Sterlinghershey.com Adjustments

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FYI, I've been adjusting the site, having learned a bit more about the behind the scenes controls. I do this regularly, but this time, the changes are more significant and apparent. I've merged the news list into the blog, so it's all one page now. The blog now shows up as the main page. Longer blog entries (like Star Wars Wednesdays) will show the first paragraph or so, then you'll have to "click to read more..." which sends you to the full post. This will also help me track which entries are getting the most readers. This shouldn't affect any links to any individual posts - those page addresses have not changed.

I've also cleaned up the tags and categories, so searching by subject should be easier (see the right column for the lists). Given that I talk about Star Wars in a variety of contexts, I haven't tagged every Star Wars entry with that, which gets redundant very quickly. Instead, look for items starting with sw, like swse (Star Wars Saga Edition) or swminis (Star Wars minis).

Star Wars Wednesday - Kershner and TESB

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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.
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Star Wars Wednesday - Adapting Adventures

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Adventures 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.
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Star Wars Wednesday - 3,720 to 1

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For 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.
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KC Game Fair wrapup

KC Game Fair was this weekend and we had a fantastic turnout and a big boost in attendence, with hundreds of players over 4 days. There were as many people playing Saturday afternoon as there were the entire convention last year. We had RPGs, minis and wargames, boardgaems, LARPs, dealers and guests. Thanks to everyone who came out to play and help out. It was a great weekend of gaming.

Star Wars Wednesday - SW Tabletop Gaming Resources

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With 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.
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Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale update

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Amazon updated the Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale entry, adding the cover art. Assuming it survived the editing/development process, a couple of my contributions are illustrated here.

Wizards of the Coast official product page.

The monsters and villains contained within are appropriate challenges for heroic- and paragon-tier characters and fit easily into any home campaign, as well as other Dungeons & Dragons published campaign settings. In addition to a 128-page book of ready-to-play monsters and villains, this product includes 8 die-cut sheets of card stock monster and villain tokens and a double-sided battle map featuring four different encounter locations you can use when running encounters.


 

Star Wars Wednesday - Assault on Intran

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As 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.
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Star Wars Wednesday - Delusions of Grandeur No. 200

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This 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.
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Star Wars Wednesday - Starship & Vehicle Sheets

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One 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.
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Star Wars Wednesday - Stat Pack - Maps of Mastery I

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This 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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