Tag Archives: Star Wars

General

Space Adventures—RPG Blog Carnival Roundup

Oh my! How fast time flies when you’re hurtling through space on a galleon held together by rope, magic, and a wish spell. The end of May means it’s the end of our RPG Blog Carnival for the month, so let’s look back on the wonderful space adventures we’ve had.

rpg blog carnival logo

Before we dig in, remember that you can join us, every month, for new themes and fantastic articles by many RPG bloggers. It doesn’t matter if you’re just browsing or you want to contribute your own articles, you can find out more about the RPG Blog Carnival at OfDiceAndDragons.com. There’s also a growing archive of past carnivals that’s well worth digging into.

Beyond the Horizon Games

Our good friends at Beyond the Horizon Games explored the difference between science fiction and science fantasy in their series of articles:

  1. Fantasy-Fi or Science-Fantasy explores two different takes on fantasy in space, using the examples of Spelljammer and Starfinder. Kim’s insightful look at the two settings also explores the difference between Paizo and WotC’s business models.
  2. What Jammer? That Jammer! takes a fascinating look into a little slice of RPG history, and the bitter-sweet existence of a lesser-known RPG gem that followed in the footsteps of Spelljammer and was a precursor to Starfinder, namely Starjammer. Starjammer is compatible with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game (1st edition), but lets you build space fighters and explore the vast expanse of the Void. The game is a platinum seller on Drive Thru RPG and is published by d20pfsrd.com Publishing.  Check this out, especially if you enjoy Starfinder or Spelljammer.
  3. Star Wars and Science Fantasy looks at three of the four iterations of Star Wars TTRPGs (Jawa players, throw up your hands and give me a “Utini!”). Adding to what Kim said, I know that Edge Studios is reprinting many of the Fantasy Flight Star Wars books, which is excellent news. 
  4. Adventures in Science Fantasy discusses three adventures — one is a remake — that do science fantasy well. Go check out Kim’s suggestions, and maybe drop some suggestions in the comments of that article if you know of other great adventures people should check out.

Codex Anathema

Gonz of Codex Anathema is a regular contributor and host of the RPG Blog Carnival. His article, De Eberron a sus Lunas (From Eberron to its Moons), explores Jules Verne’s works and brings them into the D&D setting of Eberron, through space travel. Although the article is in Spanish, Google Translator (or even better, DeepL Translator) will open up this inspiring article. Gonz has certainly given us a lot of interesting ideas for space adventures here.

The Other Side

Timothy S. Brannan, who blogs at The Other Side, gave us a review of the Monstrous Compendium Vol One: Spelljamer Creatures, which was recently released by Wizards of the Coast.

Rising Phoenix Games

And of course, we went mad with a bunch of new races that would fit your D&D 5e Spelljammer games. We have:

  1. The cunning Star Foxes, mentioned in our first post.
  2. The Gruune, immortals born out of the destruction of their planet.
  3. The Eu’karai, beings of living light that, as a race, were tasked with cataloging the universe.
  4. The Skriblin, elementals of creative energy that make me think I’ve watched a little too much Space Jam.

And that, as they say, is that. We hope you enjoyed these adventures in space, and that you’ll join next month’s hosts for more RPG Blog Carnival content.

Till next time!

General

Star Wars: Age of Rebellion

This week I got to play Star Wars: Age of Rebellion. Read on to find out my thoughts on the game.

Inspired in Japan
It’s surprising how may Japanese role-players seem to get started on Call of Cthulhu. I have no idea why, but, where most westerners start with D&D, and might even refer to all rpgs generally as “D&D”, Japanese players have a firm foundation is the mythos. Certainly all of the Japanese players I’ve met, mostly teenagers, can’t get enough Cthulhu. Perhaps it has something to do with the ghosts and monsters that are so prevalent in Japanese culture?

Justin Mullis writes for the Lovecraft eZine that Lovecraft’s work came to Japan in the 1940’s, and has had a major impact on many creatives, including anime and manga artists. Certainly, Lovecraft’s work has inspired a huge number of artists and game designers all over the world. Maybe that’s why Call is so popular in the Land of the Rising Sun.

If you can find it, check out the anime Haiyoru! Nyaruko-san, but be warned, SAN loss awaits you.

Avernos Unearthed
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Rising Phoenix News
In a few weeks I’ll be introducing you to some of my friends, guest authors who’ve got some fantastic articles that are sure to inspire you.

Campaign Journal
I got my first chance to play Star Wars: Age of Rebellion, playing the ace character Zal in a run of the beginner game. I love starter sets, because they’re well put together and easy to play, and ease you into the bigger game.

The concept: It’s Star Wars, and you’re playing a Rebel up against the Empire. Sign me up. The action is set somewhere during the original Star Wars movies. In the starter, you’re tasked with infiltrating an Imperial base and capturing it for the Rebel cause.

Mechanics: Edge of the Empire shares mechanics with many new generation RPGs I’ve played, such as Marvel Heoric Roleplaying (and Cortex). You’re not going to be counting squares for movement or range, and there’s a fair bit more emphasis placed on telling a story from the results on the dice, rather than just saying “Oh, you hit with your blaster.”

Fantasy Flight love to give you custom dice, and much of the mechanics revolve around rolling a number of dice against other opposing dice. This is all very intuitive, and it seemed to make for a faster game. Combat didn’t take long at all, and was very easy to understand.

