Role-Playing Games

Starship Deck Plans Links Compendium

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Starship deck plans for the U.S.S. Enterprise, rendered as line art.

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.

Summon WebScryer: 2010 in Review

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My “Summon WebScryer” column for Knights of the Dinner Table kept rolling along in 2010, continuing a run that began in 2000. Some months it’s a struggle to come up with ideas, other times the stars align and the column writes itself, but it’s always fascinating to see how folks are using technology to promote, … Read more

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

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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 … Read more

MEPACon Fall 2010 Wrap-up

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Black and grey dice with red numbers sit on top of role-playing game source books.

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. … Read more

Dark Sun Creature Catalog

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A dragon king stands on a stone ruin.

The sun-blasted, magic-scarred campaign setting of Dark Sun is unlike any other published for Dungeons & Dragons. It inverts or eliminates many of the core concepts of D&D: arcane power is rare, psionic abilities are rampant; Halflings are cannibals, dwarves are slaves, and elves are opportunistic, lying traders. The world itself – known as Athas … Read more

Can you survive arcane wastelands of the Dark Sun Campaign Setting?

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A female warrior with a crude sword and shield stands against an orange-yellow desert background.

The Dark Sun has risen again on the parched, magically devastated world of Athas, bringing with it the new rules and mindset of Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition. First introduced in the early 1990s during D&D 2nd Edition, Dark Sun was meant to be a brutal, unforgiving dark fantasy setting unlike anything the game had … Read more

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

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The villains of the Legacy era.

My events for MEPACon Fall 2010 are up and ready for registration on Warhorn. The convention is being held Friday, 11/12/10 through Sunday, 11/14/10 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), … Read more

Star Wars: Scum and Villainy

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Han Solo and Chewbacca

Scum 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.