Star Wars Artwork: The Stratt (First Wacom Test)

Happy Birthday to me.

So I got my Wacom Tablet, and here's what I've done with it....








































All and all, I'm really happy with my first attempt with it.  I can't wait to play around some more with this and see what I can do.

I definitely think I need some more color theory work, practicing highlights and shadows of clothing.

But hey, it's a start and a decent job on a coloration work.

Star Wars Artwork: The Stratt (work in progress)

Occasionally, I do art...

This is "The Stratt", a Zorro-like character from the Taipani Sector.  The neat thing is this; this is a Player Character.  He hasn't appeared "on-screen" yet, but after the next session of my Order 65 campaign he might.

Done originally in pencil with ink.

I intend to work this file as one of my starting "projects" for when I pick up my Wacom tablet for my Birthday.  All and all, I'm really pleased with how this one is progressing.

Another Longshot:: First Pass

This is the first post for the development of my next campaign, likely not to start until 2012 or even 2013.

I find it very interesting to write that; it may not start until 2013.  I remember campaigns I've whipped up and started in weeks.  I don't think I've ever planned for a game so far in advance.  Sort of mind boggling.

Anyway, like my three other campaigns I have running currently, I started an Obsidian Portal page for my upcoming game, titled "Another Longshot".  Given that the original campaign centered around a Venator-Class Star Destroyer re-named the Longshot, I knew I wanted to bring her back for the sequel, and how.  I have some plans and some plot elements that tell the story what happened to the Longshot.  To help tease that, I went looking for some screen-captures from the Clone Wars cartoon.  The episode "R2 Come Home" centered around the crashed Star Destroyer Endurance.  After finding a pair of pictures that conveyed what I wanted it to, I took it into Paint Shop Pro, cropped it a bit, and added the title to the campaign.

Boom, instant banner.

(As an aside, this image should make the PCs from the old game either drool or twitch with dread.)

It's at this point that I start jotting down Ideas.  Chapter names, themes, scenes I want to have, characters I want to use, planets I want to run adventures now.  I just write them all down.  Obsidian Portal has a great benefit that I can write these things down on pages that are "GM Only", pages only I can see and access.  I'll be able to access these pages anywhere, on any computer. To the cloud!

Oooo...that reminds me, I've got some aerial encounters I want to run.  Better write those down too.

At this stage I'm adding characters as either NPCs or as GM-Only NPCs.  GM-Only NPCs are NPC profiles that only I can see.  If you look at the entries of characters for my other campaigns, there are likely an equal number of NPCs that are GM-Only as there are visible to all; especially in my Order 65 campaign.  There's a ton of soon-to-be-revealed characters in there.

So I have three NPCs right now; the first is a throwback to the previous campaign, B4-NDT, otherwise known as "Bandit".  He was the astromech droid for the smuggler's ship in the previous arc.  Part Astromech, part humanoid mechanic droid, Bandit had a tendency to start sentences in Basic but would occasionally switch to beeps and whisltles of the Binary language as he spoke.  I don't have much else down for Bandit right now, just that I know I want to use him again as a connection to the previous campaign.

More later..

Another Longshot

First off, the "help Phil buy a Wacom tablet for his birthday" Paypal button is only active for another week and a half. I will find the tablet very useful for an upcoming project that not only will benefit my PCs, but hopefully the greater Star Wars Gamer Nation at large.

I'm starting the development of my next campaign; Another Longshot. I ran a Star Wars campaign several years back using the Revised Core Rules of the Star Wars RPG. The premise was something between "The Hunt for Red October" and "Battlestar Galactica".

In short, the PCs were all fighter pilots working for the Rebel Alliance. The Alliance had a plan to steal a Venator Star Destroyer from an Imperial Boneyard, refurbish it, and use it as a symbol of the Alliance and the Old Republic. The mission was dubbed "Operation: Longshot" because the resources they could commit to it were barely enough to accomplish the task. The enire operation was fraught with bad luck and sabotage, but after 14 months of limping on a back-up hyperdrive the PCs succeeded in bringing the old ship, renamed the Longshot, to Mon Calamari for recommissioning.

The campaign ended, in part because two of the PCs moved to Atlanta, GA, but mostly because it was designed to be a set story with a set ending. A sequel was possible, but not while one of the main PCs was in Georgia for the next four to five years.

Now, I find myself drawn back to the Longshot campaign from time to time. I think about it, it's execution, it's storylines. I think about the advances the Star Wars RPG has undergone since then; the arrival, run, and ending of the SAGA Edition line. I think about the creation of the Legacy Era, which incorporates all the fun and interesting elements from every Era that came before. And I think of a promise I made to myself to try and write a complete campaign, one with at least a couple adventures that could be considered "Publish Worthy" (or at least ePublish Worthy).

So I've started to get some ground work down on the sequel to the Longshot campaign. It will be a SAGA Edition campaign. It will take place in the Legacy Era, with Darth Krayt's Empire firmly in place. Where it goes from there will be something I'll be sharing with all of you as I develop. My goal is to share development ideas, map making design tips, tricks I find around the web to make this game not only fun but able to be run by other GMs.

