FFG & Star Wars, take two

Last night, the GSA put up a much more in-depth article discussing what was (at the time) known about Fantasy Flight Games' upcoming Star Wars RPG.

http://gsa.thegamernation.org/2012/08/17/fantasy-flight-announces-star-wars-edge-of-the-empire/

Fair warning that the tone can seem a little negative, but take it with a grain of salt.

I won't rehash what's said there, but of note is at the end Mr. Ruffles of the Brew City Gamers podcast has a short iPhone video clip of him flipping through the book.  Seems there's not a lot of art, but there is a lot of crunch-based content, and word has it the lack of art is going to be the only major difference between the "beta" book and the final version.  To me at least, this sounds less like it's a beta in regards to D&DNext, and more like the rules are largely set, they just don't have the assorted bits and bobbits ready yet.

I'm hoping that we'll have more information not long after GenCon, as the GSA's got at least a couple Agents on the spot at GenCon with the chance to talk to some of the folks behind this game.

Edit: You can also read about a fellow gamer's thoughts about FFG's version of Star Wars over at Word of the Nerd at http://www.wordofthenerdonline.com/fantasy-flight-games-releases-star-wars-rpg-beta/

Fantasy Flight Games & SWRPG, my thoughts

As I (and probably a host of other folks) expected, Fantasy Flight Games finally released some news on what they were doing with the RPG portion of their Star Wars license.  Clue one, it ain't using it as a seat warmer.

From what bits I've seen on Twitter so far, it looks like it's going to follow a model similar to that used by the Warhammer 40K RPG, with at least three books of escalating power levels, with the initial offering being "Edge of the Empire," and an additional book being released each subsequent year.

To be honest, I'm a bit hesitant about this.  Having seen the WH40K books and the way they were set up, I have a bad feeling about just how "open" this new iteration of Star Wars is going to be, at least in terms of official content.

Granted, it's true that the d6 version of Star Wars had an incredibly strong focus on the Rebellion and eventually the New Republic eras, but that's due largely to those really being the only eras out there, with Clone Wars pretty being "hands off" as per The Flanneled One.  But since the release of the Prequel Trilogy (regardless of what you think of them) on top of the New Jedi Order, Knights of the Old Republic, and Legacy Era material, Star Wars now covers a much broader range of eras than just the Classic/Rebellion Era.  Even the OCR and RCR versions of Star Wars by Wizards of the Coast weren't heavily restricted to just a small window of time, remembering that they were released at the same time as the adore-mentioned Prequel Trilogy.  Star Wars Saga Edition, by far my favorite version of the different Star Wars RPGs, almost literally covers the gamut of eras, with the vast-majority of the crunch-based material being non-specific enough that it can be ported into game set in other eras with a minimal amount of fuss, to say nothing of almost half the line's sourcebooks generally being "era-neutral" and thus applicable to campaigns set during the Dawn of the Jedi all the way up to to Legacy Era and everything in between.

No granted, I don't have any special insider info, and not being able to go to GenCon this year obviously means what a lot of what little info I do have is coming to me second-hand, so I might be way off base.  Then again, considering the press release that FFG put up on their website, there may not be a whole lot of viability if you want gameplay in settings outside of the Rebellion Era.

However, that may also change, as FFG is offering up the chance to get involved in the Beta Testing as early as now, even if you're not at GenCon.  Unlike a lot of other Beta testings, this one you have to pony up your cash up front to play along.  So for those of us not at GenCon, there are two options: Hope you've got a participating retailer in your area, or buy the beta book right off FFG's website, which is the option I took.  I choose the Priority Mail shipping option, but I suspect the book won't even ship until after GenCon.

For those of you curious and would rather get the (limited) info from the horse's mouth, here's the link:

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=3496

In other news, I'm really hoping for my X-Wing game to be shipped soon.  I pretty much pre-ordered the main box set and all the available boosters as soon as they became available, based solely upon the demo games I played of it at GenCon 2011.

Also, lack of being at GenCon has the prospect of being made up for by playing a Skype game of Mouseguard run by my friend Nateal.  I've heard a lot about the game, so I'm eager to see what all the talk is about.

Edition Wars: Great Fun in Small Packaging

Not a huge post, but just a quick one to discuss in brief the first offering by GamerNation Studios, aka the guys behind the D20 Radio network.

Funded via Kickstarter earlier in the year, Edition Wars has officially been let loose upon the world.  Part of the premise is it's a quick, fun card game you can throw down while waiting for the rest of your gaming group to show up, or perhaps play if the GM suddenly can't make it (which is what happened tonight).

As most of our group for the bi-weekly Marvel Heroic RPG had shown up but the GM had to beggar off to avoid excessive wife aggro, that left a bunch of gamers ready to game but no game on hand.  Luckily, I'd brought along my copy if Edition Wars so at least our gathering wasn't a total waste of everyone's time and gas money.

We only played a couple times, and the first one had some referring to the instruction pamphlet (not really a booklet) a few times just to make sure we got things right.  Nothing's worse than playing a game, not having fun, and then realizing you'd screwed up several key elements.

