Game Day: Random Stellar Encounters II

Another week, another game of Star Wars. The adventure rolls on with a special flashback episode. Last week, our band of heroes learned of 32 Belasco Division E-company (aka the Early Birds), an Old Republic Army advance assault unit that went missing on Toprawa during the Great Sith War. This week, we’ll be playing soldiers in the Early Birds, allowing us to learn first hand what happened to the division.

It’s a cool idea, and one we talked about before heading into the campaign. One of our goals with our Knights of the Old Republic game is to get to play characters at low, mid and high levels. To accomplish that, we’re going to occasionally jump the campaign forward a few years/levels, and then run one-shots (or multi-shots) to fill in the resulting time gaps.

For example, when the Mandalorian Wars finally arrive, we’ll stop the regular campaign and jump into the skins of Mandolorian Neocrusaders invading the Republic. When we’ve played through their assault on some frontier world, we’ll jump back into our newly-leveled up main characters, and react to the invasion.

I’m eager to see how it plays out, and fortunately, I actually get to play it as my friend Cory is once again GMing tonight. That means I had a little extra time on my Friday to put together this game day column, and report on a few more Star Wars: Saga Edition resources that my group’s turned up.

When we were playing D&D 3.5, my group loved HeroForge, the Excel-based, macro-driven spreadsheet for creating D&D characters. Now that we’re playing Star Wars, we don’t technically need the world’s most advanced spreadsheet to create new characters (I for one am reveling writing out my characters long-hand) but a few enjoy the convenience of computer-assisted character generation.

Fortunately, someone’s created a HeroForge-style character generator for Saga Edition. It’s discussed in this Gleemax thread and you can download it here. I don’t know if there’s a permanent home for it; if I find one, I’ll blog about it.

If you’ve got a bunch of Star Wars: Revised Core Rules books lying around, you’ll want to check out GMSarli Games’ Unofficial Revised Core Rules to Saga Edition Conversion Guid [pdf] (many thanks to my friend Damon, who turned up both of these gems.

One of the things that we discovered as we started leveling up our KOTOR characters is that there just weren’t enough bonus feats for the the scoundrel. It was fine if you wanted a ranged-combat rogue, but if you wanted someone a little more skillful, you didn’t have a lot of options. Fortunately, each new campaign guide and rule book has included additional bonus feats; I’ve compiled a list of them on our KOTOR site for quick reference.

While working on the list I found that the new Scum and Villainy book was the exception to the rule; it was the only book that didn’t note which feats could be used as bonus feats by the base classes. That led me to Wizards web site, where I discovered that they have posted errata for all of the Star Wars: Saga Edition source books, up to and including the just-releaed Clone Wars Campaign Guide. Included in that errata were the Scum and Villainy bonus feats I was looking for.

Also on Wizards web site you can find two excerpts from the aforementioned Clone Wars Campaign Guide:

  • Excerpt 1: The Vurks, a PDF about “an amphibious species from the planet Sembla.”
  • Excerpt 2: Clone Blaze Trooper: “Specialized versions of the standard clone jet trooper, blaze troopers wear heavier fire-resistant armor and wrist-mounted flame-throwers.”

In other Clone Wars Campaign Guide news, lead Star Wars designer Rodney Thompson can be heard on Order 66 #52 discussing the new book, answering questions, and generally geeking out with the guys. It’s always a good, informative show when Rodney’s on, so be sure to check it out.

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