Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

Messages - alex_van_d

Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 7

Star Wars Saga Edition General / Re: Hello from someone who used to play SAGA a long time ago (in a galaxy not so far away)

« on: March 13, 2021, 05:49:53 pm »

Star Wars Saga Edition General / Re: Episode VI Infinities

« on: April 12, 2020, 09:48:26 pm »

Interestingly enough I have been running a Star Wars RPG game that led to a somewhat similar result.

So the PCs were sent on a mission to a planet by the Rebellion. A secret, undercover, sandbox campaign. One of my players journalled about it online if you want to read the craziness of it here. https://yordano-searle.livejournal.com/

However, the key result is that the research lab on this planet was developing the targeting system for the superlaser on the 2nd Death Star and the PCs prevented it from being completed on time.

So, in the climatic final battle when the Emperor reveals the "full operational" battle station, the superlaser misses!

That weakens Vader's belief in the Emperor. And in this version the Emperor looses his temper and unleashes force lightning on Luke, but Vader intervenes and blocks it. So it becomes a father and son battle vs the Emperor with the Emperor loosing.

Anakin survives and joins Luke to create a very different Jedi order. (No cradle robbing to train Jedi from birth. Using the old, "original" Jedi code, etc...)

We're now playing in a new campaign set a few years later in this same universe.

Star Wars Saga Edition General / Re: How many times has this been asked? DoD enhancement threads?

« on: October 02, 2019, 09:07:58 pm »

That helped a lot! Thanks.

Now I only need to find 3, 8, and 9

Star Wars Saga Edition General / How many times has this been asked? DoD enhancement threads?

« on: October 02, 2019, 03:49:18 pm »

I know this has been asked many times, but I didn't record the answers.

Does anyone have all ten of the DoD enhancement threads from the old WOTC boards? I've managed to find 1, 5, and 10 but want the others too.

Star Wars Saga Edition General / Re: Raising base speed

« on: March 16, 2019, 05:25:55 pm »

Has no one mentioned ride?

Of course, getting a Hutt on a suitable mount will be a challenge, but the image in my head is awesome!

Star Wars Saga Edition General / Re: I could use your help

« on: February 25, 2019, 06:38:37 am »

StevenO, You are absolutely right. I get so set in my ways I keep building similar characters. Having someone else build him will make him different and interesting. Something my players won't have seen from me before.

I am going to stick with the Surgery and Skill Focus (Use The Force) requirements for story reasons. There will be no one else in the sector who has been trained in Skill Focus (Use The Force) except the PCs, which will lead them into conflict with this Master for certain. (Actually, there's one other place in the sector this could be found and if the PCs don't stop the Master, he'll find that eventually and escape Pergitor, leading to a new level of conflict.)

1) In terms of what he can do I'm leaning in the direction of less combat and more diplomatic manipulation. That's the role he's been forced into because he's trapped inside the Mount Tantiss facility. He has to work with proxies because he can't get out. This also means that he may be less combat capable and if the PCs meet him while under-leveled they may have a chance of getting out alive. He'll have a lightsaber and be able to use it, but that shouldn't be his main focus. But he's also unstable, so his build shouldn't be optimized as he'll have made some unusual choices because of his instability. Think Palpatine, but less capable.

2) He can be any class at all. I, like you, think the classes really have been mis-named. He's a Master because he's past 13 level, or just because he's chosen to call himself a master. After all, who's around to tell him otherwise? He's even being influenced by a Sith spirit so he could have picked up some Sith levels.

Star Wars Saga Edition General / I could use your help

« on: February 24, 2019, 05:57:11 pm »

So, I'm working on a new/old campaign for my group to play. We've been playing together for 15 years. One of the challenges we face is that I keep creating the same kind of adventures and the same kind of NPCs. So I've taken to mining other content for ideas so that they will be fresh for my players.

I'm taking the classic Tramp Freighters Galaxy Guide from WEG and updating the book to create a sandbox style game for the PCs to play in. (I ran this game 25 years ago with WEG's rules.)

On the world of Pergitor I've made a few changes. Go here for a little detail about the planet: https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Pergitor I'm going to have a Jedi/Sith Master working from the shadows here. But I keep building my NPCs the same way. Can you as a community create a build for me instead? One that will be different from what I always do? Here's some background:

The resurgence of the conservative branch of the church is because of who they woke up.

