Coloring Within The Lines

One of the biggest personal obstacles I encounter when I'm creating a Star Wars campaign is how close to canon I'm going to keep the game. I've done games where the PCs interacted with established canon (with no adverse effects to the movies), and campaigns that completely tossed canon right out the window. Sometimes it's fun to rub elbows with Skywalker, Solo, Organa, and Vader. Other times I want to keep them as far away from it as possible. Not necessarily because I want to "preserve the story", but more because those stories have been told. By interacting with the movie characters, the PCs may feel like they're simply supporting cast for "the Big Three". That's not their role, though; they're the Player Characters. This is their story, and they deserve an epic as big as any Star Wars hero who's appeared on screen to date.

Aside from the aforementioned "tossing canon out the window", there are several tricks to keep your campaign within canon, but not interacting with canon. I find myself utilizing this when I put together a new Star Wars game.

Location, Location, Location

One of the first questions I ask myself when creating a new game; when does the story take place? Star Wars has a rich history, even if most of it now falls into the category of "Legends", and is no longer established canon. You've got the Old Republic era, thousands of years before the movies. You could even go farther back than that to the formation of the Republic and the fall of the Infinite Empire, and give the game a real "space fantasy" feel. You could play in the Fall of the Republic/Clone Wars era, or the Dark Times. The product line from Fantasy Flight Games is currently written from the standpoint of the Rebellion Era, and much of the media since Disney took over Lucasfilm has been focused on a return to that time. There's the New Republic era, both in the books from the last 25 years and the newer version that Episodes 7-9 will show us. The Yuuzhan Vong war, the Legacy Era, even farther beyond you could make up your own future where your PCs are Skywalkers, Solos, Antilles(es?), Calrissians, and a host of other famous family members.

So "which era to run" is my first question. Once I have that, the next location to decide is where in the galaxy is the game focused? Some campaigns I've run had no specific central location in the galaxy, they just sort of happened wherever the PCs wanted (or needed) to go. This felt rather epic, as the story swept across the galaxy to a score of worlds the the PCs would likely never come back to. However, the games where I had the most fun were ones that had a central location; a place for the PCs to get familiar with, get to know the people and unique places within, and gave them a sense of "coming home" every few sessions. 

I sort of equate it to the difference between shows like Star Trek (Original series or Next Generation) and Battlestar Galactica versus ones like Deep Space Nine and Babylon 5; with one the new location is the exciting discovery or unknown threat, while with the other there's a general desire to protect your home from threats that come to it, or dwell within it. This is a generalization and simplification to be sure, but I hope you get my meaning.

The Right Amount of Seasoning

A sad consequence of growing old was the dawning realization that I can't game like I did in college; not if I want to maintain a healthy social balance among my family and friends. No more weekly games for me, the games typically need to be spread out to months between sessions. This can make sweeping epics very hard to maintain, as I was reminded of with my last campaign "Another Longshot". I have to factor this in to the type of story I want to create with my players; more of a series of connected adventures that could stand alone rather than a sweeping epic that takes years to complete. 

The more I write these days, the more it feels like I'm planning on "seasons" for my game rather than sessions. It's like the Rebels cartoon or any of the DC's "Arrowverse" shows on the CW; each episode (or 2-episode arc) deals with a stand alone story. Within that story are plot threads that weave into a larger storyline that will culminate at the end of the season. This give me more of an opportunity to write sessions based on the player's backgrounds, motivations, and complications while still building towards a season finale that ties it all together.

Uncharted Territory

So what happens when you have a desire to run a game in an era that's seemingly been written a thousand times over? I had this mentality for a good fifteen years that I was done with the Rebellion Era; that every story that could have been told within that time frame had been told. I was distracted by the stories being written after the destruction of the Second Death Star, or by those leading up to and including the Clone Wars. But what appealed to me about those eras were that there was seemingly more open canvas in which I could paint my own picture about Star Wars. An uncharted section of space where I determine what happens there in. What I was reminded of recently was that the galaxy is a really, really, really big place. There's plenty of space within the galaxy for me to create a vast and robust story and never have it cross paths with anything already established if I don't want it to.

One of the best resources I've found is the interactive Star Wars Galaxy Map website. It lists out the location of every known sector, planet, and trade route in the Star Wars galaxy. It even links them all to Wookieepedia, so you can look up important details about the planet, sector, or trade route. Taking some time, it's rather easy to find a sector or two that are practically empty; devoid of any meaningful established canon  or even "Legendary canon".

Practice Makes Perfect

Utilizing the points I've made thus far, let's look at a potential new campaign. With my rediscovered enjoyment of the Galactic Civil War, I elect to place the campaign in the Rebellion Era. Specifically, I'm really enjoying the years leading up to A New Hope, as seen in the Rebels cartoon and Rogue One. I want to tell a story about a rebellion forming within a specific sector, one that will become a part of the greater Rebellion as a whole, but still focuses on the politics and dynamics within a specific region of space.

Looking at the Galaxy Map, there appears to be a nice and mostly vacant sector in the southern side of the galaxy; the Tantra Sector. According to Wookieepedia, there really hasn't been much established there, especially within the new canon. There have been only the barest mention of anything about the sector in Legends canon, even though the sector lies between two of the major galactic trade routes. I can see the sector being heavily colonized within easy reach of those trade routes, with most of the interior of the sector barely touched (or even explored). Entire planets of beings could lie in that region and have yet to be discovered, or lost colonies could have thrived there waiting to be brought back into galactic society.

This region of space, and the era it's in, gives me a huge amount of real estate to create planets, organizations, and plot points for. I can lay out details for the Imperial's control of this sector, outlining the military strength of the Sector Fleet and the general personality and machinations of the Moff in charge of the sector. I can create several worlds to fill specific roles within the sector; population centers, manufacturing locations, agro-worlds, shadowports where criminals thrive, and lost colonies that simply want to be left alone. Pirates who threaten the spacelanes and bounty hunters who hunt them down for sport and profit. Lost temples or starships that hold secrets of the Force... 

And of course, dissidents who balk and refuse to submit to the will of the Empire and who have chosen to be rebels.

This could be a fun place to play, a corner of the sandbox that I can build what I want and how I want it. It can be a familiar place for the players to have meaningful effect on, yet close enough to the "galactic highways" that an adventure could take them across the galaxy if need be.

Growth Potential

Where you place your story is almost as important as what your story is. A good location can make a good game great, a sweeping plot-line epic. It provides players with a sense of familiarity, and can be something to motivate your players to action when you threaten "their home".  Be sure to give a lot of thought to how much freedom and space your location provides, and enjoy the time you spend coloring within those lines.

Trinary is now Anomaly

Art by Leo Chuang

Welcome back to Fragments from the Rim; I was musing over on Facebook today that I needed to brush the cobwebs off this site and get it going again. Life has been rocky and rough lately, and my various forms of artistic expression have taken the brunt of my lack of drive and neglect. Part of me getting things back on track is getting my creative juices flowing again and enjoying the work I do. So; here's hoping this is a start.

Last October I posted an entire month of posts about "Trinary", a new campaign world I had kicking around my head that I finally attempted to get some traction on.  It's been a long while since I've made anything as grand as a campaign world; my Twin Worlds setting back in College was my last journey into world-building, and I had a lot of fun with that.  I poured countless hours of work into developing that setting for several Dungeons and Dragons campaigns that ran in the years following. Had many a good time and adventure that my players still talk about today.

