Of Jedi, Vidoe Games, and Fallen Orders

Greetings programs!

Yeah, been a spell since my last post here.  Mostly that's been due to having been rather busy with real life things (nothing worrisome, just time consuming).

So a little over a week ago, I opted to take the plunge and pick up EA's latest offering, Star Wars: Jedi: Fallen Order.  I'll be honest in that I was largely skeptical about whether I'd enjoy this game or not, given the less than stellar experiences I had with Spider-Man and Kingdom Hearts 3.  Still, I'd been hearing lots of good things being said about this game, both from reviewers and especially from one of my friends whose opinion on video games I generally trust.

And I have to admit that the game is generally pretty fun, being an action-adventure "metroidvania" style game.  Now admittedly I'm playing the game on Story Mode (aka Easy Mode) as at this point in my life I play video games as a means of relaxation and am not looking for a serious/frustrating challenge.  The game's not perfect, as the combat controls feel like there's a bit of lag between button input and result, especially when there's a lot of enemies on the screen.

So that said, I got the inspiration to work up some stats and such of people and things that appeared in the game.

Cal Kestis, Jedi Fugitive (as of Escape from Bracca)
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Cal_Kestis 
The protagonist of Jedi: Fallen Order, young Cal is a survivor of the purge that was Order 66, and has spent the five years since that fateful day hiding on the planet Bracca, where he works as a scrapper alongside his Abednado co-worker and friend Prauf.  Circumstances arise that causes Cal to reveal his Force abilities and subsequently coming to the attention of the dreaded Imperial Inquisitors.

I built Cal using the Jedi career and Padawan specialization from the Rise of the Separatists supplement, as it not only fit his background, but also allowed me to get him up to Force Rating 2 rather inexpensively and thus acquire the Bind power, which is what I'm using to represent his Force Statis ability both to slow down enemies but also to briefly freeze various obstacles to allow him to progress.  I also gave him the benefit of the Mentor shared background resource from Force & Destiny to account for the his proper training prior to the events of Order 66.

 

Psychometry (New Force Power)

So this was a Force power I had originally taken a crack at years ago as part of my old Ways of the Force fan supplement.  At the time, the only example of a Force user that was skilled with this ability was Quinlan Vos, but now that we have Cal demonstrating the power, I've got a somewhat better handle on what the power can accomplish.  It's fair to warn GMs that this Force power very much has the ability to unravel adventure plots that center on discovering things, so that end many of the upgrades for this power are expensive to purchase.

Kudos also to FFG forum user Nytwing, whose on take on Psychometry helped inform a fair bit the above.  You can read his take on the power on his website here.

BD Unit Droid
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/BD_unit
Serving as Cal's companion through much of the game, BD-1 is the game's exposition fairy, and has been likened to an intelligent puppy in terms of how he acts.  The stat block presented here presents more of a "factory model" version of the droid.
Cost/Rarity: 4500 credits/6

Abednado

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Abednedo
While the species was introduced in The Force Awakens, I thought it'd be fitting to include my take on a species write-up given that the character of Prauf plays a pivotal role in pushing Cal to undertake the grand quest that is the game's focus and for the young man to embrace his destiny as a Jedi.  I did use the character sheet for the Abednado Colonist Bormo from FFG's The Force Awakens Beginner Box set to help inform my choices on how to design this species.  It of course goes without saying that FFG ever does an official write-up of the Abednado, it's going to look rather different than what I'm posting here.

Starting Characteristics
Brawn 2, Agility 2, Intellect 3, Cunning 1, Willpower 2, Presence 2
Wound Threshold: 9+Brawn
Strain Threshold: 12+Willpower
Starting XP: 90
Species Abilities: Abednado being with one free rank in Resilience.  They still may not train Resilience above Rank 2 at character creation.
Gregarious: Due to their affable and friendly nature, Abednado characters add an Advantage to the results of all Charm and Negotiation checks the character makes.

S-161 "Stinger" XL Luxury Yacht
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/S-161_%22Stinger%22_XL
The game's principle method of getting Cal and company from planet to planet on their quest, the Mantis is fairly sleek ship design.  There's not a whole lot to go on apart from the comments of Greeze, the ship's captain and pilot, about how the Mantis is fast but not much good in a fight.

We don't get to explore much of the ship in the game, but I feel safe in presuming that there's more interior space than what is shown, enough to warrant putting this vessel in the Silhouette 4 category and with a decent amount of space for passengers and cargo.  I also decided to price the vessel as something that an Edge of the Empire group could begin play with, though it is out of the initial reach of a Force and Destiny group.

