Z-6 rotary blaster

Death On The Outpost Moon

Clone Wars Episode 5 This week, the GM decided to try out a one-shot scenario. He assigned no-name clone troopers for the players. A sergeant and a bunch of rookies who were tasked with housekeeping of a listening outpost on a Rishi moon. He made it clear that they were the first to know if a Separatist invasion force was on its way to sneak up and bomb the crap out of the clone trooper production world of Kamino. The outpost was descibed nicely by the GM: it was a small drab gray installation with a landing platform and large communication dishes, perched at the edge of a rocky cliff filled with holes. Initially the players did great in giving each trooper a distinct personality despite their common appearance. They picked out quirky names for their PCs like “Sergeant O’Niner”, “Cutup”, “Echo”, “Hevy” and “Fives”. Then, a meteor storm occurred. […]

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Padmé finds herself smack dab in the middle of things blowing up... again

Riders of the Malevolence

Clone Wars Episode 4 The GM announced that this week was going to be a standard dungeon crawl, to which everyone shrugged and went, “Meh.” However, after recapping last week’s session, he started out with a bang by shifting the scene to two new PCs. Senator Padmé Amidala of Naboo and her protocol droid See Threepio were both on their way to a secret meeting with the Intergalactic Banking Clan, an enemy faction, when suddenly they reverted back in normal space right in the middle of last week’s closing skirmish. The PCs asked the GM why “Intergalactic” when they were only in a single galaxy? The GM reminded them of the map in Episode II: Attack of the Clones, which displayed a main spiral galaxy and at least one dwarf satellite galaxy. So, “Intergalactic” was technically correct. Anakin’s player thought they’d better update all the official sources with this tidbit […]

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Y-wing hotdogger aces

Strikeforce: Shadow Squadron

Clone Wars Episode 3 After the last adventure, in which the party gathered intel on the Malevolence, the GM now changed the flavour of the campaign from a rescue to a starfighter combat scenario. It was a straightforward mission. A squadron of fighters will take off from the Resolute, take a short cut through a nebula, then attack the Malevolence targeting its command tower at the other end of the nebula before it can destroy the Kaliida Shoals Medical Station, with its load of hospitalised clone troopers and cadre of doctors and medics. There were supposed to be only four players this session. The PCs snapped up by the players this week were Anakin Skywalker, Ahsoka Tano, and two of the clone pilots named Broadside and Matchstick. The GM thought it would be awesome to give everyone a fighter from the original movies, like the Koensayr Y-wing. But since this […]

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Clones in vacuum

The Orbital Debris Field Manhunt

Clone Wars Episode 2 Obviously last week had merely been the gaming group’s test run using a stand alone scenario in a single session. This week, the GM brought out the big guns. Literally. The Republic fleet has been under attack by a colossal capital ship, known as the Malevolence. Which is why this scenario was titled “Rising Malevolence”. Incidentally the Malevolence is a 7.9 km-long Subjugator-class heavy cruiser, which means the first ship of the line, the Subjugator, was still floating about somewhere in the galaxy. Great job by the GM, cause this gives the rest of us another ship to play with in our own campaigns. There were seven players around the table. And the GM split them up into two groups. The first group’s PCs consisted of the Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker, his Togruta padawan Ahsoka Tano and the trusty astromech droid Artoo-Detoo. The second group played […]

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The King with two bodyguards

Battle At The Coral Moon

Clone Wars Episode 1 The scenario titled “Ambush” was designed so that the Player Characters (PCs), on the side of the Galactic Republic, set down on the moon known as Rugosa in a diplomatic mission. Rugosa’s terrain was a thick forest of a multitude of hard, gigantic coral structures. If there was a sea once, it probably had dried out a long time ago. Tiny airborne subspecies of the neebray, like little sparrows, flit between the coral branches. Quite an exotic setting described by the Game Master (GM). The PCs task was simple: Land on Rugosa and make the planned rendezvous with the Toydarian King Katuunko, then persuade the good king to actively support the Republic in the war against the Separatists.The lead PC was Yoda, a Jedi Master with a fair amount of dice in his Force skills. He was aided by a trio of clone troopers, Thire, Jek […]