I've had an idea for a long while, a theme that spawned the creation of a cluster of stars in the corner of a far-flung galaxy (no, not THAT Galaxy Far Far Away; I do enough campaigns in that one). The 30 Days of World Building exercise gave me a basic skeleton and a lot of ideas to work with. Looking back, I'm not happy with a lot of the names, but I am pleased with a lot of the ideas that exercise spawned.

Art by Luvisi

My biggest hangup has been the name; "Trinary". I had a few reasons for choosing that name, but it never sat right with me. It felt too clunky, too easy to miss-speak and call it "Trinity". Also, the name wasn't very evocative. I've been trying on other names for the campaign world for a while now; the name really drives a lot. Sure, I could try and develop a world and see if a name for the campaign pops out, but that's not typically how I operate. I try to put a name to the idea that I have, and everything that comes after is better designed to fall in under that umbrella. It fits with the themes and the stories I want to create for that setting.

I've decided on the name "Anomaly" for my game world.  The name hints at the fact that something is amiss and highlights the irregular, which for the most part includes most player characters. There are many anomalies in the game; social anomalies, stellar anomalies, cultural anomalies. Gravametric anomalies allow for Faster Than Light travel. Genetic anomalies hold the key for powers long lost to be reborn. There may even be a temporal anomaly or two that must be dealt with.

GM Phil's Anomaly (Yes, I know I need a new banner image...)

So now I've got a name I can work with. Next is trying to refine what I want into a very basic campaign setting that players can use.  I need to remember that I don't need to present them with the entire setting all at once, just enough for them to grasp the concepts of the setting, get a feel for the political powers, and understand the themes within the campaign world.

Here we go...

Art by Lino Drieghe

Costumes, Campaigns, and Comics

 It's funny, there are about three or four things I want to blog about, but I'm having some difficulty settling on them to get them out.  I try to keep this blog on-topic (when I am able to write for it, anyway), partially because I think it's better to share my experiences on specific topics; costuming, Gamemastering, anything Star Wars; whatever.  I don't like doing "shotgun blast stream of consciousness" posts, but maybe I need to just to break this log-jam.

Costuming

With Celebration: Anaheim only three months away, there's been a small amount of pressure to 

 finalize some costuming for the con.  My stepson had thoughts about formally getting a Cade Skywalker outfit made, and I was looking forward to helping him put it together.  Problem is Cade's mop-of-hair and my stepson's dislike of having his hair more than 2 inches long, it seems. So he ditched Cade in favor of something else.  At first he thought about being a clone trooper, which could be really cool.  Now, starting on a Clone trooper, like most fully armored Legion costumes, means you just committed yourself to a $1,000 outfit. The stepson was taken a little aback about that, but if that's something he wants to do, we'll find a way to do it.  In the mean-time, he's now looking at other soft-costume characters he may want to do, and is considering Starkiller from The Force Unleased.  "Especially since you know him!"

"...call the POLICE..."

Ah, the innocence of youth.

In other news, I have a box of Biker Scout parts sitting in my father's basement, just waiting to be assembled for him.  It's a good kit, I just have to find the time to drive down and help him with it.  It shouldn't take too long to assemble, either, and I'm fairly certain it includes all the straps and such needed for him to wear it.  The only part I dread is the helmet; my helmet came to me pretty much done.  Just had to attach the visor to the helmet faceplate, and then the faceplate bolts onto the helmet itself.  This is more of a 4-part kit; visor, faceplate, that square brim that goes around the faceplate, and then the helmet itself.  I'm probably going to tap into the expertise of one of my local Legionnaires who's put together this exact kit before, and get some help with that.

But what about my own costumes?  I've lamented before about finishing my SWTOR costumes, or getting them started more like.  The wife says I am to break out the dummy and toss my Jedi Shadow onto it to see where it is and what needs to be finished. I honestly have a fear that doing so will do no more than make an obstruction in the traffic pattern in my house...again...and that it still won't go anywhere.  

We'll see, I guess.

Another Longshot

What a rabid batch of PCs I've cultivated for Another Longshot.  Seriously; I can't remember the last time I had such involvement by my PCs in additional writing, and support for the game.  Maybe my short-lived Earthdawn game, but I think this is even more (probably because I've got 5 more PCs than that game had).  Background stories, in-character reports to command, a pair of Adventure summaries; their writing has even inspired my writing (which is probably contributing to my lack of updates here). Mostly, it's background information for a location that will likely become a prominent one in the game, Port Rasper.  I'll admit, I had a bit of Babylon 5 influence when writing about it.  Hopefully it will keep a unique feel and give my PCs some inspiration for what to do on the station.

Wild Cards

My campaign that was labeled as the "Another Longshot Prequel" has been in hiatus since September.  I ran a Force and Destiny Beta group on a short series of adventures (which I intended to chronicle here, but something came up).  Now with that group brought to a pause, and the main Another Longshot begun, I have a third group of equally rabid PCs asking when I'll be starting up the Tuesday night game again.  Sadly, we lost my former co-host Fiddleback as an active PC. I have found another contender who's looking at making a melee bruiser droid along the lines of the IG-100 Magnaguard; a sort of "Mr T of Droids".  Likely Marauder, maybe Enforcer. He should be good and as a droid could be easily inserted into the party.

I just have to get that game back up and running again.  I've got some ideas, and I think they're worth pursuing.  But man, that would effectively mean that my Another Longshot campaign has 3 PC groups, all in the same overall storyline, with 15 PCs total.

I must be out of my god damned mind...

More variant covers than any Liefield comic, ever

Marvel Star Wars Comics

Just my feedback on Marvel's return to writing for Star Wars comics; I'm not impressed.  They released Issue 1 with over 100 variant covers, and with the exception of an Imperial Captain and a bunch of stormtroopers only included the major characters from A New Hope; Luke, Han, Leia, R2, 3PO, Chewie, and Vader. 

My favorite characters from the Dark Horse runs were the non-movie characters.  Rogue Squadron! Quinlan Vos! The rise and fall and rebirth of A'sharad Hett! Dass Jennir!  K'Kruhk!  Cade Skywalker! Ganner Kreig! Zayne Carrick! Jahan Cross!  If I could costume these people I would! These are the characters I would look forward to the next issue for, stories I really enjoyed.  They made the Star Wars universe bigger.  But with Marvel's latest issue, they made the galaxy smaller.  Insinuating that only the Heroes of Yavin can do the important missions in the galaxy, and only Vader can oppose them.

Eh, it is only issue one...time will tell I guess.

Jedi by day, lead singer of Nickelback by night...

May the dice be with you.

Another Longshot - Launch Day

So there were no updates in December, the primary reason being that any time I had to write for the blog, I spent it on writing for today's topic.  As you may discover, there was a lot of work needed and it seemed to pay off.

New year, new post, new campaign.

...campaignS?

Technically seven years in the making, Another Longshot has finally launched.  Set in the "Legacy Era" of what is now called "Star Wars Legends", the campaign takes place primarily in the Hagen sector on the edge of Wild Space.  Mysteries, ancient enemies, new threats, and a struggle to survive and fight the Sith Empire are all themes of this story, and this past weekend my PCs helped me kick it off with a bang.

