it’s the year of the game.

• Why Imagining the End of the World is a Great Idea at Year of the Dungeon: Picturing an apocalypse really gets your creative juices flowing, both to describe what happens after the end and to identify decision points for PCs to explore as the end happens.

• Rock, Paper, Scissors at Untimately: A look at Read Magic’s role in OD&D, and how spells function as shortcuts for character abilities.

• YOU WILL EX-TERR-MINATE THE PEE-CEES at Critical Hits: Reflecting on Dr. Who, modular campaigns, and the inverse ratio of shrinking time to growing campaign complexity that plagues us as we age.

• No more Kickstarters for me – Publishing Pitfalls at There’s Dungeons Down Under: One opinion on the slow return on investment seen in most Kickstarter RPG projects.

• Hard Questions about the RPG Kickstarter Revolution at Hill Cantons: A look at some of the shortcomings of the Kickstarter crowdfunding model.

• Dark Worlds at Thieves Of Time: A free Lovecraftian horror hack of Apocalypse World.

• [HOUSERULES] Revisiting Corruption… at HeroPress: What happens when a mage plays with powers not meant for men? Roll 2d20 and check this table…

• Ghosts at Loca Imaginaria: What if the bad guy is far too powerful for the PCs? What if they die and end up inside an artifact with other ghosts and spirits? Cool campaign idea.

• 90 Minute D&D at Deeper in the Game: Want to strip down D&D to its simplest-running form to run incredibly fast for introducing RPGs to non-gamers? Try this.

• Dungeoneering For Real… at HeroPress: Ever wonder what you can see when you’re carrying a torch? Check out this video for some real-life testing of torches.

• Expeditious Retreat Press is Giving Away Free Adventures in PDF at Tenkar’s Tavern: Follow Expeditious Retreat’s blog and they’ll give you a free adventure PDF.

• Sword Lords (1981) at Mesmerized by sirens: Download an old-school RPG wargame that focuses on army battles and ship-to-ship combat.

• Planning the Start of a New Campaign – My Process at RPG Musings: Follow one GM’s process to start a new campaign, focusing on what to prepare for immediate use at the table.

• Across a Table Madly – Episode 0: An Introduction at RPG Musings: Introducing a new RPG podcast called “Across a Table Madly”. Sounds good to me.

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 Best Laid Plans Edition to see different ways to haul your gaming stuff to games, a 10,000-roll randomness comparison between dice from different manufacturers, and great tips for getting the n00bs at your table up to speed.

• Roving Band of Misfits publishes their Weekly Roundup column every Sunday. This week’s Out Of The Loop Edition gives us a podcast on D&D vs. Story Games, pictorial inspiration for horror games, and tools for the lazy DM to facilitate improvisational games.

• 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 article on transmedia collabrative storytelling, Oregon Trail Live in Oregon (beware of dysentery), and instructional design in RPGs.

• Critical Hits aggregates their Twitter feed and publishes it on Sundays under Critical Bits. This week’s Critical Bits mentions nominations for the 2012 Golden Geek Awards, Designers & Dragons at Evil Hat, and an article at io9 on new games from Fantasy Flight.

Here we are once again, sharing two weeks of obsessively gathering gaming links from across the internet. For those of you just waking up from a month-long nap, GenCon happened a week ago. As you may imagine we have a few links in here about that particular event.

If you have something you want announced, by all means pass it on in the comments or in the chat. But for now, enjoy the links!

At Home

Articles posted here on The Gamer Assembly.

Away

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

• The Places of Pyre: The Priest-Mechanics’ District by Brent Newhall at Dr. Worldcrafter: Explore the district of the people who built the dead city of Pyre. Just mind the ancient constructs.

• The Places of Pyre: The Unmentionables’ District by Brent Newhall at Dr. Worldcrafter: See the ruins of where the working class lived in the dead city of Pyre. The undead run rampant here.

• Captain Britain – Marvel Editable Datafile by Brian Liberge at Stuffer Shack: Grab this data sheet and start playing Captain Britain tonight.