You can find PDFs of most of the above (everything save the write-up for the Abednado) in a zip file located here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/696xqpegf7c2eut/Jedi%20Fallen%20Order%20files.zip?dl=0

Hopefully you've enjoyed reading this, and may even find use for some or even all of this material in your own games.

So until next time, remember.... persistence reveals the path, and trust in the Force.

(Re)Learning the Ways of the Force

Firstly, Happy Birthday to me.  Not every day a fella becomes the answer to life, the universe, and everything after all now, is it? (yeah, that's not the least bit egotistical)

Been a while since I last posted an update to this blog of mine, so indulge me a brief summary of what's been going on since I last posted before I get to the "good part."

Since I posted those revisited PCs back in May, my friend Eric (known as oghen in some places) has been running a Star Wars campaign set in the era of The Force Awakens, taking place shortly after the events of the movie.  In this campaign, I'm playing a further revised version of Valin, who is still a Sentinel/Shien Expert, but his backstory has changed a bit; there's no Empire hunting him, and he's now packing a training lightsaber (still hasn't been used in a fight as of yet), but he was still on his own for most of his life and only had a modicum of Jedi training.  Also seeing play is Jade, whose re-write my adopted big sis Linda liked enough to use as her PC.  We're only two sessions in, due to a number of delays that our Friday Night Skype group have jokingly suggested were ploys by the First Order to keep two teenage Force-sensitives from embarking upon their respective journeys; after all, it's a known fact of the setting that teenage Force users are the bane of militaristic regimes seeking galactic domination.

As I'm sure any fellow Potterheads will know, the script for the play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child has been published in book form.  While the book was a very quick read (it's comprised mostly of stage directions and dialogue), it was still an enjoyable read, and if this is indeed the last story to feature Harry Potter and company, then I think it was a pretty good note to go out on.  In a way, it was very much like visiting old friends that you'd lost touch with after many years, seeing how they're doing and how things have changed for them.  I've heard some complaints that too much of the action focus on Albus, but to me that makes sense as Harry's already had his grand adventure and settled up with most of his old demons.

I've also been reading through my hard copy of the 2nd edition corebook for 7th Sea.  I had a lot of fun playing the 1st edition, even if the mechanics were a bit loopy in several places (skills and knacks, I am looking directly at you) and the metaplot could be rather heavy-handed.  Thus far, I've only been able to run a single session and play in a single session, and I had a lot of fun both times.  I really like how the system has evolved, and that dice rolling is toned down in terms of how often you're making dice rolls.  One thing I have noticed is that being a Swordsman and having a Dueling School on your character sheet makes one's PC a terror in combat.  I'd run some test battles using a revamp of an old 1st edition PC of mine, one Estevan Santiago de Montoya, and even as a starting PC the boy can decimate brute squads like there's no tomorrow.  Sorcery is also very interesting, and while much more viable in the early going as compared to 1e, it still has its limits in what a player can accomplish (especially since it's fueled by spending Hero Points, which are a fairly rare resource for players); the Hexenwerk sorcery is suitably creepy, and Sorte is potent but not overwhelmingly so.  One minor gripe I have is that with regards to Villains, fighting them can begin feel like a grind, not unlike fighting Solo monsters in the early days of D&D 4e.  I am thinking of a house rule to either halve the number of Dramatic Wounds a Villain can withstand before they become Helpless, or simply halve the number of wounds needed to inflict a Dramatic Wound.  But beyond that, I love how this system works in terms of dice results and how vastly different one PC can be from the next.  Maybe later this month I'll post up the various characters that I've written up.

So that's that, and now onto the main course.

Off and on, I've been updating, revising, reworking, further revising, and so forth with what would essentially be the second edition of my old Ways of the Force fan supplement.  Now, I knew from the very start that WotF would have a definite shelf life, being a stop-gap to provide some more options for Force usage until the release of Force and Destiny.  But rather than let it fall completely to the wayside, I felt that some of what I had created still had merit, and that what it really needed was an overhaul and an update to account for the new rules and material regarding Force users during the time frame of Fantasy Flight Games' most excellent Star Wars Roleplaying Game.