Day One: Group Besh

On Saturday, the first dice started rolling for Another Longshot. Group Besh, "the Rebel group", got everything started with a romping 6 hour adventure. I think the thing that most impressed me was the lack of combat in this session.  There was one altercation on the promenade of a space station thanks to some Threat results on the dice, but otherwise it was all skills and role-playing to move along the plotline.  The players seemed to have a good time, so much so that three hours after I left (I live an hour away even without snow on the roads) my PCs were still hanging out talking and writing about the game.

I think I may have hooked their interest in the game...

I'm not going to re-hash what the PCs went through; I'll let them do that!  You can find the adventure write-up by the Group Besh PCs here.

I think the best part about the adventure was the collaboration. Everyone tried to make sure that everyone else felt useful and needed in the group. I still think Joe (playing the displaced Jedi) was the odd-man out and may have felt the least effective. Still, he contributed and I'm fairly certain the next session will focus the spotlight on him a little bit more, especially since his Bounty obligation got rolled.

I roll Obligation, Duty, and Morality at the end of the session so I know what's triggering for the next one and can write it into the story.  Works much better than spending hours writing something and then having someone's Oath Obligation get rolled or Space Superiority Duty rolled and having no extra room for random NPC interactions or space battles.

Day Two: Group Aurek

Due to schedules, it worked out that I had to run both groups back-to-back or else Group Aurek wouldn't "launch" until Late February.  Better to get the games going and PCs collaborating, I thought and predominately I was right.  "Group Aurek" is a unique group because everyone is a Force User.  It's basically a Force and Destiny group, with two Jedi, two Imperial Knights-to-be, and an unwilling Sith Apprentice who started off the campaign by saying "enough of this, I'm leaving and I'm freeing my Master's prisoners first".

This is the group with the most overt-ties to the original Longshot game. One of my PCs (Alex) is playing a descendant of the cigarra-smoking, foul-mouthed, unkempt space-pirate-turned-Rebel-operative he played seven years ago.  Now playing an upstanding Imperial Knight named Bleys (sort of a Star Wars take on an old favorite D&D PC of his), he's been saddled with his great-grandfather's broken-down ship and even further broken-down droid. This group also was exposed to the campaign "prophecy", or at least the "Nemoidian Fortune Cookie" variant.  Read all about their harrowing adventures here.

It will be fun to see where this motley crew goes.

Lessons Learned

Two games!  Two PC parties!  11 PCs!

I will never do this again if I can help it.

I ran 12 hours of games and had 5 hours of travel (thanks to detours and snow-delays). My wife is a very loving, understanding, patient soul for supporting me in doing this (and doing my best to give her some quality time prior to this hopefully helped).

I will happily run for 6-8 hours straight, but only for one day.  And I just can't spend that much time in the cars.  The rest of my weekend was basically shot, and I had to bail on an Order 66 episode because I was fried.

If I do have another game-a-rama like this, it had better be because I'm at a con.  Then again, who knows; I'm sure that at some point the calendar gods will decide to throw this scenario at me with a "both sessions on X weekend or one team doesn't play for 3 more months" or something like that.

I need to resolve how I'm doing maps.  Making maps on Roll20 is easy, and handy, but unless more players are using their own laptops to access the game everyone's looking at my secondary 19" widescreen from across the room to see the action. Plus I can't figure out how to center the other screens on what I'm looking at on mine, so I can't "force" the view on the second screen and am constantly shifting back and forth to adjust the PCs view. On the flip side, extra laptops for Group Besh would really clutter the table we're sitting at.  I wouldn't mind using physical maps, but I'd miss out on several good maps of Chris West's and it wouldn't work well with Group Aurek, where we're all sitting around a living room. Group Besh might be easier, but the map could take up more room than the extra laptop or two.  Going to have to work on that.

Someday, my friend...someday.

On a more positive front, I forgot how much music enhanced my game. I'm still using my Beta-release of Syrinscape because it allows me to make my own sound sets with my music and I don't have to pay for a subscription to use it (a recent development from that program's developer). The music was on for the Group Aurek game, with tense overtones coming in  while I'm describing scenes as if I planned them from the get-go.  Definitely worth my time Friday night rebuilding my sound sets from my laptops "format faux pas" a year ago.

Logistics

Early on I knew that I wanted to document this adventure, perhaps more-so than almost any previous campaign. Let's face it; I'm a known entity now (at least in a very niche group). Folks who are not playing the game will be following the campaign. Also, I've developed something of an issue in keeping things straight, so it helps if everything is written down someplace I can access it at any given moment. Finally, it's good to see things from a PC's perspective, and see what they are thinking.  Many times they come up with angles and sub-plots that are better than what I had planned.

I'm encouraging my PCs to help me develop and record the game, and bribing them with XP to do it.  It'll be small, usually 5xp between sessions, but that 5xp will add up over time.  Assuming I stick with my schedule, that'll be an extra 25-30xp by the end of the year. I know no PC who wouldn't want an extra 25xp to add to their character. That's a bottom row talent, or a Skill from Rank 1 to Rank 3, or a new Force Power with an upgrade or two. With 11 PCs, it's going to be tricky finding something for each of them to do, though.  I think the next few weeks will be needed to hash out the "PC contributions" portion of the campaign.

I hope this works out. I won't really know if I've got this on a good head of steam until we hit LARP season, and arranging games turns into a real puzzle with all the games folks play. To be fair, I've got a plan for that to, I just have to get my PCs to a point where they could have "crossovers" with each other and run with everyone who isn't at a campsite with boffer swords and spell packets on a particular weekend.

And I have to see how I can deal some Wild Cards into the deck...

Hope to have another blog-post sooner rather than later.  Until then, may the dice be with you.

Endings and Beginnings

I sit here typing this while a high-tech washing machine launched 10 yeas ago is now doing it's best TJ "King" Kong impression as it rides around the solar system.

Best tweet I saw about this...

Fox News: Why did America waste so much money on this mission?  
Scientist: This was a European mission.  
Fox News: Why didn't America do it first?

Order 65 Draws To A Close

On November 22nd, I'll be running the last session of Order 65, my Alternate Universe campaign that began on July 4th weekend, 2010.  It's taken a little longer than I intended to get to the end, but I did have to take some time off in 2012 to recharge my batteries and come up with a way to convert it from Saga Edition to FFG's Star Wars RPG.

The game didn't go exactly as I scripted out, but it was pretty much where I thought it would go.  I'm still trying to do some sort of self-evaluation to see if that was because I directed the storyline or if it's because the PCs followed the same clues and thought patterns I had going for the plot.  I'm willing to bet a bit of both; sometimes it's up to the PCs to figure out where the GM intends the plot to go.  I think it's a mark of a good GM to let his story happen along with that of the PCs, instead of against them.  I know I steam-rolled over a lot of good RP opportunities because I wanted to move the plot along.  I had a story to tell, dammit.  I don't have time for Lucas's revenge plot, or Nicaella's flirtation with the Dark Side, or Marin and Barrett's issues with their creditors.