• Monsters of the Shattered World #3: A Clutch of Kobolds by Brent Newhall at Troll in the Corner: Andreas, Apprentice Scholar of the White Order, details his encounter with a group of kobolds in this audio letter. Third in the series of Monsters of the Shattered World.

• Meanwhile, In The Game Box… by T.W.Wombat at Wombat’s Gaming Den of Iniquity: A photo diary of a trip down Memory Lane by way of a box of RPGs past.

• Non-Sequiturs, Inspiration, and Blowing Off Steam by T.W.Wombat at Wombat’s Gaming Den of Iniquity: Sometimes you just need to do something silly, like a non-sequitur-off over Twitter. Now grab one of the ideas and make a game element out of it.

• Schrödinger’s Gun GMing: Monsters on the Fly by T.W.Wombat at Wombat’s Gaming Den of Iniquity: Make yourself a Monster Stack and then you can build monsters just before you need them in combat.

• The Dogs of War by John Pope at Daily Encounter: A homebrew mass combat system, inspired by AD&D’s Battlesystem. Part of the Classics Return blogfest.

• Birthright Domains in 4e. by T.W.Wombat at Wombat’s Gaming Den of Iniquity: Ever wanted to describe Birthright provinces in terms of D&D 4e? Try this system. Part of the Classics Return blogfest.

• A late start to the “Classics Return” Blog Carnival by Adam Page at Daily Encounter: So many classic D&D products and settings have yet to be updated for 4th edition. Classics Return is a blogfest dedicated to fan updates to these classic settings.

• All I Want for Christmas is the Next Basic Set by T.W.Wombat at Wombat’s Gaming Den of Iniquity: The latest playtest materials couldbe reformatted into a basic set. And with luck, that could be ready for the Christmas season this year. Also a plea to consider the BECMI model of releasing sets based on tier.

• A return to spell research and manipulation by Adam Page at Daily Encounter: Porting spell research into D&D 4e makes for more flexible arcane casters. Part of the Classics Return blogfest.

• A Solo D6 Wargame: Tabletop Conquest by Brent Newhall at Dr. Worldcrafter: Take a shot at capturing the enemy capital in this random one-player game of conquest.

Product Announcements

New products and special events announced this week.

• Kaidan Campaign Setting (PFRPG) by Steve Russell at Kickstarter: Imagine a Japanese horror dark fantasy setting for Pathfinder featuring a dictatorial undead child emperor-for-eternity. Now go read more about it.

• 13th Age expansion book: 13 True Ways by Fire Opal Media at Kickstarter: Want to play a druid or monk in 13th Age? How about rules for dragon riding? Or details for forests and monastic orders making them as distinctive as cities? Then check out 13 True Ways.

• August DCC RPG Contest – Get Some Corruption and Maybe Win a Prize! at Tenkar’s Tavern: Submit a new corruption for Dungeon Crawl Classics in August and you may win free PDFs!

• Operation Jared Tech by Tracy Hurley at Indiegogo: Jared von Hindman writes the Wizards of the Coast column “D&D Outsider” and illustrates games of all stripes by creating unique pieces of art. He’s currently in the hospital and in need of a new laptop and other supplies to let him continue to create his visual art while recuperating.

• Our first new microgame! at Machine Age Productions: The first Kickstarter-promised minigame from Machine Age is out! Here’s the announcement for Radio Show: Martian Miscreants with a link to the free download.

• Lots of Changes at Innsmouth Free Press at Innsmouth Free Press: If you write horror fiction, take a look at Innsmouth Free Press’s increased rates and format/content changes.

• Carnage Moves to Killington, Vermont in 2013: Carnage, Vermont’s tabletop gaming convention, is moving to Killington in 2013. This year’s Carnage runs November 2-4, 2012 at Lake Morey Resort.

• Ogre Pocket Edition Sent To Printers at Daily Illuminator: The Ogre Pocket Edition will be released at it’s 1977 price of $2.95. And it’s headed to the printers right now, all 140 tokens’ worth.

Notes From Abroad

Other interesting articles and cool links.

• Another Approach to Races at Untimately: Let’s leave the standard interpretation of elves and dwarves behind and consider them in a new light for OSR games. Bonus: you can play a Beastling if you don’t mind low Int, Wis, and Cha scores.

