Transitory States
Edward:
David S Leyman:
Hisham:
Luke:
James Kight:
king:
Hisham and Sila has been writing stuff down on this weblog since 2005. Sometimes they post photos of family, sometimes they talk about film, books and music, sometimes there is artwork and stuff about tabletop gaming.
So the other day I put up a thumb to the desktop wallpaper that was on my Ubuntu side of the computer.
Here's the wallpaper on the XP side of the laptop, its size reduced from 1280px by 800px. There's a whole bunch of folks in Mandalorian armour. I found the image for the wallpaper on DeviantArt but now I can't seem to find it again to link it here.
Click on the thumb to view the image.
My first official completed SWAG request since this blog went live is done. The artwork was requested by Acheron and he wanted a picture of a Gungan slicer (a Star Wars term for a hacker, is all).
So, here's a purple skinned Gungan like Captain Tarpals, wearing a headgear with a comlink and a blaster pistol, quickly typing on the keyboard to retrieve some restricted data from a computer database.
Hopefully, he isn't discovered by guards any time soon.
As a bonus, here's a SWAG blog (Swog?) entry of the picture taking it through three days as a work-in-progress in this laptop, from its pencil work in Painter Classic to what it turned out to be.
All my life I've loved the idea of the Star Wars universe. When I discovered that there was a Star Wars Roleplaying Game published by West End Games back in 1987 I was excited. But this won't be about how I got into RPGs, but the review of one of the best SWRPG supplements ever:
Here is a list of why this supplement by Simon Smith and Eric Trautmann rocks:
Five years ago today, a bunch of tabletop roleplayers and artists and web programmers who met by chance on SWRPGNetwork's Holonet Forums and shared a common dream (well, two really) finally launched the Star Wars Artists' Guild after months of planning. One of the founding members was me. The Guild was created in order to create Star Wars artwork for the RPG, whether it be D6 or d20 or even if you made GURPS or Wushu or Fate games out of the setting.
Today, in the hands of Kris Vanderwater, SWAG is relaunched (using Drupal replacing the old pMachine as its content management system) and all that's old is new again.
Thanks for your effort in relaunching the site, Kris, and Happy 5th SWAGDay. And also thanks to everyone from Bob Rogers, Chris Curtis, Derek Jones, Daniel Falconer and all the others who helped conceive and ran it initially on SWRPGNetwork until it had its own home on the net, to all its contributors and fans throughout the years that kept it alive.
Here's the new link to my SWAG Gallery.
A little secret: The reason why I always remember SWAG's Anniversary is that it's exactly a week ahead of Irfan's birthday! Yaaay!
In the tradition of West End Games' series of sourcebooks such as Cracken's Rebel Field Guide, Cracken's Rebel Operatives and Cracken's Threat Dossier (all of which are books written in-universe by the fictional General Airen Cracken), I now bring you the non-official mini-sourcebook pdf for the Star Wars Roleplaying Game (D6 rules version)...
It's created 100% by open source software. The artwork was made with The Gimp, the layouts were done in Scribus, and some elements were saved in EPS and ported from Inkscape. And it's compressed into a zip file by Ubuntu's onboard archiver.
It's basically a book about some dangerous escapees from a nuthouse. Stats are included for D6 roleplaying goodness. Take it seriously at your own risk... and sanity. Apologies for not having the time to create a back page.
Oh, and Airen Cracken doesn't really appear until the end.
Right click and save at this here link. The zip filesze is 1.8 MB.
By the way if you're hard up for wireless internet, the benches right in front of the MPH bookstore (top floor) is information supersluice tube. Bathrooms and surau are close by. Who knows... you might even find yourself in a conversation with a friendly passerby which ends with you yelling at the top of your voice, "Yeah! This is future of office work baby! Go back into your sunless cryp- er, I mean office and sulk!"
Meanwhile not far away, a dogfight between an Incom Corporation T-65C-A2 and a Sienar Fleet Systems Twin Ion Engine Advanced x1 was underway. How cool is that?
In the Jann Tosh / Mon Julpa story arc of the Droids series the heroes encounter a 3-metre tall monster called a durkii in a dungeon pit, not surprising since the durkii was apparently a pet of the evil Tammuz-an vizier Zatec-Cha.
It was large, purple and had an unpleasant demeanour, but had no stats.
I hope this entry rectifies that oversight. At least in D6 terms.
I've never played Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) computer game before, where I've read Taris was first featured.
However, when I heard Dark Horse Comics would be producing the Knights of the Old Republic series on four-colour print, I was dubious. Reading through the first story arc of the series written by John Jackson Miller entitled "Commencement", I discovered that in terms of numerous minute elements in the story, this series has the most Original Trilogy Star Wars flavour in comics.
The story is simple, a young Padawan Zayne Carrick, part of the Jedi Academy on the city world Taris in the Outer Rim, isn't the best of Padawans. In fact he's been screwing up task after task on one assignment: to capture small time Snivvian black marketeer Marn Heirogryph, who believes Zayne has the ability to leave behind wreckage strewn after him.