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Death Star Game 01

Escaping the Death Star using Dice

Once upon a time, Sila brought back with her a Star Wars: Escape the Death Star Action Figure Game, which is actually a board game with two sets of rules (an easy and an advanced rule) as well as two Hasbro action figures, a Luke Skywalker in stormtrooper disguise with removable helmet and lightsaber, and a Darth Vader figure with removable helmet (complete with exposed back of head) and lightsaber. It must have been ten years since, and I’ve never actually played it until recently. Because Irfan wanted to try it out. However, I realised that the easy rules were too easy and straightforward, and the advanced rules were too complicated for Irfan. So the gamemaster in my blood took over, and I not only modified the rules so that the difficulty level of the rules are something in between and it’s something Irfan can play and enjoy. Also, I […]

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Dice

Teaching Kids to Roleplay is Only Natural

I have been GMing some very simple scenarios with Irfan. Mostly it’s been dungeon crawls through caves with traps and obstacles, trying to find his way out. Today I read this article from Geekdad written by Daniel Donaho, which has some ideas in how to make things more interesting when playing with children. Here’s an excerpt: The Early Years (4 – 7 years) Is four-years-old too young to play an RPG? Not if you have a couple of older children (say 6 or 7) play with. Of course, if you want children to abide by all the rules exactly and have a detailed knowledge of movement and encumbrance rates and initiative then you are setting yourself and the kids up for failure and a pretty uninspiring time. The focus at this age should be on the “role-playing”, rather than “roll-playing”. You need a game that will take anywhere from 20 […]

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Woof

I Want To Play In This Campaign

PVP Online‘s latest comic regales us with a description of one of the greatest ideas for an RPG campaign. I believe I’d very much like to play Jesse Mach of Street Hawk in that campaign. Anyone else willing to be Stringfellow Hawke, B.J McKay, Sheriff Lobo and Colt Seavers travelling the country to thwart the evil plans of an evil Mr. Belvedere? We’d have the Street Hawk, Airwolf and Sheriff Lobo’s police cruiser positioned inside B.J. McKay’s 18-wheeler, ready to be deployed at a moment’s notice, like The Highwayman series. We’ll be fighting wave after wave of Melmackian troops led by Gordon “ALF” Shumway, under the direct command of Mr. Belvedere’s lieutenant Arnold of Diff’rent Strokes. “Whatchoo talkin’ about, ALF?” You know you want to play this.

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Arakyd Diamondback

Arakyd Diamondback Droid Stats

It was during the Enteague Sector campaign for the Star Wars Roleplaying Game which I GMed perhaps fifteen years ago. A new team of the Strikeforce Enteague, consisting of younger members, had to investigate the Malc Toldreyn Library on the planet Neeuderni to solve the campaign mystery arc of why an Imperial Admiral (no names here, cause in retrospect the NPC naming convention I used at around this time sucked) wanted Ham Slacker the tongue-tied engineer dead. Naturally, the Imperials attacked during the investigation. Radio communications on and around the planet was jammed. It turned out that the Imps had deployed a Diamondback droid which is designed to jam planetary and interplanetary communications. The group borrowed the local defence forces’ CloakShape fighters to attack the droid, which had its own defences in the form of anti-fighter cannons. I’ve rewritten down the D6 stats slightly modified from my original pencil notes […]

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The old RPG gang

So what IS a Role-playing Game Anyway?

I have a Role-playing Games category right over there at the left sidebar on the front page of the site. I’m sure there’s a lot of visitors to this site that will probably shrug and say, “I dunno”, or half-heartedly answer, “Something like Dungeons and Dragons?” Well, Dungeons and Dragons is a role-playing game (RPG is the popular acronym attributed to it), true. But it’s more than just D&D and we’ll get to that later. If you ask ten gamers, you’d probably get ten different answers on the description of an RPG. So this is a description of a role-playing game as what it means to me. What Do You Do? A role-playing game (RPG) is a collaborative game where players take roles of characters in an interactive story which is planned out and refereed by a game master (GM). There needs to be at least two people in the […]

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Starships of the Galaxy by Uncle Gary

