Welcome to The Weekly Roundup here on The Gamer Assembly!

I’m T.W.Wombat, and I’ll be managing this particular feature for the foreseeable future. We’re planning on publishing a list of links here every Friday. This idea hatched this past Tuesday, and in the first week we’ve got 20 things to tell you about. There’s nothing quite like starting a new venture with a bang, is there?

We know there’s no way to publish any sort of definitive list of RPG links, so please don’t feel offended if we missed your blog. We gather what we’ve seen and list it in a single post for your convenience, and our perception has limits. That said, if you have a link to an article you think is the gamer bee’s knees, please let us know. Feel free to join us in the chat or to contact me directly, just say that you’d like to recommend a link for the Weekly Roundup and I or one of the Stewards can add it to the list. I encourage you to recommend something you wrote and published yourself – we’re all about boosting visibility to cool ideas from the RPG community, and that means you. This column isn’t going to work for long without your help, so please spend the few minutes to make a suggestion of the coolest link you’ve seen this week by Thursday.

If you have any comments, suggestions, or other feedback, please comment below. We want to hear from you. If you like this column, please tell us! If you want to suggest changes to the page, we’ll certainly entertain suggestions. If you don’t want to comment below, please mention me on Twitter or email me directly. If I incorrectly attribute an article, definitely let me know and I’ll fix it as soon as I can. I try to verify as much as possible, but I’m just one human with a human’s blind spots.

If this is your first introduction to The Gamer Assembly, we hope you feel welcome! Please drop by our chat and introduce yourself. If you’ve got a favorite IRC client already, hop on #gamerassembly at irc.gamerassembly.net.

Thanks for visiting, and enjoy this week’s links!

At Home

Articles posted here on The Gamer Assembly Blog.

* December’s theme at The Gamer Assembly is Favorite Gaming Memories. Keep an eye out for more articles in this vein coming soon.

* Welcome to the Gamer Assembly by Brent Newhall. The quintessential first post.

* I’m Not Just D&D… by Daniel O’Crowe. A reintroduction and a link to a 26-page PDF containing weapon and armour modifications, design elements, and attachments for your cyberpunk-genre game.

* Swords to Ploughshares (Part I) by Chris Jackson. Part 1 of a 4-part series on avoiding or short-circuiting combat encounters in D&D 4e.

* How the Illuminati Made Me a Better Gamer by Brent Newhall. Have a look at Brent’s favorite gaming memory and how it applies to The Gamer Assembly.

Away

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

* Announcing: Got Loot – The Festive Blogfest Come join the community to blog about loot during the last week of the year! Open to all, with guest blogger space available!

* Back To Basics by digitaldraco at Daily Encounter. Draco comes back to D&D 4e with a different attitude and a simpler plan for game prep.

* Tema Vampiro, by Brian Liberge. Using the options already available in Heroes of Shadow I re-purpose the class as a theme, but translated into Portuguese. [4e]

* Rollin the Hunter by Brian Liberge. An epic level D&D 4e werewolf with inspiration from Kobold Quarterly #19!

* How to Play When It’s Just You by Brent P. Newhall, at the RPG Doctor. Advice on running aD&D 4e sessions with just one player and one DM.

* Schrödinger’s Gun GMing: Placing Plot Dominos by T.W.Wombat, over at Wombat’s Gaming Den of Iniquity. Thinking about Story and Plot in a flexible framework. Also includes an added dimension on top of @DaveTheGame‘s 5×5 Design Method.

* Wombat’s Headspace by T.W.Wombat, over at Wombat’s Gaming Den of Iniquity. Rambling thoughts plus a mention of The Gamer Assembly.

Notes From Abroad

Other interesting articles and cool links from all over.

* Advent Calendar OF EVIL! Keep up with a daily dose of monster art from the master of gaming caricature James Stowe. Yesterday’s Vampire rocks the house.

* Dragon Chow Dice Bags are on sale at Paizo! Congratulations to Lyndsay for closing that deal and for the high quality dice bags. Pick up a new dice bag through Paizo or at DragonChow.com.

* RPG Superstar 2012 is on! The 5th annual contest for RPG designers at Paizo started accepting entries this week. If you can make the cut for the 32 best Wondrous Items, you’ve got a shot at a publishing contract. The open call submission window closes on 06 January 2012, so get crackin’!

* Never. Stop. Making. Games. from Michael Wolf at Stargazer’s World. An amateur game designer’s rebuttal to the call for small designers to stop publishing what they love. In short, exactly how does limiting market choices to a few game systems encourage innovation?

* Riot Acts from Chris Perkins at Wizards of the Coast as part of his The Dungeon Master Experience series. Working with Epic Tier in 4e, Chris suggests thinking of individual encounters into 3 acts to make them more interesting.

* Hoarfrost Goblins by @TheIdDM at This Is My Game. Enjoy this sneaky and frosty ready-to-run D&D 4e monster complete with stats, lore, and tactics. And while we’re talking about goblins…

* Goblins! A Roleplaying Game looks like it could be piles of fun. Keep an eye out for development notes and playtesting opportunities.

* Potential – XKCD gives us some graphic backlash in response to the question, “Why aren’t you working up to your potential?” Be careful what you wish for.

That’s our list for this week. Thanks again for visiting, and we hope you come back next Friday for another Weekly Roundup!