Catching up with an old favorite

Not too much gaming-wise going on of late, and I've been permitting myself a short siesta from game mechanics to try and give my brain a chance to recharge.

However, this has afforded me the chance to start watching the DVD collections of Babylon 5 I picked up for a veritable steal some time back. I'm currently about 2/3rds of the way through Season 1, and am enjoying the series just as much as I did the first time I watched it. Perhaps part of it is due to knowing what is to come, particularly with characters like G'Kar and Londo and their respective fates, or just simply being able to enjoy a TV show without having to wait for "next week's installment" or drudge through commercial breaks.

It was while watching this show that I recalled there was a D20-based RPG that Mongoose Publishing produced for this series, and that thanks to the kind donation of some no-longer needed shelving units from my parents, I had the chance to take a bunch of my old RPG books out of storage and put them onto shelves. Amidst which were several of the B5 RPG books. And so in spite of wanting to take a break from D20 games, I found myself paging through the various B5 books, which for me consists of the two corebooks (1st & 2nd edition), the Ranger sourcebooks (again, 1st & 2nd edition), as well as the Techno-Mage fact book, Psi Corps fact book, and Lurker's Guide to Telepaths, and a few PDF books as well. And I must admit, while they do display some of the problems of the 3rd edition D20 system, there's a wealth of background info to be found. Being something of a fanboy of the Rangers, both those sourcebooks have provided a great deal of information and history, even if the 2nd edition book caters more to the less-than-stellar Legend of the Rangers TV movie. I doubt I'll ever get this RPG on the table, but now I kind of wish I'd picked up more of the PDFs before the license got termed, if only for all the various background and historical tidbits scattered throughout the books. Still, what I do have has been fun to read, and has sparked more than a few ideas for possible future Star Wars game sessions. And besides, Marcus Cole was cool.