On the Other Hand...

[the_gneech]

My Star Wars Saga Edition Gamemaster Screen came today — very nice! I don't think I've ever seen a GM screen made of this heavy cardstock before.

Got Threats of the Galaxy when it came out, too. It's good, but not quite as big a deal given how many "lists of character types" resources there are on the net for SWSE. Nevertheless, I'm very impressed with the SWSE line overall.

I wonder how it would fuse with Cthulhu d20...

-The Gneech

Comments

[sirfox.livejournal.com]

dooooo eeeeet.

Also, i got the munchkin:Cthulhu expansion pack today. Call of Cowthulhu

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

Whattya think, is 1 hp + Con bonus per level too many?

-TG

[sirfox.livejournal.com]

for us or the enemies?

[sirfox.livejournal.com]

also, got my 4th ed books. looks interesting so far, i'm still reserving judgment.

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

Well, we are talking CoC here...

-TG

[sirfox.livejournal.com]

Beef up the bad guys, come up with some interesting madnesses to temporarily afflict the party with, and go to town.

We can take it.

Or maybe we'll just flee screaming. Either way, it'll be fun.

Been looking at 4th ed. There are a lot of neat things they've streamlined, and i won't be sure of a lot of them 'til i've tried it, but it looks as if the capsule opinion so far is: it does seem to borrow a number of aspects from WoW/SWD20 as far as charts and abilities go, but probably in a good way. Laurie's fear of ten billion special exceptions to the rules looks like it's well founded, however. One mechanic, the d20, works like it always did, a few simple guidelines on how to resolve questions, (specific beats general, round down fractions, etc) and then eight point four billion exceptions to the rules for many spells and abilities, etc. I'm not yet even through looking at the character creation part, so i'm still figuring it all out.

Keeping track of the special conditions may well be a trial. Characters now have a condition known as "Bloodied" which looks like it happens around 1/3 of your HP. This opens up a number of "last minute" abilities depending on class/race. It also looks like characters can have some limited healing on their own, kinda like SW.

One rather good point that they picked up from WoW is roles. in 3.5, there are only a few things that will, for instance, let a tank prevent some baddie from going after the casters and healers. (Generally the options were A: get in their way, and B: kill them) Now there are ways that a tank can engage enemies with certain abilities that cause the enemies to know that fighting anybody else will cause them significant grief. (damage, debuffs, etc, and once affected, the enemies are aware of this)

So far, they've also kept the blatant self-promotion to a low level. They have some flavor inserts at the bottoms of a few pages. One is a rather abridged history of D&D which still does a good job of covering the last 40-some years or so. There were two others that were little more than adverts, but were at least understated. One mentioned that there would be lots of available content on their webpage, (Dragon magazine's digital incarnation, they call it that by name, more or less) the other was to promote the RPGA.

The dragonborn look like a neat race. Race Creation looks like it might not be a horrid trial, so i might look into playing around with it later. They give a lot of options for character stat creation, including a point-buy system, and a matrix with a variety of scores pre-calculated which you can just pick from. Saves time, rather nice.

like i have time to learn a system between now and AC. ;_; i'm so impulsive, sometimes.

[hossblacksilver.livejournal.com]

Any word on when the Alien Races of the Galaxy will be coming out for Saga? I wants my Noghri Jedi.

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

I don't remember mention of an alien races book specifically, but I'm sure they'll get around to it. There is a "semi-official" conversion document floating around, and here is one fan-made version of Noghri stats:

Ability Modifiers: +2 Dex, –4 Cha
Size: Small
Speed: 6 squares
Bonus Feat: Noghri are always trained in self-defense from a very early age. All Noghri gain the Martial Arts I feat as a bonus feat.
Intuitive Initiative: A Noghri has quick reflexes and may choose to reroll any Initiative check, but the result of the reroll must be accepted even if it is worse.
Low-Light Vision: Noghri ignore concealment (but not total concealment) from darkness.
Primitive: Noghri do not gain Weapon Proficiency (pistols, rifles, or heavy weapons) as starting feats at 1st level, even if their class normally grants those feats.
Scent: Noghri have a keen sense of smell. At close range (within 10 squares), Noghri ignore concealment and cover for purposes of Perception checks, and they take no penalty for poor visibility when tracking (see Survival skill, Saga Edition Core Rulebook, page 73).
Languages: Honoghran.

The document these stats came from can be found here:

http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=954649

-TG

[rhanlav.livejournal.com]

Nothing yet, although I don't see why you couldn't use the old Alien Races of the Galaxy book, with probably a few tweeks at most. Although, I don't know much about the Noghri.

--Salen