TheSagaContinues

Now here's what I'm talkin' about!

That's the fan base. If Episode 7 through 9 and/or any of the individual Character movies are bad even in the slightest, we will be hearing about it into the 22nd Century.

That's why we should have a forum called "Korriban" where people can post all their negative threads excoriating Star Wars, thus freeing up all the other forums from the negativity so the fans can feel like they're among people who want to actually share in their enthusiasm.

WOW!!!!  Congratulations, guys!  If ANYBODY deserved to be tapped, it's you guys.  I look forward to seeing your Fantasy Flight material!

I feel your pain, FTJ.  I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on FATE.  It's an extremely narrativist-friendly system, and one of the best I've come across.  It's designed to be compatible with any setting, and as far as I can tell, unlike other such generic gaming systems, there is no setting that is its "sweet spot" or "weak spot."  And the best part is, you can get the Core Rulebook and all the various toolkit sourcebooks for free at the gaming company's download page on their website.

There are folks out there using it for Star Wars, and I can see it working to great effect.  I've used it for everything from a Tolkien-legendarium-based game to Cthulhu to giant robots, and it's worked swimmingly.

I understand your situation, MasterArkaine. 

Right about the time that the Saga line ended, I had stumbled upon the FATE system by Evil Hat Productions.  I was intrigued by the system and figured it would be useful for running a fantasy game set in the Tolkien universe that I had long wanted to run (and by "long wanted" I mean "looooooong wanted"...this idea has been simmering for over 15 years, but I was never satisfied with any of the published systems for Tolkien's universe).

Just at the time I was starting to read the FATE books (which, by the way, Evil Hat Productions offers as FREE .pdf downloads on the "Downloads" page of their website, which you can print for yourself for free...you only have to pay money if you want them to mail you the published paper book versions), I was offered the opportunity to play in the first published Edge of Empire game.  At two separate tables (not on the same gaming night!) I was playing FATE with one group of folks, and Edge of Empire with an overlapping group of folks.  I liked that EoE was less number-crunchy and more narrative than Saga, but Saga was the first game in thirty years of gaming that ever made me actually APPRECIATE the mechanics of a gaming system.  I mean...Rodney is a genius.  Saga is a true work of art.

But Saga IS crunchy.  It's a good crunch, like a fine granola with nuts and dried fruits that you might get at a high-end health food store in a rich neighborhood.  But it is undeniably crunchy.

FATE, on the other hand, is the complete OPPOSITE end of the crunch/narrative spectrum, but not overboard like the Amber RPG system (I need to roll dice when I tabletop game...there's something viscerally satisfying about it).  It's the least time-consuming system I've ever encountered for designing a adventure.  I can literally spend ten minutes statting out all the NPCs, monsters, obstacles, hazards, etc. that I need for a single session, and can often just do it on the fly.  And as I age, and my life grows more complicated, and my time grows more limited, I have less and less time to stat out a Venerable Clawdite Soldier 12/Jedi 5/Jedi Knight 3 NPC for my session on Monday night.  FATE just seems to fit my current, responsibility-laden lifestyle; Saga increasingly less so.

Edge of Empire seemed superfluous with the advent of the FATE system.  So I made myself a promise that when my gaming group/s get/s back to a Star Wars game (and I would undoubtedly be running it, since my fellow players have created a presumption that the Star Wars universe is primarily my bailiwick at the gaming table), I would use Saga to run it, but would use FATE to run everything else we play (at least for the foreseeable future).  And then it happened.  And I had to put my promise into practice:

One of the players couldn't make it to our FATE game one Monday night.  So I said, "Don't sweat it, everybody!  I'll run the continuing adventures of our Star Wars characters that night!  Bring your Star Wars characters!  I can always think of some loose ends that need tying up that would make for a fine session."  And they did.  And so I prepared for the game. 

Now, at this point, I have so many resources on my flash drive, on my Google Drive, on my MediaFire drive, and in this Saga forum, that I don't really have to stat out any adversaries for the rest of my Saga gaming days from now to the end of time...except when I need that one special NPC adversary that has a flavor all his own.