The Obligation chart really took a back seat to become an on-again-off-again debuff, and not so much as a source of subplots for my players.  I really feel like I missed out on a lot of the fun of the system because of that.  I suppose I was just so focused on getting to the end of the campaign so I could work on the next "shinny thing".  Stupid ferret-brain.

Another Longshot Prepares for Launch

The next two weekends will have meetings with the 5-6 players in each of my Another Longshot groups.  This will make the weekend of the 22-23rd a very Star Wars weekend for me.

Group Aurek looks very Force-heavy, with everyone playing a Force-user of some allegiance.  At least two Imperial Knights and two Jedi, for certain.

Group Besh looks more on the fringe/Galactic Alliance side of things.  Got one Mandalorian, a merc commander who may go Alliance, and a fighter pilot who also may go Alliance.  No clue what the other 3 PCs are thinking of playing.

I'm leaning towards everyone having Obligation or Duty (as appropriate for their characters) at game start.  Force users will have Morality too, but I'm leaning towards applying the other two "RP Mechanics" in all cases.  It makes sense to me that Imperial Knights have a Duty score, and that Jedi have an Obligation (or two).  Starting scores will be based on the number of players in that party with either Obligation or Duty, as outlined in the Character Creation section of the Core Rulebooks.  So the two Imperial Knights (assuming the fifth player is not an Imperial Knight) will start with a Duty score of 20, since there are only two PCs with Duty in that party.  The Jedi (or whatever) will all start with Obligations of 15, since there are three PCs with Obligation in the party.  If I based it on the number of total PCs, then everyones score would start at 10.  So a 20% chance to have Duty affect the game and a 30% chance to have Obligation affect the game.  That just feels a bit low to me, even taking into account these scores will shift as play proceeds.

I'm leaning heavily towards letting my players modify these starting scores to allow for more XP or gear, as normal, except that any XP earned by lowering Duty or raising Obligation is applied after Character Creation (so it can't be spent to help increase Characteristics).  I'm leaning towards this option instead of starting characters at Knight Level (+150 xp, +9,000 credits or a lightsaber).  I've got a lot of players that are relatively new to the system, or at least new to leveling up their own character.  I want to give them that chance to grow and develop their abilities, but maybe start them a little more advanced than normal.

My conundrum is what to do about those players that aren't Force Users.  The Force Users can basically double dip.  It would only be fair to let the non-Force Users to as well.  I think I'll be working with those PCs to figure out the best manner to handle it; some may have Duty and Obligation, or double Duty hit (and possibly starting with zero Duty, but a ton of gear), or two Obligation types (and really be beholden to someone).

We'll see.

Anyway, that's all for now.  Here's a treat for those who don't follow my twitter feed; the finished image for my Besalik Imperial Knight PC.

 

May the dice be with you!

Let's Get A Party Started

Anyone who's followed this blog for any serious length of time, you'll notice that occasionally there are times when I got dark for a few weeks.  If I'm lucky, it's only a few weeks.  Rest assured, I try to come back as soon as I can to talk Star Wars at you all.

Another Longshot: The Preparation

So Another Longshot is coming together.  I've set a date for the campaign to start; January 3rd.  I'm excited, and anxious.  I'm setting myself up for something really ambitious; multiple parties, same storyline.  I've tried something like this once before with an Eberron campaign I co-GM'd with my buddy Random.  We ran our own groups, and each group contributed to the over-all story we had written together.  It worked well for...a year, I think?  Then life happened, and the game fell apart.  I made some odd logistics choices too, concerning a journal that both parties had and could write in to share information with the other group.  I had one journal in each party, players who wrote anything in one would appear in the other.  Nice concept, but I spent a lot of time transposing from one journal to the other when I should have just used the same book with each party. Ah well, that was a long time ago; many games under the bridge since then.
 

The parties are starting to come together, at least in number if not in themes.  I've got a couple concepts, which fortunately has the side effect of sparking my artistic side.  One of my players, my fellow Legion-cohort Erich, wants to play a Besalik Force User.  Not a Jedi, but an Imperial Knight.  Thinking about Jedi General Pong Krell in Imperial-Red armor burned such an image into my mind that I had to put it to paper. This also got me to bust out my Wacom Intuos4 tablet I got a couple years back and also work on it.  I'm a fair bit of the way through painting some color onto the Knight.  Got the base colors down, and I'm now working on highlights and shadows. 

I'm changing my technique from my last digital paintings I've tried.  I'm working on a few character portraits in the same vein as comic book art, as opposed to most of the digital paintings seen in Star Wars gaming books these days. I think I work in that style a bit better, and I'd rather crank out some more character portraits in a shorter time (since my free time is pretty well taken of late).

Another player is busting out the obligatory "PC from annoying alien race" and making an Ewok Jedi.  Hey if one brother could make a Gungan Ace Pilot that was pretty effective and fund to game with for my last Legacy era game, then my other brother should be able to do the same with an Ewok Jedi in this Legacy-era game.  I think he's planning to go Ataru Striker and rock that Lightsaber (Agility) skill with twin shoto-lightsabers.  Beyond that, no clue where he's taking the character.

One thing I'm so thankful for is the return of my buddy and former co-host Gonzo from the not-so-wilds of Georgia.  He and his family have finally returned to the land of four actual seasons (Almost Winter, Winter, Still Winter, and Road Construction) and that means he can actually play at the same gaming table as the rest of us instead.  He is also eyeballing an Imperial Knight, as some sort of Star Wars version of a character he's played a few times before.

That puts two Imperial Knights and one Jedi in "Group A" (which coincidentally has 3 players in it with names starting with "A"). 

Group B (which coincidentally has 3, possibly 4 players with first or last names starting with "B") is still forming with the current concepts including a Bothan Mandalorian and a Human Noble/Merc Commander from the Dark Times who was carbon frozen until the Legacy Era.  I shall also be rehabilitating one player's perceptions of what a Star Wars game is, as his last GM...well, let's just say the GM was very liberal with her interpretations of the universe culture.

DarthGM: The Next Generation...?

This campaign is also likely to include another first for me; a player from the next generation.  My step-son is going to be playing, and in one of these groups (depending on final numbers).  It will prove to be an new experience for me, being a parent of his.  True, he's almost out of High School, but I remember my gaming "prowess" at that age and what I was really into when it came to gaming.  He seems to be lining up for a similar bent, so at least I'll have my own experience to fall back on for how to handle things.  All and all, I'm sure he'll do fine.

I think that'll do for now.  Maybe I can come back next week and get some more gaming goodness down.  I've also got some costume projects in my future I gotta get ready to document; Celebration Anaheim is coming up, and we have PLANS.

May the dice be with you...

World Building and Costume Conundrums

Wow, it's been a while since I posted.  I could come up with lame excuses why, but you've heard it all before.  Sadly, they're still reasons I've been kept away from this blog for too long.

At least I've got a modern browser on my work computer now, so I can start updating while I'm at work during breaks.

