And no, that doesn’t mean edition wars. Perish the thought. We’re kicking off our new monthly theme with an RPG Blog Festival to match. Read on!
At Home
Articles posted here on The Gamer Assembly.
- February’s theme at The Gamer Assembly is Military Matters.
- Stay tuned for Campaign Season, our upcoming RPG Blog Festival hosted here at The Gamer Assembly. Interested in writing military-themed content for an RPG? The signup page will be online soon.
- The End Of The Beginning Of The End by T.W.Wombat touches on mashing conflicting ideas together to make a more compelling game.
- Campaign Season Is Upon Us officially announces the upcoming RPG Blog Festival. Keep eyes out for the sign-up page coming soon.
- Epic Endings by Brian Liberge revisits the end of his campaign and shows us how he revived it to run a more satisfying campaign wrap-up adventure.
Away
Content from people involved with The Gamer Assembly posted elsewhere across the Internet.
- Secaelia: Introduction to Player Options by Chris Jackson introduces week two of his old school campaign world, Secaelia, this time discussing player options.
- Secaelia: Player Classes and Options by Chris Jackson explains what classes should be available within the world of Secaelia, based on classes available in the Swords and Wizardry manual, plus details about how the different classes are perceived in-world.
- Swing From the Chandelier by Brent Newhall encourages us to find our PC’s inner hero and switch biases from diplomacy to action.
- Critical Hits and Magical Mishaps by Brian Liberge takes a look at what happens when you roll a natural 1 and how we can make that more fun.
- But It’s Invisible Math featuring Brian Liberge is a new podcast from RPGCircus where Invisible Math behind Leveling, Unusual Races and the History of Traveller is discussed.
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.
- Attitudes of Soldiers in Your Campaign by Ensign Expendable analyzes survey results from veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan and suggests ways to make your NPC soldiers more true-to-life. This gets the creative juices flowing for Military Matters and Campaign Season.
- Let Me Tell You About My Favorite Band at Jeff’s Gameblog turns D&D into a band and the rulesets into albums. The album titles rock.
- Thinking in the Old School – a philosophy of role playing at Troll in the Corner dives into the root of the old school gaming approach and tells some great anecdotes for illustration.
- Calling All Gamers: Help A Grad Student Out asks gamers of all stripes to fill out a personality survey for fellow gamer Michelle Drury’s Master’s Thesis in Experimental Psychology. It comes with a free analysis of your responses, but it ends soon.
- Caves of Chaos Reimagined by Weem provides a free-to-use-with-attribution awesome version of the Caves of Chaos map. It’s full color and based on the old B2 Keep on the Borderlands module. Have I mentioned it’s awesome?
- Lost Movie Found from Ethan Gilsdorf at GeekDad presents recently-uncovered Super8 footage of a D&D game from the early 1980s. That brings back memories.
- Beyond Maps and Minis by Sarah Darkmagic in her Joining the Party column collects ideas for using 3d environments, props, and sounds to make your game more immersive.
- Sandbox Games: A Collection of Links at Stargazer’s World starts collecting links related to Sandbox-style game play and tips for running a Sandbox RPG campaign.
- Dating in D&D: No One Parties Alone speaks for itself.
- Podcast Listener Survey Results and Analysis 2011 (PDF) give a great overview of podcast listeners, or at least extrapolates based on 850 survey responses. Also discussed in this episode of The Podge Cast.
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 News From Around the Net articles on Fridays. Check out this week’s roundup to see a real life megadungeon, interesting gaming Kickstarters, and Kittens in a Blender.
- Roving Band of Misfits publishes their Weekly Roundup column every Sunday. This week’s Modified Mini Edition gives us the 2e Monstrous Manual online, a random idol generation table, and a resculpted Donkey Kong mini.
- Critical Hits aggregates their Twitter feed and publishes it on Sundays under Critical Bits. This week’s Critical Bits mentions the Magic the Gathering toolbox, and the Warrens of the Stone Giant Thane module available for DDI subscribers.
