Over on Character Generation, Liz talks about what five games influenced her. I’d like to talk about the five games that influenced me.

1. Star Wars D6. Like Liz, this was my first RPG. It introduced me to a world where anything was possible. I had a blast with it, even if I only played it (back then) about 10 times. It inspired me to make my own terrible RPGs with my brother as we sought to discover more about what this whole roleplaying thing was. I’ve recently rediscovered this game, and it still holds up as a fantastic ruleset for simulating the Star Wars universe. Perfect.

2. Star Wars D20. This was the first game I ran. This system is one of the best systems I know, but only on a personal level, because I know that I could run this game into eternity without ever looking at a book. I know it that well. It also taught me how to run things completely on the fly, and knowledge of this system allows me to run any other d20 system (including 4e) on the fly. I’m still playing online with my players from 11 years ago, in a modified version of this system, with the same characters, and hope to continue on until the end of time.

3. Savage Worlds. This game blew me away when I first played it with its simplicity, but also its familiarity. This game is my preferred universal system, even over d20. It really allows you to play anything you could imagine playing. If you want a game where your characters are mundane, and also sort of badass, this is where you’ll want to look. It’s Necessary Evil campaign is pretty incredible. Up until Marvel Heroic came out, it was my go-to when someone would want to play Superheroes. Speaking of…

4. Marvel Heroic Roleplaying. I know I shout its praises, but it’s for good reason. The Marvel Heroic RPG is one of the best things I’ve seen in a long while. It allows for some really dynamic and interesting games, with a wide variety of roleplaying opportunities. The “rules-lite” approach is very indie in flavor. This isn’t Champions, Mutants and Masterminds of Necessary Evil. This is a game that replicates the action that takes place in a comic book, without any further need for rules bloat.

5. Burning Wheel. This game is my unicorn. I’ve never, ever run a game of it, but I love it completely. I’ve tried, I’ve tried so hard to run it, but without much interest from anyone. The ability to scale-up or scale-down the rules for your group, the simplicity of the dice rolls, and the lifepaths. Oh, the lifepaths… I love them so much. If every game in the world had lifepaths like this game, I’d be so very happy.

What are your Five Games? Tell me here, or on your own blog, but make sure to link back here and to Liz’s post over at Character Generation, so that we can come visit and see what your five are.

Ah, The Abandoned Asteroid.

Beck before the internet was big, it was tricky to find RPG materials. This would have been around 1999, and I scoured the internet for whatever material I could find for my Star Wars group. One particular adventure I stumbled across in my scourings was The Abandoned Asteroid.

I ran it, I loved it. Nice, simple, and very claustrophobic.

Years, and years and years later, I got a message from one of my players from back in the day. We’re still playing online now, but she was interested in running a game for her nephews and nieces. She told me she discovered an adventure online that took place on an abandoned asteroid.

Having completely forgot about playing in it all those years ago, she really enjoyed it, and I offered her some advice on some tweaks to make.

I’m thinking I’ll run it as one of my one-shots. Check out the link above. I think you’ll enjoy it.

I’ve been posting up things on Twitter, little projects I’ve been working on, and almost every time, someone says, “Jeeze, man, how many projects are you working on?!”

Good question.

My hobby is collecting projects. I’ll often begin working on something, then leave it to the side when I become bored, only to come back to it again months later. This is what’s been going on with Veil of Secrecy (formerly known as Pointman, Hacker & Thief). I was expecting to have it out by the end of last year, but it now looks to be done by the end of this year.

So, here’s what I’m working on.

Websites

Dice Monkey: Still going strong here. I post up whenever I think of things to write about. It used to be every day (sometimes twice a day), but lately, it’s dwindled to every other day or so.

Dungeons and Dragons and Dads: I write for this one on occasion, and I’ve got some ideas for articles. It’s just a matter of getting it done.

The Time That is Given Us: This is my site for my writing. Here’s where I collect what I’ve written in one place. There’s no set schedule, so as I write a piece of fiction, it’ll go up there.

Podcasts

RPG Circus: I’m still on the show, as I’m available. The last few episodes, I haven’t been able to make, but I hope to get back to it.

