The Star Wars Saga Edition RPG Databank

GenCon fast approaches, and while there won’t be a lot of ‘official’ support my good buddy Gary Sarli will be there running some Star Wars miniatures and RPG events.

GMSarli Games
Booth #1923 (right across from WotC)
Officially Unofficial Star Wars Gaming Headquarters

I’m going to be wandering a bit, as I have quite a bit of ‘official’ business to attend to, but it’s a safe bet that I’ll be spending at least some time at Gary’s booth. I will try to post both here and on Twitter (http://twitter.com/gvegames) as the day goes by to keep people updated. I don’t know how many of you all plan on attending GenCon, but I would love to meet those of you who will be there and maybe roll some real dice with you all.

See you there!

There have been a lot of major changes and big plans made recently, so I thought I would drop a note to let everyone know where we stand.

The Compendium

Some of you may have noticed that we haven’t had any new articles in a few weeks. Well, that’s not entirely true. The truth is that in the last two weeks the Databank has grown by over one-thousand entries and had major back end changes to support some usability changes.

It came to me not too long ago as I used the D&D Rules Compendium on the Wizards of the Coast site that something like this would be useful for the rapidly growing Saga Edition library (especially with the lack of indexes). It appears as though I am not alone in my desires, since as I began my project I noticed that several others had compiled similar indexes as well, primarily as Word documents or .PDFs. In the past couple of weeks, I have added entries for nearly every published talent, feat, class, prestige class, force power, and just about everything else I could find. This week I should finish up with the Knights of the Old Republic and Force Unleashed campaign guides.

What does this mean to you? It means that in addition to having great new material on this site, you will also be able to use the category based navigation and the search features to locate officially published material as well. Hopefully, this will make it a piece of cake to find exactly what you want when you need it, whether it be officially produced material or one of our own little gems.

Storms of Theed

Our adventure arc finally has a name, and the basic outlining is done. I would love to brag about being right on schedule, but honestly, we’re not. I’m really happy with the quality of our maps right now, but they are taking a little while and are distracting me from actually putting the adventure down onto paper. It is still on its way though, but it will be a little while. I ask that you have a little bit of patience though. I am just one man, and I can say with utmost confidence, at least in the overall scale, volume of research, and production value, this will be the biggest single Star Wars adventure yet produced for Saga Edition.

And yes, I do recognize the boldness of that statement. I am nothing, if not bold.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars

I had originally wanted to run a weekly article following the Clone Wars cartoon series, but with the upcoming book I have actually decided to give it a pretty wide berth. After the book comes out, expect me to relaunch the Clone Wars series.

Darth Bane: Rule of Two

I have just reread both Darth Bane books, and you can expect a series of characters, equipment, and other goodies based off of the material in that book in the coming weeks.

Submissions

I am working on streamlining the submission process. However, for now, I am still working on keeping the lines as short as possible and keeping updates fairly regularly. Unfortunately, this sometimes falls to the wayside, so I apologize to everyone who is waiting on an approval.

I usually don’t give many “previews”. I tend to like keeping secrets and revealing things as they are ready to be revealed. However, some secrets are too exciting for me to keep. This is one of them…

For a long time people have asked me about adventures. As of now, we don’t have any ready to run adventures, and its one of those things that just about everyone wants to see. The other big request is maps. We don’t have those either. My excuse in both cases is almost always the same: Time. Adventures and maps are both time consuming, especially when done right. Adventures require playtesting and an extensive amount of layout work. Maps require full tilesets and custom art, not to mention the hours of research that can go into something official, like a map of the Jedi temple or the Rebel base on Hoth.

Well, I still don’t have a lot of time, but I do have that itch. That itch that says I need to do something a little bit special. So… I’m doing both. That’s right. I’m doing both. Work has already begun on an all new Force Unleashed era adventure set on the planet of Naboo. Without revealing too much, I will say that it will be an adventure for mid level heroes and will explore the rapid fall from Republic to Empire. Also… there will be gungans. And many of them may die.

And speaking of gungans, a little sneak peek of the first map: the Drunken Gungan, a bar owned by a famous veteran of the Liberation of Naboo and meeting place for those less than satisfied with Imperial rule.

Hey everyone. Just a quick note to let you know that I am, in fact, still in one piece and planning some updates for the near future. Unfortunately, all my free time for the last couple of days has been taken up by playing the Force Unleashed and fixing up some things around the house. So, yeah… I’ve been lazy.

I did finish off Force Unleashed this afternoon though and it was well worth it. Not going to ruin the ending for you all, but after all the work getting there it was spectacular. My only real complaint about the game was the little mini-game cinematics. Its a sad state when pulling a Star Destroyer down into a giant trash cannon was something of a “frustrating disappointment”… but it was. Frustrating. And disappointing. The rest of the game (aka: WAILING on stormtroopers) is spectacular.

But that’s enough about Force Unleashed. As for Saga-Edition.com, good things are coming…

Star Wars Saga Edition! Congrats to the designers and developers (and community) that have made this such a great game.

Best Rules presented by Mike Selinker:
Gold: Star Wars Roleplaying Game Saga Edition, Wizards of the Coast
Silver: Trail of Cthulhu, Pelgrane Press

Best Game presented by Peter Adkison:
Gold: Star Wars Roleplaying Game Saga Edition, Wizards of the Coast
Silver: Aces and Eights, Kenzer & Company

Best d20/OGL Product
Gold: Star Wars Roleplaying Game Saga Edition, Wizards of the Coast
Silver: Monte Cook’s World of Darkness, White Wolf Publishing

Product of the Year presented by Peter Adkison:
Gold: Changeling: The Lost, White Wolf Publishing
Silver: Star Wars Roleplaying Game Saga Edition, Wizards of the Coast

Begun, the CLONE WARS have.

To celebrate the release of the CLONE WARS series, I have assembled some of the finest “Clone Wars” related stats available, to be released in a steady trickle throughout the next few weeks. Unfortunately, after seeing the film and with the release of the Knights of the Old Republic campaign guide I find myself wanting to touch up some of the STARS of the series, so you’ll just have to wait patiently as we build up to the big releases.

Enjoy.

One of the things I love about publishing through a website is the fact that I can go back and play with the entries on the site even after they are submitted. Mostly I just use this feature for real-time errata and corrections. However, I recently realized that there may be a far better application of this “power”.

As I was looking through the table of contents for the Knights of the Old Republic campaign guide and saw some of the AWESOME feats and talents, I was like “WOW! Why doesn’t Yoda have that!” or “Man, that’s totally Obi-Wan.” I thought to myself, “I wish they could update those old stats when new stuff came out”. Then I thought to myself, “Wait! I totally have a website where I post stats all the time! I could totally release updated versions of all those characters!”

And so, the “Definitive Collection” was born. A brand new series of characters all updated with the latest available materials, all using “official materials” to best represent the character as defined in the Star Wars Expanded Universe.

Enjoy.

(more…)

Just a reminder, to anyone who hasn’t already heard the buzz, that Star Wars Saga Edition is up for several ENNIE awards this year: Best Rules, Best d20/OGL Product, Best Game, and Product of the Year. The awards are based on YOUR votes, so if you haven’t taken the time to vote, please remember to do so soon.

http://www.ennieawards.com/voting/index.phtml

Also, it appears as though there was an issue with their website and some votes have been thrown out. So if you have voted previously, doublecheck and cast your votes again, if needed.