Well, fun was to be had, as well as laughs galore at some of the gamer types and the GMs, as well as various Critical Effect cards.  I must admit, it felt kind of odd to lose the game because my own gamer card was the 6th gamer in to another GM's group.  I'm going to want to play a few more times before I really go into an in-depth review, but suffice to say it's a really fun game and worth the $25 to pick it up at either your FLGS or various online gaming retailers.

In other news, while I've not been posting much here, I have been far busier over at the Gaming Security Agency website, found here: http://gsa.thegamernation.org/

I've done a couple of advice articles, including a warning about excessive house ruling taken from my own long experiences with RPGs and an incessant urge to "tweak" things under just about any RPG I've played or GM'd.  I've also kicked off a running series of articles called "Heroes on Demand," which is intended to provide ready-to-run characters, all of them rules-legal, for new players and time-pressed GM's alike.  I'd say about half of the offerings so far are for Star Wars Saga Edition, although I really do hope to change that in the weeks to come.  Already there's a Chest-Deep hero for the FATE-based Dresden Files game as well as a doughty adventurer for Warhammer Fantasy.  And there are a lot of other great articles by my fellow Agents that are worth your time to check out, so if you haven't scoped out the GSA website, go do so.

A change in objective and pace

First, a fair warning in that you might not be seeing this blog be updated quite as often in the months to come.

However, this won't be entirely due to lack of interest on my part.  Rather, this will be due to the creation of the Gaming Security Agency blog, or GSA for short.  The brainchild of one Brian "Fiddleback" Casey, a longtime member of the d20 Radio Network and the Gamer Nation, the GSA is a collection of gamers, referred to as "Agents," who have gathered together from the four corners of the universe to put their prowess as geek savants to use in helping others build upon and improve their gaming experience, table-top or otherwise.  It includes such folks as Chris "GM Chris" Witt, verbose co-host of the Order 66 podcast, Garrett "barefoottourguide" Crowe of the Threat Detected SWSE live-play podcast, established author and gamer Wayne Basta, plus Nateal "Kaylylia/HotPinkJoystick" Erickson, chipper gamer geek fatale and her sagely husband Ben "Cyril" Erickson, and many others.

Having signed on as Agent #94, a fair chunk of the stuff that I'd be posting here will probably end up being posted over at the GSA instead.  Although it's only been around for a few days, there's already a good number of articles up on the site, so click the link below and check them out.  You won't be sorry that you did.

http://gsa.thegamernation.org/

Chris West is at it again!

Having only just shipped out the last of the maps from his previous Kickstarter project, Christopher West, mapmaker extraordinaire, has a brand-new Kickstarter up and running

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mapmaker/poster-maps-of-mystery

There's not much in the way of details at the moment, but the fact that he's only a few hundred dollars short of his funding goal in less than two days should tell you something about the quality of this man's past work and the trust he's earned amidst the gaming community.

So like the man said, if you're gonna pledge, hurry up and do it.  This Kickstarter as a short window of opportunity, and the sooner the initial funding goal is met, the sooner we get more details.

And now... our heroes

Not calling this part three of my series of posts regarding the 4th of July game I ran of Deadlands using the Savage Worlds rules.  Well, mostly using the Savage Worlds rules; I'd kept things fairly simple in terms of "expanded actions" and revamped the way skill checks worked.

Bear in mind that each character was made using the optional "card system" that I linked to a few posts back, with the hand being a King, a Jack, a 10, a pair of 7's, and a 6, so don't be surprised if these pre-gens don't add up right according to the official method of character creation in the Savage Worlds Deluxe book.

So enough of my yappin', and on to the heroes of our tale, as well as couple other pre-gens that I put together after the fact.  But rather than post each of them individually, I compiled them onto a no-frills PDF, which can be found at the link below:

Dono's Deadlands: Reloaded Posse Pregens

I also included a brief synopsis of each character, particularly where I think their strong points in a group would be.

The Doom Pool podcast

If you've got an interest in Margaret Weis Production's Marvel Heroic Roleplaying Game but haven't yet taken the plunge, either to buy the books or get this game on the table, then I encourage you to check out the brand new podcast, "The Doom Pool," to be found right here.

They just released their second episode, and so far Jason, Bryan, and Daryl have done a good discussion of the doom pool mechanic (1st episode) and the effect die (2nd episode), as well as giving several of the published hero files a pretty in-depth review, both how they work and don't work (and Sentry gets what is, in my opinion, a much-deserved bashing almost across the board).  They've got an actual play segment at the end of each show, but sadly there's some audio issues that makes it very difficult to hear everyone, particular Bryan/Spider-Man (which is especially unfortunate as it sounds like Bryan was really getting into character) and Susan/Beast.  However, that portion is prefaced with Jason discussing where he made mistakes as the GM/Watcher, and why he made some of the rules calls that they did.

They've also got their own sub-forum on the D20 Radio Network (which isn't quite as d20 dominated as used to be), located over here.


Seriously, give these guys a listen.  They're informative and entertaining.