So here we go again, Phil starts work on another campaign. I'm a little concerned about momentum and ability, but if there's any thing I'm going to write about that might actually make it in the end, I'm glad it's about the Longshot.

She's got a way of beating the odds.

"Birthday Wishes" or "Phil Wants to Wacom"

So I've had my eye on a Wacom Intuos4 computer tablet for quite some time now.  I'm an artist, sketchwork mostly, and I've wanted to use computer programs for artwork for some time.  The problem is my mousework blows, it looks horrible when I try to draw most anything with a mouse.  So, I end up drawing on paper scanning it in to the computer, and trying to manipulate it there. 

But back to the Wacom tablets, they've intrigued me for years, and now they're finally down to the price were I'd feel comfortable putting down some serious coin for them.  The problem is, like many folks out there, I have no coin.  I'm trying to get my credit down so I can get married and maybe a home in the next year or two, and don't have a lot of extra cash to put aside for electronics that really fall into the category of "Nice to Have".

But that doesn't stop me from coveting.  Greed and Gluttony are my Sins.  Such is life.

I posted about it in another blog, and one of my lovely friends said the following:

"I am a big fan of the whole "put up a PayPal button and see what happens" theory... :)"

...so hey, what the heck, right?

Between now and April 15th I will be taking contributions to the "Get Phil a good Wacom for his Birthday" fund.  On the 15th I'll take the button down and transfer funds to my checking account so on my birthday a few days later I'll skip into Best Buy and pick up my new electronic piece of awesomeness.

Everything I get will go directly towards the price of an Intuos4 Medium tablet from Wacom.  With this I'll be able to dive into computer art, map making, and other computer artistic activities sure to get me into trouble with someone.

Donate a little, donate nothing, donate what you like. 

In any event, happy birthday to me, right?

Episode 68: Dynamic Space Battles

I love space battles.  Seriously love them.  My college years were dominated by hours of play on TIE Fighter and X-Wing Alliance.  And it’s an unusual occurrence to go more than two sessions in my games and not have some sort of space encounter.


SAGA edition has done away with a lot of the old, tactical based combat mechanics like facing and turn radius, and allowed us to run space combat simply yet dynamically, just like ground combat.  But just like ground combat, if you’re not careful your space encounters can devolve into uninteresting sessions of dice rolling.


I noticed something when I ran my last game session.  One PC was in a Jedi Starfighter, and the rest in a Nu-class Shuttle from the Clone Wars campaign guide.  They faced off against 6 Droid Starfighters in orbit around Onderon.  There were squares filled with the wreckage of destroyed cruisers, to allow for sources of cover.   There was the atmospheric disturbance between Onderon and its moon Dxun, causing difficult terrain and some concealment for units with it.  At first, itlooked like the makings for a fun encounter.


Then combat started, and devolved into the Droid fighters flying up to point blank range on the Nu-Class Shuttle or the Jedi Starfighter.  The PC in the Jedi Fighter smartly headed for the wreckage for all the cover he could get from the Droids, but other than that no one moved.  All ships just sat there, with their players (myself included), content to just roll dice until the droid fighters were wiped out.


How droll.


GMs, my advice to you is to take a page from your days playing the X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter games and apply that to SAGA edition.  When your tiny little fragile fighter had to make attack runs on larger ships, you’d get your shields up, bomb in, make your attacks, and then fly off.  If you had buddies with you, you’d wait to let one draw the target’s fire, then all gang up on the ship and leave in different directions.  Have your ships in SAGA edition do that too.


Unless you’re running a game based around a fighter squadron, odds are your PCs have one, maybe two ships.  A light freighter they’ve turned into a gunship, and maybe a starfighter.  Possibly held in something like my custom Fighter Cradle rules.


If you fly up to point blank range on a large ship, bristling with multiple PCs in multiple turrets, any ship that survives sitting next to the PC’s gunship for one round should shoot first on their following turn then move as far and as fast as possible, preferably in different directions, forcing the PC flying the gunship to pick one fighter to go after so his gunners can make attacks with the fewest penalties possible.  It gets more action out of the map, presents a realistic tactic for the enemy, and should make the encounter more interesting and hopefully fun.


That’s all for this post.  Until next time, 20 side up, one side down.

Originally aired on The Order 66 Podcast Episode 123: "Die Meatbag Die"

Setting the Mood

To coincide with the recent subject matter discussed on the Order 66 podcast, I want to pimp out a program I've been using lately in my games.  Syrinscape is an audio file player and 15 slot soundboard. 

GMs can set up 6 different audio channels to play music, sound effects, and sound loops at random intervals as background to their gaming scenes.  Punctuate that tense negotiation with the Duke during a royal dinner by having mood music, crowd dinning noises, and crackling fire from the fireplace in the background.  Immerse your players trying to hold back a legion of Stormtroopers with blaster bolts, explosions, swinging lightsaber sounds, and dramatic scores from John Williams.  Even something as "mundane" as sitting in a tavern or cantina disucssing the PC's next course of action can be enhanced with approriate sound clips as background noise.

It takes a couple hours of investment to find and rename all the audio files, and place them into "states" that you can call up as needed, but once you do it they're ready to roll at any time.

I love this program.  And best of all, it's free. 

GMs, if you want to enhance your games, give this program a try.