Star Wars Wednesday - Nonheroics

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Continuing with the stat block creation discussion of the past two weeks, this time I want delve into the use of the nonheroic class in Star Wars RPG Saga Edition.

In a minute. First, I want to cover one important point on last week's notes on stat blocks for canon characters.

When creating canon characters, you're usually dealing with known character histories. That means the characters must have certain abilities available at certain times in their career. While Saga normally just printed the stats for a character as it was best known, the stats were built with their histories in mind so they could be deconstructed to a logical lower level if needed. So, this means building the character like you would a player character is pretty important. You must pay attention to the order of levels, ability score advancement and potentially the pickup of extra skills and languages if their Intelligence score increases along the way. Sometimes, you have to get pretty creative to fit it all in, and tricks like that can help.

So, nonheroics - what the heck is that class?

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D&D Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale Releases

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Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale is now available in a lot of places, a bit ahead of schedule. You'll find all kinds of great monsters and organizations ready to throw into your Nentir Vale campaign, or any locale of your own devising. My co-authors are Brian James, Matt James and Steven Townshend.

Along with many of the monsters, I designed the swamp map contained inside (though I didn't do the art). The black dragon and the lizardfolk on the cover are also mine, story and stat-wise. They would be Shadowmire and his Witchlight lizardfolk underlings. If you're a D&D Insider subscriber, check out my tie-in adventure, Battle of the Witchlight Hermitage, just released TODAY, to see these guys in action. It uses the the swamp map as well. 

Star Wars Wednesday - Dealing with Stat Blocks

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A few hours ago, I finished recording/co-hosting an episode of the Order 66 podcast. I'm writing this on Sunday, because I'm traveling this week. If all goes well, this will auto-post at the right day and time. If you never listen to the Order 66 podcast, it is dedicated to the Saga Edition of the RPG, and you can find it at d20 Radio.

In the episode, we talk about creating modules for public use/publication and how that is different from creating an adventure for a home game. Hopefully, some of my more rambling comments still provide some help. It occurred to me, however, that one aspect we didn't address was stat blocks, so I wanted to touch on that a bit this week. I'll be addressing Saga Edition specifically, but most of the following applies to any system.

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Star Wars Wednesday - More SW Minis Resources

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While it's been over a year since the end of the Star Wars game lines (and no new rumors I'm aware of, for those who have been asking), fans of the Minis game are working hard to keep it going. If you know where to look, there are new maps to be found, new scenarios, podcasts and even new virtual sets. I've posted some links before, but became aware of some I'd missed so I wanted to pass them along. Plus there are some GenCon and pre GenCon items some might find useful before the show in August. 
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Battle of the Witchlight Hermitage Coming to DDI

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My next D&D adventure for Dungeon magazine issue #191 / D&D Insider is due out later this month:

Battle of the Witchlight Hermitage
Shadowmire, the black wyrm of the Witchlight Fens, doesn’t like his neighbors. Can you protect a poorly defended hermitage from the dragon’s wrath? A D&D adventure for characters of levels 3–5, designed to support Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale.
As you might guess, it builds on some of my sections of Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale, to be released June 21.Check out the issue's cover art on the for a hint to the adventure...(though for some reason, I can't see it in firefox...may be a setting here, since it works in IE and android)

Star Wars Wendesday - How long did that take?

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Action scenes in roleplaying games are major highlights in the game. In Star Wars, more often than not, they should be THE highlight of the session, or the campaign. Creating good cinematic sequences is key.

Remember that action doesn't always mean combat. There doesn't even need to be a direct physical threat, if there is enough drama in the scene. The results of failure can manifest itself in other ways - the characters didn't get there in time to prevent x from happening, for instance.

Creating a good action sequence can be difficult.

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Star Wars Wednesday - Newsnets

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So, it's still Wednesday, right? Sorry for the delay, things got considerably busier at the end of the day than I expected...

Today, or what's left of it, I want to talk a bit about distributing information within the game, for those RPG fans out there. I'm talking mainly about clues and backstory - information that the gamemaster wants the players and their characters to learn about, but may not want to spend a lot of session time playing it out. Sure, the GM can read it out, or play it out with GM characters, but this runs the risk of halting play for a lot of exposition. Handing over a sheaf of campaign notes aren't likely to be read either, no matter how interested the players may be.

