Star Trek Beyond

I saw it over the weekend and the short version is that if this had been the second movie instead of the third the series would be in better shape.  It's just a better movie in pretty much every way. I'm keeping the spoilers light so if you've seen the trailers I don't think anything new is revealed here.

Some High Points:

• It's very respectful of Trek history. Canon matters if you want to call it that.
• Kirk is less of an impulsive maker of bad decisions here. This Kirk has a little maturity and seems more like TOS Kirk than he has before.
• There are lots of nice little character moments in the film that feel true to the characters
• The new character is decent. If she shows up in the next movie then she adds a lot more interesting. If she's a one-off, well, OK.
• The villain was more interesting than I expected. He's not original Khan, but he's not bad.

Some Nitpicks:

• That space station is just ridiculously huge. Why would you build a station of that size in the middle of nowhere? Is it a deliberate effort to show how tiny the Enterprise is? If it takes a year or more to build an Enterprise type ship how long did it take to build that thing? It bothered me every time they showed it. 
• A lot of the movie takes place on one previously unknown planet - a LOT of the movie. You only get so many shots at a movie and I'd like to see a little more of the universe than we did in this one. The station almost made up for it and this isn't a huge deal, more of a wish list kind of thing. 
• The results of the attack used late in the movie seems like a stretch, even for Trek. I get jamming frequencies to stop enemy coordination - that part I can accept - but the resulting explosions seem difficult to explain. Not critical to the plot but kind of a "how did that work?" moment after the movie ended.

One overarching thing for me: A lot of the impact of the movie depends on us caring about these characters and the ship and the universe. If they had done this as the second movie as I suggested above it wouldn't have worked as well because we would only have had the one prior movie with them. This is the third movie and much like the thrid original cast movie the Enterprise gets blown up and the crew is in trouble. The reason that mattered so much then though is that we had years of TV series to build those characters up. We don't have that with this cast and it does still feel a little "light". It's certainly possible to establish characters and relationships in a movie or three (see Iron Man and the Marvel Cinematic universe) but I'm not feeling it as much here. This is probably where being "Star Trek" hurts it for me because I am constantly comparing it on some level with all of the Trek leading up to this and it's never going to reach the depth, the level of experience, that those previous casts had. Comparing 3 movies to roughly 100 hours of movies and TV shows for those other teams is not fair but I can't help it because it's "Star Trek 9th Edition*" not "Space Cruiser Enterprise 1.0".   

So I liked it, a lot more than the last one. It feels like they are finally off and running and doing their own thing. They are moving in the right direction and I'm glad they are making a 4th installment as there is still a lot of interesting and entertaining stuff they could do in this version of Star Trek.

* Rationale:

1. Original Series
2. Animated series
3. Original Cast Movies
4. Next Generation
5. Next Gen Movies
6. Deep Space 9
7. Voyager
8. Enterprise
9. New Trek
10. (New CBS Series ST Discovery)

Meme-tastic Monday

The New Star Wars Campaign, Canon, and Making It Yours

I'm in a bind - I'm finally getting to run a game in a system I really like using a campaign concept I came up with years ago but I can't really spill the beans here because my players haven't figured out the big picture just yet. They know it's different, they just don't know why. The odds they would read it here are small but I want to see the look on their faces as they figure it out. Another session or two should do it.

Let me say this: The biggest complaint I hear (and have heard for years) about playing a Star Wars RPG is that "We already know what happens". This is a very narrow point of view - it's a big universe, both space-wise and time-wise and there are a lot of places and eras to play in without being upstaged by the movie characters. I've never felt constrained by knowing who blew up the Death Star and all of that story because I've never felt like that was the only thing to do in that universe.

Some people feel that way though so it can be a factor. Two things that drove my concept for this game:

• I read somewhere that the best science fiction follows all the laws of physics that we know about now except for one. it might be FTL travel or psychic powers or whatever interests the author but that's a good place to start. These stories typically examine the impact of that one change on a society like the one we know now. It's an interesting way to focus in on a particular idea.
• The best alternate history novels follow the history we know up to a particular point in time where things happen differently. The story then examines all of the differences that flow from that one change.

One of the attractions of using a known universe like Star Wars is the chance to interact with familiar things, but it loses a lot of the appeal if it turns into a museum trip where you can look and talk and maybe touch but cannot make any real change. Even if the GM tells the players that change is possible, a lot of players are reluctant to do so, to take actions that would send things "off course". 

