Just a couple of updates today based on the subject of yesterdays review, Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Season 5 Episode 10: Secret Weapons. Today I've added Encryption module to the Star Wars D/6 Equipment Section, and Haor Chall Engineering Maxillipede shuttle to the Star Wars D/6 Starships Section of the Site.

Freddy

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        A bit of a collection today, all based on the subject of yesterdays review, Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Season 5 Episode 9: A Necessary Bond. Today I've added, the Combat speeder to the Star Wars D/6 Vehicles Section, the Nuna (reptavian gamebird) to the Star Wars D/6 Creatures Section, and Ganodi (Rodian Youngling), Gungi (Wookiee Youngling), Katooni (Tholothian Youngling), Petro (Human Youngling), Byph (Ithorian Youngling) to the Star Wars D/6 Characters Section of the Site.

        As well as all the Younglings, I've done the Nuna for Hellstormers cookery book collection he seems to be set on creating. The Nuna even states in it's write up the Culinary Uses of the creature, which include Nuna Gumbo, Nuna drumsticks, Nuna bacon, Nuna sausage, and the Nuna salad sandwich. So an absolute range of dishes all from one creature.

Freddy

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Fantasy Flight on Running Rebels

        Fantasy flight games, publishers of the latest Star Wars RPG, incorporating the Edge of the Empire, Age of Rebellion and Force and Destiny games, have published an article on their website about bringing Star Wars: Rebels into the RPG.

        The article details taking an episode of Rebels (specifically the episode entitled "The Call") and running your players through it. They incorporate custom stats, and all in all have published a fantastic and useful article, no matter which version of the RPG you run.

Bryan Young: Who hasn’t watched an episode of Star Wars Rebels and thought the scenario would be amazing fun for the Star Wars Roleplaying Game? Well, what if I made it really easy for you? I’ll give you everything you need to run your group through an episode. Obviously, you’ll be able to scale it for your players and their particular quirks, but Rebels makes it easy to create a game on the fly.

Let’s start with the fifteenth episode of season two, “The Call.” In this episode, the Rebels are running low on fuel, as they always seem to be, and they need to steal some from an asteroid-based gas refinery. It’s the perfect sort of setting for a one-shot adventure, because of its remote location. And you can easily scale the difficulty based on how many players you have.

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        A few wee updates from the subject of yesterdays review, Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Season 5 Episode 8: Bound for Rescue. Today I've added, the Lantern droid to the Star Wars D/6 Droids Section, Preigo (Dug Entertainer) and Carshotta (Togruta Entertainer) to the Star Wars D/6 Characters Section of the Site.

Freddy

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Dungeons and Dragons creatures, generated by Neural Networks

        I'm not sure I can sufficiently explain this one, but basically over on Letting neural networks be weird they've trained a Neural Network to create D&D monsters, it's almost like random generation, but it's come up with some weird and wonderful creatures. I just wish it made the stats too.

The game Dungeons and Dragons has all sorts of lists of spells and abilities you can use for gameplay. I trained an algorithm called a recurrent neural network to generate more spells - like Barking Sphere, Hold Mouse, and Gland Growth. Then, with a larger set of spells in my training dataset, I trained a better neural net that generated even more - like Song of the Dave, Summon Ass, and Shield of Farts.

It turns out that in addition to spellbooks, Dungeons and Dragons also has monster manuals - books full of the names and descriptions of creatures that adventurers can encounter. Colin Fredricks, who created the RPG Sufficiently Advanced, was kind enough to send me the names of 2,205 creatures from the 2nd edition monster manual.

As I had hoped, the neural network generated creatures that would probably be pretty awesome.