Dice Monkey Radio: Formerly called the Dice Monkey Dicecast, this is a new podcast I’ve started. One episode is up, another one is in editing. It’ll only be going up about once a month, so I have plenty of time for editing. It only requires getting one other person on, and who that is is different every month, so I can just fit it into my schedule. Not too time consuming. It’s put out by the Tome Show, so I just pass it along to Jeff when I’m done.

Gaming

The Godfell Stone: I’m currently running a 4e campaign, which you’ve seen here on the site. It’s going well, though we haven’t gotten together in the last few weeks.

Star Wars: Shattered Alliance: This is a game of Star Wars I’m running on RPOL.net. It’s with the group of friends I’ve been playing with since 2000 or so. After we wrapped up the story that started 11 years ago, we started a new one. I keep forgetting to get on there and post, but I really need to.

Star Wars d6: I’m running this occasionally for a group of guys, including Gary Sarli and Enrique Bertran. We play on Maptools, and will be getting together soon again (I hope).

Fiasco

With Great Power…: This was sitting on my computer for about two months. One day, my brother and I hopped online and began writing up different notes for this Fiasco Playset. Then… it sat there. I finally knocked the layout out in about a half an afternoon, as I already had the template from when I did Toil & Trouble. It’s been moderately successful. While I’ve seen some play session reports from Toil & Trouble, nothing from With Great Power… so far. Hopefully I’ll get some feedback soon.

Where No Man Has Gone Before: This is my next playset. It’ll be dealing with Star Trek-ian themes. Hope to mock a few tropes here and there. Also, I’m considering a Mission mechanic to add to the game. I look forward to working on it.

A Scarred Face in Miami: I’m going to be working on this one with Enrique. He’s been kicking around the idea of a 70′s-80′s Miami playset for a while now, and wants to write it. I think I’m being used for my graphic art skills, though…

Other Projects

Veil of Secrecy: It’s off at the editor’s! I finally got it done; an espionage RPG. My first full RPG. I plan on making a PoD version of it once it’s out, too. Stuart Robertson of Robertson Games is working on the cover, and it’ll be laid out by Michael Wolf of Stargazer’s World. It’ll be released through Stargazer Games as a free PDF. I really look forward to seeing a finished copy!

The Powergrid System: I’ve got an idea rattling around for a superhero RPG. I’d love to write it down, but I’ve been chatting with Scott of The Angry DM about the mechanics. Not much more to say on that at the moment.

Innstrad 4e Supplement: I’m taking the material WotC has been putting out on their site about the new Magic: The Gathering set, and assembling it into PDF, adding in 4e rules such as monsters, knowledge rolls, and such. I’ve gotten the first chapter done. You can see what I’ve got here.

Imperial Guard Army: I’ve got a Warhammer 40,000 army that really, really needs to get assembled, painted, and onto the battlefield. Not sure when I’ll be done, but it’s a pretty large army still on its sprue.

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And that’s about it. So I keep myself busy by gathering projects and sitting on them for a while. Keep an eye open as some of these projects get completed!

Here’s another set of Star Wars templates.

I’ve gotten a system for them now, in that I can usually knock one out in about a half hour. The changing art for different genders is nice and quick, so when I have two genders, it takes about 45 minutes.

I’m continuing to work my way through. I’ve realized that the Force-using classes take a little more work, as they need room for their Force powers, as evidenced in the Alien Student of the Force.

I had a comment yesterday from Wayne, who wondered my reason for including so few skills.

It was a design decision I made, for a few reasons. One, it saves space to not have all those blank spaces. Two, similar to how many D&Ders are switching over to the Essentials, I wanted to keep the core concepts of each of the Templates as core. In other words, your character can improve as much as he wants, just within those skills. Want to have other skills? Play another template. There are plenty of them to choose from. It makes the Templates similar in concept to the Classes of other RPGs.

You can, of course, always right new skills on the back of the sheet.

In any case, here are some more sheets!

The Liturgy of Nerath posts I was going to work on are going to have to wait for a few days, as I’ve got something to show you.

Last Saturday, I tried to get a group onto Google+ Hangouts to play the Star Wars d6 Roleplaying Game. This was the first RPG I ever played, and I was looking forward to getting some friends together, including Gary Sarli, who used to work for WotC on their Star Wars line.

The game, however, fell through. Gary was the only guy who was going to be able to attend, so I decided to reschedule. I don’t have a new date, but I’m looking at the calendar to set it up.