Components: I loved the map, the character booklets, the tokens and the dice. I don’t like that I can’t use my own dice for this game, but the dice compliment the game well. Fantasy Flight got better at making dice; the dice from my copy of Doom: The board game are fading fast, but dice from newer products are indented and should last forever. I only got to skim the rulebook, but it looks great, with plenty of pictures to inspire and examples and tables to clarify the rules.

Characters: the included pregenerated characters were great. Out of three players, everyone felt some connection to their character before starting out. Personally, I felt that Zal, my character, would be loads of fun to play and I wanted to really explore her motivations in game. I’m also glad that the characters weren’t rubber stamped copies of Han Solo, Princess Leia, Chewbacca and Luke. You’re very much telling stories in a world where those characters are doing their own things.

Unfortunately there are no rules for character generation in the starter, but it looks like you’ll still get a few sessions and levels out of the box before you need to expand your collection.

In Short: Buy this game if you want to tell your own Star Wars stories. This box will get you started and set you up for expanding your game with other books in the series.

That’s all from me until next week.
Tell Thrilling Tales


Cthulhu Mythos - Available Now @ DriveThruRPG.com

Tips and Tricks

New Pathfinder Tech

This is the year of hoverboards and Star Wars hype, which is all good news for role-players. Today we’ll look at basic rules for hoverboards in Pathfinder and inspire you to tell the story of three daring Tie fighter pilots.

Hoverboards
Imagine your players faces when they discover the ancient artefact they just uncovered is a hoverboard. Here’s my proposal for these awesome rides in Pathfinder.

The Fly skill gives us a great basis to work from, using a hoverboard is just like flying and generally uses the same rules. Hoverboard maneuvers are a little different.


Flying Maneuver Fly DC
Increase speed above normal speed by +5ft 6 (+2/5ft)
Turn greater than 45° by spending 5 feet of movement 15
Turn 180° by spending 10 feet of movement 20
Ramp of up to 45° 20
Balance while grinding 20

Hoverboard speeds: Hoverboards minimize resistance between the board and the ground, so are capable of intense speeds. Start with a base speed equal to the rider’s base speed +10. Going faster than this requires a Fly check, and each turn the rider can spend a move action to increase her speed by +5ft. So a human with a base speed of 30 rides easily up to 40ft a round and would have to make a DC 8 Fly check to reach a speed of 45ft per round. Note that hovering and riding slower than normal doesn’t require any checks, that’s easy stuff.

Turning: hoverboards turn as the rider shifts his weight on the board. To turn sharply, the rider has to contend with his momentum. One way to overcome the direction of momentum is to use a foot or hand grab to swing the board around sharply.

Ramps: If a rider takes a ramp of 45° or less, they can attempt to jump using their current speed as if making a running jump. They make the DC 20 Fly check for the ramp and then an Acrobatics check for the height or distance of the jump.

Rails: To grind a rail, the rider needs to ride or jump onto the rail or ledge and make the Fly check each turn to maintain the grind. Ending a grind is a free action.

Falling: Collisions at high speeds can hurt. For every 10ft of speed above the characters base speed (not hoverboard speed), a collision deals 1d6 points of damage. So a rider with a base speed of 30ft who hits a wall while riding at 40ft per round takes 1d6 points of damage, or 3d6 damage if riding at 60ft per round. Falling off works much in the same way, except that the damage is none lethal if the rider can make a DC 14 Acrobatics check to roll with the momentum of the fall.

There you go. Marty McFly would be proud. Let me know if you try these rules out and happy riding.

Inspired in Japan
It took artist OtaKing77077 4 years to finish his short film entitled Tie Fighter, and it’s way impressive.

With the Star Wars Age of Rebellion Rpg, plus the new Armada game and of course X-Wing, we have a great chance to tell the story of these three pilots. So, who are they, how did they get here, and why are they loyal to the Empire? I’d love to see someone write a scenario for this.

Avernos Unearthed
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Campaign Journal
Getting in a quick RPG session is possible, but needs some work from the GM and all players involved. We played a 2 and a half hour session this weekend and here’s what we learnt.

Prep: As a GM, you’ve got to be as ready as possible before you play. Pre-written adventures are great for this. If there are rules you’re fuzzy on, read up before you play. I made sure I knew all about flying before game, so my dragon could terrorize the skies without disrupting play. Bookmark those rules too. Players can really help the GM by sending character sheets in before the game and reading up on all their feats and skills.

Setup: Similar to prep, but really, this is what you do when everyone is arriving, or just before. Roll20 is great for prep, because you can set everything up before hand. Make sure you have tokens or models for everyone, and a few pre-generated characters. Keep down clutter as much as possible. Really all you need is some paper, a pencil, the rules and a set of dice. Only add to this if it will make for a faster game.

Game Time: Establish a turn order and stick to it. Keep things simple and focus on the fun stuff. When the party approached a beauacrat wanting to know about an artefact, it sped things up to give them a summary, rather than force them to probe for details. Players should roll attack and damage dice together and think about what they’re going to do when it’s not their turn.

Aftermath: Really, fast games take real teamwork. Talk about what worked and how you can improve on things. Also, take the time now to get ready for the next session. If you’ve done the work, the next time around will be so much easier.

That’s all from me until next week.
Tell Thrilling Tales


Cthulhu Mythos - Available Now @ DriveThruRPG.com