Owlborn
Cat, Stone
Vampire Bear
Kick Spirit
Hatfright
Purple Bird
Slug, Spectral
Wolf, Chromatic
Golem, Rain
Human, Crystal
Hound, Plant
Fish, Astro-
Wolfworm
Ogre, Space
Dog, Goblin
Serpent Shark
Mommy, Greater
Giant, Dunebat
Cloud of Chaos

It also generated some creatures that you should probably run from until you figure out what they are. (Though Dome Animal might simply be a cool turtle)

Brain, Fire
Horse (Spider, Brain
Undead Lake Man, Fire
Walfablang
Fraithwarp, Giant
Fish, Sun of
Lycanthrope, Wereladoo
Pat, Great, Space
Shadowstaffer
Spectral Woof Greepy
Jabberwont
Animal, Dome
Dwarf, Giant
Burglestar
Pigaloth
Beeple, Desert
Wendless Woll
Memeball
Marraganralleraith

There were 118 dragons in the original dataset, so of course the neural net liked generating new dragons. Some perhaps better-conceived than others.

Dragon, Death Seep
Dragon, Purple Fang
Dragon, Curple Lard
Dragon, Dead
Big Dragon
Will O’Dragon

And it generated new unicorns!

Unicorn, Fumble
Unicorn, Bat
Unicorn, Black Willow
Unicorn, Sith Sheet

These might be possible misses, though.

Man-Can
Barber
Beet
Skull
Feast, Stone
Peg, Brown
Kurt
Durp Snake
Golf
Vampire, Putter

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        A few updates from the subject of yesterdays review, Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Season 5 Episode 7: A Test of Strength. Today I've added Professor Huyang to the Star Wars D/6 Characters Section, the Architect droid to the Star Wars D/6 Droids Section, and Lightsaber training staff to the Star Wars D/6 Weapons Section of the Site.

Freddy

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        A bunch of new player character races today based on the subject of yesterdays review, Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Season 5 Episode 6: The Gathering. Today I've added Nautolans, Tholothians, Togruta, Iktotchi, Anacondans and Zabrak to the Star Wars D/6 Races Section, and Junkers to the Star Wars D/6 Characters Section of the Site.

Freddy

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Second Season of LEGO Star Wars: The Freemaker Adv

A SECOND SEASON OF THE EMMY-NOMINATED
‘LEGO STAR WARS: THE FREEMAKER ADVENTURES’ SET TO PREMIERE THIS SUMMER ON DISNEY XD

A second season of the animated comedy adventure series “LEGO Star Wars: The Freemaker Adventures” is set to return this summer on Disney XD. Recently nominated for four Daytime Emmy Awards, the fun Force-filled series will continue the story of the Freemakers as they join the Rebellion in their fight against the Empire.

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        A few updates from the subject of yesterdays review, Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Season 5 Episode 5: Tipping Points. Today I've added, Steela Gerrera, Saw Gerrera (as of Clone Wars) and Lux Bonteri to the Star Wars D/6 Characters Section, Baktoid Combat Automata Super tactical droid to the Star Wars D/6 Droids Section, Baktoid Fleet Ordnance/Haor Chall Engineering HMP (Heavy Missile Platform) droid gunship to the Star Wars D/6 Vehicles Section, and Onderon to the Star Wars D/6 Planets Section of the Site.

Freddy

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Watch Forces Of Destiny Season 2 Now Online!

        While probably not a series I'm going to review and stat, Forces of Destiny is a fun little series dipping into the Star Wars continuity at various points. So if after the end of Rebels you want to see more of Hera, Sabine and Ahsoka, this is the place to look. Anyway, season 2 is out, and free to view on Youtube.

Hasty Departure
Hera and Sabine liberate an Imperial shuttle, but because Sabine was rushing, they board the wrong ship and it’s full of troopers! Chopper flies the correct shuttle and rescues his friends mid-air.

Unexpected Company
Ahsoka joins Anakin on a mission planned for just he and Padme. Anakin, upset at the intrusion, sets a quicker flight path that puts them in the path of a Separatist blockade. The three must put differences aside to get past the blockade.

