Edge of the Empire Core Rulebook

Upon arriving home from Pasir Mas after an overnight drive via Jeli, Gerik and Kuala Kangsar, I discovered this note from the post office right outside the door of the house.

So Irfan and I went to pick it up. It was a box and I was ecstatic at the size, shape and weight of it. Even if I was cautious about it. With my luck, it could have easily been some court summons because I'd accidentally strangled some duck to death 15 years ago or some weird thing like that.

Blixus - With Stats!

Among the many entertaining obstacles you could use as challenges for players of the Star Wars RPG are creatures. Defeating a critter is a natural Star Wars storytelling element, as can be seen in the movies. A host of new and original creatures had been created in the Star Wars The Clone Wars animated series, such as mastiff phalones, skalders, rupings and gutkurrs. Most have not had official roleplaying stats to them for gamemasters to use.

However, here are my home-made stats of the blixus, a cephalopod with huge, flailing tentacles, a crab-like shell and and a ravenous maw as it appeared in the fourth season episode "Kidnapped".

A fun fact: the blixus first appeared in the Dark Horse Comics' Star Wars The Clone Wars #2 "Slave Traders of Zygerria" written by Henry Gilroy. This story arc was adapted into the three-episode Zygerrian slavers arc of which "Kidnapped" was the first.

Here are D6 and Edge of the Empire stats for the blixus. Also, let's assume these stats are for the "blue-speckled, yellow-bellied blixus" that originate from the Tingel Arm and are now widespread on a thousand other systems in the Outer Rim Territories. When the official blixus stats are eventually published, they would not supercede this subspecies of the creature

Star Wars Living Card Game and Not Dying

Another gift from the GOKL gang, I finally started playing with Irfan the Star Wars: The Card Game from Fantasy Flight Games. Designed for two players, but with a future expansion rule that would allow for more than two players, I spent the last couple of days duelling cards with Irfan. He has won once and I twice. It was enjoyable.

I'm certain we got some details of the rules wrong because we played and read the rules on the fly - and I never really played any card games before this. We kept discovering new things that we missed when we played earlier. In any case, you can view the video tutorial by FFG here.

GOKL Escapes The Insurmountable Ned

Earlier today I ran Star Wars Edge of the Empire for GOKL for the second time, using the Beginner Game truncated rules and extra stuff found on the internet.

Everyone was given 10 XPs from the previous session with an option to advance their characters. Qillian Ryn the Trianii and Darter Kel the Zeltron advanced their characters. 41-VEX the manumitted colonist droid saved his XPs for later.

NPC stats and GM notes and stuff

A Brief Prologue

A brief prologue was run to account for the absence players of Lowhhrick, Oskara and Nora. The commandeered Corellian YT-1300 light freighter Krayt Fang landed on a small oceanside shadowport on Rodia. Actually before landing, they kicked the ousted slaver captain Trex out into the humid Rodian swamps a hundred klicks from nowhere. An outlaw tech would be able to install a new BoSS transponder on their ship, but only for 10,000 credits as times are tough. Seeing that the crew did not have the money, the outlaw tech suggested they look for work at the Ithorian herdship that just made orbit recently.

Landing Bay 1138

This particular Ithorian herdship, named Green Fields, was an interstellar starship that was disc 5 klicks in diameter and had a giant transparisteel canopy 4/5th of the diameter that has a living jungle and ocean biomes.There was a central island that formed a mountain 400 meters tall. This type of herdship travelled from system to system and opened their doors to locals as tourists, encouraging them to visit their biomes, to stay in their hotels, to go on safaris and to generally spend a lot of money there.

Krayt Fang was berthed at Landing Bay 1138 at the rim of the Green Fields. Darter, 41-VEX and Qillian went out into the bustling landing bay which was able to support two medium ships and eight light ships such as their own. There were technicians, deck officers, tourist groups heading to or from their ships, load lifter droids, security droids, hustlers, businessmen, entrepreneurs and wanderers. Thanks to some fast talking Darter found a terminal that listed immediate job ads. Most did not pay well, but one ad from Captain Beru Highbringer paid 4000 credits per successful applicant. The job: crew of a Corellian YV-664 converted freighter - now a tour ship - that brought tourists offship to visit gorgeous astronomical sights of the region.