• GenCon 2012: Nykki GM’s with GoD at Starting Young: Come read a tale of running Indie Games on Demand for the first time at GenCon 2012, filled with equal measures scathing self-doubt and resounding success.

• Game Fodder: Journey of the Sword – Into the Fire at Game Knight Reviews: How can smelting metal inspire plots and adventures in your game? Read some of these great ideas and find out.

• Kickstarter Fatigue and Crowdsourcing Your Funding at facebook: A discussion on the myth of Kickstarter Fatigue and coining the term “fanwidth”.

• Hack Goblish at Of Dice and Djinn: Use this random table to hack together words in Goblish. Linguistic purists, avert thine eyes.

• Coordinating a Game Day at Take On Rules: Jeremy searches for horror stories and other advice about running a game day. His list of questions makes me think about running something similar. Can’t wait to read more feedback on this one.

• The Technocratic Union v2.0 at Ryan Macklin: Ryan has been named as the Mage: the Ascension Technocracy Convention developer, and he shared some details about what that means.

• Gen Con 2012: D&D Keynote and More at Critical Hits: Dave Chalker gives his take on the GenCon 2012 experience.

• Willfully and Persistently – Gen Con 2012: Beggars at the Feast: Robin Lea recounts her GenCon 2012 experience from setting up the Peryton Press booth, to running games, to brushes with gaming greats, this sounds like a great time all around.

• Giff Return at Daily Encounter: Rich Green updates the Spelljammer hippo-like race for D&D 4e. Part of the Classics Return Blogfest.

• Rules of Wonderland at Playing D&D with Porn Stars: Zak will be writing an Alice in Wonderland adventure for D&D. Take a look at some of his guiding principles.

• Of the productivity of peasants and the price of rations at The Dragon’s Flagon: This level of economic analysis can benefit almost any game. When a peasant soldier earns 1gp/month and food costs 5gp/week, something doesn’t make sense on your price list.

• Willpower in Traveller at Untimately: Read how having a low Intelligence score in Traveller can help your character become more buff.

• Use the PCs’ Actions to Tell a Great Story at Gnome Stew: An elven ranger kills the evil sorceress with an arrow imbued with the power of a child’s tear. That’s an awesome story that never would have happened if the GM didn’t run with the player’s decision to comfort a distraught child.

• The Fragile Foundation of Skills at Some Space to Think: Rob explores our assumptions with skills and alternate ways to simulate Mad Skillz without fighting the system and failing far too often.

• YOUR DICE HATE YOU – Free download poster at Dork Tower: Free poster exposing proof of what all gamers know to be true.

• Praise for a Subsystem of 1e AD&D at Telecanter’s Receding Rules: A look at the Oriental Adventures system of building your own martial art with an eye toward adapting it for more modern play.

• Joining the Party: Fantasy Web Series by Tracy Hurley at Wizards of the Coast: Tracy takes a look at several webseries based on or inspired by D&D. There’s also the usual great assortment of Tavern Tales community links.

• Subcontracting Your Villain Work at Roving Band of Misfits: Need an extra shot of creativity in your game? Give away some creative control and have someone play an NPC villain. Your group won’t know what hit them.

• And the Killer is… at From the Sorcerer’s Skull: Weird Adventures makes a killer murder mystery, as detailed in this account of a recent game session.

• What Is A Game Designer? at Dinofarm Games: Written for computer games, the ideas are applicable to tabletop game designers as well. A designer isn’t just someone with an idea that coerces others to develop products.

• Shakespeare & Dragons Podcast at Enderra: If you haven’t heard Shakespeare & Dragons, the story-centric world-building podcast by Paul Stark, go devour the archives. Great stuff.

• Grand Experiments: West Marches at ars ludi: Ben set up a campaign with a stable of 14 players and put all the scheduling and creative control in the hands of those players. Here’s a series of articles on how he did it.

• Simplifying D&D (You know, for kids?) at Wired: Kevin Mackice walks through how he slimmed down D&D 4e’s rules in creating DnDish to engage his kids.