In the meantime…

I was looking over the templates in the back of the book. For those who don’t know, Star Wars had the option for full character creation, but had a great system for playing almost out the gate: Templates. You would take a template, which was basically a half-completed character sheet, and fill in some last details, such as your skills. If I’m remembering correctly, you have 7 points to spend on your skills. Each Template featured the skills you could choose from.

While this seems like it limits creativity, in reality, it allows for some great diversity. Two Smugglers or Bounty Hunters will never be alike.

The templates are simple-looking enough, but I wanted to make them look really good for anyone playing in my upcoming game. I really like the D&D Encounters character sheets in their compactness, so I decided to mimic those. What began as a simple project has now ballooned into something huge.

 I took the Encounters sheet, put it into Photoshop, then covered the sheet so I couldn’t see it anymore. I would occasionally make it visible again so that I could use it for reference. I went on to the Star Wars Artists Guild and grabbed art (you can see the name of the artists at the bottom of the sheet) but by no means is the art authorized.

I started with the Bounty Hunter, then decided to make my own, creating the Clone Trooper in case anyone wanted to run a game in the Clone Wars. Initially I was only going to do the ones in the Star Wars 2nd Edition rulebook, but there are some great ones in the 2nd Edition (Revised and Expanded) rulebook, so I’ll be utilizing them as well (as evidenced by the Young Senatorial below). Also, when I have art for both genders, I’ll include versions for men and women. In the case I can only find art for one gender, we’ll stay with that.

The sheets can be printed off either full-page, or half-page, whichever you prefer.

Please let me know what you think, or if there’s anything to be added. I’m still early in the project, so changing stuff is much easier now than 2o sheets from now.

The next Template on my docket is the Quixotic Jedi.

Click to enlarge all the images.

On Saturday, Oct. 1, I’ll be running an RPG on Google Plus.

Utilizing Hangouts, like Michael at Stargazer’s World has been doing, I’ll be running the classic Star Wars d6 Adventure: Wind Raiders of Taloraan by James Cambias. The adventure appeared in Issue 5 of the Star Wars Adventure Journal back in the 90′s.

If you’re interested, hop over onto Google Plus, add me to a circle, let me know in the comments here what your name is, so I can add you back, then comment on the post I’ll be putting up for RPGers inviting them over there. I’ll be able to accommodate six players total, so be sure to hop in early. You can either make your own fresh new character, or I’ll be providing characters.

No experience is necessary.

We’ll start at 8pm CST, and go until probably about 12.

I hope to see you there!

Yes, it’s true. I predicted it, and was right.

From their site:

Fantasy Flight Games is pleased to announce that it has entered a comprehensive licensing partnership with Lucasfilm Ltd. for the worldwide rights to publish card, roleplaying, and miniatures games set in the popular Star Wars™ universe!

”Being able to publish gaming products in the Star Wars universe is quite simply a hobby-game company’s dream come true,” said Christian T Petersen, CEO of Fantasy Flight Games. “I’m confident that both Star Wars fans as well as FFG’s regular customers will be blown away by the game experiences we have planned for this legendary IP.”

“As a leader in hobby gaming, we’re excited to be partnering with Fantasy Flight Games,” said Howard Roffman, President of Lucas Licensing. “Fun and adventure are hallmarks of the Star Wars saga, and FFG perfectly captures this in their games.”

This is fantastic news for any Star Wars fan. Fantasy Flight is known for their very high quality products, using IPs such as Warhammer Fantasy, Warhammer 40,000, Lord of the Rings, Battlestar Galactica and more. What are their first two releases? A minis game and a card game.

The minis game:

X-Wing is a tactical ship-to-ship combat game in which players take control of powerful Rebel X-wings and nimble Imperial TIE fighters, facing them against each other in fast-paced space combat. Featuring stunningly detailed and painted miniatures, X-Wing recreates exciting Star Wars space combat throughout its several included scenarios. Select your crew, plan your maneuvers, and complete your mission!

The X-Wing starter set includes everything you need to begin your battles, such as scenarios, cards, and fully assembled and painted ships. What’s more, X-Wing’s quick-to-learn ruleset establishes the foundation for a system that can be expanded with your favorite ships and characters from the Star Wars universe.

