Interesting Times, Interesting Places

It seems recently I have become the recipient of the Chinese proverb: May you live in interesting times.

Last week I talked about being the victim of theft, and it sucks to say it has once again happened to me this week. When I went to leave for work Wednesday morning, I discovered someone had made off with the front tire and seat post of my bicycle, whist it was still locked up on my front porch. As you can imagine, being the victim of theft two weeks in a row put me in a very sour mood.

Again hindsight is 20-20, but it doesn't help change the fact that my bike is now useless (though it's not a big concern given the season and weather.) If I save up cash and buy the parts, I should have it up and running like new come spring.

Anyway, on to other (better) interesting things:

First of all I'd like to give a shout out to the redditor who came across my 'Prolonging Death' article and posted in the D&D subreddit. People really seemed to like that houserule I came up with; that's the most traffic I've had on my blog so far, perhaps even surpassing last year's total visits. Thanks again for the exposure!

A few days ago I was talking to a buddy of mine about the Star Wars: Edge of the Empire Beta, and he was able to track down copies of the Beta book for each of us through his connections with gamers up island! I should have it in my hands Wednesday. As you can imagine from my previous post, I'm quite excited to play this game. I'm also currently reading through the books of the The Lando Calrissian Adventures trilogy that I got back in September, and getting ideas in my head for running a few Edge of the Empire sessions in the Centrality, a funny little offbeat region of the galaxy perfect for fringe types. Given what I've heard on the free-form narrative nature of the game, I think I don't need many actual rules to make the quirky Centran differences work in the game.

As for actual game resources for the Centrality, I've found a few:

1. Back in the day, West End Games was going to publish The Lando Calrissian Adventures Sourcebook for their d6 Star Wars RPG, but the project was cancelled. 
2. Back in issue #5 of WotC's Star Wars Gamer, they published A Campaign Guide to the Centrality; if you're not lucky enough to own a copy of this issue, you might be able to find it online as a PDF.
3. Finally, WotC's Star Wars Saga forum alumni and Lando fan, Rob Shanti, created his own sourcebook: The Centrality: A Gazetteer and Guide. Even though it's for Saga Edition, I highly recommend you grab the PDF of it if you're at all interested in the Centrality.
4. Good ol' Wookiepedia. :p

Pew Pew Pew

My interest has also grown in Fantasy Flight's Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game. Finally, a good Star Wars starship miniatures combat system. (Star Wars Miniatures: Starship Battles was a colossal flop.) I'm not a huge strategy game player, but this game just looks too fun to pass up. Even though Edge of the Empire sounds like it has a good cinematic vehicle/starship combat system (unlike the various WotC and WEG incarnations that GMs and players alike avoided), it sounds like one could incorporate X-Wing into their EotE or SWSE games for a more tactical/tactile starship combat. Especially once Age of Rebellion come out; anyone else have the idea of the PC's taking on roles the of a hybrid starfighter/commando unit a la Wraith Squadron? I'm sure that character stats from the RPG could be roughly translated to the pilot stats from the minis game to make a functional mash-up.  This is something I shall perhaps have to investigate further...

Finally, SWTOR is launching it's free-to-play model this Thursday, so I'll probably be playing that on and off for a bit.

Now on to other news.

Feb 1st - 3rd

I've thrown my hat into the ring to GM a game or two at GottaCon come February. The RPG coordinator is starting to get the gaming schedule together, but I've yet to decide on which slot(s) I'm going to be in and even what I'm going to run! I want to run a system that got little to no exposure last convention, so I have a couple ideas:

• Mouse Guard - I think Mouse Guard is a great system that's pretty easy to learn, so it'd be perfect for both newbies and people who've played the game before.
• Paranoia: Troubleshooters - In Paranoia, even if you've played it before, you're not expected to have any knowledge of the rules, because that means your a commie-mutant-traitor and punishable by death! (At least for your character.) The rules are completely the GM's domain but entirely flexible/optional, which leaves the players to do whatever they want to do; namely be entertaining. Death isn't really a punishment given your character has multiple clones. Sounds like a perfect convention game of hilarious dystopian slapstick for both veterans and newbies. I don't have a physical copy, but my friend might lend me his.
• Airship Pirates - This might appeal more to the Steampunk crowd. I've run the in-book adventure a few times with pre-generated characters, so I could do that again. I'd like to grab a bunch of pirate minis and a few airships for this one to make it fancy. I might reserve running this one till the next Victoria Steam Expo.
• Dread - A very niche choice, this storytelling-jenga game. I might use an amnesia concept I'm developing for his one.
• Spirit of the Century - I want the FATE system to be represented at GottaCon this year, so I'm thinking about this game. There's a couple sample adventures in the book and a couple of pre-generated characters I could use. My friend Jason, might be running Dresden Files, and if so that would satisfy my need for FATE representation and might allow me to run something else.
• Star Wars: Edge of the Empire - If I get a change to play the Beta a couple of times, get a good grasp of the system, and write a basic adventure up, I might run it at the con to give anyone curious a chance to see what it's about. The full game isn't supposed to come out till Spring, so running the Beta in February might generate some interest. Though this could be complicated given the fact the Beta rulebook is being updated every couple weeks.

It'll remain to be seen which game(s) I decide on.

Until next time! ;{١