And I needed one for the night, so I statted out one BBEG and maybe one beastie.  And it took A LONG TIME.  Partly that's because I was a tad bit rusty with the Saga CharGen.  But partly it was because I kept thinking every ten minutes, "If I were running this Star Wars game with the FATE system, I'd be done my statting and I'd be relaxing with a glass of wine by now."

And while I was RUNNING the game that Monday night, and the combat was reaching round 7, I was thinking, "If I were running this game with the FATE system, this combat would be long over by now, and we'd be well into the next bit of action."

And I realized something.  The magic was gone.  Just like you said, MA.  I had fallen out of love with Saga and fallen for a younger, more nubile system.

But here's my dilemma.  I love talking gaming with the folks on this forum.  I love how everybody's so nice by internet forum standards.  I love that when FTJ bashes the Star Wars franchise, or StevenO tells one of us we're "just plain wrong," or I gush or fawn over somebody's idea, we all sort of smile, because we're all family here -- we've all been discussing Saga for -- literally -- years, and we don't take anything anyone says as troll-talk or otherwise annoying.  We all have our distinct, quirky personalities and we all accept each other for who we are.  We remain at all times not just civil, but friends -- not just fellow forum members -- and we talk about what we love: gaming.

So I intend to stick around.  Though admittedly, I find myself less and less visiting those threads that discuss rules and crunch, and more and more visiting those threads that discuss the Star Wars franchise/mythos in general or discuss generalized "Star Wars gaming" that is not necessarily specific to the Saga system.

But I admit...I do miss talking crunch and hashing out rulebook passages with this group...though there's little left to discuss for my own Saga needs.

To that end -- and I am not trying to spam the forum here -- if anyone is interested in trying the FATE system, you can get the FATE Core Rulebook and all the optional, fancy FATE toolkit sourcebooks for free here.

If you find that you'd like a community similar to this one where we can relive the days of our great game-mechanics discussions, but for the FATE system, then I invite you all to the FATE RPG forum that I created, and maybe we can have TWO places to hang out ... one of which has a lot of unexplored ground for discussion. 

I think you would like the FATE system if you tried it.  I think that FATE is a system designed for the aging gamer community, whose growing life responsibilities diminish the amount of time they can devote to game prep.  And I think that we can revive the magic we had here as a forum community over at the FATE forum (without abandoning CHIA's great Saga forum here!), and help each other hash out the many issues that will undoubtedly arise as the FATE gaming system makes "contact with its player base" (to quote Rodney Thompson's famous Winston Churchill paraphrase that "No game system survives contact with its player base.").

I'm "Shai" over at the FATE forum, and also the admin.  So pick up FATE, give it a try, and let's talk about it as old friends.  Let's keep the magic alive!

Disney CFO says ‘Star Wars’ strategy will follow Marvel structure
By Daniel S Levine, 12/10/2013

Disney chief financial officer Jay Rasulo touched on the studio’s future plans with Star Wars and Lucasfilm during a New York conference on Tuesday. Rasulo, who previously said that the Star Wars spin-offs may be origin films, said today that the studio will follow its Marvel strategy with Star Wars. After all, if it’s not broken, don’t fix it.

Rasulo said that Disney is not done buying up properties, although don’t expect its next acquisition to be on the scale of Marvel, Lucasfilm or Pixar. “It’s safe to say you’ll continue to see us doing acquisitions in the future,” Rasulo said at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference, reports TheWrap.

Lucasfilm is being treated as a major purchase on the level of Marvel, so expect Star Wars and the just-acquired Indiana Jones franchises to have a bigger presence at the theme parks.

“You can substitute the word Marvel for LucasFilm,” Rasulo said. The studio has already said that it will release a Star Wars movie every year starting in 2015, a strategy that has paid off for the Marvel franchise. At first, solo movies set up The Avengers, which then launched even more successful solo movies before the Avengers sequel.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Rasulo also promised investors that there will be more Star Wars product out by December 2015, when the new movie comes out. He is confident that the Marvel strategies will work for the Lucasfilm properties as well.

Star Wars: Episode VII hits theaters on Dec. 18, 2015.

Holy cow!  Our fellow forum members over the pond, get over there!

Here are some tips for success!