And the card game:

Daring Rebel spies have uncovered a weak point in the Galactic Empire’s defenses. Tensions run high as the Rebels assemble a strike team with one chance to set back the Empire’s quest for total galactic domination, but with zero margin for error! Coordinating hit-and-run attacks to distract the Imperials, the Rebel Alliance relies upon a handful of heroes to undertake a vital mission…

Star Wars: The Card Game is a cooperative LCG that puts 1-4 players in command of the Rebel strike force and mission team. Players will launch fleets of starships and direct some of the most famous heroes in the Star Wars galaxy as they confront the might of the Empire. By working together, players can fend off Imperial assaults and complete their mission, winning the game! In Star Wars: The Card Game, players take the roles of such notable heroes as Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Princess Leia as an Imperial deck opposes their mission attempts with a devious artificial intelligence. With a wealth of characters, starships, missions, and enemies, Star Wars: The Card Game immerses players in galactic conflict.

You’ll note that in the first paragraph of their announcement, they speak of RPGs as well. I am so very excited. FFG has some really high-quality stuff.

GenCon approaches, like a Great White Shark, slowly consuming all gamers in its path. Unfortunately, though I’m only a few hours away, I won’t be in attendance this year. Next year, Bridget and I plan on attending, however.

There’s a lot of thoughts I’ve got on GenCon, primarily what two companies are going to be announcing.

Thought the First

 Let me start by saying that I have no foreknowledge of this. My brother used to work at Fantasy Flight, but is mum about whether my theory is correct.

That being said, I think that at GenCon, Fantasy Flight will be announcing that they have the Star Wars RPG license. There’s been a lot of talk since Mongoose announced that they didn’t get the license. To quote a portion of their blog post: “The interesting thing is why our negotiations ended – another company beat us to it. We are not going to reveal who this is (you have heard of them), as that is their fanfare to blow. However, I am sure many will find it intriguing that the licence covers card games, RPGs, and… miniatures. Now, the company concerned is not known for its miniatures lines, which will probably put paid to my dream of 28mm multipart/multipose Stormtroopers.”

In my opinion, the only possible company for this would be FFG. They also have a lot of IPs under their belts, and I could definitely see them doing some amazing stuff with the game. At this point it has been more than a year since Wizards lost the IP, and I can imagine FFG keeping it hush-hush until they have fully playtested the system they’ll be using and are ready to release. So keep an eye out for that.

Thought the Second

I have a feeling there’s going to be huge news coming out from Wizards of the Coast. In the last year they’ve cut down their production, and recently, they’ve been talking a lot about old editions. Additionally, they have made the Game Table they have work for any edition of D&D (presumably). I think there’s going to be two big announcements. One, they’re going to release a D&D 4e Basic. I think it will be an even more simplified version of 4e than the builds for Essentials, and will be much more like 1e than even 3e.

Secondly, I predict that they will be starting up releasing PDFs, not just of 4e, but of all the editions. Right now, they’re making no money on the previous editions, so it only makes sense that they would do so. Perhaps even at RPGNow, where you could order print copies of the old books. That would be phenomenal.

Anyway, those are my two predictions. We’ll see if it pans out.

I recently bought a copy of the Star Wars 2nd Edition rules, something I’ve been wanting for quite some time.

The first RPG I ever played was Star Wars 2nd (Revised and Expanded), so it was like seeing an old friend after many, many long years.

The pure simplicity of the ruleset is amazing to read, and seeing how simple the Star Wars universe was back then is so refreshing. No Clone Wars, no Naboo. No armies of Jedi. The 2nd Edition came out around the same time the various Expanded Universe titles were kicking off, but before the EU exploded into hundreds of books.

The mechanics are simple: Roll the number of dice equal to your skill, and try to beat the difficulty. I’m not going to spend a lot more time dwelling on the mechanics.

The rules lend themselves to on-the-fly storytelling, as anything and everything can be easily created as needed. Run into a group of thugs? All their stats are 3, except for their Strength, which is a 4. Stumbled into a Rancor’s nest, but don’t have the Rancor’s stats in front of you? Feel the wrath of 6d6.

Did I mention it uses only d6′s? An elegant weapon for a more civilized age…

I’ve been aching to run a game of d6 Star Wars now. I’ve got a few people on tap for some online gaming of it. I’ll let you know how it goes.