So what has DarthGM been up to in September?  Well, I've ordered a new costume.  Not for me, for my father.  He tried on my Biker Scout at the Dover Mini-Maker faire this past August and really liked it.  So we talked with a few folks and he has a suit of un-assembled Scout trooper armor on a UPS truck en route to his home.  Ideally we should have it set up for St. Pats day (if we troop it)

We also need to make some upgrades to his Old Ben Kenobi outfit.  The outer robe shrunk and the inner robe stretched out during one of the rainy parades he trooped in.  We got new material for his inner robes, but the wool army blankets I ordered to make his outer robe from never shipped.  Never even heard back from the eStore owner I bought them from.  That transaction is now in dispute with Paypal and I'm waiting for resolution.

Preliminary work is being done on a Cade Skywalker outfit for my stepson.  He'll be 18 by the time we go to Anaheim for Celebration VII, which means we can get him into the Rebel Legion group photo if we do a good enough job on it.  It's simple, yet difficult to make.  Gotta make it look right.

I wonder if we can submit him for a BH or SL designation in the 501st.  He was a Bounty Hunting, drug using scum who collected a bounty on a Jedi, and he did go dark-side for a while there.  If Mara Jade could do it and get SL designation, why not Cade?

I promised my stepson that if he got the costume all ready by his birthday, I'd get him Cade's lightsaber.  I thought I was going to have to build it from scratch, but Ultrasabers actually has a really good saber that looks right.

(Looks like Ultrasabers won't let me link their photos, but this is what I see as "close enough!")

Even my wife is starting to look into costumes.  She expressed interest in a couple; we'll see when we can move forward with one of them.

And me?  Cripes, I don't know.  I've been meaning to kick my EVA Jedi Knight/Sith Acolyte into high gear for a while now.  It's all about finding the time to work on it, which means I have to start neglecting something else.  Probably Mechwarrior Online is the next thing I really have to ramp back on.  Too bad, because in December they're releasing the King Crab, and it looks bad-ass.

Oh look; something else to fit into my already tight schedule!

I'm reminded that I was going to release my GenCon Module "The Big Leagues" for public consumption this month, or at least to those who backed the Order 66 Podcast/GamerNationCon 2015 Kickstarter.  I really need to get on that.  Building these characters using the Force and Destiny careers and specializations should prove a fun exercise.

I've made some changes to my "Another Longshot" campaign.  Previously I was running my Tuesday night game (dubbed the "Wild Cards")  as a prelude campaign to "Another Longshot".  I've had some inspiration with what I want to do with the overall Longshot campaign and right now the Wild Cards don't really fit into that.  I've split the Wild Cards off as their own campaign on Obsidian Portal and made a new Another Longshot website.

I've put some time and effort into mapping out a sector of space where the Longshot game will predominantly occur in; the Hagen Sector.  Thanks to Pro Fantasy and their Campaign Cartographer, I was able to slap together a pretty cool map of the area.  I then went and applied my "Eons System Generation" method I talked about a year ago and came up with some pretty fun locations.  I haven't fleshed out every system, but I've got some neat ideas.

And with that, I think I'll call it for another blogpost.  Gotta get back to work.

May the dice be with you.

Brevity Is Not Usually My Style, But Its Been A Long Month...

Dear Blog,

Today I woke up with heat in my house.  It was a very good day...



Seriously; I could hide, like,
five bodies in there!

In all seriousness, I'm happy to report that my heating issues have been dealt with.  New furnace, new duct work, happy Darth.  There is now a good amount of  heat in my home, and just in time.  Next week is supposed to be "Damn Cold".
 
As an odd consequence to this home improvement, I discovered a "void" in my home's floor plan that would cater quite nicely to a new closet.  Some nut-job just threw up a wall, instead of making a closet.  The home has space issues to begin with, why would you wall off 48 cubic feet of usable space?! 

Talking with a carpenter to see what they think it would cost to convert into useable space. 

Three's a Charm

Anyway, games!  Just ran my third session of my Wild Cards game.  I have a standard that I live by...more of a track record, really...that if a game can make it through three sessions, then it'll go.  It'll get the momentum it needs to carry on for years.  I've had one anomaly to this in recent years, my Earthdawn game only made about a year of games before "game-fading".  It fell apart around the time that the 2012 LARP season started, as soon after I started house hunting and house packing.  My new home doesn't cater well to large groups of people, and my own attention to the campaign faltered, so it sadly is off the radar.

Could it be run online?  Eh, maybe.  I'm finding it difficult to run games entirely on my PC.  It's one thing if I'm running a game with half my PCs in the room, and the other half on Roll20.  Especially if the ones online have web-cams.  My current Wild Cards party has one person with a webcam, the rest are all still images of the players.  And even then they're about 200 pixels high.  It's hard to connect with the players, at least that's what I feel.  No visual cues, can't tell if they're engaged or looking at websites between combat actions.

It is only the third game, though...  *shrug*  Maybe it'll change.

Also, my gaming space is pretty tight.  I'm at my desk, crammed in the corner of my library.  My "table top real estate" is pretty tight.  If I try to have a book open in front of me, it doesn't work out too well as far as room to type goes.  Heaven forbid I need to have a second book open too, as that will be in my lap.

Eh, maybe it's time to figure out a new desk set up, or room layout, or something else entirely.

As far as the campaign goes, I'm having a pretty good time.  I'm going to try to keep the Wild Cards episodic for now, with every 3-4 games being one story.  Maybe the 4th "episode" will tie directly into their back story.  I figure we'll need at least three episodes to get the PCs used to each other, and with me, really.  I've got two new PCs (never before played), one PC who I've had at my table twice before (a campaign that only made it to session two), and two "hardened veterans" who will likely be able to see several plot themes coming.  The vets are the only ones who have played together in prior games, too.  I think.  Regardless, it's a real new group so it'll take time to gel.

Still, at least I'm gaming regularly again.

Balancing Acts

Joy of wondrous joys!  I can blog from my work computer again!

No longer am I stuck with XP and IE 6...or 7.  Or whatever dinosaur I was saddled with.  Now I'm on IE 9 and can actually type things in this field on my Blogger page.  Hopefully this will go a long way to getting back on track with my weekly updates.

How very "Miami Vice"...

This week marked the start of my "Wild Cards" campaign.  The first pc group in my multi-party "Another Longshot" game, the Wild Cards mixes Star Wars with "The A-Team".  I'm planning on it being more episodic than over-arching.  There will be sub-plots that carry from one game to the next, like clearing their names and getting revenge on the Sith that set them up for war crimes.  For the most part, however, the group will be getting together every other Tuesday night over G+/Roll20 for a couple hours, and kicking around the Edge of the Empire in small, 2-3 session adventures.

Translation Trouble

It wouldn't be a Star Wars game, or any sci-fi space opera game really, without "The Ship".  This game is no different.  The backstory is that the Wild Cards stole a military ship to escape their stockade, but traded it in to a contact one of the PCs knows to get something less conspicuous (or traceable).  Fiddleback selected and recommended a ship from one of my favorite sources; Star Wars Gamer issue #2.  That particular magazine was the second issue of the old WotC-printed, Dragon Magazine equivalent for their d20 Star Wars game.  The article was called "A Legacy of Starships" by Owen KC Stephens with art by Jeff Carlisle.  It gave write ups and stats for ten different and never before seen Corellian Engineering Corporation freighters, from eras just before the Prequel Movies to well after the latest novels. 

Old school, yo

This particular craft Fiddy selected was the YV-929 Armed Freighter.  Top of the line during the end of the Galactic Civil War, 130 years later the ship is a relic and an antique.  The thing is a brick; great armor and shields for a transport, with a solid cargo hold.  It boasts some pretty significant armament too; triple-blasters, concussion missiles, ion cannon turrets, and oddly enough two light turbolaser cannons.  This was of particular note because turbolasers have always been the realm of frigate-sized capital ships and higher, in just about every iteration of the game.  They were light turbolasers, for sure, and would merely threaten a capital ship for a moment or two, but against a similarly sized transport the turbolasers would pound it to scrap in short order.

This was back during the OCR days (Original Core Rulebook).  Since then the game updated to Revised Core, and Saga Edition.  The 929 didn't make an appearance in Saga, but the starship construction stats made it pretty clear that you can't mount turbolasers on your average Space Transport.

Several months back, the ship appeared in the Equipment Labs series of articles on the GSA Website.  Agent 35 did a good job pulling the ship over to FFG stats, and included all of its unusual armament.  These were the stats that Fiddleback showed me during the game on Tuesday.  I was all over it, but then I noticed in my copy of the Age of Rebellion sourcebook that the YV-929 is fully and officially statted out!  Some of the stats were better than Agent 35's, like sensors, handling and shields.  Some were worse, like customization hardpoints and the armament.  The number of missile tubes were decreased, and the turbolasers were removed entirely.

My conundrum is to stick with the official FFG stats, or the ones from Star Wars Gamer?  Most of the official stats are just fine, and I had no issues with those.  I'm a little put off by there being only one Customization Hardpoint, but the ship is pretty well tricked out on its own. The lack of Turbolasers takes away a pretty flavorful, and potent, feature of the starship.  I can see why FFG removed it, it sets a really bad precedence for mounting anti-capital ship guns on a PC's craft.  Everyone would be doing it, and things would get real interesting in the galaxy with all these ships mounting serious military hardware.

A Matter of Scale

Art by Jeff Carlisle

The big reason the turbolasers were so nasty in d20 was the multiplier.  Vehicle weapons did more damage than personal weapons, usually to the effect of doubling the damage rolled.  Capital scale weapons, like the turbolasers, multiplied that by five.  So even if the damage you're rolling is low, in this case 3d10, you're quintupling the number rolled.  That's an average of 5.5 per die rolled, 16.5 on a 3 die total for an average of 85 damage per successful hit.  Considering that an X-Wing's laser cannons average 66 damage (6d10x2 damage), that's not that much more damage.  Even maxed out the light lurbolaser only deals 25% more damage than the X-Wing's quad laser blast.  Both will still paste enemy fighters that lack shields, and two solid hits will clear everything else.

Turbolasers in FFG are just as nasty, but on a different level.  X-Wing lasers deal 6 damage, in a galaxy where TIEs can only take 6 damage before being blown apart.  Sure, they have an Armor rating of 2, but X-Wing guns have "Linked 3", which means the attacker can spend two Advantage to trigger another hit on the target, up to 3 times.  Two 6 point hits will paste a TIE.  They also have a range of "Close", meaning the fighters need to move in to be able to hit each other.

Light Turbolasers have a base damage of 9, one more than a proton torpedo.  They have Breach 2, meaning they ignore 2 points of Armor with each hit.  They do have "Slow-Firing 1", which relegates the cannons to every-other-round attacks.  But the big thing they have is a Medium Range.  They can start laying in on enemies from quite a fair distance away, even farther away than proton torpedoes and concussion missiles.

What kind of damage could PCs do with turbolaser cannons? 5 hits would take out a Bulk Transport.  A YT-1300 like the Millennium Falcon would be pasted in 3.  Even Corellian Corvettes and Marauder Corvettes are threatened, to a degree.

It's not like the PCs would be in an unstoppable battle-tank, though.  The YV-929 has good shields, and good armor, but it's not impervious.  The single customization hardpoint also limits the upgrades that can be undertaken.  It can't increase its armor or shields.  If it does decide to go up against a Corellian Corvette, it'll get two shots off before the Corvette responds with potentially four of its own (two light, and two medium turbolasers).  Aside from the turbolasers, the YV-929's weapons are decent, but limited.  The triple blasters are awfully light, potentially not even breaching the Armor on some enemy craft.  The Ion turret is slightly better.  It carries missiles, sure, but with a limit of 10 per launcher they need to be rationed, especially if the players can't resupply too often.

Yay or Nay?

I'm tempted to say that the turbolasers are in, but it comes at a cost of the one customization hard point.  I'm also tempted to just give the players the turbolasers and try it, see if it becomes a problem.  I could always take them away with a well timed Despair result on their part, or a Triumph on the part of an attacker.  I could replace them with some beefed up Heavy Laser cannons.  I've got choices, and time will tell how it turns out.

Worrying about the game balance of imaginary weaponry; I'm such a nerd.

Fantasy Flight Imports: Pt 1- Barret Taliff

Everyone loves "New Hotness".

With the presentation of the Beta Rulebook, and the impending arrival of the Core Rulebook, Star Wars Gamers around the world are drooling over the prospects of playing with the Edge of the Empire system.  We've been devouring the free adventures, picking up the Beginner's Boxed set (with official dice!  Yay!), and grabbing every chance we've had to get experienced with the way Fantasy Flight's system works and feels.

We're all considered new to Edge of the Empire, but a large number of us are long time Star Wars table-top gamers. Whether you got involved with Wizards of the Coast's editions of the game, or went all the way back to the beginning with West End Games, many of us have put countless hours into adventures in that galaxy far, far away.

And for many of us, we're still adventuring there now.

We are faced with a common problem; we want to use the new rules set, but we want to use it with our old characters.  We want to convert over our current campaigns to Edge of the Empire.  We want to play our old faves with the new hotness. It is work, a lot of work, but it's work that can be fun, rewarding, and worth doing.  Today, I'm going to share with you my experiences with the process, and share with you my successes, failures, triumphs, and despairs.

Is This Trip Really Necessary?

The first step is to figure out if you need to convert the characters over in the first place.  That statement sort of goes against the whole notion of this article to begin with, but it's true.  I've had a lot of fun playing the pre-gen characters in the modules that are out there, as have my PCs when I ran them through what's available.  If you're not ready to convert over your entire campaign to the new system, including the highly probable need to homebrew certain classes and vehicles, then don't do it.  Put your campaign on the back-burner and run a new Edge of the Empire game until there's enough material out there that you feel comfortable converting.  It'll also give you and your players practice earning and using their talents and skills, and can make the jump from the previous edition to Edge a lot smoother.

If you decide that you are ready for this undertaking, then let's proceed.

Establishing a Baseline

For this article I'm going to focus on converting characters from a Saga Edition game to Edge of the Empire.  We'll be using that rules set as a base for abilities, and be the target mark for what we're trying to replicate with EotE.

One thing to remember is that in Saga, the character has many opportunities to increase stats; 2 ability scores increase by 1 every 4 levels.  In addition, characters can bump up a score or two if they complete certain destinies.  In Edge of the Empire, you can increase your stats after game start only by taking the Dedication talent, and only one characteristic gets the increase.  These talents are buried deep in every Specialization tree, and take over 100xp to get to.  Because of this, take a look at what your character's ability scores are in Saga Edition, and spend your starting XP getting as close as you can to those numbers.

