We’re well into Episode 5 of our Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic campaign and I’ve got to say I’ve found switching gears from fantasy to science fiction harder than I expected. 

It’s not that I don’t know science fiction; hell I’ve been reading it ever since I could read. But after a dozen years of playing D&D in Greyhawk, I’ve grown used to certain kinds of stories, and being able to rely on the genres familiar tropes and clichés.

In some ways, it’s a question of switching tropes and clichés; when writing fantasy (or designing a fantasy campaign) there are certain standard story ideas (the dungeon crawl, the rampaging monster, the damsel in distress, the crazed cult) you can pull out with barely a moment’s thought. Make a few tweaks, change some of the setup and whammo, you’ve got an adventure.

Our Star Wars campaign reached a major milestone last Friday: our heroes bought their first starship. The group is loosely divided into two factions: the Jedi padawans and the crew. The later group served aboard a ship known as the Aeon Harrier, which the Jedi occasionally contracted out for missions. It served as the group's spaceborn home for the last 15 game sessions.

Friday night, she met her end, not in flames, but on blocks. The old freighter -- a 578-R -- took a lot of hits over the last few months, engaging in firefights with pirates, narrowly escaping a shipjacking frigate, and nearly melting to slag in the heart of a protostar-rich nebula.

The Harrier barely made it home to the party's home base of Zebulon Beta, and after she landed (with only two of her three struts descending, the third having been melted closed) her captain handed the keys over to the crew (for a minor sum) and then announced his intention to spend the rest of his days drinking home-brewed alcohol and hunting.

Another week, another game of Star Wars. The adventure rolls on with a special flashback episode. Last week, our band of heroes learned of 32 Belasco Division E-company (aka the Early Birds), an Old Republic Army advance assault unit that went missing on Toprawa during the Great Sith War. This week, we'll be playing soldiers in the Early Birds, allowing us to learn first hand what happened to the division.

It's a cool idea, and one we talked about before heading into the campaign. One of our goals with our Knights of the Old Republic game is to get to play characters at low, mid and high levels. To accomplish that, we're going to occasionally jump the campaign forward a few years/levels, and then run one-shots (or multi-shots) to fill in the resulting time gaps.

For example, when the Mandalorian Wars finally arrive, we'll stop the regular campaign and jump into the skins of Mandolorian Neocrusaders invading the Republic. When we've played through their assault on some frontier world, we'll jump back into our newly-leveled up main characters, and react to the invasion.

The biggest box under the Geek Tree this year belonged to Arkham Horror, a board game I've wanted ever since my friend (and fellow Blackrazor) Lance got it a few years back.

We cracked it open for Friday's Game Day; there were only three of us to face the horrors of Shub-Niggurath because of the Christmas holiday, but we still had plenty of fun. Heck, we even managed to eek out a 17-point victory.

Leafing through the boxed set before the guys arrived I discovered that my version is the 2nd printing of the game. For the most part the game looks and plays the same as its predecessor, but there are a few notable differences: