What's Going On in February

 

In recent weeks I've managed to run two sessions of FFG Star Wars and two sessions of Deadlands. It feels good to be back on track. The Deadlands campaign has now hit 19 sessions and this weekend will be the first "real" session of the new Star Wars campaign. 

For Deadlands I am running "The Flood" and it has gone pretty well even with some player turnover. I had 6 players at one point and we've lost two of those but added one new so we are still running with 5. This means we've had a ton of consistency and in a somewhat more "plotted " campaign that means a lot. Since it is a published run with a definite end I expect we will finish this one up later this year. The players have been really good about respecting "niches" and some of them have created some very memorable personalities. Lately they've been getting into some fun stuff like blowing up an ironclad and participating in the Shan Fan Kumite martial arts tournament. I really do need to put those session summaries together ...

For Star Wars I used the Edge of the Empire Beginner Game - which I had somehow never run, despite owning it for years -  to test out the system with my current group of players. It went over quite well even though the dice are hard to find right now. At the end of that run (which stretched over two sessions because we get sidetracked a lot and were learning a new system) we have a party with some experience and a ship of their own which had traveled to Bothawui - because that's where one of them is from. There will be some party shuffling as some of the characters were pre-gens and I expect those to be altered or outright replaced before we begin but we decided to continue onward from this point instead of starting completely new. I was fine with this as it gives them some grounding in the universe and a potential known adversary for Obligation purposes in Teemo the Hutt if they want to use him.

These guys look more and more like Traveller Aslan to me - anyone else see that?

The challenge here is that we decided to stay with mainly an Edge of the Empire type campaign where most of the campaign ideas I had written up in the past were more rebel-centric or set in the Clone Wars era and Jedi-centric. Right now we have no force users and the preference was to start right around the end of the republic. So, sketchy parts of galactic society right as the empire takes off ... yeah I have nothing written up specifically for that. So a big part of the RPG think-time these past couple of weeks has been how to start things off, where things could go down the road, and what places and groups are significant in this time period. I've spent more time on Wookiepedia this week than I have maybe ever and I have to admit it's been fun. I'll post more on the campaign planning later.

So yes it's been a pretty active January and February and it feels like we are finally rolling consistently again and everyone is invested in keeping it that way. It's a good place to be.