To be perfectly honest, a large part of why this took so long was that I went through numerous versions of the Jedi Initiate universal specialization.  The one thing that I wanted to avoid was making this a "gotta have it!" spec for any PCs that were interested in being lightsaber wielders, especially those who started out with one of the six Lightsaber Form specializations in Force and Destiny.  While I'm currently pretty happy with how the version published here has shaken out, I'm still concerned that this could be a very dominate spec, seeing as how it offers both a Force Rating talent and the Improved Parry talent.  I tried to balance this by putting those talents on very separate paths in the spec, as well as having Improved Parry be rather buried in the tree, making it much more expensive to acquire than it would be in the other specializations it appears in, as well as kind of burying the ranks of Parry and Reflect so that a player won't get those talents too quickly.  Still, I feel like I've broken some sort of cardinal rule by including both those talents in the same spec, so if anything I would suggest to GMs that they require a PC looking to acquire this spec have undertake some measure of quest before they can purchase it, and that it certainly cannot be purchased at character creation for games set after the fall of the Jedi Order.

Another portion that I struggled on and off with was the new lightsaber crystals.  I wanted to introduce some new options for PCs, making them different enough from the already published crystals that they didn't all feel like retreads but not so different as to possibly unbalance the game.  I posted earlier drafts of some of those new crystals here on my blog a while ago, as well as guidelines for constructing a synthetic lightsaber crystal, which I've touched up a bit.  I ultimately opted to treat a synthetic kyber crystal as being the same as the Ilum crystal, and figure that the Sith were so hung up on synthetic crystals being "superior" to natural kyber crystals was a combination of their inherent hubris and that a freshly created synthetic kyber crystal would have the potential to have some of its modification options added during the creation process, making it "better" than a stock Ilum crystal.

One thing I had been going back and forth upon including was a "Beast Master" universal specialization, incorporating elements of the Pathfinder specialization as well as the Beast Rider specialization from Stay on Target.  I ultimately axed the idea upon the announcement of Savage Spirits, but upon acquiring the book I may revisit that idea down the line.  To be honest, a lot of the proposed intent for the Beast Master was taken from the Legends version of the Dathomir witches, who were capable Force users that bonded with and rode beasts (notably rancors).  As is often the case with home-brew specializations, the trick was not doing too much cherry-picking for this proposed specialization in terms of talents.

In terms of Force powers, that section was surprisingly easy to update.  I completely chucked the Force Techniques idea and the various powers I'd created.  While it's entirely possibly that the upcoming Sentinel sourcebook Endless Vigil will have some kind of Psychometry power, I put together my own take, one that I feel captures the essence of the power without it becoming too much of a potential game breaker, especially for adventures that revolve around solving mysteries or learning hidden truths.

Well, enough blathering on my part, so here's the goods.

Ways of the Force, Version 2.0

Hopefully you find this newest (and possibly final) version of Ways of the Force to be a useful, either in whole or in part, at your gaming table as your characters learn and explore the mysteries of the Force in a galaxy far, far away...

Ways of the Force: A Deep Breath Before the Plunge

It's the 11th, one day before I get another year older, (and maybe a bit wiser than I was a year before (though I kinda doubt it).  It's also only a few more days until GenCon kicks off, and the anticipation levels are starting to climb rapidly.

One of the big things that I hoping for this year's GenCon is that we will indeed be getting the Force and Destiny Beta for FFG's excellent Star Wars RPG.  There's been a lot of anticipation for this book every since it was announced that they were doing three separate core rulebooks for their system, with a focus on the galactic fringe (EotE), the Galactic Civil War (AoR), and finally the force (FaD).  There's also been a lot of discussion (some polite, some heated, and some absolutely worthless) about how things are going to shake out.  While there are those that are terrified of the idea of Jedi finally being available as PCs, I'm willing to give the FFG design team the benefit of the doubt.  They've done a bang-up job so far on this system, and the ground rules for Force usage have thus far proven to be effective as well as not subject to being too easily twisted to make an uber-powerful Force user.

Which brings this particularly post back around to my Ways of the Force fan supplement.  When I first released this document back in May 2013, I knew from start that this was going to eventually become obsolete in a year or so.  That it was, at best, a stop-gap measure to provide players and GMs alike some additional options regarding Force users, including an option for Jedi for those folks that wanted to include one of the most iconic character types of the setting.  I've gotten a fair amount of feedback, most of it positive, some of it caustically negative, and some of it pointing things I'd overlooked.

Over the past couple months, I'd taken a look back over my development notes from back in 2012 up to version 1.3, and it was interesting to see how the talent trees for my three Force-sensitive specializations had grown, changed, and evolved.  Of how many different iterations and implementations of Deflect Blasters that I had conceived of, many of which were not implemented at all due to either being totally unworkable or far too random for something that's an iconic ability of the Jedi.