As a general guideline, try using this as a guide; make the Characteristic value in EotE as close as you can get it to the ability modifier in Saga.  So if someone has a 14 Dexterity (which generates a +2 Ability Modifier), their Agility should be 2.  18 Intelligence (+4 Ability Modifier) should be an Intellect of 4.  There's a lot of push and pull here.  I can see 15s generating Characteristics of 3.  13s converting to 2s.   It's all about what looks right, in the end. 

Now, where to put those points. Brawn is your combination of Strength and Constitution, so if your character had high marks in one of those areas, that's where you want to reflect that.  Dexterity to Agility is a direct conversion, as is Intelligence to Intellect.  The last two require some consideration of your character and what they did with the stats they had.  Wisdom is a good translation to Willpower, but because perception is Cunning based I could see points going in there.  Charisma is split between Cunning for deception and creativity and Presence for raw personality and charm.  Figur out what your character did with those Abilities and you'll have an idea where to apply that with characteristics.



Today's Example: Barret Talif



Art by Phil Maiewski

With the completion (for now) of my Jedi Career and Lightsaber Forms document, I can continue to work on the primary purpose I created those custom rules in the first place; updating my Order 65 Campaign to the Edge of the Empire rules set.  Thanks to the diligent work of my PCs and the handiness of Obsidian Portal, I know approximately how many sessions I've run, and can approximate how much XP I should be working with.  Looking through the adventure posts and my own list of chapters, I see that we've run about 18-19 game sessions.  That puts us just shy of 300xp.  For argument's sake, I round that off to 300xp.  It might make the characters a little over-powered.  If it does, I can always dial it back.

As a base-line example, I started with the most mundane character in the party; Barret Taliff.  Barret's a techno-genius from Fondor and loves hauling around a blaster cannon in combat (even if he hasn't been that successful a shot with it).  He repairs what he needs, and improvises the rest.  He's also become the party's font of information, having taken several talents that allow him to maximize his Knowledge skills.

Let's show you what I'm working with.

Barret Talif                                                         CL 10

Medium Human noble 7/improviser 3

Destiny 6; Force 10

Init +12; Senses Perception +10

Languages Basic, Binary, Bocce, Durese, High Galactic, Huttese, Mon Calamarian, Rodese, Shyriiwook, Sluissese, Verpine

Defenses Ref 24 (flat-footed 22), Fort 21, Will 24

hp 67; Threshold 21

Speed  6 squares

Melee survival knife +8 (1d6+6) or

Melee survival knife +8 (1d6+6)

Ranged blaster cannon +10 (3d12+5, 1-square splash) or

Ranged blaster pistol +9 (3d6+7) or

Ranged rotary blaster cannon -1 (3d10+5) with autofire or

Ranged rotary blaster cannon +7 (3d10+5) when braced

Base Atk +7; Grp +9

Atk Options Assured Attack, autofire (rotary blaster cannon)

Special Actions brace (rotary blaster cannon), Personalized Modifications, Right Gear for the Job, Stand Tall

Abilities Str 13, Dex 14, Con 13, Int 18, Wis 10, Cha 12

Special Qualities contraband (2000 credits)

Talents Educated, Exceptional Skill (Mechanics), Leading Skill, Personalized Modifications, Right Gear for the Job, Wealth

Feats Assured Attack, Droidcraft, Linguist, Skill Focus (Mechanics), Stand Tall, Superior Tech, Surgical Expertise, Tech Specialist, Weapon Proficiency (heavy weapons, pistols, simple weapons)

Skills Deception +11, Gather Information +11, Initiative +12, Knowledge (physical sciences) +14, Knowledge (technology) +14, Mechanics +19 (treat die rolls of 2-7 as 8), Perception +10, Persuasion +11, Pilot +12, Treat Injury +10, Use Computer +14

Possessions blaster cannon (tech specialist mod; +1 attack), blaster pistol (tech specialist mod; +2 damage), 56530 credits, rotary blaster cannon, survival knife, survival knife, utility belt (3 day food supply, medpac, tool kit, power pack, energy cell, glow rod, comlink, liquid cable dispenser), cybernetic prosthesis (left leg), datapad, 2 hip holsters, medical kit, 4 medpacs

To begin, I started building him as a new character, spending XP where appropriate, and then went cherry picking for talents and skill upgrades that fit.  Humans start with 2s in everything. Barret, as the resident smartie and tech-god needed a high Intellect, so I dropped 70 of his starting 110xp into buying up Intellect to 4. Barret has also improved his Dexterity a bit over his adventuring career, so I spent 30xp to get that to 3. I know a Dexterity of 14 has a +2 Ability Modifier, but with so many of his other abilities between 10 and 13, this fits where Barret has gone in his adventuring career.

Brawn 2, Agility 3, Intellect 4, Cunning 2, Willpower 2, Presence 2

That uses 100 of the starting 110xp for Humans.  We'll use the last 10 to pick up a second rank of Mechanics.

For Careers, Barret is the techie so Technician is a natural choice. He has been more cultured in his upbringing and more focused on machines than computers, so his initial specialization is Mechanic rather than Outlaw Tech or Slicer. Starting skills are Astrogation, Computers, Mechanics, Perception, Skulduggery, and Pilot-Space. Humans get 1 rank in two non-career skills at start, so I selected Medicine and Gunnery.  Barret has that blaster cannon he loves to lug around, and has turned into the unofficial party paramedic.

I did have Barret pick up Outlaw Tech as a second Specialization, as well as branching out and buying access to the Scholar Talent Tree in the Colonist Career. I'll go into why later.

Let's start with Mechanic; I'm looking for talents that fit Barrel's abilities in Saga Edition.  Gearhead is a great start point.  That connects to Redundant Systems which encapsulates Barret's nature of scavenging parts and making ad hoc repairs when needed.  Looking down the chart, I see that I'm in a column that ends with Natural Tinkerer.  In between is Solid Repairs (which fits great because Barret is, first, the ship's mechanic) and Contraption.  Contraption is perfect for Barret's Improviser Prestige Class.  I'll take the entire column.  

Time to buy up some skills.  Astrogation at 1 is fine, Barret's got a high Use Computers skill in Saga Edition, but Astrogateing was secondary in his role.  We'll bump up Computers to 2.  Coordination really isn't Barret's forte, so let's skip it.  Same with Discipline.  Mechanics, however, is another story.  Let's get that up to 3.  Pilot-Planet fits, so I put a rank in that for 5xp, along with a rank in Knowledge-Outer Rim for another 5. 

Spent XP thus far is 110.

Moving on; I have Barret buy into Outlaw Tech for 20xp as his first extra Specialization, and from the same Career.  While he's an educated man, Barret's also had a tendency to fiddle with technology and has been able to squeeze maximum performance out of his machines.  This is reflected in the Tech Specialist feats from Saga.  Tinkerer is perfect for this, so we start there.  But with two Tinkerer talents at the top of the Talent Tree, we have options where to start.  I look at the first column and see that mid-way down is the Utility Belt talent.  This is another skill that is great for replicating the "I have a tool for that!" nature of the Improviser.  Plus in between those talents is a second hit of Solid Repairs.  Come to think of it, this entire row is perfect for Barret, so we also take the next talent after Utility Belt; Jury Rigged.  I'm going to hold off on the last talent in the column, Inventor.  It's a good talent for Barret, but I've got to be running low on XP.  I look at the skills he now has access to and put a Rank into the Knowledge skills Education and Underworld.  More Knowledge skills for "the professor".