Shuttle Shock
On their approach to Canto Bight, Finn and Rose encounter a pod of creatures in the atmosphere. When a tentacle hits the shuttle and shorts out BB-8, Finn and Rose must work together to fix BB-8 and land the shuttle safely.

Jyn's Trade
A Chadra-Fan child snatches Jyn’s kyber crystal necklace away and Jyn gives chase. When she finally catches the kid and retrieves her necklace, she realizes the child is just hungry and gives him her piece of fruit.

Run Rey Run
While scavenging inside a Star Destroyer, Rey is cornered by Teedo who is on the hunt for a valuable part. Rey tries to warn Teedo the removal of the part will trigger the vessel’s collapse, but he does it anyway and she must help them both escape after Teedo is knocked out by falling debris.

Bounty Hunted
Seeking help to free Han from Jabba, Leia, Chewbacca, and R2-D2 travel to Ord Mantell to meet with Han’s old friend Maz Kanata. Maz lures bounty hunter Boushh into a firefight so Leia can obtain his helmet and armor for a perfect disguise.

The Path Ahead
Struggling with his Jedi training, Luke is grateful for master Yoda’s offer to join him on a sojourn through the trees and swamps of Dagobah, until he learns that Yoda will be riding in his backpack! Minding Yoda, Luke learns to trust what he feels instead of what he thinks he sees.

Porg Problems
As Rey struggles to force lift stones, a curious porg snatches her lightsaber! Rey gives chase and force lifts the porg before it can dive into the water with her saber. Rey thanks the porg for the unexpected help in her training.

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        Just a couple of updates today based on the subject of yesterdays review, Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Season 5 Episode 4: The Soft War. Today I've added the Electroguillotine to the Star Wars D/6 Equipment Section, and the Baktoid Armor Workshop Electrostaff to the Star Wars D/6 Weapons Section of the Site.

        I can't believe I never did the Electrostaff before, I'm going to have to keep an eye on what I'm considering skipping as I think it's already on the site.

        Oh, and yes there's Google adverts now, I'll keep an eye on them as I think currently there's too many, but I'm afraid they're here to stay, if you don't like them there's all sorts of ad blockers out there you can use.

Freddy

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D6 still in print with MYTHIC D6

        This site mainly focuses on Star Wars D6, but it's nice to see that even after all these years the D6 system is still in print.

MYTHIC D6 is a dice-based tabletop RPG created to play heroic action adventure in your genre of choice. The spiritual successor of the D6 Legends games system produced by West End Games. The system and the game worlds it supports opens new options and opportunities for gaming across a wide spectrum of genres. Incorporating 20 years of gaming innovation into a tried and true system gives gamers ultimate flexibility when looking for a transparent and intuitive game system.

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Star Trek Adventures New Sourcebooks!

        Been playing some of this lately, and it's really good, one of the most fun games I've played for quite a while. Anyway . . .

A big new product was announced this week! That’s right, the first sourcebooks for Modiphius’s Star Trek Adventures. The first is The Beta Quadrant Sourcebook. If you’re not that into Star Trek that you’ve actually tried to find canonical maps of the galaxy (which is hard to do because, well, they didn’t really write the original show with a map in mind) and you only know of the Alpha Quadrant from its frequent mentions in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, you might not know that a good deal of the stories from Star Trek are actually in the Beta Quadrant. It is the quadrant of the galaxy that includes the Klingon Empire and Romulan Star Empire as well as the home planets of the Vulcans, Andorians, and Humans (technically, the Sol System is on the dividing line between the Alpha and Beta Quadrants). This sourcebook includes character creation information for the Benzites, Bolians, Efosians, and Klingons and information on the ships of the Klingon Empire, Romulan Star Empire, Gorn Hegemony, Orion Syndicate, and civilian craft. The book will be available in May of this year with a retail price of $34.99.