• Record-breaking Gen Con at ICv2: The attendance figures are still being counted, but Gen Con 2012 was the largest on record for space used and retailers in attendance.

• How Technology is Changing RPGs – GenCon 2012 on Vimeo: Great insights on, problems with, and ideas about technology in tabletop RPGs from developers in the business.

• A Night’s Work (Shadowrun promo, 1990) at YouTube: Watch the infamous and horribly-done Shadowrun promo film.

• Moving Pieces at Some Space to Think: Rob noodles on static vs. dynamic GMing and reactive vs. proactive players and what each combination means for your table’s play style.

• On How Clerics Really Work at Hack & Slash: What if clerics ONLY get spells while adventuring in service to their god? The healing dynamic in this style of game would look very different than a “standard” high fantasy game.

• Campaign Wiki LinksToWisdom: HomePage: take a look at this wiki containing links to OSR house rules and other general RPG coolness.

• Asteroid Mining – Most Valuable and Profitable Asteroids Ranking – Asterank: For those of you looking for real-life resources for your near-future SF game, check out the relative value of asteroids.

• Why Pathfinder Will Remain #1 at Quest For Fun!: A look at the dynamics between D&D and Pathfinder from a marketing standpoint. Unless Wizards redefines the game, D&D Next might not surpass Pathfinder’s sales when it comes out.

• Improving Player Choices at Gamasutra: Making player choices important and relevant is a game designer’s job. Here’s a treatise that analyzes choices in terms of game design.

• Principles of an Indie Game Bottom Feeder at Gamasutra: TL;DR. 1) Find a niche that the mainstream producers have overlooked. 2) Develop a game in that niche. 3) Profit.

• D&D Podcast: Penny Arcade/PvP #3 (of 4) at Wizards of the Coast: The Acquisitions, Inc. conversion to D&D Next continues with a spotlight on advantage, disadvantage, and the Fighter’s Expertise pool.

• Links of the Week on Hiatus at Keith Davies – In My Campaign: Sad as it is, there isn’t much return on the investment of collecting and curating RPG links. Keith has put his Links of the Week column on permanent hiatus.

• RPG Designer’s Reference Library at Wild Musings: A tour of one designer’s reference library across several subject categories. Great stuff in here in inform RPGs of all genres.

• Highlights From the WotC D&D Next Gen Con Keynote Address at Tenkar’s Tavern: A cynical grognard’s 5-point summary of the WotC GenCon 2012 keynote.

• Level Drain at Untimately: Modifying level drain effects for OD&D, so that 1st level party doesn’t instantly die when confronted with a Wight.

• Data Mining RPG Interests at Mithril & Mages: How do you find other interest threads followed by other gamers? A lovely idea of how searching should work that goes beyond the blog.

• On the Non-Standard Phase at Hack & Slash: A look inside the Deathless Gods game folder after the Site Exploration phase.

• Quick and dirty Spelljammer for D&D Next at Fjords of Africa: Spelljammer hacked to fit into D&D Next? Yes, please.

• So you want to write an RPG module at Thick Skull Adventures: Check out this great collection of tips for creating and publishing adventures.

• Some Space to Think: Icons and d20Tech at Some Space to Think: A mini-review of 13th Age and how it ties characters to Icons. The idea of NPCs-as-setting has come home to roost.

• Year One Tips For Running Google+ Games at Playing D&D with Porn Stars: As the title says, here’s a pile of tips for running games on G+. Many tips are also applicable for con games and games in general. Best overall tip: Let the players do something as quickly as possible.

• D&D Documentary to Explore ‘The Most Influential Game in History’ at Wired: Yes, there’s a D&D documentary in the works. Check out the trailer and watch for the Kickstarter in the fall of 2012.

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 how to keep your players excited between game sessions, several reactions to GenCon, and making the perfect three-minute NPC.

• Roving Band of Misfits publishes their Weekly Roundup column every Sunday. This week’s Decompressing From GenCon Edition gives us some steps for starting a successful new campaign, posts reacting to both GenCon and the Reaper miniatures Kickstarter, and Wesley K. Hall’s art for a now-defunct Gamma World Deck of Many Things project.