But, as a self-professed "tinker monkey" I couldn't leave things alone, particularly at those points when I was struck with the "Hey, that's an idea!" bursts of insight, such as a means to quite possibly have the Deflect Blasters talent be both simple to implement and roughly balanced.  So while I'd released version 1.3 with the idea of it being "that's it, last update, I'm done," that has turned out to not be the case.

So without further rambling on my part, I pull the curtain back on Version 1.4 of Ways of the Force, the unofficial fan supplement for Force users for FFG's Star Wars Roleplaying Game:

Ways of the Force, Version 1.4

As I'm sure some folks will note, the Jedi Initiate got a pretty substantial overhaul, with a large part of that being due to Deflect Blasters once again being consolidated into a single talent, itself having gotten a substantial revision.  As the Age of Rebellion book is now on shelves, I've updated page references for the talents taken from that book.  Message and Rebuke have gotten a substantial reworking, as did Injure to a lesser extent.

Earlier versions of Ways of the Force had what I'd taken to calling "minor Force powers" in that these were one-use effects that (at the time) I didn't think warranted being made into full-blown Force power trees.  Well, that changed for most of my initial lot of "minor Force powers," either due to FFG beating me to the punch on some of these in Age of Rebellion or because I finally could justify them as being full-blown Force powers.

Well, there's still a number of minor Force abilities that don't have a corresponding effect in the game, and having taken a look through some of my RCR books not too long ago, I decided to revive the concept of "Force techniques."  In short, these are specialized Control Upgrades that add another basic usage of an existing Force power, such as being able to hold one's breath for several minutes (Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan in Episode I) or enter a hibernation trance.  The mechanics behind these are fairly simple, and with one noted exception play with any of the Upgrades that a given power might have.  To be fair, I didn't get the chance to really play test these, but the effects are generally so minor or so specific that I don't see them as causing any serious problems in anyone's game.

I'm not going to say one way or the other if there will be any further updates to Ways of the Force, as a lot of that is going to depend on how things shake out with Force and Destiny.  Always in motion is the future.  But until then, I hope those of you that have enjoyed using some or all of the material in Ways of the Force in the past continue to enjoy the material, and thanks for the support and feedback.  May the Force (and Destiny Beta) be with us...

Edit: Okay, so I made an assumption with part of the FFG rules regarding talents that make use of the Force die.  While there will be a v1.41 to clear those up, in the meantime any instance where a talent says "character rolls " the intent is that the character rolls Force dice equal to their Force Rating, not just a single Force die.

Ways of the Force, Version 1.3

Wow, four posts in the same month.  One might start to think the owner of this blog actually remembered that it exists ;)

It'd been quite a while since I'd last updated my Ways of the Force fan supplement.  I'd been working on altering a number of things, such as largely doing away with the minor Force powers and expanding two of them into full-fledged Force Power trees.

Ways of the Force, Version 1.3

I've also made some major revamps to the Force Powers, new and old, in light of clarification from FFG's own Sam Stewart in regards to how Force Power effects were activated.  To simplify, my understanding was incorrect, and that in light of that understanding, Injure and Healing were vastly more powerful than I was comfortable with.  There was also the matter that they had gotten perhaps too complicated, particularly Healing and my attempts to keep it from being too useful to a group but not so restricted as to make it nearly useless.  I think I've struck the right balance this time around with both powers, making them effective but not game-breaking.

The Jedi Initiate has also gotten a substantial change in layout.  I opted to go back to the original focus of this being a specialization that focuses on becoming a competent lightsaber duelist as one of it's primary aspects, and that improved Force usage isn't quite as major.  That's not to say that someone taking Jedi Initiate won't be slackers in the Force, but rather that lightsaber prowess is going to be a major part of the specialization.  So folks that are looking to be a Jedi but don't want to bother with the lightsaber talents, I'm afraid you're going to have to look to other Force-sensitive specializations to scratch that particular itch.

I've also recanted a bit on my earlier statement about not having any kind of skill check to construct a lightsaber.  For this version, I've settled on making it a single Discipline check, partly to avoid the issue of "how would my PC know how to build a lightsaber if they're not trained in the skill?" had I used the Lightsaber skill, but largely as a nod to Saga Edition and having it be a Use the Force check to accomplish that task.  Plus, Discipline ties into it being an important skill for Force users to have as well as the concentration and focus needed for a task that's noted as requiring a combination of great delicacy and precision.  However, that's not to say that it's an automatic thing either, especially if the player is impatient, as the check starts at Daunting, and only gets harder the quicker a PC tries to accomplish the task of building the 'saber; get too greedy and your Jedi-in-training could find themselves having to start completely from scratch.

