You’d think that the gaming would slow down over a school vacation week with so many students on vacation. While it feels like things have slowed down here at the Gamer Assembly, it looks like blogging has picked up across the ‘Net. We’re always looking for guest bloggers if you want to give us a shout. I’ll be putting together a post about that soon, so stay tuned. Meanwhile, enjoy the links!

At Home

Articles posted here on The Gamer Assembly.

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!

Campaign Season is upon us. Sign Up for our military-themed RPG Blog Festival hosted here at The Gamer Assembly. It runs from 19-26 March 2012.

Only 45 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 a panel on Saturday, April 7 at 12:30pm in the Merman Theatre. Will we see you there?

Modern Assembly: A 4e Hack by Brian Liberge announces Gamer Assembly’s ruleset for modern roleplaying based on D&D 4e. Stay tuned for more articles in this series over the next few weeks!

How’d You Like a Print Tabletop RPG Magazine? by Brent Newhall premieres the first printed collection of Gamer Assembly articles available now from Lulu.

Away

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

On Keeping Time by T.W.Wombat muses about timekeeping methods without clocks. Bonus pics of the proposed Trainhenge project at Stockton-on-Tees.

Love and Hate of Epic Tier by Brian Liberge gives a perspective of what Wizards nailed and missed in 4e’s Epic Tier.

Schrödinger’s Gun GMing: Agile RPGs, Scrumming Players by T.W.Wombat looks at stealing some ideas from Agile development methodology and applying them to running RPGs.

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.

PAX East will be in Boston for another 10 years. Plus, PAX East is donating $25K per year to MassDiGI, the Massachusetts Digital Games Institute.

Wizards is looking for DMs for PAX East and offering free badges and free hotel rooms in payment.

The Best of 2011 Podcast at RPG Countdown counts down the top 100 best-selling gaming items of 2011. Take a listen, then buy one from your local game store. If you mail your receipt to RPG Countdown, you and your FLGS are both in the running for $2011 (cash for you, online ads for your FLGS).

Playing D&D With Mike Mornard at Blog of Holding recounts a recent OD&D play session with a GM who played D&D at the very beginning (1971). Great insights into the origins of the game in this series of articles.

Moldvay – Dungeon Mastering as Fine Art gives us some great DMing insights from 1e D&D. Check out the rest of the Moldvay article series on Beyond the Black Gate.

Where I Learned to Stop Doubting Myself and Just Hit Things at Troll in the Corner details one journey of moving your character out of your comfort zone. “True to your character” doesn’t always equal “fun”.

Weem waxes philosophical about Epic and Immortal D&D play in I Want To Move Mountains.

In Places Deep has an ongoing Monster Monday The Groan. It’s written for AD&D, but it’s another great series to mine for ideas to use in any system.

Map Fu gives us some mapping tips from Chris Perkins to make your Battlemat downright attractive at your game table.

The Dragon Age Set 3 Playtest is available for download. Don’t choke the Green Ronin servers all at once, OK?

You can buy the Marvel Heroic Roleplaying Basic Game from Drive Thru RPG. Superheroes under the Cortex Plus rules, hot of the virtual presses!

What Is A Role Playing Game? from Intwischa provides an intro to role playing games intended to help you explain the hobby to non-gamers.

Piracy’s antidote involves customer service: giving the customer what they want for a decent price. The Oatmeal tried to watch Game Of Thrones and this is what happened.

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 the seven wonders of your game world, finding great names, and modeling terrain at your game table in new ways.