In my experience the best way to get over that is for the GM to make the first change. This lets the players know that it's OK and they aren't trapped in a movie or expected to stay on the rails. Once that happens, in a big bold way, they know anything can happen - and you're off and running!

I feel like I'm being too general here so fine, I'll get specific: How is this Star Wars campaign different? Well, it follows canon completely up to The Empire Strikes Back. Then, near the end, one thing changes: When Vader says "Join me", Luke, battered and bloodied, says "OK". After that, a lot of things start moving and the rails disappear.

So that's my big reveal for the campaign. it's the same universe we all know and love except that one man, in a moment of crisis, made a different decision - and changed everything. 

Now to see what my players do with it!

Investigations into a Fantasy Campaign

(other than Pathfinder, that is)

Reading some rulebooks and playing some Pillars of Eternity has me thinking about some other options at the table.

• Re-read RQ2 a while back and got the itch to try it out. I like Glorantha enough to play there but I'm thinking about using Caverns of Thracia for the first run, maybe setting it in a more Roman-type setting than Dragon Pass. For a test run I don't need to overthink the setting.  
• I re-read the 5th ediion D&D PHB too and I feel like I should give it another chance. I was all fired up about Pathfinder and coming off of 4th Edition when I last tried it. I might be more willing to find it's strengths now as simpler and faster definitely has its own attraction again. Thinking about using Thracia here too. Also considering Ptolus, as I haven't run a big city based campaign in a long time. Or I could pick up Temple of Elemental Evil again ...
•  I'm all over the Mutant Crawl Classics Kickstarter and that got me thinking I should really re-read the original DCC and of course that has me thinking that we need to try it out too. I'm thinking Stonehell would be a good fit for it after the initial carnage of zero level.
• Then of course looking over my Stonehell notes, we could have played some Labyrinth Lord at any time the past few years and probably had a blast. 

So many adventures - faster and simpler is huge. All of these games look like a good time waiting to happen. 

Halt Evil Doer!

I'm a little late to the party on this one since it came out in 2010 but I read some good things about it and decided to pick up a copy.

Details:

• It's a superhero setting that focuses on "Heroic Earth" but also covers cosmic elements
• Stats are for Mutants and Masterminds 2nd Edition
• It's the second edition of the book
• It's available on DTRPG here.

I can best describe Heroic Earth as a world where DC and Marvel character homages (and others) are freely intermixed along with nods to other related elements. For example, the son of the big American hero (a sort of Captain America/Iron Man combo) ends up in the role of what is effectively Cobra Commander from GI Joe. It feels as though it has been used in actual play and that some of the answers in the book come from questions that arose during games. 

The book covers all the things you would need to run in the universe:

• There's a detailed history of what happened when that covers about 10 pages
• Info on the world covers about 20 pages and includes real countries, comic book cities, and things like Atlantis, the hollow world, and Super-Alcatraz.
• Space and other dimensions is covered in about 10 pages
• There are about 50 pages divided into chapters covering sources of super power, how supers work in this world (from the point of view of the Batman-analogue), and organizations both good and bad
• The last 100 pages cover individual heroes and villains

The things I liked: 

• It's a lived-in world. Heroes and villains have been around for a long time and have impacted the world for good and for ill. 
• The various ages of comic books and the attitudes associated with them are used in-universe to refer to generations of supers and have ended in violent confrontations at times. I thought it was a nice touch
• The default assumption is that myth and fiction from history are all true. this means Gilgamesh is the first superhero, the goddess Athena is the Wonder Woman of the setting, Merlin is a part of the magical side of things, Frankenstein's monster and Dracula are part of the world, Captain Nemo was an Atlantean, and Holmes and Moriarty have had a lasting impact through legacy organizations.  

Things I didn't: There are quite a few characters presented with no illustration. Many are shown, the big time characters in particular, and I know art can be expensive, but it really helps with a super hero game to have pictures. I know I've been spoiled by the full-color heavily illustrated books of the last ten years or so from M&M to Icons but it's really become a standard for me. That's really my only complaint.

The level of information here hits that sweet spot for me - enough to inspire and run a game but not so much that the details smothers the life out of the setting. For example - the chapter on space has information on the power groups, agendas, and history of the major players. It's enough to answer questions from earth-bound players and enough to set up a background for a character with an alien origin, but it doesn't drill down into maps of the galaxy and statistics for a Thran space cruiser. It's exactly what I'm looking for in a super-earth setting book.