• 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 a five-minute survey on character design in games. For science!

• Critical Hits aggregates their Twitter feed and publishes it on Sundays under Critical Bits. This week’s Critical Bits mentions the Star Wars RPG dice app for iPhone and Android, the 13 True Ways Kickstarter, and Critical Hits passing 3,000 posts and 30,000 comments this week. Congratulations on those impressive milestones!

• 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. As mentioned above, the Links of the Week series is on semi-permanent hiatus, so we’ll be dropping this entry from our MetaRoundup section. Do yourself the favor of checking out the archives – each post is packed with wonderful links and insightful commentary.

It’s Monday, and I just don’t feel right without publishing a Weekly Assembly. Odd, that. I think the cancellation of the regular series gave me permission to miss a week or two at a time and not feel badly about it. I’ve changed the name to the Nigh-Weekly Assembly to reflect the new not-every-week status.

This week is filled with GenCon prep, or CONCurrent prep if you can’t make it to Indianapolis. And to help you prepare, have some free downloads and other inspirational links. Enjoy!

At Home

Articles posted here on The Gamer Assembly.

Away

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

• The Places of Pyre: The Warriors’ District by Brent Newhall at Dr. Worldcrafter: Explore warrior training facilites in the dead city of Pyre, and try an ancient test as you try to survive the Gauntlet of Chains.

• 50 Games in 50 Weeks: Houses of the Blooded by Brent Newhall at Dr. Worldcrafter: In Brent’s quest to experience several new games this year, here’s how he reacted to his first time running Houses of the Blooded.

• Another Classic? by Adam Page at Daily Encounter: Another Classics Return preview article that uses the name Greyhawk as inspiration for a new secret society complete with a 4e PC theme.

• Scarlet Witch – Marvel Datafile by Brian Liberge at Stuffer Shack: Brian writes up the Scarlet Witch for your Marvel game.

• Quicksilver – Marvel Datafile by Brian Liberge at Stuffer Shack: Need a fast villain? Try Quicksilver for your next Marvel game.

• On Scaling Monsters by T.W.Wombat at Wombat’s Gaming Den of Iniquity: Why should PCs have all the advancement fun? If you’re willing to put in a little work, that Kobold Archmage could give your party a run for their money.

Product Announcements

New products and special events announced this week.

• The GM’s Real-World Reference by Tristan Zimmerman at Kickstarter: Here’s a collection of one-page snippets of places, events, and people from the world we all share to inspire you to create something in your game world. I really like this idea.

• Dragons Gameboard by Brass Monkey at Kickstarter: A virtual tabletop that the entire table can control through their Android or iOS devices? Color me interested.

Notes From Abroad

Other interesting articles and cool links.

• Third book, “Magical Environments, Effects, and Events” released for free. at Reddit: Looking for a magical bit to add to your fantasy game? How about a Chrono Storm or Fate Volcano or Willpox? Take a look at these three free collections of goodies for more ideas.

• Composite Skill Bonuses in the d20 System at Loremaster: If your PCs are using several skills at once, why not collapse them into a single roll? This method also handles cases of “missing” skills, like having the Paladin sneak past a group of Ogres using a distraction. An excellent idea from FASA’s Star Trek ported to D&D’s skill system.

• 1st Edition AD&D Special Edition at Original Edition Fantasy: A look at the pros and cons of the premium reprints of the original 3 AD&D books.

• The “Google Translate” Name Game at Intwischa: Need a name for your game? Fire up Google Translate and plug in a couple of relevant words. Problem solved.

• Tenkar’s Minor Magical Tidbits – Backbiter at Tenkar’s Tavern: Need to increase your backstab multiplier in AD&D? Put one of these short swords in your game. Nicely done, and not a huge power boost.

• Delver Signs at Iron Canyons: Great idea for mysterious graffiti in previously-explored dungeons.

• AD&D’s Apocalypse and Hereafter at Hill Cantons: AD&D’s random tables imply that the world has recently been devastated, with fortresses in the wilderness overwhelmingly populated with brigands.

• Star Wars High School Breakfast Club: Great art for high school versions of Star Wars characters, and an excellent mashup with The Breakfast Club.

