My Star Wars: Saga Edition game has hit the summer doldrums, as our Friday sessions fall victim to August vacations, Musikfest, and back-to-school crush. We're about three-quarters of the way through our Mandalorian Interlude story arc (in which we're all playing Mandos in the opening days of the Mandalorian War), and while it's been fun, we're looking forward to getting back to our regular characters. Thanksfully, the rest of the net is keeping the Saga Edition fires burning during our downtime.

Of of the Blackrazors' pet projects has been coming up with a fantasy version of Saga Edition; you can track the progress here. Little did we know that someone had already beat us to the punch with Sword & Sorcery Saga Editon. I've downloaded the rules, and I'm looking forward to reading through them -- in particular I'm interested in seeing how they handled the two most contentious areas of our own discussions: a point buy system for skills and the addition of a Vancian magic system.

Predator starts off as a standard 1980s-style military adventure film, not unlike Swartzenager's own Commando. It's got the bad-ass elite soliders (led by Arnold's own Dutch), a bombastic soundtrack, and a pitched firefight with guerillas.

But in between the bouts of testosterone, there's tension. Our troops realize something isn't quite right -- but is it in the mission (fouled by their CIA contact) or something else?

Of course, we know it's something else ... something extraterrestrial, given that an alien spacecraft was dropped to earth by an alien starship just before the opening credits. But as to the nature of their alien adversary, that's a mystery that's revealed ever so slowly.

Remodeling my game room gave me a chance to re-organizing my role-playing game collection and dig out books I haven't touched in years. As I shelved them, I couldn't help but start to mentally order my favorite and/or most influential games. This list is the result; this is Part 2, which covers games #10 through #1. You can also read Part 1, which covers games #20 through #11.

The first role-playing game I ever played was Dungeons & Dragons. The second was Star Frontiers. Saying I "played" Star Frontiers is something of a stretch; I game mastered one or two sessions in 8th grade and that was pretty much it. Except … it was much more than that. Star Frontiers grabbed the world-building part of my brain, and wouldn't let go. I created the Starrior star system, and populated it with the benevolent megacorp known as Astro Mining & Freighting (or simply AMF). I detailed the vast starfleets of the United Planetary Federation and the smaller – yet still formidable – Starrior Milita.

I filled a three-ring binder background information, fleet configurations, and star maps that depicted the growing Starrior Republic which – looking back – was a sort of proto free market republic dedicated to fighting the threats that the UPF was too cowardly to engage (namely the vile Sathar invaders).