Unified spaceship weapons for Star Wars d6

As much as I like the D6 system and its approach to space combat, the weapons that they put on the ships for Star Wars are total chaos. Terms are used completely inconsistently even though the stats are generally pretty consistent. About 90% of the time. And then occasionally you run into a gun that has the same range in “space units” as regular other guns of that type but 20 times as much range in “atmosphere units” for no reason at all. Since I am a huge fan of consistency, I made the following list of standard guns found on the vast majority of ships. Continue reading “Unified spaceship weapons for Star Wars d6”

Star Wars Roleplaying Game: Revised, Expanded and Updated

Recently people have voiced dissatisfaction with the most recent officially licensed Star Wars roleplaying game. Me for example, among others. I thought the Star Wars Saga Edition game was pretty okay and clearly the best version of the d20 system I’ve ever seen. But it was still a d20 game and that one also just doesn’t feel right for Star Wars. So over the past weeks I’ve seen occasional mentions of the first Star Wars RPG that was released in the 80s by West End Games using the d6 system. While the name is similar, it works completely different than the d20 system. And from what people are saying about it, it supposedly works perfectly for running adventures that play and are paced like the Star Wars movies. But the game was discontinued 18 years ago, at a time when AD&D was still around.

A while back I was wondering if there’s some kind of retroclone for that game, but it turns out that it’s even better than that. West End Games released the OpenD6 game under the OGL, including the free d6 Space pdf. And I think it looks quite interesting and would fit well for a Star Wars or Mass Effect campaign. But what if I were to tell you can actually get a modern and updated version of the game from the 90s even know, and that it is also completely free?

impossibleThe West End Games game had an original edition, a Revised Editon, and eventually a Revised and Expanded Edition. And last year a group of fans went ahead to make their own Revised, Expanded and Updated version. And it looks absolutely amazing.

Star Wars Roleplaying Game 2nd Edition R E UIt’s a 512 page colossus and since it’s digital and not made for print they could make it look incredible without worrying about print costs. The layout looks great and frankly a lot better than what you see in most commercial RPGs. And soo much freaking full color interior art!

The system itself is surprisingly simple, with the player section being only 62 pages and the GM section another 79 pages. The rest is adventures, and optional stats for specific aliens, vehicles, equipment and so on.

tumblr_ntqv7qBCBQ1rv231do1_500

I don’t know how long it will take me to read through this whole thing. Simply going with d6 Space certainly would be a lot faster and easier. But this thing looks so damn good, you just have to fall in love with it. I recommend to anyone with some passing interest in Star Wars or space operas to give a look to either d6 Space or REUP. I have so many problems with so many sci-fi games, and here I find this thing that seems to get it perfectly right. And already did so 28 years ago! A while back I was reading the old Basic and Expert sets for Dungeons & Dragons and while there’s some unnecessarily convoluted math in them, the basic framework also seems so much better than almost anything that has come in the three decades after it. Instead of improvements, games since then seem to mostly have added needless clutter. (Barbarians of Lemuria and Basic Fantasy being two notable exceptions I am familiar with.) Most retroclones for D&D take lots of effort at looking super retro, using boring fonts and layout and art that is in my opinion deliberately bad. REUP is nothing like that. This game looks new, modern, and fresh and you have to know that the mechanics are 28 years old to recognize it as a retroclone.

Obviously, this whole thing does look somewhat dodgy though. Using the OGL and d6 Space, recreating a set of rules that closely mimics an older commercial game is nothing different from the common practice of the entire OSR crowd and the D&D retroclones. Just speaking mechanically, it seems very comparable to OSRIC or Sword & Wizardry. And it has been a long standing practice that companies usually don’t interfere with fans making hacks for RPGs that let them play adventures in the worlds of movies, TV shows, or videogames. But usually those things are a few pages of conversion notes with the most simple and basic layout. REUP is a completely different dimension, even though it’s still completely noncommercial. But as long as it’s silently tolerated it really is a damn fine looking game.

Fantasy Flight Games Star Wars RPG – What were they thinking?!

