Hey, gang! Sorry for getting this out a day late this week. Unexpected holidays have a way of turning well-maintained schedules into discrete piles of goo. We’ve decided to maintain the D&DNext links on a wiki page instead of clogging the Weekly Assembly with heaps of speculation, though the MetaRoundup is overwhelmingly D&D Next-heavy. Enjoy this week’s links!

At Home

Articles posted here on The Gamer Assembly.

January’s theme at The Gamer Assembly is The Beginning of the End, in honor of the end of the Mayan calendar cycle.

Check out 3 Generations After the End, aka 3GATE, our system-independent post-apocalyptic setting which we’re developing this month.

D&D 5e Goes Indie? by Brent Newhall shares some thoughts about public playtesting for the next edition of D&D.

3GATE: Tomas’s Kingdom, Stronghold by Brent Newhall gives us a tour of one warlord’s ambitious country carved from the chaos.

D&D 4e Comment Thread Bingo by Brent Newhall lets you play along as “I like 4e” threads merrily burn down forums across the ‘Net.

3GATE: The Wolves of Thanatos by DeusInnomen introduces us to a group of bloodthirsty wizard-hunters who can dampen magic.

3GATE: The Races by Brian Liberge shows us some options for playable races in this post-apocalyptic world.

3GATE: Monsters by Brent Newhall brings some of the more common monsters in The Valley to life with game stats for 5 systems.

Away

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

The State of the Brian by Brian Liberge. Brian offers his take on the new edition of D&D, from the prospective of someone just beginning to Freelance.

And then there was 5e? by Brian Liberge Where Brian gets arguementative with his co-hosts on RPG Circus on the new edition of D&D.

A Better Adventure: Scenarios by Brent Newhall describes an alternative to the traditional adventure.

A Response to an Open Letter to D&D Next’s Art Department by digitaldraco argues for more inclusion in D&D’s art tempered with a side of romance and flirty sexuality.

Fudged Mouse Guard by Brent Newhall describes his experience running a game of Mouse Guard using a free system based on Fudge.

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 last week. 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.

FLASHBACK! Speculation on D&D Third Edition pre-GenCon and post-GenCon in 1999.

Playing the Pathfinder Boxed Set with a 3-year-old on YouTube shows how playing with young kids can be awesome.

A Game Divided Against Itself by Jeff Grubb provides some perspective on the D&D edition wars with a history of the controversies surrounding each new edition of D&D.

Hex Ranger at Exploding Dice expands Brent‘s recent 3 Dice Dungeon solo game into a game of frontier space exploration, where you play a Space Ranger battling aliens and exploring lost ruins.

Dice Mechanics: Fate by Jeff at House Rule is an excellent analysis of the mechanics of FATE, and why they provide more intuitive randomization effects than, say, d20.

Top 5 Ways to Speed Up Tabletop RPG Combat from Troll in the Corner features five solid, simple ways to keep combat moving, particularly in a D&D3.x/4E/Pathfinder game.

gameshelped.org is a new initiative to collect stories of how games helped improve your life. It’s good to focus on the positive aspects of games. Please take a look and contribute if you can.

New Year New Game (NYNG) comes from the folks over at Gnome Stew. It’s an annual challenge for GMs to run a new game in the new year. Join the blog carnival and enter their contest for a chance to win a pile of prizes.

Seth Godin doesn’t identify as a gamer, but his blog post outlining the TED Imperatives gives anyone in the RPG community some guidelines for defusing edition war-like-arguments before they escalate to Holy War status. Many of us skip the first 2 steps: Be Interested and Be Generous.

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!