Star Wars: Saga Edition – Annotated Playtest #2

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

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

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

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

Game Day: Dawn on Zebulon

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

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

Radio Active #72: Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition

Nuketown Radio Active #72 contemplates the best way to organize a geeky bookshelf, takes another turn at chess with kids, finds out that Neutron Lad has a lot to talk about, and asks questions about Nuketown’s long-dormant RADIATIONS newsletter. Finally I review Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, the latest edition of the venerable role-playing game by … Read more

Game Day: Setting up a KOTOR Campaign

An armored Sith lord and a woman in brown clothing hold lightsabers aloft.

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 … Read more

Gaming in the Verse

The cast of the movie Serenity stands in a desert, ready for battle.

Prepping for my “Unification Day” adventure for the Serenity Role-Playing Game at Nuke(m)Con 2008 sent me wandering the web for inspiration, references and shortcuts.

Unfortunately, the official Serenity web site at http://www.serenity-rpg.com is dead, but it seems Margaret Weis Productions is working on moving material from the old site to their new one. The most important of these is the PDF of the Official Serenity Character Sheet. The site also has news on the new Serenity Adventures book, which features a number of related scenarios for the game. The PDF is available now, the print version will hopefully be out soon.

The official site is down, but the unofficial one at FireflyRPG.com may be the next best thing. It’s got a beautiful poster map of the Serenity solar system, 3D renderings of ground and air vehicles, weapon reference cards, and deck plans for 28 different ships. There are also two rules quick reference sheets, but unfortunately during the playtest I found they had too many house rules to be useful.

Nuke(m)Con 2008: The Wild, Weird West

The cast of the movie Serenity stands in a desert, ready for battle.

Like a twister carving its way through a Midwestern cornfield, Nuke(m)Con has come and gone. My gaming group held its annual (well, almost annual) home-grown convention over the weekend. In a break from previous years, which typically saw a mix of Dungeons & Dragons and board games, this year’s Nuke(m)Con had a western theme. We … Read more

Reboot your game with Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition

An armored reptilian humanoid (left) and a red-robed female spellcaster (right) stand in combat stances.

There’s an old Star Trek acronym called “IDIC”, which stands for “Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations”. Dungeons & Dragons Third Edition was all about IDIC, with infinite combinations of characters played out across thousands of campaigns and dozens of different game systems. Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition is about FDFC — Finite Diversity in Finite … Read more