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Post by barrataria on Sept 6, 2012 8:58:21 GMT -6
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Post by barrataria on Sept 6, 2012 8:54:59 GMT -6
I don't like the idea of paying $30 for a beta version but I got a free copy at Gen Con. So far, I have written one post about it on my blog and I intend to write more. Got a link, pard?
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Post by barrataria on Aug 20, 2012 17:21:51 GMT -6
Sorry, but I'm of the school of thought that playtesters shouldn't have to pay to iron out a game's bugs. FFG has things as backwards. I'm with you, of course, but I will say it's more honest than some companies that seem to sell their beta copies as "first edition" With the "rules upgrade" sold separately!
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Post by barrataria on Aug 20, 2012 7:26:50 GMT -6
Also thinking of the fascination of "The Force" and "Jedi" I just don't find it all that mystifying anymore. Don't get me wrong I was probably about 13 when the movie came out, a perfect age to see the movie and be absorbed by it. Were we all looking for an alternative to organized religion? Did Scientology get its roots from this?? Its weird to look back on. Funny, I've been thinking along the same lines since I started taking yoga classes... and have had the utterly horrible thought that the name "Yoda" is yoga with one letter changed
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Post by barrataria on Aug 19, 2012 7:28:26 GMT -6
And, from the rpg.net thread.... Yeah, looks interestin-
Oh. Printed beta, for 30 bucks, apparently without pdf. Losing interest.
Also, custom dice. ;D ;D ;D
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Post by barrataria on Aug 19, 2012 7:18:44 GMT -6
I don't know much about it at all. I know there is a thread on Dragonsfoot on the beta rules and I think it was being compared to Warhammer Fantasy RPG for some reason. I should go back to re-read the thread... Maybe it wasn't DF. I can't find the thread now. I don't think it was there, although I was away from the boards for a while. I don't recall any at Rancor's Pit or d6 online either. Maybe rpg.net or enworld? I don't read those much. Edit: was it rpg.net?
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Post by barrataria on Aug 18, 2012 18:30:54 GMT -6
Dredging this up because I'm thinking about it again... Wow, what a cool thread! I'd love to play in a game like this. I like the Red Letter Media suggestion that the Clones should be an army secretly bred by Palpatine washing in over the Old Republic, so that they in turn beging recruiting troopers and becoming more militarized paving way for the Empire to be formed. I had forgotten he suggested that, I need to re-watch those reviews. I think the assumption in the WEG books was also that the clones were fighting the Jedi... one of those things we just assumed at the time I think. Anyway, I'm ret-conning the prequel era for purposes of a timeline for my campaign, and I've gotten to thinking about these wars again. I'm thinking that the Jedi and the local militia fought against the clones/cloned monsters AND the droid armies in the prequels. This is partially as an excuse to include droid soldier minis in my games but also as a backdrop to anti-droid sentiment shown in the Original Trilogy. Oh, and running with another Red Letter Media criticism, I'd introduce Christopher Plummer as a heavy in the first film, as Maul's master. It seems that the Sith are really a secret cabal of evildoers within the ranks of the Jedi, and he (Tyrannus) makes a pact with Senator Palpatine to buy the clones, build the droids, and scare up support for militarization of the Republic/Empire as a prelude to eliminate the Jedi, ancient enemies of the Dark Knights. Tyrannus eventually clones what's left of his apprentice Maul, but the cloning fails and he has to heavily cyborg the result. The result is General Grievous, perfectly engineered to command clone and droid armies. The Emperor is strong with the force, but does not use a lightsaber (which he sneeringly calls a "Jedi weapon" in ROTJ) and was never a Jedi (nor a Dark Knight of the Sith cabal). He uses his mind control in strategic places in the Senate and elsewhere to get his overwhelming power. When Anakin comes along, part of his fall to the dark side is making a pact with Palpatine, gaffing Tyrannus to take over the Sith, which is how he ends up as Darth Vader, Lord of the Sith, hunting down Jedi and, later, "rebel scum".
