Other Stuff Coming Down the Pipes - Models and Figures

I want to get back into building models and painting figures. So I placed an order on Amazon. These seem to be all Japanese imports, but not ridiculously expensive.

Millennium Falcon + 2 X-Wings	2 A-Wings	Jedi Starfighter

The fighters are all 1/144 scale while the Falcon is 1/350. I might have to kit bash a Falcon is 1/144 scale, but I have no idea how big that would be.

As I progress, we'll be looking at each build individually.

Anyway, my kids are asking for some Lego Star Wars sets. I can't find the Falcon, but I did find the fighters. These images are link's to Lego.com. I have to warn you, the reason my kids don't have these is the price.

Jedi Fighter	A-Wing	X-Wing

A Little Bit of Everything

This week, I plan to have at least one post a day on topics that cover every aspect of my nerdiness. The last post was on AD&D assassins, the next will be on models.

Anyway, Star Wars has become a large part of Disney World and while I can't quite wrap my head around Disney and Star Wars living under the same roof, I do love it. 

In 2016, Star Wars was plastered all over Hollywood Studios. My son Nathan and I picked up some little metal toys. I selected new X-Wing while Nathan went with the New Order's TIE. I keep mine on my desk while he has his on his dresser. My wife won't let me keep mine in the bedroom...

Anyway, I can't wait to get back there, except I can wait for this pandemic to cool down. It's a weird feeling. One of my favorite things to do in Disney is to take in the little museum like setups they do to absorb the crowds. It works and usually it's a relief to get out of the heat.  They had a whole area in Hollywood Studios for Star Wars.

I loved it!

I would be remiss if I didn't plug our most excellent travel planner, Jaime Nowicki. Her services are free and she does more than Disney packages. You can also follow her on Facebook.

Episode 001 - Why I hate Walking Dead and the New Star Wars Films almost as much as I hate 5th Edition D&D

Title says it all, come on over to the dark side and take a listen as to why.

While you are processing that, let me tell you about the music. It is a track called Sovereign by Kevin MacLeod, available through the Creative Commons License.

Sovereign by Kevin MacLeod.
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4397-sovereign
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/



The Original is acceptable.

This is also acceptable.

I don't think so...

Star Wars: Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook

Title: Star Wars: Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook
Author: Andy Collins, Bill Slavicsek, JD Wiker
Rule Set: d20
Year: 2000
Pages: 319
Number of players: 2 or more

Rating: ★★★★

For many years, Star Wars was in the stable of West End Games. Over the years, I accumulated many of their books, but never had a chance to play. In 2000, with The Phantom Menace coming to screens, Wizards of the Coast produced a gamebook for the series, which included everything you needed to play, including a set of rules to convert from WEG Star Wars to d20.

The system is a pretty close skin of D&D 3.0 or 3.5, with some great differences.

The system is a standardized d20 system. Standardization from the ground up is very good. One of the great advantages is it breaks every character down into a couple of stat blocks, which makes building a quality, unique character easy. Each character is made of 7 different categories of descriptions, all of which is uniform between classes. You start with ability scores, then everything changes. You select a species which is an approximation of race in D&D terms, a class, skills, feats, character descriptors like reputation, equipment and finally spells, if any. All characters have the same 6 items, unlike D&D where some characters get spells in addition to their other "stats".

So, what about The Force? Those aren't spells, they are tied into one Feat and several Skills for Force Sensitive people. Hit points are replaced with vitality and wound points. This changes the dynamics of how characters work. Vitality is how much energy and stamina you have, while wounds are actual chunks of flesh. Hike through a hellish landscape will reduce your vitality, but a blaster to the head is a wound. Wounds stick around or are fatal, while vitality tracks how much "give" you've got. Nice system, considering how dangerous a lightsabre is. Vitality returns with rest and wounds require healing. The reputation system is a replacement for alignment, which actually has some mechanical advantages or disadvantages, unlike the alignment system.

While this is a d20 system, there are several advantages to this rule set over a typical d20 RPG. First, your players will have a general idea of what they want to be if they have seen Star Wars. To this end, there are 25 character templates so you can play right away. The rules allow you to flavor these characters, so you are a cutout character, but perhaps not made of cardboard. Additionally, if you played WEG Star Wars, there is a set of conversion rules in the back. There is a section on Starships, Droids, and a Game Master Section, with a module included. Everything you need to play is right there.

4 of 5 stars.

You can pick it up on Amazon for less than $20.00. The links below are paid ads and will take you to Amazon.com.

This is not the post you're looking for...

Today, I have the chance to see Rogue One.

I haven't been to a Star Wars film on premiere day since I was a child. I'm loving.

So I am AMC with their reclining chairs and student specials. This is going to be awesome!