Landing Bay 1142

There were three Lambda-class Imperial shuttles berthed in Landing Bay 1142. Worried, Darter asked around about them. An Ithorian deck officer told them not to worry. Imperials were always boarding the herdship wherever they stopped; always looking for rebels - especially when there were so many outsiders aboard the ship. So far none had been found on Green Fields.

The trio met with Captain Highbringer at the cantina at Landing Bay 1142. She was a grizzled spacer, as grizzled as a 28 year old human female with long, wavy blond locks could be. It disturbed them that she kept disrupting Darter's spirited job application pitch to her by whispering strangely to the old force pike by her side as if it was alive.

It was even more disturbing that she hired them and paid them half in advance because the inanimate force pike had somehow "allowed" her to.

Before leaving they noticed four humans in casual tourist garb slipping into the cantina, a woman and three men. They were all clearly on edge, as if on the run from pursuers. The group decided not to interact with them.

They returned to the Krayt Fang to pick up their gear as well as extra space suits. (Yes, even VEX grabbed a space suit for arcane reasons.) They had a light lunch with Nora, Oskara and Lowhhrick before returning to Landing Bay 1142.

The group's initial pool of 4 Destiny Points among 3 PCs 

SWAG: Squeak, Claire and Dutch

I love it when children play RPGs. Their young imagination make any game soar. If there's any way to help introverted children to help express themselves more and be better speakers, I would always recommend parents to run tabletop RPGs for them.

This was why I immediately took this request on the Star Wars Artists' Guild, which was requested by Juanflaco. He gamemastered a Star Wars: Edge of the Empire RPG game for his children, ages 12, 9 and 7. The 12-year-old plays Claire, the young teenager on the run from Tatooine. The 7-year-old plays R2-79 a.k.a. "Squeak", Claire's astromech droid. The 9-year-old plays Dutch an amnesiac former Clone pilot who has to protect the two.

Click here for the forum request.

Click here for the SWAG art post.

Click here for a larger image at DeviantArt.

Snivvian Long Distance Lovers

Derf requested a pair of Snivvian lovers for his Star Wars RPG campaign. He plays a Snivvian student on Coruscant who has a long-distance relationship with a holodrama scenist back on Cadomai. Painted in monochome digitally with MyPaint, and coloured using GIMP 2.8.

Click here to check out the image (as well as Ryan's "DAWWWW") on DeviantArt.

My Interview at Epic Level Artistry

I gave an interview to Tristan Tarwater of Epic Level Artistry at the Troll in the Corner site.

Here is an excerpt:

Do you find yourself more drawn to drawing locations or people? Do you have them fleshed out before you bring pencil to paper (to use an old idiom) or do the ideas and the image kind of grow side by side?

Thanks to a lot of practice, I’ve done a lot of characters, but I also do a lot of creatures, gear, vehicles, robots as well as scenes. Sometimes I plan it out. Sometimes it just comes to life on paper – or screen – naturally without a lot of thought. More so of the latter when there’s capybara blood mixed with kumquat juice.

Click here to read the whole thing!

GOKL Escapes Mos Shuuta

I've already run Star Wars Edge of the Empire RPG Beginner Game adventure for Irfan, so now I would see how it would fare with half a dozen experienced tabletop RPGers, namely the guys at GOKL.

From the available pregenerated characters in the adventure Escape from Mos Shuuta, Ivan played 41-VEX as a manumitted medical droid, Razzman played the Twi'lek bounty hunter Oskara, Macx played the Wookiee hired gun Lowhhrick and Doug tweaked Pash the smuggler into Nora Romanova. Darren and Kai jury-rig a character generation using the Beta rule notes found online and became, respectively, Qillian Ryn the Triannii assassin and Darter Kel the Zeltron scout and bush pilot. I might have screwed up the chargen a bit because of lack of complete rules.

The adventure's encounters are designed so GMs and players get the hang of the system. For example, the first encounter teaches us about options on hiding in a cantina. The second encounter takes us through combat with a drift of Gamorreans. The third forces players to interact with NPCs to acquire a gear important to the story.

However, GOKL players being GOKL players, things blew up and died in encounter one.

The Cantina

Nora, Oskara, Lowhhrick, 41-VEX and Qillian had crossed the local crime lord Teemo the Hutt, and Teemo's band of cudgel-bearing Gamorreans were now combing Mos Shuuta for them. The group ducked into the Devaronian's cantina to look for the pilot they hired beforehand, namely Darter, just before Gamorreans spotted them and chased in after them.