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Post by barrataria on Aug 18, 2012 17:21:05 GMT -6
Anyone know how many seasons of the cartoon are out there? I bought one for my son long ago and hadn't realized they had so many more until I happened to see a different one at the video store. Ditto, I just got around to watching the movie and then discovered there are four seasons in the can so far. Apparently there's an entirely different cartoon, as opposed to CGI, that ran in 2003-5. I don't know anything about that, apparently the current series is a sequel to it.
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Post by barrataria on Aug 18, 2012 13:41:59 GMT -6
So, this was going to be a pretty glowing recommendation, until I got to the episode with Jar Jar in it Still, the first disk and a half have been enjoyable. They do a nice job depicting the planets, and there's a real "planet-per-episode" feel to some of them. The depiction of Rodia was pretty interesting, and there was a coral planet (supposedly formerly an ocean world, so coral forests and dry land) that was pretty neat too. So, if you can hold your nose at some of the prequel stuff you probably didn't like (clone soldiers, incompetent droid army, etc.) and pretend it's an "adventures of jedi knights" cartoon, I think it's not too bad. They even have fun with some of that baggage, really playing up the stupidity/incompetence of the battle droids, for instance. I really like the intro music and the way they do a voiceover (which sounds like an old radio show) instead of the opening crawl. And I will say that the folks writing it could have been put to good use in the prequels... I haven't yet found a love scene ;D Even some of you saga-haters might find it enjoyable as sci fi set in the SW universe.
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Post by barrataria on Aug 18, 2012 7:49:08 GMT -6
To play devil's advocate after a fashion, I seem to recall back when the pdfs were pulled, that WotC made some mention of 'future plans' or some other such equal parts vague and ambiguous. Most folks seemed to grab onto the notion it was a result of a silly fear of piracy, but I don't remember that anyone associated with WotC ever said as much. What I mean, is, perhaps they've been working on this all along. The work done was taken to the next level with the AD&D 1E core books since they are what they are...but...maybe similar digital treatment has been ongoing for Original and B/X and the RC, etc. I mean.... maybe. Time will tell. Yeah, I have a hard time seeing them re-scanning things they could just throw up for download again as-is. But maybe they do want to create a digital library of their IP, which would be great, and even better if it can be accessed by others. I won't subscribe to that kind of service, as things are now, but as cloud computing expands maybe it will be more useful to me. I mostly have pdfs of what I want now; I'd be happy to see the Moldvay/Cook B/X finally available legally.
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Post by barrataria on Aug 18, 2012 7:11:17 GMT -6
Ken Skywalker (father of Luke; interesting that Ken and Anakin are similar). Did you have the Ken Skywalker action figure? I bet he had a cashmere sweater! * Jedi Armor (black for evil Jedi or Grey for neutral; no white option) was zero encumbrance but acted like Plate+2. What did you think was a "neutral" jedi? Were they only the low-level jedi as you discuss elsewhere? I'm curious where this idea came from. * Jedi spells were essentially magic-user spells revised, such as "Force Lock" instead of Wizard Lock. I just started working on a free-form force power system to use with SWRPG, and I intend to use it in d6 Fantasy too when I get around to running that. * The leader of the Rebellion was Bail Organa, King of Alderaan and father of Leia. I always assumed that he wasn't really involved in the Rebellion, or at least was so secretly involved that no one knew about it. When Tarkin and co. blasted Alderaan, they never said or implied that it was some hotbed of resistance. I always thought Leia would feel guilty for "getting them killed", and was surprised pleasantly when I read an old SW comic with that plotline. And dismayed that Alderaan is almost never mentioned again in SW or the other original films I always thought it was a major factor in other planets deciding to throw in with the Rebels, the opposite of what Tarkin intended. I hope you find more notes!