So last weekend at GenCon the third and final rulebook for Fantasy Flight Games new Star Wars RPG has been released. Because they made the descision to split the game into three and have separate rulebooks for smugglers, soldiers, and jedi and the game is using funky dice, I had not really been excited about it from the start.

thBut now that all three books are actually there and you can play a propper Star Wars game, my curiosity returned again. At least a bit. First inconvenience I encountered is that there is no digital version of any of these books. Which means you have to buy the much more expensive hardcover book. And how expensive? 65€! Each! That’s a total of 195€! I can get a PS3 with a stack of games for that money. Who can afford that? I know that you’re not “supposed” to play with all three books and just one. But pretty much every single Star Wars movie, novel, and comic I can think of always has mixed parties of heroes. Narrowly defined parties go against the spirit of the setting.

But let’s assume you have 200€ and nothing better to do with it than buying a new RPG. Are the books overpriced? Well, it seems almost reasonable given that they are 450 pages. Each! Who creates a 1350 page RPG? And this isn’t Mechwarrior or something like that. It’s freaking Star Wars. It’s a pulp setting for pulp adventures. How much rules can you possibly need for that? A tenth of that page count would have been completely sufficient. What were they thinking?

misc-jackie-chanLet’s compare that to the Star Wars Saga Edition game by Wizards of the Coast from the last decade. I believe it’s a revised edition of Star Wars d20 (on which Knights of the Old Republic seems to be based), and while d20 certainly is not a good choice for a Star Wars game (or for pretty much anything other than D&D), it’s so much more reasonable in scale. One book, 285 pages, $40 cover price.

This new game seems like possibly the most ridicoulous game I’ve ever heard of. Though I don’t actually know anything about the rules or the content. Because I don’t have 200€ to indulge my curiosity. I love Star Wars RPGs, but even if I am not a huge fan of the Saga Edition or would be unable to find a copy of the out of print game, I could just as well go with Spirit of the Century or Stars Without Number. Which are free.

Nu Wars is not for me

I saw the first reveal trailer for the New Star Wars movie when it was first released and I already didn’t like it. That rediculous three bladed lightsaber was just too stupid, as was that silly googly eye robot. And even though it was announced that the movie would be a completely different continuity than almost all the existing material that we’ve been loving for the last 24 years, I thought I am probably ending up seeing it anyway.

But now someone showed me a link to one of the changes they appear to have decided on (“Disney’s already fucking up Star Wars!”) and that confirms to me that indeed, this is a completely different universe, entirely unconnected to the Expanded Universe. It is only that the events of the first six movies happened to happen identically in both. (Obviously big spoiler.)

It’s not that I have any particular attachment to this part of the EU, but it seems pretty indicative that not only do they plan to tell the story differently, but actually make it a completely different story altogether. At least Nu Trek is a semi remake of Star Trek I and Star Trek II, but Nu Wars apparently doesn’t even care for that. Well, neither do I care for Nu Wars.

It’s not really a problem for me. It’s not like de Camp destroyed Conan. He just wrote his own officially licensed fan fiction. In fact, it is probably better that they decided to make Nu Wars, as that leaves the Expanded Universe untouched.

So let’s not treat this as a day of disastrous news, but instead as another opportunity to think of the greatest works of the Star Wars continuity:

  • Tales of the Jedi
  • Knights of the Old Republic (videogame)
  • Knights of the Old Republic (comic)
  • Racer
  • Republic Commando
  • Revenge of the Sith
  • Tie Fighter
  • Star Wars
  • The Empire Strikes Back
  • Return of the Jedi
  • X-Wing: Rogue Squadron, Wedge’s Gamble, The Krytos Trap, The Bacta War
  • Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, The Last Command
  • Jedi Knight: Jedi Outcast, Jedi Academy

Freaking Star Wars! Fuck Yeah! I love this stuff.

Eureka!

Suddenly, inspirations! Inspirations everywhere!

spongebob_imaginationI think I found the perfect core concept for my new iteration of the Ancient Lands setting. And if you know me just a bit, it will be no surprise to you: “Star Wars as a Bronze Age Sword and Sorcery setting.” Specifically the two Knights of the Old Republic comic series.

And now I also know what to do with the naga in the setting that isn’t simply making them Yuan-ti. These guys:

Sadow_vs_KresshI am not going to copy the whole Sith War storyline, but I think the old Sith are a perfect inspiration for the overall mindset and culture of the naga.

I’ve already been planning to do a group like the Mandalorians and the Qunari from Dragon Age for a long time. And two of the races are directly inspired by Jarael and Sylvar.

