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Star Wars: Saga Edition

Game Day: The Saga Ends

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Sun, 08/28/2011 - 1:36pm

Cover: Star Wars: Saga Edition Core RulebookAfter 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.

Star Wars Roundup: New Starships, Threat Detected Podcast, Battlestations

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Mon, 05/09/2011 - 4:44am

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.

Star Wars Roundup: Mysticism, Chevin, Vehicle Rules, Dragon Age Adaptions

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Mon, 03/14/2011 - 7:56pm

A round of Star Wars RPG-related posts and web links, including Sterling Hershey's "Star Wars Wednesday" posts about "Adventuring in the Tree", "Running Published Campaigns" and "Species Creation". There are also revised vehicle design rules for Star Wars d6, an adaptation of the AGE system from Green Ronin's Dragon Age RPG, a love letter to the d6 system, and a discussion of story reverals in RPGs.

Starship Deckplans Links Compendium

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Mon, 02/28/2011 - 5:54am

One of the big differences between running a fantasy campaign and a science fiction campaign is that when playing SF, I find myself constantly looking for starship deckplans.

With a fantasy campaign, many of the maps revolved around buildings, dungeons or overland adventures, and those sorts of maps were easy to knock out over lunch. Failing that, I had plenty of maps from 20+ years of Dungeons & Dragons that I could fall back on.

With my Star Wars campaign though, the adventures are split between world-based exploration and starship- or space station-based combat. Starship based adventures represent perhaps 1/8 to 1/4 of the encounters I run, but when I do run them I often find myself scrambling for deckplans.

The big reason there is that it takes more effort to come up with a rational-seeming starship. A dungeon can be as simple as a series of rooms, but with a starship players always want to know where to find the bridge, engineering, jeffries tubes, etc.

Star Wars Roundup: Dathomir Witches, Clone War Source Books, Skill Challenges

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Tue, 11/23/2010 - 5:30am

It's been a while since I did a Star Wars roundup, but thankfully the rest of fandom has continued churning out content in recent months. I think this is essential for Star Wars role-playing to carry on; many times when an RPG goes out of print, players move on to other, better supported games. Star Wars is somewhat different in this regard, as fan support for d6 Star Wars shows.

There's plenty of new Star Wars content being created, and if the mechanics of your favorite system are sound, its easy enough to adapt that content to your game. This round-up demonstrates that's exactly what's happening today, as d20 fans (and d6 ones as well) step up to create more content for their favorite systems.

MEPACon Fall 2010 Wrap-up

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Wed, 11/17/2010 - 7:49am

Another MEPACon has come and gone, taking with it two weeks of frantic game preparation and 12 hours of actual play. The convention was held in Clarks Summit, near Scranton Pa. on November 12-14 and looked to have the typical attendance of 100 gamers playing a mix of board games, organized play, and one-shot RPGs. I ran three events, all of which had 5 to 7 players.

GameCryer.com: Unknown Regions

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Thu, 10/14/2010 - 3:35pm

The Unknown RegionsMy review of Unknown Regions, the final source book for Star Wars: Saga Edition is up on GameCryer.com. The Unknown Regions is nominally the splatbook for scouts, adding a bunch of new feats and talents for the basic class, but there's actually a lot more to it than that. There's an expanded system for creating hazards -- things like lava flows, erupting geysers, and avalanches that can do damage, but aren't creatures -- as well as rules for near-humans, mounts, a bunch of new worlds, mini-adventures, a random world generator, and a wealth of talents, feats and equipment for scoundrels, soldiers, nobles and Jedi.

It's a great book to end the line with because it gives game masters everything they need to spawn a thousand new worlds and keep their campaigns running for years to come. It's already become a staple of my campaign. Read the review.

MEPACon Fall 2010 Events: Star Wars, Ragnarok, and Pathfinder

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Thu, 10/07/2010 - 7:35am

My events for MEPACon Fall 2010 are up and ready for registration on Warhorn. The convention is being held Friday, 11/12 through Sunday, 11/14 at the Ramada Clarks Summit in Clarks Summit, PA. I'll be running three events -- "Catch and Release" (Star Wars: Saga Edition), "The Champions of New York" (The Day After Ragnarok), and "The Rise of the Ur-Flan".

Star Wars: Scum and Villainy

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Sun, 09/26/2010 - 9:21am

Scum and VillainyScum and Villainy is an essential source book for those running a Star Wars: Saga Edition game on the fringes of galactic society, whether that’s trolling for would-be passengers in a Mos Eisley cantina, smuggling spice out of Kessel, or engaging in piracy against the Galactic Empire.

The book does for crime what the earlier Starships of the Galaxy did for starships and space combat, providing scoundrels, bounty hunters and outright criminals with a host of new game rules and options for running a campaign that interacts with the galaxy’s dark underbelly.

Star Wars RPG Round Up: Pop Culture, Campaign Planning, Starships, WotC archive

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Sun, 08/29/2010 - 10:41am

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.