Games

After 47 chapters, 10 episodes, and 2.5 years, our Star Wars: Shadows of the Force campaign has come to an end. What started with a fight against pirates on the jungle world of Zebulon Prime ended with against grey market salvagers in the depths of a planetary nebula. In between we saw the rise of Binary Transports, the promotion of three Jedi Knights, the training of two padawans, the discovery of an alien holocron , and numerous battles against the Force knowledge cult known as the Sith Ascendancy.

But the campaign was about far more than numbers. Along the way we changed how we play RPGs, incorporating narrative mechanics like skill challenges that created truly exceptional, truly memorable encounters, including hot-wiring a speeder while fending off high plains lizards and bouncing a starship through a proto-star nebula. We also told some really cool stories, including the adoption of a young Force sensitive Twi’lik and his training as a padawan, the epic battle with the fleet of the pirate lord Ral Duris, and lightsaber duels amid alien ruins in the sunward desert of Ryloth.

Savage Insider Issue 1 is a new Savage Worlds PDF magazine by Mystical Throne Entertainment. You can download it via RPGDriveThru.

Savage Worlds Deluxe, a hardcover version of the Savage Worlds core rules, is available as a PDF through DriveThruRPG.com. It's being pitched as a sort of special edition of the rules that expands upon, but doesn't invalidate, what came before. This version adds new setting-specific options, rules for social conflict, better and expanded examples, new artwork, and rules commentary from the creators.

I'm looking forward to the new book. I love the Explorers Edition's sleek digest format, which launched a Savage Worlds renaissance in my gaming group, but there are aspects of the rules (movement, rate of fire, vehicle chases) that I'd appreciate some elaboration on.

My review of The Unspeakable Oath #18 is up at GameCryer.com. This issue resurrects the 1990s horror RPG magazine in digital and print format, bringing with it new scenarios for Call of Cthulhu, horror reviews, and numerous adventure seeds.

Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom is an action-adventure game set in a new fantasy setting. Typical of the genre, you’ll also solve various types of puzzles as you explore and defeat enemies.

Released about a month before Christmas, this game was quickly lost in the plethora of new games at that time. I never let it leave my radar, and eventually found some time to check out the game. It turned out to be a little different than I was expecting.

Munchkin is a reality-mashing, planet-destroying “let’s see you try and save this Earth, Superman!” cross-genre machine. After 10 years of expansions, Steve Jackson’s opus to killing monsters and taking their stuff has incorporated almost every speculative fiction genre imaginable, all of which beg – nay demand -- that gamers combine them.

Given that this month’s RPG Blog carnival is about cross-genre mashups in role-playing games, I thought it was a good time to visit the best of these Munchkin crossovers.

For years, Order 66 was the only Star Wars: Saga Edition podcast. Now there are two, thanks to Threat Detected, a show dedicated to playing through the Dawn of Defiance campaign. In other Star Wars RPG news, Saga-Edition.com resumes publication with write-ups for the VCX-700 Heavy Courier and the HWK-290 while Dice of Doom tries out the RPG, and likes what they find.

Semi-Official Posts

The official Star Wars: Saga Edition web site is no more, but there are still the occasional posts by former Saga writers.

My review of the Savage Worlds Super Powers Companion is up at GameCryer.com. This book is a setting agnostic version fo the supers rules from Necessary Evil, with a bunch of non-player characters and headquarter design rules thrown in.