Oskara flipped a table. Nora jumped over the bar. Qillian slipped his knuckledusters on and crept into the shadows by the doorway. VEX orders a drink - a pitcher of motor oil. Darter, following the band of newcomers' example bounded to the dance stage where the Twi'lek dancer was dancing by a pole. He immediately tried to charm the pants off her.

As the pig guard burst in, the person with the keenest eye, fastest reflexes and swiftest hand moved first. It was VEX. He cooly downed his drink much to the bartender's slack-jawed surprise. However, the guards saw Oskara who was already behind the flipped table with her blaster rifle ready. She had the advantage and blew a hole in the lead Gamorrean. From the stage, Darter wriggled his butt, reached into his tight pants and a dart gun appeared was in his previously-bare hands. He took a firing stance and shot a dart at another Gamorrean, which sadly bounced off his thick bacon-smelling hide. Nora popped up from behind the bar and fire a wounding shot into his shoulder while Qillian snuck up from behind the Gamorreans and punched one with his knuckleduster, dazing the pig guard. All had fallen but one, who turned to the one who had shot him: Nora. But then VEX drew his blaster, spun and fired. The last thug fell.

Nora introduced Darter, their new pilot, to the group and the horrified Devaronian bartender yelled at them to get out of his bar. Darter explained that he too was in Teemo's bad books for seducing Teemo's daughter. The others would have lost their lunches at his story if they had eaten something for lunch.

Slugshark - With Stats!

When Irfan showed me this clay creature he created, I thought I'd take a photo of it and make up some stats for it.

Star Wars D6

Slugshark, Amphibious reptilian predator

Scale: Character
Length: 150-200cm.
DEXTERITY 2D
Brawl 3D+2
Constrict 3D+1
PERCEPTION 2D+1
Sneak (only when swimming) 4D
STRENGTH 2D
Swimming 4D+2
Special:
Bite attack damage: 3D
Constrict damage: 1D increments per round (Round 1: 1D, round 2: 2D, etc)
Horn attack damage: Strength+1
Move: 10 (swim) / 8 (slither)

Star Wars Edge of the Empire

Slugshark [Minion]

Brawn 2
Agility 2
Cunning 1
Intellect 1
Presence 1
Willpower 1

Skill: Brawl 1, Coordination 1, Stealth 1
Talents: None
Soak/Defense: 1/1
Threshold: Wound 12
Abilities: Difficulty to see swimming slugshark Hard (♦ ♦ ♦ )
Silhouette: 1
Equipment:
Horns (Brawl, Damage 4, Crit 4, Range [Engaged])
Teeth (Brawl, Damage 5, Crit 4, Range [Engaged])
Constrict (Coordination, Damage 1 and +1 every round thereafter, Crit 3, Range [Engaged])

Oh hey, my first Edge of the Empire stats.

Two More SWAG Pickups

Two more Star Wars Artists' Guild player character art pickups. I love picking up these requests once in a while for a warm-up sketch before work begins in the morning.

Badji Hida is a Devaronian scoundrel requested for oexto's Edge of the Empire game. He wields a DL-18 blaster pistol, presumably with aplomb.

Mano Vector is a human Special Agent of the Senate Bureau of Intelligence (before it eventually evolves into Imperial Intelligence, shudder). He was requested by one Agent M.

The Lawless

The Star Wars The Clone Wars episode "The Lawless". Best Star Wars since The Empire Strikes Back? Hyperbole?

However, it has shown us violence that provided emotional release at some parts, like when Commander Jet's troops burned dozens of Geonosians alive... onscreen... and we see the Geonosian aflame and shrieking in agony; we've seen innocents shot with blaster burning right through their torsos; we've seen Ahsoka leap, spin and decapitate four Mandalorians.

We've never seen the emotional rollercoaster brought on by "The Lawless". If what happened in the episode not at the same emotional level as "No. I am your father..." then it should be pretty close, based on what has come before beginning with the introduction of Mandalore and Death Watch in season two, and the return of Darth Maul in season four.

As a bonus cherry on top, we get the best choreographed lightsabre fight ever on the series, Darth Sidious versus Maul and Savage Opress.

Let me say that if there is no executive network meddling and the such, I am confident that Supervising Director Dave Filoni will not disappoint us when he ends this series and segue into Revenge of the Sith. I really don't expect the story of Ahsoka Tano to end well.