So how will I use this book?

Well, I probably won't run it as it's own setting for one of my campaigns. This is mainly because they are already rolling in their own settings. BUT - as a superhero GM you never know when one of your players will send the whole team to a parallel earth and this book gives me an easy option if that happens - famous heroes and villains, history, geography - all the things I would need on the fly to make a believable world. 

Quite a few of the organizations look like they would be easy to drop in to an existing world so there's a chance some of them appear in my games. Heroes and villains and new alien races are also always welcome.

If one of the Apprentices wanted to run a supers-game I would probably hand them this one because it is both coherent and concise - one book covers it all! That makes it easier for a new GM to get a handle on. It's a different perspective than Freedom City or Emerald City in that it's not a city-focused book - it's a world-focused book.

I would also recommend it to someone who's not looking for a massively detailed setting and who doesn't want to have to create one on their own, who wants a solid super-setting to refer to without being out-knowledged by the local Marvel-guru, DC-savant, or Freedomverse-nerd. Here's a setting where someone could run some games - in any system, really - and have some names and details ready to go when the heroes run into an agency, or he needs a bad guy network to drop in, or just wants some easy reference material on what happened before the game started.

It's a very useable book, as a whole, or in parts. For more information on the setting there has been a massive ongoing discussion on the Atomic Think Tank for years (now archived) and on the newer Ronin Army Forum.

Meme-tastic Monday

July Games

I had some time off last week and with the Apprentices around most of that time we hit the game table pretty hard ...

• We started a new Star Wars campaign (mentioned here)
• Sentinels of the Multiverse! Our 4th or 5th game in the last two weeks - definitely a hit here.
• We worked in two big 40K battles (to be detailed on Friday)
• We restarted our extremely intermittent Deadlands campaign
• We managed to dust off the X-Wing Miniatures game with some new ships and had a good time with that too.

The rest of the month should include more of most of these plus some Pathfinder and some superhero stuff too so the summer is going pretty well here.

Meme-tastic Monday

Two themes from the weekend ...

40K Friday - Battles Happening Today!

The Iron Warriors have returned to Tranicos and the fighting that began last night continues all day today! Taking no prisoners they are battling against the Eldar and are also setting up an action against the Ork hordes on the planet! Stay tuned for more details!

In the image above the Iron Warriors warsmith makes a tactical withdrawal while Plague Champion Helzarius takes on a Wraithknight one on one. His scarifice will not be forgotten! 

Investigations into a Star Wars Campaign

I got fairly obsessed over the past week with running a Star Wars game, which meant I fell down the rabbit hole of "which system should I run." I'm back now and feeling better and I actually ran the Apprentices through a kickoff session that I will detail (and link to) later.

My agony was in deciding between d6, FFG, or Savage Worlds. I have a bunch of Saga Edition stuff and while I like it I am getting enough d20 with the two Pathfinder campaigns I am involved in and I want to do something else. I asked the Apprentices what era they were interested in and got different answers so that was no help.

D6 has a ton of fan support for a game that's been out of production for 20 years.  One of the best examples is here - conversions of all the d20 material which covers the Clone Wars era and a bunch of other topics too. It removes the need to worry about the mechanical parts and lets me focus on setting up an adventure. There's a great Old Republic "Galaxy Guide" as well that's amazing in presentation and scope - that adds all of the characters, settings, and gear from the MMO to the option list as well.  I've always thought of d6 as mainly the "Rebellion Era Game" but between the Tales of the Jedi book and the ocean of online material available these days it is really viable for any era.


Savage Worlds is one of my favorite systems and it's pulp orientation fits the setting to a T. There are multiple fan created conversion guides and honestly any of them is probably a solid start to a campaign. The simplicity of the system removes a lot of the need for nitty-gritty detail on minute differences between types of equipment and vehicles and powers which keeps the focus on doing rather than shopping or leveling. I still want to try this but it might be overkill with Savage Rifts on the horizon.

The third option was Edge of the Empire/Age of Rebellion/Force and Destiny which was a strong contender as we've played a few sessions with a beginner box last year and I've been picking up books for it recently. This one is a little more complicated.

