Has everyone been following the previews for the new Saga Edition of Star Wars d20 that Wizards is supposed to be releasing this month? I think it's looking pretty sweet. I've never run or played any of the previous Star Wars rpgs, which always struck me as very weird behavior on my part. Why would a roleplaying nerd who likes Star Wars not try a Star Wars rpg? I honestly can't explain my behavior.And this new edition is coming out at a time when my faith in the forthcoming 5th edition of Traveller, and its ability to impact the hobby positively, is at a low ebb. Everything I see on the message boards and other sources tells me that Marc Miller is writing a game that will only be of interest to people who are already fans of the Traveller franchise. I want a sci-fi game I can pitch to people who haven't already drank the Trav koolaid.
Here's the other thing that's making me consider hopping onboard the Saga train. The RPG section of my local con seems to be treading water or maybe even slowly dying. The Living Greyhawk section is going full steam ahead, but the rest of the roleplaying games are starting to look as crusty and insular as the guys who've run the same minis games for the last 20 years. No offense to those minis dudes, but I want a more fresh and exciting vibe out of the RPG department.
My buddy Doug pointed out recently that part of the problem was so many of the GMs run the same old games every year. We need some fresh, exciting material. The year I ran two 3E games it was still the hot new thing and I had absolutely no trouble filling those tables with people eager to play those games. I think I need to do something like that again. Sure, those games were me jumping on the bandwagon. But plenty of people wanted to be on that bandwagon with me. And that's kinda the point, I guess. For Winter War to continue to bring people in the door we need to be offering the games people want to play.
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Every preview of Saga makes me more excited about the game. I played a decent amount of WEG SW in high school, but skipped over the dd20 incarnation entriely.
ReplyDeleteI dig d20 Modern, and the idea of a more streamlined, genre-appropriate version of Modern powering Saga makes me giddy with nerd-glee.
I played some WEG Star Wars (and a homebrew Star Wars RPG before that), but I haven't yet touched D20 Star Wars. However, I am a big-time player of Wizards' Star Wars minis game, and I am just so excited that in streamlining things into the Saga edition, the combat has apparently become more like the minis game. I don't know what it was like before, but having the combat be like the minis game is a /good/ thing, because the minis games largely plays out like Star Wars should -- scrubs fall left and right, and heroes are the last ones standing.
ReplyDeleteI've played a fair amount of WEG Star Wars and I've also GM'ed some d20 Star Wars. I lean towards the WEG, but I was happy with the d20 version, too. There are a few oddball things that I hope will be amended (like the ridiculous hoops needed to do somethign as simple as Force-enhanced stealth, where you make a modified random roll on a random table to get a random modifer for yet another random roll to follow - just let me spend something and get a bonus, for god's sake).
ReplyDeleteQuibbles like that aside, d20 Star Wars was well-presented, and the writing was vastly better than most WotC fare: it had the readability, energy and gamerly sensitivities that I search (usually in vain) for. Of course, I gamed with it because I was writing for it in Star Wars Gamer, in a [tentative] solitaire-adventure series that might well have gone somewhere had the magazine not up and died :(
And yeah, it was no SWAJ, but comparing anything to SWAJ is unfair. Star Wars Gamer fairly rocked. Deckplans in every issue. Two adventures in every issue. Rock.
So, yeah, I'm interested in the new one, too.
There's a gentle background note in this post that worries me a little. Frankly, your usual thumbs-up to my own work is something that has come to mean something to me, and ... well, you and I both know that I'm never, ever, ever going to make anything that makes a dent in anything, anywhere. At all.
ReplyDeleteI hope that isn't a big filtering criteria for you, now :)
I'm having trouble getting a firm grasp on your second comment. Are you concerned that I might be suddenly rejecting your work as appropriate con fodder because it lacks the wider appeal of a Star Wars? That's not the case, at all. For one thing, I have at least two Encounter Critical scenarios left in me, "Obi-wan Shinobi in the Wilden West" and "Obi-wan Shinobi Goes to Synnibarr". And I need to run another Risus game, too. (One of these days I hope to run Pokethulu as well, just so I can claim the S. John Ross Trifecta or something.)