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Star Wars Wednesday - Yoda's Species in Play

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A long time ago, in a meeting far, far away, George Lucas declared that Yoda's species details would remain a secret. Generally, I'm fine with that - it's a big galaxy, and it's nice to have unknown bits. We don't even know the species name. For game designers, this presented certain challenges - how do you stat out Yoda or one of the other two known members of the species?
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CHAOS D&D and GenCon 2011

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I see from my site stats that a few eager GenCon 2011 attendees/players found my old post on CHAOS D&D, some through a google search. Thanks for the interest! I've gone back and edited the plot info out of the entry, but reading it may still give a way some spoilers on how the game itself is played. Though that in and of itself is not a secret (CHAOS has been running for years at ShaunCon and KC Game Fair), it's still more fun for some people to experience it first hand.

As to the plot info earlier readers or players may have read/played, CHAOS plots have a way of developing over time (and even in game), so I'm sure it won't be exactly the same this time around.

For those who aren't following all of that, the Roleplayers Guild of Kansas City, Ltd. is running two rounds of its long running Chaotically Hysterical Association of Systems (CHAOS) event at GenCon 2011.

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Star Wars Wednesday - May the 4th Be With You

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May the 4th be with you!

Sorry for the late post today. When I realized yesterday that there would be a lot of Star Wars related activity today, the mostly unofficial Star Wars day, I decided to hold off at least until after the countdown clock on starwars.com expired, in case it was important. By then, of course, I was at work and ended up working late, so I'm just now getting to this.

As my friends and family know well, I like puns. You'd think I would be a fan of a something like the title of this day. Sorry, but this one just never clicked with me. Apparently the fun continues tomorrow with the Revenge of the 5th. I do find the combination of jokes funnier than either individually, for whatever reason.

Anyway, there was a lot of Star Wars around the web, at least. Here's a quick roundup of some of the better stuff, for those who missed it:

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Chaos Scar: Scarblade now available on DDI

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My adventure Chaos Scar: Scarblade is now live in Dungeon Magazine for D&D Insider subscribers. It's my first Dungeon and DDI contribution. Come to think of it, it's my first 4e to be released (though not my first 4e first project).

Somewhere in the Chaos Scar is the Proving Pit, a gladiatorial arena that is associated with an enticing magical sword called the Scarblade. Ruling over the Proving Pit is Morrn Bladeclaw, its foremost champion and former owner of the Scarblade. To claim the mystical blade, challengers must face Morrn Bladeclaw, but not until they've bested the pit's lesser champions first. But the Scarblade, and the Proving Pit itself, might have something to say about the situation. "Scarblade" is an adventure for characters of levels 7 to 9.

Good luck and have fun! 

Star Wars Wednesday - Mobilized

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This week, I've been totally distracted by several things. I've recently become significantly busier, in a good way, but it has also left me going "Tomorrow is Wednesday? Already?" the past couple of weeks. I'll get things sorted and get some more gaming stuff up in the future, and follow up on the outpost from a few weeks back.

One distraction this week is my new android phone, my first foray in to the smartphone arena. No, it's not "droid" branded model, though that would have been appropriate and fun, especially the special edition R2 model.

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Star Wars Wed - Trandoshan Hunting Pod

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I hope everyone enjoyed last week's April Fools day posts. The "obviously omitted" rules from Wednesday were a lot of fun to do, and those who checked back on April 1st itself got some RPG and minis stats for Simon the Killer Ewok. A couple of notes: the rules were far more popular than Simon, and I actually did send a previous version of those midi-chlorian rules to Rodney Thompson (Wizards Saga line developer) back in 2008 for April 1st. Last week's version was much improved, and a few people noted what I thought of as a joke within the joke - you could eventually use them in play, after some more development and tweaking.

I don't report a lot of Star Wars non-gaming news, but for those who missed it, the official forums at starwars.com are shutting down at the end of the month. They'll be read only until June or so, but then they will be removed. No word on the blogs, and I'll keep posting there while I can. I've suspected for a long time the blogs would go away with the end of the Hyperspace online fan club, given the lack of upgrades. Didn't expect the forums to also go away. There was an announcement last year that another company was coming in to help run the Lucas sites, so I gather this is all part of that process.

On to this week. Since it's the end of the current Clone Wars season, I wanted to follow up on the final episodes, without major spoilers.

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