Emperor Palpatine built a Mount Tantiss style complex here. He had been experimenting with cloning Jedi late in the clone wars, but as the clone wars came to an end he shut down those experiments and stored the remnants of that work here. This included one cloned Jedi Master. This Jedi Master was born with a Force artifact inside his brain. It was a bomb that would go off if he left the facility. He was placed in Carbon Freezing. (I am totally stealing ideas from the Heir to the Empire series by Zahn!)

A group of the conservatives who had pushed out of power by the rise of the Royal Family’s desire for freedom resorted to meeting in secret. They ended up discovering the Mount Tantiss complex and began thinking of it as a good place to hide. On one of their explorations they woke up the Jedi Master. He was so capable he became the “Perceptor” of the church and helped lead the church into taking over the planet and expelling the Royal Family.

This Jedi Master is unstable and being influenced by a Sith Spirit who’s tomb is under the Mount Tantiss facility.

He seeks to leave the planet, but the bomb in his head will go off if he leaves the facility. The bomb can only be removed by a highly skilled doctor and someone who is skilled in the ways of the Force. (Mechanically speaking someone with the Surgery feat and is trained in Treat Injury and someone else who has the Move Object Force power and Skill Focus (Use The Force)) He has been able to acquire medical droids with the necessary abilities, but needs a Force user.

His first attempts to find a Force user was actually to create some by cloning himself. Each of these clones has a similar artifact bomb in their head, but instead is set on a timer that must be re-set by a certain time period or it will go off. Unfortunately, these clones are even more unstable than the master and he can’t trust them to do the job properly. So he has put them to use as his agents, sending them out to hunt for a suitable Force user somewhere amongst the stars.

The PCs may very well encounter these agents as they pursue other Force users, and if the party has a Force user they will begin pursuing the party. The master can become a recurring villain, even if they defeat him many times. Eventually the PCs may be led to investigate and end up facing the master.

For the build he can be any species and I'd love a Level 14 and a Level 16 version.

I'd also love to have clones of this master at CR 3, 5, 7, and 9. They would all start from the same race and base statistics, and mostly have the same build, but there could be some variation in them as they have diverged since being decanted.

Star Wars Saga Edition General / Looking for a startship stat block file

« on: February 10, 2019, 12:45:21 pm »

Hey all,

I'm looking for a starship statblock file so that I don't have to type the thing up myself. Anyone have a good one? I'd prefer it in Google Docs if possible.

Star Wars Saga Edition General / Re: Imperial Armed Forces Organization

« on: September 19, 2017, 05:34:40 pm »

Star Wars D6 Junk!

Blasphemy I say! No such thing! D6 was gold I tell you gold! Ok, maybe not otherspace, and a few other things, but it was awesome!

I still own almost every single D6 book published. Still go back to them for ideas and resources at times.

Hey, did you know FFG is re-publishing the original rules in an anniversary edition?

Star Wars Saga Edition General / Re: Temptations of the Dark Side

« on: March 04, 2017, 05:30:52 pm »

It is very important to have player buy in before you start. I was quite clear with my players before we began the campaign that this would be part of it.

Even then there was one player who found her character killing an enemy who was trying to surrender. Her character promptly got rid of the item she was carrying. (One of the power gamers in the group was happy to get it! But he started running into trouble later as his character came closer to the darkside.)

It made for an interesting game, but I wouldn't play this way regularly.

Star Wars Saga Edition General / Re: SAGA on Roll20?

« on: January 28, 2017, 07:49:52 am »

Quote from: sienn_sconn on January 27, 2017, 08:29:10 am

I'd be interested. I've had quite a bit of experience on Roll20 and I absolutely love the interface!

Would you be GMing, or are you looking for a GM?

I'd love to be a player, but I enjoy GMing too.

I've got the beginning of an idea for a very episodic series of adventures where the PCs are a Rebel SpecOps team. It's the kind of thing that could actually be done with rotating GMs.

I was thinking of doing it as a test to see if we could even make it work. I didn't want to put a ton of effort into preparing a long involved campaign until I found a somewhat stable group of players to play with.

Finding a time is always a challenge. My current availability is rather sporadic. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday evenings between 9 and 11pm EST (-5GMT) but every week the day would be different.

