Star Wars: Saga Edition

[img_assist|nid=2750|title=|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=300|height=163]Three weeks into our new Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic campaign it became obvious: we needed a blog. Or at least, I needed a blog.

Even without leaving the Vargis Tau star system and its binary world of Zebulon we'd still managed to accumulate a dozen-odd NPCs, three or four ships, three adventure write-ups, a handful of locations. While I had references to all this stuff on my computer, it was in the form of adventure notes, and not readily browseable.

Skill challenges were one of the best things to come out of our D&D 4th Edition playtest.  Building on earlier versions that appeared in Spycraft and Unearthed Arcana, skill challenges provided an in-game mechanic for resolving non-combat conflicts and complex tasks.

One of the problems I’ve found with action points, bennies, plot points, and other similar mechanics is that unless they’re crucial to the game, players tend to forget about them. And even when they are important, keeping track of them can be a challenge as the light-weight chips or tokens get covered up, buried, or pushed out of the way.

My gaming group's used minis in our Dungeons & Dragons campaign for years, and when we playtested Star Wars we continued that tradition. I’m blessed with two players who have large collections of Star Wars minis that I can borrow and I’ve spent the last few days organizing them.

Our Dawn on Zebulon prelude campaign for Star Wars: Saga Edition hit Episode II last night, and I think to say we've hit our stride. Even with two new players joining the session with no Saga experience, our second game went as well as the first.

Our Star Wars: Saga Edition campaign kicked off on Friday with our first full-fledged Knights of the Old Republic session. Since my Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition Annotated Playtest went over so well  I decided to do the same for this Saga Edition.

Our first official Star Wars Game Day is upon us. After two weeks of playtesting starship combat, we're launching into a first-level prelude campaign with about half of our regular players in attendance (the other half having family/work commitments).

Set in the time of the Knights of the Old Republic, the campaign begins on the Outer Rim binary planet of Zebulon in the Vargis Tau system. Zebulon's comprised of two worlds: the primary, Zebulon Prime, and its sister/moon, Zebulon Beta. The later of these is home to the Jedi academy that will serve as home base for the Jedi in the campaign.

World Building

As with our Dark City D&D campaign, hashing out our Star Wars universe is going to be something of a group effort. Frequent commenter  (and longtime campaign member) Erilar worked up this excellent overview of Zebulon after I tweeted the name on Twitter:

Due to its slow orbit around "the Prime", "Zeb" Beta loses one day of sunlight every two months, dropping the temperature of the planet 50 degrees and treating the inhabitants to 75 hours of darkness and snowy chill – a fact of life that Beta denizens have always called simply, the Darkness.

[img_assist|nid=2712|title=|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=109|height=125]Our Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic campaign is kicking off next week.

That fact, combined with the timely arrival of a gift certificate to Amazon.com, has me shopping for some last-minute tools and goodies, including game master screens, battle maps, miniatures, soundtracks, and background material in the form of graphic novels and video games.

As my group's D&D Dark City campaign winds down, the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic game is ramping up. This week sees the group off because of a combination of family colds and Celtic Fest (which, given the rainy weekend forecast, will likely result in more colds, but I digress) but we've spent last few days thrashing out the KOTOR campaign. 

With Saga Edition rules and KOTOR campaign guide in hand, we've figured out some of the basics.

• Star Wars: Threats of the Galaxy
• Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
• ISBN-13: 978-0786947812
• MSRP: $34.95
• Buy it from Amazon.com

Now that it looks like my gaming group's long-proposed Knights of the Old Republic campaign may actually be coming to fruition, I've been stocking up on source books.