Ken Newquist

Organizing a Solar System of Miniatures

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A plastic case with separate sections containing small plastic figurines. Each section is labeled.

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. One thing I’ve learned from my … Read more

Star Wars: Saga Edition – Annotated Playtest #2

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Star Wars-themed miniatures face off on a desert-colored battle map. A Saga Edition rulebook appears to the lefthand side.

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. Unlike our initial game, which focused on three Jedi … Read more

The GM Has Had It

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This is brilliant. And yes, I have occasionally felt this way. I have no idea who came up with this poster (and unfortunately can’t remember the blog where I first saw it) but I think it’s a sentiment that just about every GM has felt at one point or another, especially when a particularly bad … Read more

RPG Reviews Digest: 3rd Party 4E, Champions, Hero, Against the Darkness

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Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition has been getting some more reviewer love the last few weeks as another wave of third-party products hits the shelves. The two notable books are Advanced Player’s Guide (Expeditious Retreat Press) and Forgotten Heroes: Fang, Fist and Song (Goodman Games), and both are looking to fill the void left in … Read more

Star Wars: Saga Edition – Annotated Playtest #1

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Various scenes from the Star Wars movies cover a game master screen. In front of the screen is a small ceramic statue; behind it are several Star Wars books.

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. This one will work a little differently; instead of annotating a single … Read more

Space Balls Invade Mars!

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No, I’m not talking about those Space Balls. NASA will be landing the truck-sized Mars Research Laboratory on Mars in Fall 2009. If the Swedes have their way, the gigantic rover will be accompanied by a number of ball-shaped probes that will roll around the larger probe. The idea is that the balls can go … Read more

Game Day: Dawn on Zebulon

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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.

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Game Day: Shopping for a Star Wars KOTOR campaign

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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 … Read more

Tim O’Reilly on Science Fiction

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In this old article (as in 1998) Tim O’Reilly provides a rundown of his favorite science fiction novels, including Dune, Stranger in a Strange Land, Snowcrash, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and The Stars are Ours.

He prefaces this list by discussing the book The Meaning of Culture by John Cowper Powys and draws the conclusion “a truly cultured person appreciates what has really shaped his world view, and uses literature and the arts as a tool to get more out of life.” He then provides the list as examples of science fiction literature that shaped his world view.

What’s missing from this article is the critical other half that explains how these books informed his world view. It’s all well and good to say that The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, but how did a novel about libertarian lunar revolution inform his world view? Was it an appreciation for the merits of a free market economy? The insidious effectiveness of revolutionary cells working in isolation from one another? Group marriages? We don’t know because he doesn’t say.