Star Wars Wednesday - Looking Behind the Scenes

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Become a big enough fan of something - book, movie, TV series and so on - and eventually, you'll want to know more about how it came to be. Behind the scenes stories become a form of entertainment all their own, both part of and separate from the actual thing they produce. With a big enough property, like Star Wars, behind the scenes info from original or secondary sources becomes extremely useful and even vital to those working on various stories and products.
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Star Wars Wednesday - Crawling Along

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One of the most iconic parts of Star Wars is the opening crawl. Recently, someone very cleverly coded a webpage to run the original Star Wars opening crawl, simply through html, css, etc. It and its code can be found here.  An article about it by the programmer is here.

The idea for the crawl came from earlier sources - Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials, one of which is below. Skip to the 34:24 mark, as the embed code starts the show off at the beginning.

Ever since there has been a roleplaying game, GMs and players have looked for ways to kick off their games with crawls of their own. They've used various methods, such as this one someone created for my adventure, Core of Corruption (#6 in the Dawn of Defiance series for Saga Edition):

Of course, this illustrates one downside for using YouTube, or rather, using the original music score. Copyright issues. Of course, for those creating crawls for their own personal home games, this isn't a problem, unless you distribute it. Fortunately, there is another great method that I've mentioned before. There is a crawl generator starwars.com that can be edited and shared with anyone with access to a computer...that uses flash, that is. That's a bummer for many who would otherwise use a tablet at the table. Still, it works fine on a laptop.

I looked around and didn't see any for Beyond the Rim yet. With so many people getting into the adventure, I thought this would be helpful: 

Copy this link and paste it into the browser to get to the above crawl:

http://starwars.com/play/online-activities/crawl-creator/index.jsp?cs=q6nrs886a6

Now, writing an opening crawl is actually harder than it looks. There is an art to balancing information, reading time, attention grabbing prose and the proper voice. The crawl from Beyond the Rim was re-written by FFG, and is much better for it. The best advice is to just hit the highest of highlights and try not to use it to replace any opening box text or more complete introduction. Look at the original examples from the movies to see where they emphasize locations, etc. using ALL CAPS.

More discussion about opening crawls can be found here and here.

 

Star Wars Wednesday - GenCon 2013

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GenCon Game Fair was a great time once again this year. As usual, new games, new releases, news, previews and more filled the Indianapolis convention center and surrounding hotels. GenCon reported today that there were nearly 50,000 unique attendees, up 20% from last year. So it's big and only getting bigger. Every type of tabletop game seemed to be represented, and there were a lot of board games this year. Clothing booths seemed to expand over past versions, usually with some sort of fantasy or steampunk focus, if not T-Shirts. At least two booths featured quality looking fezzes with logos or art on them, most likely thanks to Dr. Who. Several former kickstarter projects and games also appeared on the show floor.

And, of course, there was the Star Wars gaming news and releases...

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Beyond the Rim Released...and sold out...at GenCon

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My Star Wars Edge of the Empire adventure Beyond the Rim released at GenCon on Thursday...and sold out sometime Friday afternoon!

FFG announced at the InFlight Report that it should reach stores in 3-4 weeks.

The new beta for the next core book, Age of Rebellion was also released. I worked on that as well, but most of my contribution isn't in the beta.

More on all of this coming in this week's Star Wars Wednesday blog post.

Star Wars Wednesday - Celebration Europe

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As expected, Star Wars Celebration Europe held the biggest Star Wars news of the convention season. There were plenty of previews and interviews. My twitter feed basically exploded with live tweets and summaries from a variety of sources. I didn't make the trip, but thanks to the magic of the internet, I could see some of the best parts and get the news as it happened. I'm not covering all of that here - there are other sites that do that far better - but I'll share a bit about what I'm looking forward to...
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Star Wars Wednesday - Edge of the Empire Release

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So, a long-awaited day has finally arrived. The Star Wars Edge of the Empire Core Rulebook hit store shelves today, along with the Game Master’s Kit and the specialized Edge of the Empire dice. Close to a year after the beta, and many months after the release of the Beginner Game, I'm very excited that everyone can now play the full rules set, including character creation and more. I had a good time working on this project, and hope everyone else has as much, or more, fun playing it.
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Dragon 424 - Desert of Desolation

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My latest History Check article, Martek and the Desert of Desolation was released in Dragon 424 today on D&D Insider. Subscribers can find it here. Desert of Desolation was my favorite AD&D campaign. It was big, and combined three of the I-series adventures (Pharoah, Oasis of the White Palm, and the Lost Tomb of Martek) into one massive campaign with additional elements, hand outs and puzzles. For any of my old players subscribe and read, at a memorable scene or two makes an appearance...

One cool thing about writing this article is that for the first time in years (I think....) there is new art of to the campaign! It's a good scene from the adventure's lengthy backstory. I don't think it's been depicted before.

Anyway, dndclassics.com has the first adventure, Pharoah, available. Eventually, all of those adventures and the campaign itself should be added to the site (no timetable as to when, though).

Star Wars Beyond The Rim

Announced today! Edge of the Empire's first full length adventure, Beyond the Rim, due to be released in 3rd Quarter of this year.

I had a great time writing this adventure. It's packed with locations , creatures and more that fans and players should have a lot of fun playing with.

"When new rumors add credence to old smugglers’ tales of the long-lost Separatist treasure ship, the Sa Nalaor, it’s time for a handful of intrepid explorers, scrappy smugglers, and adventuresome academics to fire up their hyperdrive and embark upon a fantastic journey to the farthest regions of the Star Wars galaxy!"

Head on over to the FFG Beyond the Rim page for a great rundown of what to expect, and check out the truly awesome art!