Another major change has been to the Deflect Blasters talent.  I feel there comes a point that when you need more than a single paragraph to cover the effects of a talent, then you've reached the point of needing to split it into two talents.  And given some of the unexpected issues that cropped up, such as a PC using the talent to deflect a single shot from auto-fire weapon and then trigger auto-fire (something that was never intended), the split was needed.  So while it now takes two talents to allow a Jedi Initiate to deflect and reflect blaster fire (presuming they've acquired a lightsaber in the first place), both talents are better balanced, with the minor bonus that deflecting ranged attacks is now something that the character could start knowing how to do; after all, it's one of the first lessons that Luke learned on his path to becoming a Jedi Knight.

The two new powers are Rebuke (expanded from Resist Force) and Message (expanded from Projective Telepathy).  As for Sense Force, that's simply been moved to a sidebar (found under the Force Mystic) and is pretty much a function of the Sense power.

With Message, I had toyed with the idea of creating some kind of "battle meditation" effect, but I felt that such an ability was best left as a plot device type of thing, particularly with FFG having kept the uses of the Force in the powers they've published much closer to the general feel of the films while mostly averting some of the crazier stunts that have been seen in the Expanded Universe.  While Sense covers the "picking up thoughts" aspect of telepathy, Message is more in line of what folks think when one mentions "telepathy," though like Saga Edition I kept the power's effects fairly simple, with the intent that any conversations would be very simple; something akin to Luke contacting Leia and sending a general sense that he was in danger and that he was "underneath Cloud City," and hoping that she'd be able to take it from there to rescue him.

As for Rebuke, one complaint I've often seen is that there was no real way to defend yourself from a Force power.  It's not a major issue with Move (since any defensive traits that work against ranged attacks would apply), but it becomes a bigger on with Influence and Injure, both of which as written don't give the target any way to stop the damage inflicted.  I opted to keep the opposed Discipline check that Resist Force had, though this isn't too big of an issue for most powers (especially as I scrapped the opposed check that was part of Injure in the last version).  I've also broken out it so that the basic effect is simply to negate the effects of a power; if your Force user wants to pull a Yoda and hurl those bolts of Force lightning back, you'll need a Control Upgrade to do it.  One potential concern is that with enough ranks in Discipline and the way Rebuke's Strength Upgrades operate it could become very easy for a Force-user with this power to shove an offensive power right back down their opponent's throat.  Admittedly, this is offset somewhat by needing a Triumph on the opposed Discipline check and the chance for a Despair against more potent Force users as well.  I also opted to include the ability to absorb/negate energy attacks as the "capstone" ability of Rebuke, using the same general mechanics, such as the Force user making an opposed Discipline check, only this time the difficulty is the shooter's combat skill.  You could potentially use this to redirect a blaster shot with your bare hands, but by the time that most characters gain that particular Control Upgrade, they should be facing some pretty potent adversaries.

There have been a few other lesser tweaks here and there, but those are the highlights.  And, barring any major typographical errors, this will probably be the final revision to this document.

With a Force & Destiny Beta having been teased as coming out later this year (presumably at GenCon), that brings to a close the reason I created this supplement in the first place; namely as a way to provide players with further options to play Force users in and Edge of the Empire or an Age of Rebellion campaign.  A number of folks wanted some way to play an actual Jedi, not a "let's pretend" version that had either the Force Exile or Force Emergent specs and a few ranks in the Lightsaber skill, as well as an ability to perform Force-based feats that we saw in the movies but weren't covered by Edge of the Empire.  While some folks chose to focus exclusively on creating a Jedi career, I opted to split the difference and create a Jedi specialization as a nod to the limited training available during the Rebellion Era as well as create additional Force powers.

But, with Force & Destiny having been teased to cover Jedi and other Force-users, the need to add new material or revise the existing material becomes less and less.  Then again, I knew this was going to happen eventually, and thus had a degree of "planned obsolescence" from the very start.  After all, when it comes to choosing between officially published material and some random guy's fan work, most gamers are going to lean towards the officially published material.  And I'm okay with that.  On a personal level, I'm interested to see how different in the design and application of things like blaster deflection and rebuking enemy Force powers my stuff and FFG's stuff will be.  Amusingly, around July of last year, I'd been working on building an "enhanced movement" and "farseeing" power, and laughed with giddy joy at seeing that the Enhance and Foresee powers in the Age of Rebellion Beta were along very similar guidelines; my stuff would have gotten to that point in another month or two.  Part of me hopes I'll get to experience that a second time around with the Force & Destiny Beta.