Star Wars Saga Edition General / SAGA on Roll20?

« on: January 27, 2017, 07:17:47 am »

Anyone here interested in exploring playing SAGA on Roll20? I've done a little bit of playing on Roll20 and would love to get some SAGA gaming in.

Star Wars Saga Edition General / Temptations of the Dark Side

« on: January 22, 2017, 08:09:38 pm »

One of the things I have found over the many years I've been playing Star Wars RPGs (Did I really start back in 1989?) is the fact that Players are rarely really tempted by the Dark Side. The few times I've seen a player go Dark Side it was because the player had decided to do so for the kicks.

I ran a game some time ago where I decided to make it actually tempting within the game to call upon the Dark Side. I ran that game without any of the minor encounters that many games have. The only battles were big ones. I also stacked the deck against the players. I didn't make the fights impossible, but I made them extremely difficult. Always pushing the CL right to the max the party could handle. (Do note, the players were all informed of the nature of this campaign before we started!) With every battle a struggle and a TPK on the horizon every time I said "Roll initiative!" I included the following rules:

A player may, as a free action, call upon the Dark Side. Any time they do so they gain a Dark Side point. There are a variety of benefits the Dark Side may offer, a player may choose one of the following each time they call upon the Dark Side:

Gain a Force point which must be used in the current encounter.
Add one use of a force power to their suite of powers that they do not normally know for the duration of the current encounter.
Add a +5 untyped bonus to one defense for one round.
Re-roll a dice and keep the better result.

Temptations: Throughout the game there will be times that PCs will be tempted. This may occur in a variety of ways. When they do the GM will be rolling vs a PC’s Will Defense which will be modified by the number of Dark Side points the PC has. In the event that the temptation succeeds the Character will call upon the Dark Side (using one of the benefits above) even if the Player does not wish to do so. The mechanics of this are inspired by the Sith Lord prestige class ability, but not exactly the same.

One of the core concepts of the game was that there were these powerful Dark Side artifacts that had gotten loose. They did awesome, fun things. But while a PC carried them there were certain triggers that would cause a temptation for the player carrying the item. Each item was different. They were very powerful, and very dangerous. The Players had to collect them all. They also had to carry them with them as it was far too dangerous to try and store them somewhere. (The one time the players did someone stole them and they had to go get them back again!)

A key component of the game became this constant struggle against the Dark Side. There were also times in battle when a player was facing defeat and would call upon the Dark Side just to stay alive. It was great fun!

I would love to hear your thoughts on these rules and any other ideas you might add to these rules to make them tempting for players. (Do note that these rules were deliberately made to be very powerful so that players would be tempted to use them.)

Star Wars Saga Edition General / Re: Playing by Skype – what to expect?

« on: January 17, 2017, 06:20:30 pm »

I also recommend Roll20. (It also integrates nicely with Google hangouts which can have better call quality that Skype, but that depends.)

I would also strongly encourage all players to have a headset. Lack of headset is one of the key sources of annoying noises. (Feedback loops, the sound of someone typing on their keyboard, etc...)

Also, have a practice session where all you do is get out the technical bugs. Do not expect the tech to work smoothly the very first time, it may ruin your first gaming session. When setting up a new gaming group I met with each player individually to create their character, but also to test out their technical setup.

Star Wars Saga Edition General / Campaign ends at long last!

« on: June 22, 2016, 05:55:44 am »

The game I've been writing and designing for 20 years has finally been played through to the end. It took my current gaming group about 2 years to play through it using SAGA. We started at 2nd level and finished at 12th.

They started on an out of the way planet (With secret value to the Empire way out of proportion to it's public view in the galaxy as this is the planet where the targeting systems for the ISDs are developed and a secret project to develop a targeting system for a Superlaser was hidden.) as a team of undercover agents for the Rebellion. They ended up mobilizing most of the populace of the planet, and in an epic 3 part battle they overthrew the Imperial planetary government just as the Rebel fleet blew up the 2nd Death Star. (Where, due to the influence of the PCs, the targeting system on the Death Star II failed and missed all it's shots. This led to Vader turning on the Emperor sooner. So a New Jedi order is being founded led by Grand Master Anakin Skywalker. But those stories will be for another day.)

If you want to read the journal my players wrote you could read it here: http://yordano-searle.livejournal.com/