ReplyDeleteBut I -also- want to run some games with some popular appeal. Its nice when people sign up at a con because your blurb in the program is interesting, or because they know the GM. But I also want to make sure we have available games everyone wants to play. My local con isn't doing a very good job with that as of late outside of Living Greyhawk. For example, I don't think anyone has ever run Exalted, even though it might be the second most popular swords & spells RPG in the hobby.
Instead all the GMs run their favorite niche games or old has-beens. I love all sorts of niche games and has-beens. Some days more than half this blog is me talking about that sort of stuff, after all. But does that get people to the convention and rolling dice? I dunno.
I'll put on my con-chair hat for a moment...
ReplyDeleteI consider myself a roleplayer, but I recognize that RPGs have not been strong at WW for years. Last year, Dave (Hoover) and I had a great series of e-mail conversations about that, and I did a much tighter series of "recruiting" this year, and it didn't really help. I have several thoughts as to why...
First, new GMs today are not like new GMs 20 years ago. It appears that the percentage of GMs who can run games for strangers is much lower. And the number of GMs who can produce system-independent material has dropped as well. It's like I told Dave then: the hobby is producing fewer GMs like Dave and Jeff, who can produce a complete convention event, much less their own game. Far too many GMs are now dependent on modules.
Second, a convention requires an ODD set of RPG games. For example, I know based on our historical data that I need to have two RPG events running in the Friday Afternoon and Sunday Afternoon slots. I should have four such events Saturday Morning and Sunday Morning, and five events Friday Evening, Saturday Afternoon and Saturday Evening.
That means I'm looking for 27 events across the convention. But it's not that simple. I know that if I can get Call of Cthulhu events for Friday and Saturday evening, they will fill. I know I need a 3.5E game in every slot except Friday Afternoon, and I need two of those games on Friday Evenings, Saturday Afternoons, and Saturday Evenings.
I know that GURPS, Traveller, Star Wars and HERO will do well in those three big slots if there's only ONE of them. If I've got other game systems, I should use them as filler during the big slots, but if I schedule them at other times, I should just let the judge know he can cancel the event.
And, there are three people whose events will always fill no matter what (although Jeff had one game this year not do well... but Jeff and Dave are proven performers in this area). I will take special time to contact our proven performers and make sure they submit SOMETHING.
And a judge who ran a game with a few players last year, if he runs the same system again, will get more players.
And don't schedule a complicated game on Saturday Morning, Sunday Morning, and definitely not Sunday Afternoon.
But all of that breaks down for ONE reason: not enough RPGers volunteer to run games I need, so near the end, I'm just looking for RPG games. "Chutes and Ladders the RPG"? I've got an opening Saturday Afternoon [our convention's prime time], and I must have that filled. So, I put a lame game in because that's all I've got.
Ouch.
re you concerned that I might be suddenly rejecting your work as appropriate con fodder because it lacks the wider appeal of a Star Wars?
ReplyDeleteOh, no, nothing like that. Like I said, it just felt like a gentle background note (of personal disappointment about Trav, specifically), and so it was the image of that kind of thing (personal disappointment) that sparked the comment.
That, coupled with the notion that (and I consider myself a creative guy) I can't imagine any way to make an edition of Traveller that _would_ have any kind of comparable appeal to a Star Wars game, so I guess I just felt a kind of sympathy pang for Miller in that instance :/
Thanks for the comments, Don. I knew you must already have a tight analysis of what goes down well locally, but it's interesting to see the details. I had figured out that CoC was a surefire hit in the evening slots all on my own. (Years of "Hey, can you squeeze in one more player?" is a clue even I can't miss.) Though I am a little freaked out by your conclusion that Dave and I are some sort of dying breed, especially given the fact that I have always used lots of canned adventures.
ReplyDeleteS. John: Part of my disillusionment with T5 at the moment is based on my own quite unrealistic hopes that Traveller could once again be a big time player. I can't make Mr. Miller change his game to better suit my interests, so I whine about it on my blog.
Actually, Jeff, what I think is more significant for the hobby is an answer to WHY we aren't producing more DMs like you and Dave who can run games with strangers.
ReplyDeleteI don't have any good answers, and I don't see anyone else even asking the question.