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Post by barrataria on Aug 10, 2012 8:00:36 GMT -6
Another option is to simply "make it so". If ever a (frontal) blow would kill a PC who is carrying a shield, his shield is instead dashed into splinters and he survives. This doesn't require any effort from the players, and it is probably the "optimal" player strategy to preserve his AC for as long as possible anyway. This is more or less my general suggestion. You are running things by the book... recall that this game was played by people used to wargames and sandtable minis, so "unit loss" was part of the whole game. So you're not doing anything "wrong".... except you need to have a game enjoyable for you and your players, and it sounds like that isn't happening. I fudge a lot more things for low level characters, especially in B/X. Maybe the spider's poison takes a couple of turns to take effect, and there's a mushroom in the next dungeon chamber that will counteract its effect if ingested. Start the magic-user at 2nd level. Give them a magic scroll that doubles HP for the day. Lean on one-shot magic items like potions and scrolls that they have to use up to survive to higher leve. Also, consider nerfing xp awards rather than awarding scads more treasure. It's fine to bury them in gp but then (if you are running a campaign) you will have to figure out where all those gp go and what players will do with them. Normally, this is the road to monty haul and munchkin games, but I think you started them out on the road to perpetual character-rolling, which IMO can be kind of dull. While detailed character backstories are kind of a bad idea and waste of time in B/X, I don't like ending up with "Erac's Cousin's Second Wife's Brother-in-Law" either, as players roll up more and more replacement characters.
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Post by barrataria on Jul 31, 2012 7:19:31 GMT -6
The only real Star Wars is the original film about kids driving wheeled landspeeders in an agrarian desert backwater settlement.
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Post by barrataria on Jul 23, 2012 8:16:30 GMT -6
Exact cuts were made to the original maps so no detail is missing, caverns have just been spread out. To use this map: [1] Cut and paste rooms and caverns of your own devising or from old modules into the spaces. [2] Simply take a marker and scribble on a print out random tunnels and new caves. Note that a map like this makes the dungeon level highly reusable with new interconnections. Thanks for the extra explanation as I didn't understand the fantastic idea you have posited here. I always thought the dungeon lacked empty spaces and was a little too "room+monster+treasure". Not a real criticism as I've used it many times quite happily, but some of the encounters with illusion-creating monsters could be even more horrible with a little foreshadowing in other encounters. And the extra caves leave plenty of room for some of the monsters in the supplement that didn't get into the module itself. That supplement was always one of my favorites, and the monsters in it were those in the MMII I used more than any of the others.
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Post by barrataria on Jul 23, 2012 8:09:38 GMT -6
The second D&D film was not bad, it was watchable. I cringed all the way through the first one. You're doing it wrong. The first movie is without question the funniest movie I ever saw in my life. My sides and my jaw muscles hurt after two hours of laughing (well, really 1.5 hours as for the first half hour I thought it was an actual adventure movie). Blue lipstick. Marlon Wayans' terrible lines. Ridley the Savior. So many memories.
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Post by barrataria on Apr 3, 2012 7:07:42 GMT -6
I hadn't seen this article before, and always assumed Meier had simply licensed Civ from AH. Silly me. My first game was D-Day, and I had and played a few of their other old chestnuts: Waterloo, Stalingrad, France 1940. Flat Top is a really good game. I also liked some of the later offerings. New World was an interesting exploration/colonization game, and Blackbeard is a greatly enjoyable game. I think Sid Meier must have liked that one too
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Post by barrataria on Mar 20, 2012 7:52:18 GMT -6
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Post by barrataria on Nov 12, 2011 9:04:44 GMT -6
I know that a lot of folks started off with Holmes Basic or AD&D and might have had different dice options, but when I started I had a mountain of d6's and a set of those wacky-colored polyhedral dice. Note the rounding of the corners... the d20s from my basic and expert sets don't stop on numbers any more.
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Post by barrataria on Nov 2, 2011 19:07:08 GMT -6
I find that I avoid telepathic communication for magic swords and familiars because I like roleplaying these as NPCs and so want to spend lots of time on that interaction without having to make the other players exclude themselves from the conversation because their characters aren't supposed to be privy to it. Good point. And thanks Aldarron for posting as you did. I'm more inclined to make it something the MU has to "research", as opposed to having a spell for it. I also expect the MU's ability to communicate with the familiar will improve as he advances in levels. I do like leaving the MU with more autonomy in picking the kind of familiar- I remember one player being mad when he ended up summoning a toad Further musings are not really about OD&D so I'll move along, but thanks fellows for the responses.
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Post by barrataria on Nov 2, 2011 8:22:07 GMT -6
So, was there a "find familiar" spell, or were there other rules for these? Or was it an AD&D innovation? I'm working on some ideas for B/X magic-users and was wondering if and/or how familiars were included in the original books.
