What Was I Saying...?

I wanna work on my Star Wars campaign.

So dang it, I'm gonna work on my Star Wars campaign!

Players, I suspect I know what we're doing next weekend. ;)

-TG

I'm due to run more Red Hand of Doom next, but after last week's Star Wars session went so well, I'm all agog to run some more of that, instead. I've even thought of a cool opening for the next scenario.

I don't have a scenario to follow the cool opening, but danged if it ain't a cool opening! One of those "I've always wanted to do this" scenarios that have never really been well-supported by previous rulesets. [1]

Ah well, circumstances prevent me from running anything in the next two weeks anyway ... maybe I'll be interested in Red Hand of Doom by then. Meanwhile, I'm going to write this stuff down so I don't forget it.

-The Gneech

[1] By "well-supported" here, I mean supported in a way that I liked. The opening is another space battle, and previous rulesets have certainly covered the type of scenario I have in mind, but always in a kind of clunky "I don't really want to bother with that" kind of way. Hurrah for SWSE!

http://www.rumblepurrlion.com/starwars/Corellian_Manhunt_Intro2.pdf

-The Gneech

Decided to try again to get some stuff rolling with the Star Wars Saga Edition this weekend; last time I ran (back in June), we left the characters hanging in mid-scenario chasing after a minor crime boss the Alliance wanted to pick up for interrogation.

The next session, assuming it goes roughly as I expect, is likely to have some ship combat, so I've been going over the SWSE ship combat rules. One thing that pleases me is how relatively simple they are and how smoothly they integrate with the regular rules. Instead of tracking "thrust points," movement vectors, maneuvering charts, or any of that kind of hoo-hah, ships move basically like characters do. "Attack run" is like a charge. "Dogfight" is like grappling. And everybody has something to do, even in the dreaded "the whole party's in a freighter being chased by TIE fighters" scenario that has led to so many bored not-pilots/not-gunners in the past, thanks to the miracle of Aid Another and untrained skill checks.

On the other hand, something I don't like as much about this system, is that the stats of the ships seem to be way more important than the stats of the characters in them. For instance, until the pilot's "heroic level" is higher than the armor bonus of the ship, they don't make it any harder to hit. Being a good pilot allows you to pull off some trickier moves and avoid hazards, but mostly what you do is move the ship around and shoot at stuff.

Also, it's harder to gauge encounter difficulty. Each enemy ship has a CL, which should help, except that you have to figure in the players' own ships CL as well. A 3rd level PC in an A-Wing is a lot more powerful than a 3rd level PC in an escape pod, to the point that you're actually balancing "A-Wing vs. enemy ship" rather than "the PCs vs. enemy ship". And until I have some experience at doing this, I have no idea how to come up with an encounter that's challenging but not overwhelming.

Starships of the Galaxy has some neat options for pilots, basically "maneuvers" you can learn in a similar fashion to the Jedi's "force powers." I don't know if I'll use them, largely because jamesbarrett's smuggler-type is really the only pilot-type in the group who might be likely to bother with them and he may not want to burn the necessary feats given that ship combat is only likely to come up every other adventure or so.[1] I suspect I'll put the option out there and let him decide.

-The Gneech

[1] The first session of the game opened with the characters piloting Y-Wings; in the time since then they've mostly been flying transports supplied by the Alliance, either generic "box with a hyperdrive" types or a Lambda-class shuttle which got "upgraded" by a bunch of Squibs whether the characters wanted it to be or not. Now they've been assigned a group vessel that's likely to stay around a while, or at least make repeat appearances, but I have in mind that they'll still find themselves scrambling with the fighters from time to time. Martin and Rumzhin are still technically attached to Rogue Squadron under Wedge, even if they don't seem to associate with them much.

Tosche Station, home of power converters, Gilligan hats, and Biggs Darklighter's dropped subplot.

Also, Star Wars Cantina!

-The Gneech

Intro and Character Creation Guidelines

Character Sheet

...and oh yeah, you remember Darth Revanus, don't you?

-The Gneech

Use the Force, Player!

One thing that sorta bugs me about most Star Wars RPG incarnations is that there are too many Force users flying around all over the place ... in a campaign that lasts long enough, everybody will want Force powers sooner or later.

I can't tell from this preview, but I think it may be easier than ever. We'll see.

On the other hand, the "Rebuke" power looks very cool and is a badly-needed addition!

-The Gneech

Snagged from ENWorld: WotC: Saga Edition Preview.

We bid the fringer farewell and send the tech specialist back to the assembly line, granting their heroic abilities to other classes. We also distilled the Jedi guardian and Jedi consular classes into a single Jedi class, which is more in line with what we see in the movies. The Force adept has become a prestige class, but we reinvented the process of creating a non-Jedi Force user. It now involves a new set of mechanics that finally lets players create Force users of their own traditions without being locked into class features that didn't necessarily fit the character's back story.

-The Gneech

This is my new character for the Star Wars game Laurie is going to try to run. She's basically taking over my game, at least for now, figuring that a low-level game will be easier for her to learn with than the high-level thing with Shradha would be. As much as I like Shradha and will miss playing him, I'll gladly make a new character for the chance to play something. (I did think about playing a 2nd-level Farghul Jedi ... but decided not to be quite so repetitive. Maybe if this game gets up to high enough level, I'll retire this character and play Shradha from there on instead. We'll see.)

( Khent Devto, Human Jedi Guardian 1/Force Adept 1 )

Well, tomorrow's SJ is done and on the servers; it'll go up with the regular update. It's BJ Buttons' cameo, which simultaneously provides me with a strip and allows me to mark something on the to-do list as COMPLETE -- yay!

Laurie ran the second adventure in the "Star Wars - Invasion of Theed" introductory game this evening. It was fairly fun, although again is was very roleplaying-light and combat heavy.

I'm thinking of, to introduce her to the d20 system, running a little mini-D&D game where she creates and controls three characters, plus I include a DNPC fourth, and send her through small "quickie" adventures to get her familiar with the concepts of the system. D&D and Star Wars aren't exactly the same, but they're close enough that it might be a valuable exercise. If nothing else, it would be something fun to do.

My back's been arguing with me all weekend; fortunately, I have chiro. appt. tomorrow. Hopefully he can do something about that. I need to be at least useful during the move, even if I can't do the heavy lifting like I did last time.

That's all for now. G'nite everybody.

-The Gneech