With that, I've spent 80 xp here.  From my 300, I'm left with 110.

I mentioned that Barret is educated, formally in fact.  This screams for Scholar, so we pick up that specialization.  Sadly, because it's his third specialization, and a non-Career one, it eats a whopping 40xp to access. Barret's Education talent from Saga let him roll every Knowledge skill as if it was trained.  I want to mimic that here.  Scholar gets him Knowledge-Outer Rim and Xenology.  We'll put a rank into both of those with a rank for 10xp.  That leaves him with two Knowledge skills he doesn't have at Career skills.  Fortunately, there's a way to fix that in Scholar.  Well Rounded is a Scholar talent that Barret can take and unlock Core Worlds and Lore.  Plus it gets him Toughened and Researcher along the way.

But are two Knowledge skills the best use of Well Rounded for Barret?  Sure, he'd have all Knowledge skills as career skills, but with an Intellect of 4, is the player likely to buy up those skills anymore?  I think he's better served by picking up Core Worlds and Lore as his bonus Human Skills, and take Well Rounded to make Gunnery and Ranged-Heavy as Career skills to give him some combat offense.  Barret loves his blaster cannon, as well as the rotary blaster cannon he picked up in his travels.  Plus when he's not fixing the party's spaceship he's manning one of the turrets.  So we go back to the beginning, make the two Knowledge skills the bonus Human skills, and spend 15xp on Ranged-Heavy 2 and 5xp Gunnery 1.  

Total XP in Scholar, 90.  Total XP over-all, 280.

Let's see if there's anything I'm missing.  Barret's a Linguist, but there's really no Language skill or ability in Edge of the Empire. I remember that I've now edited out Barret's one rank of Medicine, so we buy that back for 10xp.  Looking over my options, I feel dropping another 10xp into Outlaw Tech Talents is the way to go, snagging another Tinkerer for 5xp, and Speaks Binary to give Barret some proficiency with directing NPC droids (he did have Droidcraft, and there are NPC droids aboard his ship)..

And with that, I've spent 300xp.  

That's it for Stats and Abilities, let's look at equipment.  Barret has a blaster pistol for back up, and a blaster cannon as his main weapon.  Closest analogue to the blaster cannon is the Light Repeating Blaster, which could replicate his Rotary Blaster Cannon anyway.  It has a Cumbersome 4 rating, meaning Barret with his Brawn of 2 would add two difficulty dice to his rolls.  Remember that Barret is a mechanic, and a modification expert.  With the application of the Weapon Harness modification, he lowers that Cumbersome quality to 2, which he can easily handle.  Due to Barret's Superior Tech feat from Saga, and the fact he modified his weapons extensively, we'll also give this cannon the Superior Weapon Customization.

For armor, Barret never had Armor Feats in Saga, so he is mostly wearing basic clothing.  Let's give him Padded Armor, though, because he needs all the protection he can get.  When you carry a big cannon, you draw a lot of heat.  Because of this, Barret will apply his Jury-Rigged talent to the Padded Armor, giving it a Ranged Defense bonus of +1.

We port over the usual gear you'd expect someone to have in Star Wars; Utility Belt, Stimpacks, Comlink, Climbing Gear, Datapad, Glow Rod, and extra Power Packs.  Because of his medical training we give him a Medpac on the ship, and Emergency Medpac in the field, and 10 doses of Synthskin.  For his Mechanics checks, he's got a Tool Kit and 3 Emergency Repair Kits.  Finally after an unfortunate encounter with a Sith, Barret lost his left leg to a lightsaber cut.  He's got a cybernetic leg to replace it, but doesn't receive any specific bonuses due to having it (because he's still got his original right leg).

The final touches are the tricky ones; Obligation and Motivation.  Lucky for me, Barret has a big obligation thanks to his character origins; Debt.  He took out a bank loan to buy the ship he and his partner, Marin Zycolik, map the galaxy in.  It's not a criminal organization, but a reputable lender, so a 5 point Obligation is probably sufficient enough (especially because Barret and Marin have worked to stay ahead of the payments).

I actually lucked out for Motivations too, because I subscribed to GM Chris's "Three Questions" and made all my PCs answer the following questions.

What does your character Love?: Kind of abstract, but his love of tech and anything new keeps Barrett going. He knows the next great breakthrough could just be around the next star system and he wants to be the one to discover it. Plus he loves working to music. Be it actual music or the pulsing hum of a well-tuned engine, it’s all love to his ears.
What does your character Hate?: He has a weird distrust of anyone who doubted him and his dreams back on his home world. Sort of like he’s out to prove them wrong. There is also an irrational doubt when dealing with anyone from a low-tech world.
Why is he working for the Republic? Barrett may be from a noble background with some income, but it doesn’t pay all the bills. If he had his way, Barrett would be tooling around the galaxy on the lookout for the latest and greatest tech toy. But there is no income in that. So he’s working with Marin and the rest of the group to help pay for his way across the stars.

So Barret has the following Motivations; Ambition-Technophile and Wanderlust.  His "hate" is a good one, but is hard to fit into the "Ambition/Cause/Relationships" framework.  It's sort of a part of his Technophile Motivation, as he distrusts and dislikes those who are afraid of or refuse to use technology to improve their lives.

And here's what Barret Taliff looks like, Edge of the Empire style...

Final Thoughts

When I did this conversion, I was surprised how quickly experience points were eaten up.  Trying to capture the feel of this Saga character required me to buy into two extra Specializations, one of them a non-Career one.  That ate up a lot of points, almost a quarter of them.  I likely could have cut one of them, and been happy with a more focused character (300 xp and not one purchase of Dedication...?), but I don't think it would be Barret.  He needs those Specializations to round out the various skills and abilities he's picked up in over three years of gaming.

This is the first of seven PCs I have to convert, and he's the easiest.  Next is Vandal the former HK-Assassin Droid, Marin the Explorer Corps scout, Lucas the criminal hero (think Zorro with Force Powers), Glendora the Zeltron Jedi Healer, Nicaela the Miraluka Jedi Duelist, and Tycho the Jedi Sage.  Those last three are going to require a fair bit of custom work.  Fortunately, there are people out there who have home-brewed resources for folks to use while we eagerly await for Fantasy Flight Games to fill in the gaps.

Custom Resources

Odds are pretty good that you're not going to be able to port over your characters directly to Edge of the Empire.  Like me, you'll need to either come up with some custom house-rules, or find someone online who's done the work for you.  There are many great resources over at the D20 Radio Forums from folks who have made custom races, ships, and Careers and Talent Trees for those pesky Force users.

Unofficial Species Menagerie, by Agent 94 and Agent 66

Ways of the Force, Force Character options for the Rebellion Era and several new Force Powers by Donovan Morningfire 

Jedi Career by Awaypturwpn, another take on the Jedi Career by one of the Gamer Nation

Edge of the Jedi, My custom Jedi Career and Lightsaber Style Specialization trees