Check out the first official Star Wars The Clone Wars Google Hangout that took place right after the first airing of the episode, featuring Filoni and some of the voice cast of the series.

EOTE: Irfan Escapes Mos Shuuta

Edged by the Empire

Episode 01 Escape From Mos Shuuta

During the events of the previous blog entry, the GOKL gang also presented me with an early birthday: A Star Wars Edge of the Empire Beginner Game boxed set.

At first the Star Wars RPG used the D6 system when it was licensed to West End Games. Then it used the d20 system when it was with Wizards of the Coast. The latest role-playing game to be adapted from Star Wars by Fantasy Flight Games now uses the special dice with symbols instead of numbers, much like the Warhammer Fantasy Role Play 3rd edition.

You'd think it'd be complicated, but when I ran it the Beginner Game's scenario entitled "Escape From Mos Shuuta" for Irfan it felt easy enough after we both got the hang of the rules. At some points Irfan was interpreting the dice rolls faster than I was.

Shane Goes To Star Wars Identities

As mentioned in the Star Trek exhibition post downriver, my brother from another mother and hemisphere Shane went and visited Star Wars Identities exhibition at the Telus World of Science in Edmonton. Shane gave me permission to feature photos from his expedition into the world of Star Wars miniatures, maquettes, concept art and costumes.

Which gives me a reason to post more Star Wars photos on this blog for the lulz.

FOR THE LULZ!

SWD6: Our First RPG Session Ever

It was way back in 1989 when I received my first tabletop RPG, the first edition Star Wars The Roleplaying Game and the Star Wars Sourcebook by West End Games. I read through the rules and thought, let's try this out. I didn't even start with "Rebel Breakout", the introductory adventure that came in the book. I took a school exercise book and created a maze of corridors and rooms and thought, "Okay, this'll make a great Imperial space station interior." Actually the map wouldn't make a lick of sense as a military installation, but it was my first try.

Sila decided to be a bounty hunter and rolled up a player character whom she named Shanna Toarinar, and she went on to play Shanna for another ten years in realtime thereafter. And the campaign would go on for many years until I was able to fill out a sourcebook using story elements from different sessions.

Shanna was a bounty hunter who wears dark combat fatigues, grey flak armour, arm greaves and shin guards. Her parents were killed by Imperial stormtroopers when she was five and now she only hunted Imperial targets.

Episode 01 Trial Run

Shanna arrived at a secret Imperial space station orbiting the planet Sirsee. Deciding that she would have better luck hunting and killing Imperials, she had decided to join the Rebel Alliance. But as a trial of her skills, she was given a mission to retrieve a stolen prototype A-Wing fighter. This fighter's computer had encrypted plans and schematics for a new X-Wing extended range variant. The A-Wing was located on this station.

She arrived at the station hidden on a Lambda-class shuttle. Although she succeeded in sneaking off the shuttle as it was refueling, a remote sensor in the hangar bay registered her motion. Klaxons blared and the station went to full alert status much to her annoyance.

A scout trooper spotted her immediately and tried to stop her, but she put a bolt on the scout's chest armour via her long, slender custom blaster rifle. She slipped out of the bay, crept throughout the cramped corridors and reach a blast door. A bored stormtrooper was guarding it. She snuck past him and crossed the blast door threshold.

Vader's Imperial Sourcebook

Click on the thumbnail above to view a bigger image of Vader reading the Imperial Sourcebook.

D6 Stats of a Star Wars Hat

From Season 2, Episode 17: "Bounty Hunters" of Star Wars: The Clone Wars comes Embo the Bounty Hunter, a male Kyuzo. His signature gear is his wide-brimmed, armoured hat, which he's able to use as a shield when turned into incoming blaster bolts. Also, he is able to throw the hat to strike a target which then returns to him like Captain America's shield.

Here is my OpenD6 stats for Embo's Hat.

EMBO'S HAT

Gear: EMBO'S HAT
Type: Awesome Frisbee-Shield Hat
Skill: Melee parry (shield against ranged weapons) / Thrown weapons (for throwing attack)
Difficulty: Easy (to shield), Difficult (to throw)
Damage Resistance: 5D
Thrown damage: STR + 1D
Note:

• Returning weapon: When throwing, upon Wild Die of 6, you automatically retrieve the returning hat. Else, you need to roll a second Moderate Thrown Weapons skill to grab it in mid-air if nothing stops it from returning back to the user.
• Shield: Use Damage Resistance code above against both physical and energy attacks. When user the hat is being used as a shield, user is totally blind. Also, if the user is running, the attacker could still use a Called Shot to hit user's legs.
• Heavy item: +10 to difficulty to both melee parry and thrown weapons rolls if user's Strength is 3D+1 and below.