Also out in May is The Command Division Supplemental Rulebook. This book includes expanded rules for social encounters and diplomacy including new 2d20 Social Conflict options. It goes deeply into what the Command Division is like in Starfleet and how officers of that division fit into the overall structure. Optional rules for running an entire fleet as an Admiral are also included, but it’s not stated if you must take the Starfleet Admiral Vow of being evil or, at best, a morally grey jerk (which is pretty evil for Starfleet). Ship designs for the Nebula, Sovereign, Steamrunner, and highly demanded NX classes are included along with shuttles and support craft along with new character traits for piloting and command. This book does not yet have an announced page count, but the hardcover will also retail for $34.99.

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        A couple of additions to the site from the subject of yesterdays review, Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Season 5 Episode 3: Front Runners. Today I've added, the Baktoid Armor Workshop DSD1 dwarf spider droid and the Narglatch AirTech prefabricated kit XJ-2 Airspeeder to the Star Wars D/6 Vehicles Section of the Site.
        It does make me wonder though, I've always added the larger CIS battle droids as vehicles, however, now there's a separate Droids D/6 section, whether I should move them there?

Freddy

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An Ancient Religon

Fantasy Flight Games has issued a preview of their rerelease of the West End Games Star Wars RolePlaying Game.

Fantasy Flight Games invites you to take a journey back to a galaxy far, far away with a special 30th Anniversary Edition of the classic West End Star Warsâ„¢: The Roleplaying Game.

The Star Warsâ„¢: The Roleplaying Game 30th Anniversary Edition features not only the original rulebook for the game, but a sourcebook used to populate adventures with the aliens, vehicles and locations of the Star Wars galaxy.

Today, we’re taking a look at the Rulebook included with the set, faithfully recreated from the original release thirty years ago.

A Galaxy of Customization
Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game has captured the imagination of players for thirty years with a rules system that is easy to understand, yet offers a galaxy of customization to create the characters you want to create and tell the stories that you want to tell.

Like many RPGs, Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game uses skill rolls to check if characters succeed or fail when they come face to face with the greatest dangers of the Star Wars universe. Skill rolls in Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game are fast-paced and easy to interpret, however, as players simply roll a handful of six-sided die based on their abilities and skills, and compare their result to a difficulty set by the Game Master.

The player characters that you create have abilities that are split between attributes and skills. Attributes are those abilities your character is born with, while skills are the abilities that are learned over time. This is where character customization comes into play. There are six main attributes, and every skill in the game falls under one of them. These attributes provide the baseline abilities of a character, telling them how many dice to a roll during skill tests. The character's skills start with the same value as the corresponding attribute—but when you're customizing your character during character creation, you'll decide which skills your character has spent his or her life training and push those skills even higher.

Heroes of the Rebellion
Character creation in Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game is quick and easy, using customizable templates for players to create the Star Wars characters they have always dreamed of.

No matter what kind of character you want to play, character creation begins with selecting a character template. The character templates found in the Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game: 30th Anniversary Edition give you a baseline to create a Star Wars character. With evocative names like the Arrogant Noble, the Failed Jedi, and the Laconic Scout, these templates don’t create a character for you, but provide a foundation for you to build your own adventurer. The book contains twenty-four character templates, just a few of which can be found below.

Bounty Hunter
“Don’t try it, buddy. I’m only going to tell you once.”

Some say you’ve got no morals at all. That’s not true. You live by a strict code. A contract is a contract, that’s all. You do your job. When someone hires you, you keep up your side of the bargain—no matter what it takes.

The Empire hired you, you did the job, fulfilled your side of the deal.

The Empire didn't.

Now you have a contract with the Rebellion, and this time it's personal.

Bounty Hunters are some of the most feared professionals in the galaxy, tracking down their targets with the utmost skill and precision. The Bounty Hunter template puts you in these shoes, giving you the equipment and skills befitting a gun for hire.

The Bounty Hunter excels in dexterity and strength skills and is weakest at technical checks.



Smuggler

“l don’t have the money with me.”