Air Genasi
Air Genasi
Kaas
Kaas

The Dathomir Nightsisters also have many great pictures I can use.

Kaska Witch
Kaska Witch

Of course, I am also taking liberally from Mass Effect (the second best thing after Star Wars), and the naga get a race of obedient servants inspired by the Geth.

Serpentmen
Serpentmen

And there will be both wood elves and dark elves as well.

Falden
Falden
Yagashi

This is coming along pretty nicely so far.

Setting up conflicts in worldbuilding

While I am revising my Ancient Lands setting, I’ve set down to once more give some deep thoughts to the underlying conflicts of the world. I make no secret about my oppinion that the Mass Effect series has the best worldbuilding I’ve ever seen anywhere. Not because there is a lot of lore on the locations and a long detailed history. In fact, there is barely anything in that regard, at least if you don’t read up on it in the ingame codex. Perhaps there is some, but I didn’t read any of it and I still think the worldbuilding is superb. The Mass Effect galaxy is incredible because it has lots of factions that are tightly interconnected with each other, forming a complex web of conflicts and alliances in which absolutely everyone is included in some way. And these groups are friends or enemies with each other not simply because the writers say so, but because they share a common past which can be sufficiently explained in three or four sentences but gives them good reason to feel what they feel, and in a way that perhaps doesn’t make you approve of, but at least understand their views. The same company that made the Mass Effect games also made the Dragon Age series at the same time, and while I am not as much a fan of that setting, it also excels at having lots of conflicts that affect everyone in some way and in which each side has some good points.

This made me realize that conflicts are really what makes a fictional setting tick. Cultures, landscapes, religion, and magic are all nice, but to get your audience invested in what is going on in the world and its people, underlying conflicts probably define the world more than anything else. This applies both to settings for roleplaying games, in which you usually want to give the players the option to chose the side their characters are taking, and to episodic fiction in which different parts and aspects of the world are explored in each story arc. So I’ve been looking at all the other fantasy and sci-fi worlds I think have great worldbuilding with interesting conflicts and dynamics between factions. From Star Wars to the Witcher, and from Halo to Forgotten Realms. And I made an important discovery when it comes to creating conflicts: Even if you have a conflict in which both sides have a point and you could easily get into the mind of a character of either group, the conflicts still always started because someone was a giant dick!

Back to Mass Effect, lots of nice sidestories with difficult moral descisions involve the alien Krogans and the human Cerberus group. In many cases you can sympathize with them, perhaps even support them, and actually very much like individual characters of these groups, even though many people consider them evil and villains. But the thing is that in the past their leaders made some descisions and ordered some actions that were really total dick moves. No questions about that; those things were wrong and they got what they deserved. But those past wrongs were not commited by the specific people you’re dealing with right now. These people can be really nice guys and they might not have done anything wrong. But for some reason or another, they are now part of this group that has a long and violent conflict with some other groups. The source of the conflict lies in the past, but it established some facts that still matter a lot right now. And I think that’s really the key when setting up some underlying conflicts for a setting rich with ambigous characters and descisions. Creating a conflict in which neither side is truly bad is really difficult, if not outright impossible. But that does not have to prevent the existence of conflicts in which neither side is truly bad now. If you want to set up a conflict that lasts for generations and affects whole peoples, make the conflict start with one terrible person making a really unfair descision. Doesn’t really matter if it’s too much black and white, because that person likely is long dead or may not appear in the story at all. What does matter is the people who are on opposing sides right now, and being sufficiently removed from the original source of the conflict, they can easily be as ambigous as you want. In Halo 2, some of the alien enemies quit the Covenant and start a civil war against their former masters, which put them on the same side as the humans. But that doesn’t change the fact that they had been the officers in charge of the Covenant army that had been leading a war of annihilation against humanity for the last 30 years. They hardly could be called friends by any stretch, but from that part in the story they have to work together and fight their common enemy, whether they like it or not. There still is great hostility between them and from a worldbuilding perspective you can still regard them as two opposing sides in conflict with each other. You can sympathize with characters on both sides, but also have no trouble at all understanding accepting that they won’t be nice to each other and getting into fights.

So this is my appeal and my advice: Conflicts neither have to be black and white, nor fairly balanced. You can have very good underlying conflicts built into a setting, which started out with one side being the villain, but by now has developed into a state of regular agression from both sides.