I can't wait for the spin-off show Clone Wars: The Adventures of Embo's Hat.

Sabacc Cards of SWAG

Back in 2002, the first iteration of the Star Wars Artsts' Guild made an exclusive deck of unofficial Star Wars sabacc cards. It was unofficial in that it wasn't a Lucasfilm-sanctioned project. However, the cards and how it was played used the play description as detailed in L. Neil Smith's The Lando Calrissian Adventures novel trilogy and West End Games' Crisis on Cloud City role-playing game supplement. A bunch of SWAG artists contributed artwork for the face cards, including myself.

Recently, Bob Rodgers the former Baron Administrator of SWAG reminded me that I have a copy of the SWAG sabacc deck. So I dug around for it and found it. Here are some photos I took of the deck.

The fold-out rules, with cover art by the esteemed Reverend Strone.

The suit cards; clockwise from top left: Coins, Staves, Sabres and Flasks.

Clockwise from bottom right: 1 of Sabres, Master of Sabres, Commander of Sabres and Mistress of Sabres. 

RIP Ralph McQuarrie

Once upon a time, Ralph McQuarrie illustrated a coffee table art book written by Kevin J. Anderson called The Illustrated Star Wars Universe. McQuarrie, if you didn't know, was one of the first conceptual artists for Star Wars. It was with his paintings that George Lucas was able to convince funders to invest in his movie. He passed away on Saturday.

He painted a chapter for Coruscant in The Illustrated Star Wars Universe, which hitherto had not been seen before anywhere else in Star Wars literature (except for renamed early concept art in some books for a planet called Had Abbadon for the then-titled Revenge of the Jedi). The planet's name "Coruscant" had only been officially named by Timothy Zahn in his novel Heir To The Empire a couple of years earlier.

One of his artwork in The Illustrated Star Wars Universe was a night scene of "Monument Plaza", on top of the Mount Manarai where the only geological feature of Coruscant is exposed to the sky.

If you were paying attention 2 years ago, this entire painting was more or less converted and animated as a CGI environment in a Star Wars: The Clone Wars episode entitled "Duchess of Mandalore" where Obi-Wan met up with the fugutive Duchess Satine.

The original McQuarrie painting can be seen as a reference art at the bottom of this concept artwork, linked from the Star Wars official site.

More building set elevation and plans for the virtual environment here, part of which can be viewed in the following image

A lighting concept from an alternate view of the plaza can be seen here.

Ralph McQuarrie would have been in a postion to see this episode. And if he did, I wonder what he thought of it.

RIP Ralph McQuarrie, you gifted artist. You've been a real inspiration to me.

Originally posted on Google+.

The Queen of Air and Darkness

The Queen of Air and Darkness is the title of T.H. White's second novel of his Once and Future King series. In the Star Wars universe, the Queen of Air and Darkness is a sabacc face card that possesses a value of negative two. There was a request on the Star Wars Artists' Guild by one "Lord Cygnus" of a starship in his Star Wars RPG campaign named The Queen of Air and Darkness which I picked up.

The ship is a heavily modified Corellian Engineering Corps YV-545 light freighter and this is how it turned out after about 90 minutes of work:

Here's the original request thread and here's the final image on SWAG.

Savage Star Wars Character Sheet

Almost two years ago, I was looking at custom Savage Worlds character sheets online. There were ones for games such as Solomon Kane, Slipstream, Necessary Evil, Realms of Cthulhu and Deadlands. These roleplaying games used the Savage Worlds system and they were officially supported.

However, what if you need to play Savage Star Wars? I know there are a number of fanmade (unofficial) documents designed for you to play a Star Wars RPG using Savage Worlds.

So, I fired up Inkscape and created this custom character sheet. If you're using Savage Worlds to run Star Wars, go ahead and download this pdf file.

Zipped PDF file (221kb)

Click here to download the Savage Worlds test drive rules version 6.0 PDF at the Pinnacle Entertainment Group downloads page!