Unfortunately for Zayne and his fellow Padawans, a conspiracy would transform their regular lives as apprentices into a living hell. Zayne is framed for multiple murder and is forced to team up with Heirogryph to flee Taris authorities.
More shocking than the reason why he was framed... was who it was that framed him.
I'm a bit late for last month's SWAG Theme Art Contest, entitled "Blue Harvest".
The subject matter alludes to the working title for the movie Return of the Jedi during its filming, to throw rabid Star Wars fans off its trail. It's also the name of a fanzine in the early 90s, which I contributed some art and writing to.
So what's blue and likely to be harvested in the Star Wars universe?
To view a bigger image, check out its entry at deviantArt.
Here are the stats and capsule for BU-77, the ARC trooper I played with Team Sabredart on IRC. The game was run by Simon Taylor using the old West End Games' D6 system. I had a ball playing this character, as you can see by the actual ad lib quotes which was spoken (or typed in) during course the game sessions.
Too bad we didn't play out the character until the Order 66 massacre. It would have been interesting to see what he would do to Raeree Giin, their Jedi team leader.
He used to have a DC-15A blaster rifle, which for the D6 stats I used the official stats of the BlasTech T-21 light repeating blaster, but it was confiscated when they were all arrested for insubordination.
Round Five of the Star Wars Artists' Guild Member Theme Art Contest is almost over, what with September starting tomorrow and all. So here I am after some hours of pencilling on paper, scanning and finally digitally inking and colouring the illustration for contest participation.
The theme is The Vacation Is Over. I can't think of a more brutal wake up call than when the newly-named Lord Darth Vader marching into the Jedi Temple on Coruscant with the 501st "Vader's Fist" Legion and slaughtering everyone, including the younglings during Revenge of the Sith.
After Phil "Grimace" Hatfield introduced me to Galaxy Games Online, I've long thought of customising some .ggo files for use with the old West End Games' Star Wars RPG.
Galaxy Games Online is a program that allows you to run and play pen and paper type role playing games over the internet using a chat window and a dice roller. One feature available on the program allows us to create our own .ggo files, which can be customised player character sheets, dice rollers and even a virtual book where we can write down our house rules, all readable from the main program. You can even create your own random name generator, which is easily adaptable to other uses such as random encounters or random locations.
Here for your download are four .ggo files compressed neatly in a zip file.
So, what you have to do is download the .zip file here (right click and Save File As... , Size: 16KB), unzip and put all files in Program Files > Galaxy Games > Galaxy Games Online > samples.
Of course it would help if you had the program installed and were using it to game online.
I rarely post YouTube links here. But this one is somewhat hilarious I just had to give it its own entry for posterity's sake.
Okay, I'm just gonna post this... because I can.
As found at the RPG.net forums. Apparently, it's a photoshop, but it's still worth a chuckle or two. But if your sanity is still up for another one, I have to say this one is definitely NOT a photoshop.
SWAG's Theme Art Contest for this month is in the bag, with two points in mind:
1. Terras' title suggestion, which is My First Summer Vacation on the Planet Zeltros.
2. Darren's suggestion of using Team: Sabredart imagery once again.
For Round Three of the SWAG Member Theme Art Contest, everyone was given the theme of It's A Trap!... except me who has the task of coming up with Star Wars: Kramer vs Kramer, no thanks to my big mouth the previous month.
So, here it is without further adieu, Star Wars: Kramer vs Kramer - The Battle for Cosmo.
It's time for another round of SWAG's Member Theme Art Contest!!!!! Well, actually it's my first submission, and it's only the second topic ever. The topic is Time To Abandon Ship! and I wanted to do a free-for-all (during the pencilling I decided to pit Wookiees against Imperial stormtroopers). The guy abandoning ship is the one in the back, not involved in the brawl.
It took me the entire length of the movie Regarding Henry on TV for me to digitally pencil, ink and colour this piece. Apologies for the shoddy colouring, by the way.
Click on the thumbnail to see the full image, or if you're game for an even larger image, head on down to where it's at on deviantArt.
I noticed that like the old comments style, the blockquote style for this website is just a bunch of indented paragraphs. So, to ensure the blockquotes are easily seen, I've added a bunch of lines to the css file, causing anything in blockquotes to resemble:
Click here to watch the Robot Chicken representation of how Palpatine reacted to Vader after the first Death Star blew up.
Hilarious.
A quote from my recent post from this thread in the Holonet Forums.
Never let it be said I ran the Wild Gundark game without having at least one group illustration done for the team. Clockwise from top left, Groo McShae the Duros sensor tech, Similiv Zalimort the Kerestian first mate, Captain Nisa Dyaton the pilot, Aleic Karnsky the gunner, N4-M8 the mercenary and Wayang Kulit the Jawa droid tech specialist. Click below to view the image.