Your parents called it “gallivanting around the galaxy,” but as far as you’re concerned there’s no better life than a free trader’s. Traveling as your fancy takes you, trading a little here and a little there, looking for a sharp deal, bargaining and selling, new worlds to see, always a new planet at the end of the journey.

That’s how it’s supposed to be, anyway. But the Empire is more and more restrictive by the day. Goods that used to be legal are now contraband. Even contraband is harder and harder to come by. Bribes have become your major expense. You keep on dreaming of making one big killing and getting out… but you don’t want to get out. To you, your ship is home, transportation, and freedom, all in one package. The idea of losing it kills you.

In addition to your skills, the Smuggler template provides the one thing every galaxy-traveling crew needs—a stock light freighter to fly you around the galaxy. The Smuggler also has some light weapons in case you run into any Imperial entanglements.

The Smuggler template excels in mechanical abilities and is weakest when it comes to knowledge-based skills.

Alien Student of the Force

“I am a servant of the Light and of the life which infuses it.”

In its long and peaceful history, your species has learned much about the universe and the nature of existence. You yourself have contributed but little to this knowledge, but you have meditated long and hard on reality, and especially on that quality that humans call the Force. You have what humans call Jedi powers in some small degree, as do others of your species.

Your race prefers its solitary existence and has never seen reason to have commerce with the rest of the galaxy. But you have decided to leave your native planet. Perhaps you seek the true Jedi, hoping to learn more about the Force from them. Perhaps you are simply curious. Perhaps the Empire has committed atrocities on your planet.

The Alien Student of the Force is a solid choice for a Force user during a time when Jedi were few and far between. By harnessing these mystical abilities, you are well on your way to galaxy spanning adventures.

The Alien Student of the Force excels in knowledge abilities and is weakest at technical abilities.

Your Guide to the Galaxy
In addition to a wealth of character templates and the slim, elegant rules set that you need to start adventuring in the Star Wars galaxy, Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game 30th Anniversary Edition also provides all the resources to run your own adventure as a Game Master. The book provides advice on crafting challenges, adversaries, and situations for your players to dive into, alongside the classic starter adventure, “Rebel Breakout.”

The book also takes a step back and examines what it means to run a roleplaying game as a “Space Opera” and the story beats found throughout the genre. This insightful advice is invaluable for giving Game Masters a greater understanding of what makes adventures exciting, and the guides found in this book are still so relevant that Pablo Hidalgo cites it as inspiration for the writers' bible he developed for the Lucasfilm Story Group.

A Galaxy of Adventure
From character creation, through Game Master advice, to plotting your first adventure, you have everything you need to travel to a galaxy far, far away with Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game 30th Anniversary Edition. What adventures await?

Pre-order Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game 30th Anniversary Edition (SWW01) from your local retailer or from our website here!

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        A few updates today from the subject of yesterdays review, Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Season 5 Episode 2: A War on Two Fronts. Today I've added, Onderonian disruptor to the Star Wars D/6 Weapons Section, and the Pikobi (flightless reptavian), Ruping and Dalgo (Riding Beast) to the Star Wars D/6 Characters/Creatures Section of the Site.

Freddy

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TSR Code of Ethics

        James Lowder, a former writer of TSR published on his Facebook page the code of ethics that all of their writers and freelancers had to abide by. This obviously comes straight out of the moral panic in the 70's and 80's at D&D, the same reasons that Demons and Devils were renamed to Tanar'ri and Baatezu. Hilarious now, and pretty much ineffective in diverting the wave of panic at the time.

https://www.facebook.com/james.lowder/posts/10215357764719380

TSR Freelancer Code of Ethics. TSR attached these pages to all game and fiction contracts issued in the late 1980s and early 1990s. (These pages are copied from a 1992 fiction contract, but I received the same pages with RPG design contracts.) The guides, which I've always assumed were created in reaction to the 1980s Moral Panic around D&D, were obviously modeled on the old Comics Code Authority rules. They were, to be blunt, patently ridiculous. Editors never enforced them. Entire TSR product lines, such as Ravenloft, would have been impossible if they had been enforced. The code was in place when I started with TSR in 1988. I recall the pages being dropped from fiction contracts around 1993, but apparently they stuck around long after that.

