This week marks the passing of The Empire Strikes Back director, Irvin Kershner, so I, like so many others, will talk a bit about the movie. I can't speak directly of Kershner, having never met him and only know him like most fans do - as the director of the excellent and successful squeal to Star Wars. But I can relay some thoughts about the movie, as I remember them from long past, and now.
Read MoreAdventures are obviously central to any role-playing game. Creating rules, and characters from those rules, can and should be entertaining and fun, but up until game time, they are simply creating the role for you to play. While many Gamemasters and game designers enjoy the adventure creation process, but it is not for everyone. Some have the desire, but not the time while others may have the desire but feel they lack the skills to create a story appropriate for their campaigns. Note, I don't say they lack the creativity (although they might think so). They might not feel comfortable writing a particular story type, or feel they don't have the rules knowledge to create a level-appropriate encounter.
Read MoreFor years...say almost 20 now...I've run Star Wars RPGs at local gaming conventions and at GenCon. It is how I started writing RPG material in the first place. More on that in a future post. Since I started working on Saga Edition, I've used the convention adventures to highlight the latest books and my most recent publications. Once the end of the Saga Edition line was announced, I intended to make a few of these adventures available for free for others to use.
Read MoreThis week's Star Wars Wednesday takes a look at a few online tools that can add some nice elements to your RPG or minis game.
Read MoreI'm preparing for the KC Game Fair this week, so in the interest of time, I'm going to answer a couple of starships related questions generated by some earlier posts. Also, if you're following up on the Assault on Intran skirmishes, I have received some reports (that time is now closed) and will follow up on the convention game next week. On with the questions:
Read MoreWith no official Star Wars RPG or Minis material in the foreseeable future, it's time once again to highlight some of the fan sites working to keep the games alive. Some of these sites have been around a very long time. Most cater to a specific segment of the Star Wars gaming audience – d6, d20, Saga, Minis and so on. Some sites contain brand new fan-generated material, while others serve as discussion areas or indexes for existing work. A few store FAQs and other information released for free from official sources that are no longer available. Some of these are old sites at new locations, so if you've lost an old favorite, you might find it here.
Read MoreAs many of you probably know, I wrote a ton of official scenarios for the Star Wars Miniatures game during its run. Scenarios are a different way of playing the game, and creating them demands a lot of attention to play and squad balance. Large scale scenrios were difficult to do, as they required a lot more time to test and many more pieces than the casual fan might have. Some were successful as multiple scenarios at built on each other. As such, I wasn't ever able to create and test a large scale battle.
With the KC Game Fair approaching, I decided to finally run a big battle.
Read MoreThis is post number 200 for my blog at starwars.com, Delusions of Grandeur. I first started blogging on starwars.com back in 2005, and in the intervening time, I've covered a lot of ground. When I first started, it was early in the Star Wars Miniatures game run, and I was producing scenarios for the Wizards of the Coast Star Wars website. Many of my early posts covered Star Wars in a broad, general sense. Posts about the music, Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, and so on.
Read MoreOne of the design philosophies behind the Star Wars RPG Saga Edition products is to make them useful at the table during game play, rather than books that are only used between sessions to build characters, adventures, and so forth. To that end, one of the early decisions by the design team was to build vehicle and ship stat blocks as though they were operated by the crew most likely to use the vehicle. This makes the ships and vehicles instantly usable to gamemasters, without any preparation time, so long as they are satisfied with the skill level and CL predetermined by the designer. This is analogous to using an enemy character or creature straight from the book, with no modifications.
Read MoreThis marks the first of what I will strive to make a weekly feature: Star Wars Wednesday. Most weeks it will likely cover some aspect of the Star Wars roleplaying or miniatures games, but some will also feature comments on most anything related to the Star Wars universe. Entry length will vary. Some will be copied in full to Delusions of Granduer, my starwars.com blog, but any that feature gaming freebies (like today) will still require a trip over here to actually download it. Some weeks, I'll be posting other items to the blog, so if you want to just see the Star Wars items, simply click on the Star Wars Wed. category (below the post).
Today, I'm featuring Stat Pack - Maps of Mastery I.
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