Another one of Irfan’s Uncle Gary’s writing project has been officially been announced by Wizards of the Coast, which is Starships of the Galaxy for Star Wars Roleplaying Game – Saga Edition Core Rulebook the third edition of the d20 gaming rules. The book was a collaborative effort between Gary, Owen Stephens and Rodney Thompson. I’ve seen the Saga Edition Core Rulebook on display at Kinokuniya the other day, but I haven’t bought it yet. I’ve heard good reviews about it and maybe someday I’ll get a crew together to sit down and play it. Heck, I’ve only played the d20 revised core rule book version via a Play-By-E-Mail game that didn’t really finish. Maybe I’ll start a new crew beginning with this little guy beside me not really quietly playing with the N-1 fighter I got 8 years ago free with a Happy Meal. But the real question about […]

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Fragments From The Rim

Fragments From The Rim

All my life I’ve loved the idea of the Star Wars universe. When I discovered that there was a Star Wars Roleplaying Game published by West End Games back in 1987 I was excited. But this won’t be about how I got into RPGs, but the review of one of the best SWRPG supplements ever: Galaxy Guide 9: Fragments From The Rim Here is a list of why this supplement by Simon Smith and Eric Trautmann rocks: It’s a well-written book. It has tragedy and humour all packaged up in the entries and the vignettes in the book. The characters to be used as Non-Player Characters (NPCs) have fantastic backgrounds. Parts of the book are designed to actually make you chuckle, not in a non sequitur humour kind of way, but well within the context of its universe. It’s diverse. It shows you a dozen aspects of life in the […]

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Children of the Horned Rat

Gary’s Book Nominated for 3 Ennies

Congratulations to Gary Astleford for getting the book he co-wrote for Black Industries, Children of the Horned Rat nominated for 3 Ennie awards. The nominations are for Best Interior Art, Best Writing and Product of the Year. Product of the Year is a hell of a big deal, of course, but I am very proud of him for the nomination for Best Writing. I seem to remember a conversation with Gary a long time ago. It was on how gaming products nowadays focus too much on rules, or intersperse rules with fluff on the campaign world… as opposed to try not breaking the fourth wall and write the book as if it was genuinely from that campaign universe. Then finally have all the custom rules for the book and such be an afterthought but easily accessible and indexed when required. Now, going by the subtext of the Best Writing award, […]

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Skill check

You Rolled Poorly

Some weeks ago I wrote an entry on role-playing game motivational posters. Last night I discovered a website that allows you create your own by uploading your own pictures and entering your own lines of text. (Doesn’t even have to be about RPGs, even.) So here we are with my own RPG motivational poster.

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Noumenon cover

A Noumenon Review at RPGNet

I rarely write for my supper, so when I see a good review for something which I participated in I get very elated. Noumenon, the RPG published by Abstract Nova, was reviewed by Jocelyn Robitaille at RPGNet on the 30th of March and I missed it… until just now. For an idea of the RPG setting flavour, take a read at the reviewer’s first couple of paragraphs, “Imagine J. J. Abrams’ Lost mixed with Alex Proyas’ Dark City and Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, but written by William S. Burroughs and with a pinch of Silent Hill thrown in for good measure. Now, picture a game that makes Nobilis look like D&D in terms of how easy it is to grasp. Combine those two pictures in your head. Are you there, yet? Good. “You now have a rough idea of what Noumenon is like.” I am proud to have contributed […]

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The fearless penguin strikes

Motivational Posters, But….

You’ve seen those motivational posters? The black bordered ones with the inspiring and or beautiful picture of nature, or a cute child or a kitten. Below the image is usually a word or a phrase of the facet of humanity requiring the motivation. Below that line, in smaller type, is a line of blissful and inspiring words as chicken soup for the soul… Anyway, a bunch of nice people over at RPG.Net has come up with a thread in their forums to create more and more of these spirit-uplifting posters. And a kind person has collected these posters and put it in a gallery at his website which you can check out here (dead link). Feel free to browse, absorb and digest some of the fantastic wisdom which, hopefully, can help you when you face bad times in your life. Here are some choice posters for your preview: Beautiful, they […]

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