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Old Spice making Character Classes?

        Old Spice, they of the amusing adverts, seem to be going for the geek market, having tweeted recently.

https://twitter.com/OldSpice/status/961362988019064832

Download this new Old Spice Gentleman Class for the greatest role playing game of all time, which we cannot mention for legal reasons, to fulfill that fantasy dream you have always had since reading this post. https://goo.gl/jBAK4n

It's basically an advert made to look like a D&D class, so the chances of it being balanced are remote, but it seems amusing anyway.

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        A few wee updates today from the subject of yesterdays review, Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Season 5 Episode 1: Revival. Today I've added Hondo Ohnaka (as of The Clone Wars) to the Star Wars D/6 Characters Section, and the Jedi training cruiser to the Star Wars D/6 Starships Section of the Site.

Freddy

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Dawn of Rebellion Sourcebook

        Dawn of Rebellion, the first Era Sourcebook for the Star Warsâ„¢ Roleplaying Game, is available now from your local retailer or on our webstore! Drawing from the characters, locations, and equipment featured in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and the Star Wars Rebels series, Dawn of Rebellion gives players and Game Masters the tools and the inspiration to create their own adventures set in the early days of the Rebellion against the indomitable war machine of the Empire.

        Whether your campaign is primarily themed around Edge of the Empireâ„¢, Age of Rebellionâ„¢, Force and Destinyâ„¢, or a blend of all three, Dawn of Rebellion offers a range of new specialization trees and species for you to use as player characters and the denizens of the galaxy that they meet. Location dossiers for iconic worlds such as Alderaan, Jedha, Dathomir, and more contribute terrific source material for your tales of danger and adventure. Additionally, extensive information on every level of the organization of the Empire gives players and Game Masters a solid background foundation for stories of desperate fringers, brave Rebels, or nascent Force-users.

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And we are back!

        Well, the updates are uploading, but the most important ones are already in place. The site should work better on mobile devices, it's got a search facility, it's got better social media integration and a bunch of other new features. But at it's heart it's the same site it's always been, and will still keep providing the same content, just in a slightly prettier way. I'll write an editorial on what's changed, but we'll be back with a Clone Wars season 5 review tomorrow, and the normal daily updates onwards.

Freddy

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        Just a single update today from the subject of yesterdays review, Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Season 4 Episode 22: Revenge. Today I've added Lotho Minor to the Star Wars D/6 Planets Section.

        And so ends Season 4 of Clone Wars, and as usual I'm taking a break of a week between seasons, but instead of previous season breaks when I've covered one of the movies in depth, this time I'm going to be working on the site. So over the next few days you'll notice some minor changes, and you'll notice some stuff disappearing. But don't worry, they'll be back.

So can I take this opportunity to say.

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        A few wee updates from the subject of yesterdays review, Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Season 4 Episode 21: Brothers. Today I've added, the Turtle Tanker to the Star Wars D/6 Starships Section, the Police droid (spaceport model) and the Lotho Minor Fire-breather Refuse incinerator droid to the Star Wars D/6 Equipment/Droids Section of the Site.

Freddy

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        A few updates today from the subject of yesterdays review of, Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Season 4 Episode 20: Bounty. Today I've added the Milodon to the Star Wars D/6 Characters/Creatures Section, the Belugan Subtram to the Star Wars D/6 Vehicles Section of the Site, and BlasTech Industries X-8 Night Sniper, E-5C heavy blaster rifle, Kage Electrified short sword and Theelin Grappling boa to the Star Wars D/6 Equipment/Weapons Section of the Site.

Freddy

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