In the end, I can only hope that in the time frame between when I first web-published Ways of the Force and when the Force & Destiny core rulebook gets released next year, folks have found the material I've created to be useful for their games, either in whole or just select parts of it.

Edit: For some reason, Dropbox disabled the previous link.  I've put a new one up.

Ways of the Force, version 1.2 (and other things)

Greetings, salutations, and various other modes of introduction.

Firstly, for those readers that live in the U.S., I hope your Thanksgiving was fun, semi-relaxing, and filled with plenty of good eats.

As the title notes, I'm now releasing Version 1.2 of my Ways of the Force fan supplement for use with Fantasy Flight Games' terrific Star Wars Roleplaying Game.

Ways of the Force, Version 1.2

On the mechanical side of things, the material takes into account new material and updates from the Age of Rebellion Beta, as well as some reworking and (hopefully) simplification of some of the new Force Powers, specifically the Injure power and the Resist Force minor power.  I'm quite pleased with how the specializations are set-up, so not major changes there other than swapping out a talent here and there.

However, the biggest change is in the formatting of this fan supplement.  Previous versions have been fairly "bare bones" and going right into the material, with the credits and such at the end.  Well, due to various experiences with some of the realities of web publishing, I've opted to change things up a bit in regards to how the document appears.  For starters, there's an actual cover page, with the credits page following right after.  Also added was a Creative Commons license agreement, something I've added out of semi-reluctant necessity given how one of my other projects was treated as "help yourself and do what you want" due to the lack of the CC license agreement in the document itself, leading to a series of events that I have no desire to repeat.

You might also notice that I've moved away from GoogleDocs and over to DropBox.  I've been having some issues with updating and replacing files on GoogleDocs (to say nothing of GD's lack of ability to track how many hits a file's gotten), and so I'm going to give DropBox a shot.   I've been using DropBox for a couple minor things, and I've been pretty impressed so far.  That and the preview versions of my PDF files don't look quite as garbled or washed out as the did on GoogleDocs.  Still, you'll need to download the file to your computer/netbook/tablet/device for it to look the way it should.

As for the other FFG Star Wars RPG fan project, the Unofficial Species Menagerie, going through the process of getting version 3.0 in order was certainly a learning experience.  In particular, that I should have stuck with my gut feeling and reached out to the person that I wanted to have do the "prettied up" PDF in the first place instead of the individual that I got stuck working with due to the lack of Creative Commons license issue that I noted above.  For all his remarks about my being "unprofessional" (mostly as I was trying to give various artists and authors a reasonable time to respond rather than the "right now dammit!" that he was insisting upon), he certainly screwed several things up, including the spelling of several alien species, and his own attitude was hardly what I'd call professional.  Particularly when Brian "Fiddleback" Casey in his role as editor of the Gamer Security Agency started up a separate thread to announce the newest version of the USM being available and the accusation that I deliberately tried to cut him out of the deal, when nothing could be further from the truth as I tried to arrange a simultaneous notification of both the low-resolution and high-resolution versions.

But that is in the past, and I'm happy to say that JegerGryte (check out his blog here) has happily agreed to step up to the plate in getting a corrected version of the Unofficial Species Menagerie.  He was my original choice as for who I wanted to work on the "prettied-up" version of the USM for the third version, and his work has been outstanding.  He's also shown to have no problems with feedback or about typos, which puts him well above the other guy in my book.  As I said, given the quality of work that he's done and the lack of ego in working with him, I really wish I had stuck to my gut and told "thedearth" to sod off.  Things are looking pretty good, so keep your eyes on the GSA for an update in the near future.

And speaking of the Gamer Security Agency, things are in a state of flux as near as I can tell.  Brian Casey has opted to move on to doing his own version, the Mad Adventurer's Society, and I think his notification that he was stepping down from being the GSA's primary editor has left everyone else a bit gun shy.  While the GSA is still up and still running, there's not been a whole lot of new content.

Also, given a listen to the latest episode of the Order 66 podcast "GMing A-Z with Jay Little" featuring the lead developer/designer of FFG's Star Wars RPG, Mister Jay Little himself.  There is some great advice on working with so-called "problem player" types, with an emphasis on the "working with" part as opposed to the traditional suggestions that focus more on "dealing with" those types of players.