The biggest problem is that I have players whose first choice is Clone Wars or Old Republic era and have a high interest in playing force users. Much like WEG used to be, but without the defense of "That's all we had", FFG caters entirely to the Rebellion era. Sure, you can hack a different setting, but that's not a terribly satisfying solution for a new game. If I wanted that level of effort/winging it I'd just do it in Savage Worlds. I'm surprised that in 3+ years of releasing material there's been no nod to the past eras for the game.

The production model for the game is also still an issue. I've heard the arguments for a few years now and for me it boils down to this: To publish a Star Wars game and claim that splitting smugglers, rebels, and Jedi into three different core rulebooks is being faithful to the source material is ridiculous. Every.Single.Movie. (and the TV series) Has examples of these character types running around together. Not separately, telling their own stories, but as a team - as an adventuring party. It worked fine in 3 versions of WEG Star Wars, it worked fine in 3 versions of WOTC Star Wars, and it would have worked fine here. Leaving aside the expense, having stuff spread across so many books is just cumbersome. A general core rulebook + a jedi book + starship book etc is easier to both acquire and pass around the table in my experience. It doesn't make it a bad game, it just gets in the way of playing it.

The other, somewhat unexpected, thing I encountered was ... attitude. All over the internet, particularly on the FFG forums and the associated Reddit pages I kept seeing a tone of limiting your players so they don't get out of control or break the game. If you're a Star Wars fan you may not believe the amount of concern expressed over giving a character a lightsaber, for example. Limiting their XP awards to very low levels was another - you don't want to give away things too fast! Forcing them to jump through hoops for all kinds of things just doesn't seem like it fits with this  For all of the narrative dice innovation good stuff I have seen I was not prepared for a flashback to the early 80's and The Right Way to Play AD&D rants that came up back then. It felt very much like a lot of people giving advice online are still in some version of DM vs. The Players and of all the games out there now this is one where I did not expect to see that mindset.

An example: I went looking for information on two-weapon usage, whether light sabers, knives, or blasters.

Why? Well, one of the d6 Jedi templates comes with two lightsabers but WEG doesn't really address using two weapons mechanically, and if I hand a kid a character sheet with two lightsabers on it he's damn sure going to want to use them together. So I poked around online for that and decided to check on how FFG handles it too. Savage Worlds address this in the core rules so I knew the answer there already.

For d6 there are several online forums, from the Rancor Pit to individual blogs to the d6 Reddit page,  On them I found multiple instances of the question being asked and multiple, varied answers from simple to fairly detailed, many of them based on actual play experiences.

For FFG there was some mechanical advice - it is addressed in the core rules for the most part - and a lot of "it's difficult as it should be" and "well first they would have to have two lightsabers ha ha" and a general attitude that that's pushing into minmaxer territory and that's not what the game is about! There was also a lot of "realism" arguments, which is laughable when you're talking Star Wars where ships in space make noise and fight like WW2 aircraft, wizard-monks use ESP and do wushu leaps while using their laser swords to cut through everything.

This kind of attitude just amazes me. I would think that if I was going to find it anywhere it would be among the old-timers writing answers to the old system that never really supported it in the first place. Instead, I find it among the fans of the newest game that does support it! Not all of them, of course, but enough that I thought I would mention it because it really puzzles me. I mean, Edge of the Empire gives the players a ship right up front. A jump-capable, armed ship. Age of Rebellion gives them two. Comparatively, a lightsaber seems like really small potatoes.

To take the somewhat negative taste away from this (I still like the game!) here's a link to someone breaking Rebels down as sessions of an FFG game. I liked it a lot.

Conclusion
I still want to try the FFG game again and we will, Savage Star Wars too, but after my multi-day review I ended up back at d6 for this run. I know, it was kind of a surprise for me too. I had dusted off an old campaign concept and pretty quickly focused on how I could run it. It's a Rebellion era game so any of the published systems can handle it without tweaking but the d6 option just felt like the right way to go this time. I've wanted to give it another go anyway and now I get to take another look at a system I have liked for decades to run a campaign concept I started working on over a decade ago. Now this is a game I am only going to run when all 3 of the boys are home and available so it's going to be intermittent at best as that doesn't happen as much with Red off to college. Regardless, I ran the first session Sunday night and it was a big hit and they are still talking about it days later so I think we will be working to arrange session #2 pretty quickly. More on the actual game next time!