This week, I was a guest on The Tome Show podcast, talking about Nentir Vale along with two of my co-authors, Brian R. James and Matt James. You can find it here.
Star Wars Wednesday - Nonheroics
Continuing with the stat block creation discussion of the past two weeks, this time I want delve into the use of the nonheroic class in Star Wars RPG Saga Edition.
In a minute. First, I want to cover one important point on last week's notes on stat blocks for canon characters.
When creating canon characters, you're usually dealing with known character histories. That means the characters must have certain abilities available at certain times in their career. While Saga normally just printed the stats for a character as it was best known, the stats were built with their histories in mind so they could be deconstructed to a logical lower level if needed. So, this means building the character like you would a player character is pretty important. You must pay attention to the order of levels, ability score advancement and potentially the pickup of extra skills and languages if their Intelligence score increases along the way. Sometimes, you have to get pretty creative to fit it all in, and tricks like that can help.
So, nonheroics - what the heck is that class?
Star Wars Wednesday - Designing Stats
Last week, I discussed the pitfalls of stat block creation for public use/publication(mostly for Star Wars Saga Edition, but applicable to other systems as well). Keith "Nar" Kappel of www.fandomcomics.com followed up with a good question I wanted to address here.
Read MoreD&D Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale Releases
in D&D
Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale is now available in a lot of places, a bit ahead of schedule. You'll find all kinds of great monsters and organizations ready to throw into your Nentir Vale campaign, or any locale of your own devising. My co-authors are Brian James, Matt James and Steven Townshend.
Along with many of the monsters, I designed the swamp map contained inside (though I didn't do the art). The black dragon and the lizardfolk on the cover are also mine, story and stat-wise. They would be Shadowmire and his Witchlight lizardfolk underlings. If you're a D&D Insider subscriber, check out my tie-in adventure, Battle of the Witchlight Hermitage, just released TODAY, to see these guys in action. It uses the the swamp map as well.
Dungeonaday.com - Level 18
in Cartography
This is one of those weeks where it seems EVERYTHING is releasing at the same time. So, on with the updates.
I'm a guest cartographer again over at dungeonaday.com, this time for Level 18. You have to be a subscriber to see it, but you can get the idea from this earlier post.
Star Wars Wednesday - Dealing with Stat Blocks
A few hours ago, I finished recording/co-hosting an episode of the Order 66 podcast. I'm writing this on Sunday, because I'm traveling this week. If all goes well, this will auto-post at the right day and time. If you never listen to the Order 66 podcast, it is dedicated to the Saga Edition of the RPG, and you can find it at d20 Radio.
In the episode, we talk about creating modules for public use/publication and how that is different from creating an adventure for a home game. Hopefully, some of my more rambling comments still provide some help. It occurred to me, however, that one aspect we didn't address was stat blocks, so I wanted to touch on that a bit this week. I'll be addressing Saga Edition specifically, but most of the following applies to any system.
Star Wars Wednesday - E3, C6, you sunk my battleship
Or not. Star Wars Battleship isn't exactly a happening item these days*. Just couldn't pass up the title.
So, I'm busy this week with a short deadline freelance project, and, correspondingly, a bit short of time. Fortunately, there has been a ton of Star Wars news this week worthy of noting here, all ready to bail me out. In almost no particular order**:
Star Wars Wednesday - More SW Minis Resources
While it's been over a year since the end of the Star Wars game lines (and no new rumors I'm aware of, for those who have been asking), fans of the Minis game are working hard to keep it going. If you know where to look, there are new maps to be found, new scenarios, podcasts and even new virtual sets. I've posted some links before, but became aware of some I'd missed so I wanted to pass them along. Plus there are some GenCon and pre GenCon items some might find useful before the show in August.
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