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Post by barrataria on Sept 5, 2011 18:19:23 GMT -6
Nice of you to share. And for Fin, these docs and MiniSix are the reason to hang onto your SW d6 stuff. You can cobble together a huge variety of games with these things, and the SW stuff will be handy as a resource if you ever use them to do that.
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Post by barrataria on Aug 21, 2011 9:38:30 GMT -6
Your example is a nice one. I don't know if I intentionally do this, but when I put together a campaign I often build a skeleton of a world without fleshing out that many areas in it so that later on I can build and adjust as needed. Kind of a surprise to me as well as the players in that I don't really know what is being put there in advance. Among the best mapping/campaign building advice I ever found was a passage in the manual for Campaign Cartographer, which suggested sprinkling a few random symbols here and there on a map, either a players' map or the DM's, without detailing them. It's come in handy countless times either to be a lair for some wandering monsters, or a location to fill in a treasure map randomly generated, and so on.
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Post by barrataria on Aug 19, 2011 21:20:55 GMT -6
I fear that it will be something like their Warhammer 3E. Full of dice, cards, pretty pictures but devoid of playability. Something like this, no doubt. I assume the release will be timed with the movies they're returning to the theatres.
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Post by barrataria on Aug 19, 2011 21:17:46 GMT -6
Needless to say, THANKS!
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Post by barrataria on Aug 19, 2011 21:17:11 GMT -6
This reminds me of a prequel-related children's book I found in a used bookstore... the Dark Side Activity Kit! For ages 3-5!
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Post by barrataria on Jan 6, 2011 13:56:56 GMT -6
Every once in a while I run across a news article that reminds me a lot of Dark Conspiracy, or Gamma World, or whichever P-A/dystopia game you prefer. Here's one: a city fills a swimming pool with mud because they can't/won't spend to maintain it. I can see mutants of the future standing and wondering why this concrete ovoid was carefully filled and packed with earth. Maybe they'll think it's some kind of tomb? www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/inberkeley/detail?entry_id=80432&tsp=1
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Post by barrataria on Dec 29, 2010 9:15:03 GMT -6
Wait, there's a new T. Zahn book out and it has Thrawn in it? Not so new. My hardback of Outbound Flight is copyright 2006. And I don't recall if I've ever actually read it, so I can't personally confirm or deny whether Thrawn is in it. Thrawn is indeed a major part of the story. I enjoy Zahn's stories a lot and I think the Thrawn Trilogy really fooled me into reading a lot of other EU books that were nowhere near as good (looking at you, Jedi Academy Trilogy!).
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Post by barrataria on Dec 27, 2010 11:07:22 GMT -6
Wasn't there a Tim Zahn book called "outward bound" or something like that with a lost colony-ship of jedi knights? Yes indeed, and I actually just finished reading it yesterday... maybe it was subliminal inspiration for the other idea I really wasn't crazy about the ship design, but maybe it's worth pursuing. Incidentally the book wasn't too bad for an EU story. I liked the Thrawn trilogy and enjoyed seeing that character appear in this book.
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Post by barrataria on Dec 21, 2010 18:45:48 GMT -6
I guess I was just thinking that Stormtroopers would be a lot of fun but wouldn't fit on a research "Life Star" ship very well. Sure they would! How else would the scientists "collect" their "specimens"? Actually I've been thinking it would be cool just using the Warden as a long-lost Republic colony ship for a "Tales of the Jedi"-era one-off. And I dug out "Expedition to the Barrier Peaks" too... something I never used BITD but I've thought about it for space/future games before.
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Post by barrataria on Dec 21, 2010 8:34:40 GMT -6
So... what if there were a third Death Star, bigger than the first (9.9 mi. diameter), but smaller than the second (55.8 mi.)? Perhaps more ovoid in shape, like an upscaled torpedo sphere, configured for research and colonization rather than war (perhaps a design prototype used to deceive Old Republic budget bureaucrats, called Project: Life Star)? Commanded by Admiral Warden? And what if the reactor leak caused a chain reaction of weapons malfunctions ( ), mutations among crew and creatures, and various freak-outs? And what if the hyperdrive and navicomp systems malfunctioned and went on permanent autopilot? I wonder what would happen.
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