Howdy, campers! Welcome to this 14th edition of Weekly Assembly. It seems hard to believe we’ve been gathering links for over 3 months now, but here we are. Enjoy this week’s offerings!

At Home

Articles posted here on The Gamer Assembly.

Only 25 Gaming Days Until PAX East! If you’ll be in Boston on Easter weekend April 6-8, you owe it to yourself to attend the best gaming con. Three-day passes have sold out, but you can still pick up day passes. We’ll be there running the “Fix Your RPG Problems with the RPG Doctor and Gamer Assembly” panel on Friday, April 6 at 7 pm in the Merman Theatre. Will we see you there?

March’s Blog Theme at The Gamer Assembly is “Gaming in the Modern Age”. Have an RPG article idea set in Information Age earth? Contact us for guest blogger opportunities!

The Call To Assembly, Volume 1, our collection of the first 2 months of Gamer Assembly posts is now available as a free PDF at RPG Now and as a not-free printed magazine at Lulu!

Modern Complications Table by Brian Liberge gives 50 ideas for random happenings in your modern game. Use it in good health, even while fending off your food coma as your cell phone blares “It’s Raining Men” and you’re caught in the middle of a flashmob.

Away

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

Designing Fantasy Cities: Location by Brian Liberge is part of a series of articles about quickly giving your location depth through purpose. This time we discuss location.

Rogue Space Roleplaying Game, A review by Chris Jackson explores the flexibility of the ultra-lightweight spacefaring roleplaying game, Rogue Space.

Rogue Space: The Dark Frontier by Chris Jackson follows up on the review of the “basic” rules of Rogue Space with a review of the “full” rules, titled “The Dark Frontier.”

Schrödinger’s Gun GMing: Baiting Your Plot Hooks by T.W.Wombat provides a few tips for making your adventure hooks irresistible to your party. Throwing more hooks into the water should incite a feeding frenzy, or at least some intense intra-party discussion about what to do next.

Notes From Abroad

Other interesting articles and cool links.

Wizards of the Coast went public with their announcement about the next edition of D&D on Monday 09 January 2012. We’re collecting D&D Next links in our wiki. If we’ve missed any good ones that you’ve read, feel free to let us know in the comments or join us in the chat.

Apparently is was a good week for 800 pound gorilla mentions, as evidenced by Why D&D Next Is Important To All Of Us over at Stargazer’s World.

D&D, 5e, and eBook Formats at Writer@Large pitches digitizing D&D to not only have every rulebook and supplement available electronically, but to enhance the gameplay experience at the table.

Save Or Die over at Mist Imp’s Musings makes a case for adding resurrection and save or die mechanics back into D&D Next.

Going back to the soul of the game talks about walking the fine line between strict adherence to rules and overruling cursed dice across the previous editions over at D&D 5th edition – Addicts’ thoughts and opinions.

Greywulf brings up an interesting idea from the AD&D archives to partially de-emphasize combat in D&D in The Case For Awarding XP For Gold.

For those of you interested in skill system design, Skills: A Conclusion With 10 Rules summarizes the findings of the Skills Series at Hack & Slash with links to the rest of the articles. I’m not sure I agree with all the rules, but there’s some great food for thought in there.

Reality Makes the Best Fantasy: Alcohol (Not the Rubbing Kind) at Troll in the Corner lists plot hooks and questions for GMs and players alike about how alcohol fits into the campaign world. This series of articles provides potent brainstorming food.

More Spellcasting Malarkey takes a look at the spells known/spells per day in Monte Cook’s Arcana Unearthed with an eye toward adapting it into a BECMI-like game.

Fantasy Traveller: Noble gives us the latest career hack in the ongoing Fantasy Traveller hack over at The Wandering Gamist. Written for Mongoose Traveller, the magic noodling and career tables would fit nicely into Original Traveller’s little black books as well.

Run a lethal game? Character Binder at Gutter Cult details a way to keep players playing in Labyrinth Lord by rolling up a stable of potential PCs and keeping them in a binder waiting to be called up and played.

It’s The Squares, Man from Robin D. Laws argues that a grid on a battlemap changes the perception from Map to Game Board, and that changes our approach the game.

Blazing Ahead: City Placement asks questions about prime locations for cities and how closely to place them. The answers to these questions will help to create a programmatic map maker called Generated Worlds.

And speaking of world map generators, here’s one posted by someone at Stanford.

If a world map is too much for you, This Google+ post holds a small collection of links to random dungeon generators as gathered by Valerio De Camillis and shared by Brian Takle.

PVP Roleplaying Table 1-1: Not Paying Attention Chart gives us a lively collection of random consequences for players whose attention drifts from your game.

Obsidian Portal is having a contest as announced on their Haste Podcast, Episode 36. Post your most over-the-top, Baron Munchaussen-esque story about how you got into gaming in 200 words or less, and you’re in the running for a month of Ascendant membership and a T-shirt.

Galileo Games posted an open call for compelling character-driven fiction about people who have fallen through society’s cracks for their upcoming project The Lost: A Kingdom of Nothing Anthology. The anthology’s stories will be based in the world of their Kingdom of Nothing game.

The RPG Guy has organized a one-hour online information session entitled How To Break Into The RPG Industry and Game Design Q&A. If you’re interested, free up your schedule on Thursday March 15th, 2012 at 9PM EST.

I like the broad range of questions in this interview that Charisma Bonus did with Amanda Valentine and Cam Banks (or Grammar Vandal and the Red Kiwi) in Amanda & Cam Talk Marvel Heroic RPG.

The Fun Now Manifesto at Deeper In The Game. Never postpone having fun or finding a way to fix a game that’s not working for you.

Art Inspiration in Wizards of the Coast’s Joining The Party column provides links to all sorts of art resources that you can use for inspiration. Double-check your rights agreements before using them for anything more than inspiration, since nobody wants to run into legal problems.

Drow at Dungeons and Drawings gives us an interpretation of a drow priestess. I’d love to see that as a poster. Keep an eye on this site, as there’s new monster art posted every Sunday.

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 news to see zombie hand bookmarks, a collection of random tables so your d12 doesn’t feel neglected, the Angry DM weighing in about lethality in D&D Next, and links to GM helper smartphone apps at Campaign Mastery. Check out the Tools section for all sorts of fun things to use.