• Elf & Magic-User Sumerian LL Spell Names / Command Words at Darves Hill: Using Sumerian words as either arcane names or verbal components for Labyrinth Lord spells. Great resource!

• Here be dragons: A look at virtual game tables – TechHive Beta Blog: A look at the state of the VTT arena with mini-reviews of Roll20, Tabletop Forge, and MapTool.

• A Billion Years? at Monte Cook Games: Monte dives a little deeper into what he wants out of a setting a billion years in the future.

• Playtester Profile: NewbieDM at Wizards of the Coast: Nice interview with NewbieDM as part of the D&D Next Playtester Profiles series.

• FATE SF: Interview With Sarah Newton, Part I at FATE SF: A great discussion of old school systems and new rulesets with the designer of Mindjammer.

• DragonQuest: Remember the old RPG from SPI/TSR called DragonQuest? Someone managed to get several versions of the rules online.

• The Storyteller’s Tools at Some Space to Think: What happens when the storyteller doesn’t have all the answers about where the story goes next, like when a GM starts the story and the players pick it up?

• MEOW: a way of looking at conflict resolution at Deeper in the Game: A way to think about conflict in RPG rules, using a four-axis model. Useful for determining if the creative decisionmaking work you and your players want to do fits with the rules.

• Hackmaster Basic is Free! at Kenzer & Company: Kenzer & Co. have released Hackmaster Basic for free. Go grab yourself a 231-page PDF with cover art by Erol Otus.

• In Praise of Modules at Untimately: Why use a pre-fab adventure? “…to charge my own creative batteries by basking in someone else’s creative light.”

• The Google Plus Epicenter Shift at Hill Cantons: A look at how the vibrant gaming community on Google+ has changed the blogosphere for good and for ill.

• On Interesting Treasure, The Snake Ring at Hack & Slash: Nice ring with open-ended rumor/lore story ideas attached.

• Reality Makes the Best Fantasy: Traffic and Crowd Control at Troll in the Corner: Ever thing about how crowds and traffic impact your game setting, especially in cities? Use these questions to flesh out crowd dynamics in your game.

• Getting Your Ideas out of Your Head at 2d6cents: Write it down so the ferret will let you sleep.

• Make-A-Geas at Critical Hits: Make Vanir dance like a monkey on a string as he completes your quest at GenCon this year.

• THAC2, OD&D AC, and Combat Ranks at Untimately: Sometimes the simple approach makes sense, like sticking with only 3 armor types from OD&D.

• On the Monster, Random, Wandering or Otherwise at Hack & Slash: Analyzing random vs. wandering monsters and what each type costs the party.

• RPG Pitches goes live! at Teutonic Blogging: Need some help pitching a new system to your players? Take a look at this tool for a list of inspiring taglines by system in German and English.

• Experimenting with 4E at Robert J. Schwalb: This article picks apart the bonus progression in 4e and sees how changing the progresion would change the game.

• 5 reasons to play D&D at Grimm Wisdom: Some great insights on why we play RPGs.

• 5 Ways You Don’t Realize Movies Are Controlling Your Brain at Cracked.com: Written to focus on movies and TV, but these points are every bit as relevant to RPGs. Stories can hack your mind and make you believe, and there’s no way for your brain to tell reality from fiction. It all boils down to what you focus on.

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 some great ideas for underground encounters, a guide to personality traits and motivations, and signature attack powers for your Epic-Tier 4e characters.

• Roving Band of Misfits publishes their Weekly Roundup column every Sunday. This week's Gencon Excitement Edition gives us a history lesson featuring the second roleplaying game ever invented, 10 reasons why D&D is better than an MMORPG, and how to draw old-school maps in Excel.

• 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. I don’t see a post for this week as of the time of publication.

• 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 Backup Ribbon Project, and Not In The Kitchen Anymore’s latest sample of online harassment.

• Critical Hits aggregates their Twitter feed and publishes it on Sundays under Critical Bits. This week’s Critical Bits mentions D&D Next character generation with Penny Arcade, Monte Cook’s Kickstarter for his new game Numenera, and the GetGamers iOS app to find other local gamers.