Q is for Qaserum

Located on the border between the Baix Pallars hill-country and the Sahir savanna, on the shores of the Nijat River, Qaserum is a far-flung outpost of the al-Qazmir nation, and the furthest (so far) that their control extends formally to the south and west.  Far from the population centers of the Golden Peninsula and beyond, until very recently, it was a rather sleepy outpost town, with a small fort and a military contingent made up of a handful of out-of-favor soldiers who were exiled to the butt-end of nowhere for falling out of favor elsewhere.  This started changing about thirty years ago when the fur trade starting passing through Qaserum from the green mountains and forested hills beyond.  But in the last five years, this change became rather dramatic when veins of gold and silver were located beyond Qaserum.  Suddenly growing to boom-town status, merchants, soldiers, and more from al-Qazmir have flooded the poor, dirt streets of Qaserum.  Quickly constructed buildings and crowds of both the unwashed and the professional now rub elbows throughout town, and the poor garrison has seen a dramatic increase in recruits stationed here (and the garrison commander is no-longer an out-of-favor cast-off, but a highly trained professional who commands the ear of the sultan of Masqutan, the nearest (although not near by any objective measure) major city, beyond Qila Safah Lake and the Chaman Hills.  Only the great difficulty (and distance) in crossing the Sahir savanna (and all of the intervening region in between) has kept Qaserum from becoming even more flooded with entrepreneurs and con artists looking to make a quick fortune in precious metals.

Qaserum is thus nicknamed the City of Sin in al-Qazmir gossip, due to its percieved lawlessness and strong element of get-rich quick rogues.  This perception, over the last year or so, has become somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The riches to be found beyond Qaserum have also turned the Caliphate's eye to the lands beyond, Baix Pallars which is nominally (although only on paper) part of the Terrasan Empire.  This has also sparked a period of intense diplomatic activity between agents of the Caliph and the Empire, although Terrasa's de facto abandonment of the province means that effectively they don't have much with which to stop Qasmiri expansion into the region.  Nationalist sentiment amongst the Pallarans runs high, and many are turning to very questionable tactics to protect themselves from the percieved threat (see the entry on Baix Pallars for more detail.)

Qaserum is located smack dab on the Nijat River--in fact, the bulk of the city is located on a series of islands connected by a bridge right in the middle of the river (although as the town expands, the north shore as "mainland" Qaserum is where most of the growth is.)  Here are a few areas of interest in Qaserum:

• The Palace of Gilded Delights--a long-running bordello that has become a center of illicit activity in the last few years; even as its owner attempts to clean up its reputation somewhat and establish it as a "legitimate" cultural location, where opera, art, theater, and more can all be sampled.  There's as yet little to differentiate the actors from the harlots, but give it a few more years, and it may yet pull itself up from debauchery to respectability.  Arshyan Kara is the proprietor, a man who was exiled from the capital of al-Qazmir, wandered for a time in Sarabasca before getting himself in trouble, and settling in Qazerum, tyring to turn his luck around.
• The Garrison, commanded by Nizam ibn Omar, a respectable noble sent specifically to curb the percieved excesses of the populace and protect the interest of the Caliphate in the region.  He is young and cunning; and he needs to be, because he's undermanned and faces substantial challenges.  The garrison is located on a separate island from the rest of the city, after a deep channel was dug to separate it, making it very defensible.  Nizam has been petitioning for more soldiers for months now, and while he occasionally gets reinforcements, he's still not anywhere near enough to pacify the Baix Pallars countryside, which would ensure that miners and furriers could trade their wares in peace.  As the situation with the native Pallarans deteriorates, ironically, he's finding it easier to gain important ears to his pleas, which is likely to accelerate the Qazmiri expansion into the area.
• The Sacred Flame.  The reason that the Qasmiri established this village in the first place is that it has a vent to a volcanic magma chamber under the ground.  Heat, and shimmers of flame occasionally dance above this vent, and the superstitious Qazmiri believe that they can commune with the afrit through the fire.  This does mean, however, that the area is prone to occasional earthquakes, and may indeed be subject to a devastatin quake or eruption.  Since the arrival of boomtown status, this has been nothing more than occasional minor quakes which, at most, are an inconvenience, but many years ago, before it became a trading center for furriers, a major earthquake hit the area.  Fallen trees and still be seen outside of town, and a few old timers recall the complete destruction of almost all of the (admittedly few, at that time) buildings in town.  It's only a matter of time before it happens again.  And, of course, while it hasn't ever been directly confirmed by reputable sources, it may indeed be that afrits or other elemental creatures do indeed live in the magma chamber below town somewhere.
• Qaserum is surprisingly caste-driven, as the wealthy new arrivals have little desire to mingle with frontier adventurers, slaves or laborers, and the military presence is also generally cut off from the rest of society by social barriers.  Because of this, a series of walls separated Qaserum into various small districts, including the Barracks, Hightown, the Slave Quarter, Tanner's Lane, and the Market (not meant to be a comprehensive list necessarily.)

Trip summary

Before I'm ready to tackle another DARK•HERITAGE post--which I'm sadly delinquent on doing--I wanted to do a quick trip summary.  As I said yesterday, this will no doubt interest absolutely no one, but I'm going to do it anyway, then start back up on my A to Z series.

The first three days of my vacation--Thursday through Saturday--were actually a pioneer trek reenactment activity.  My wife and I took on the roles of a "Ma and Pa" for about 10 teenagers.  Although no handcart pioneers ever trekked through the woodlands of Michigan up near Bay City, it was still a fun and meaningful activity for everyone involved.

After that, we got home, slept in, went to church, and packed the car for our "real" vacation which started first thing on Monday morning.  We spent two days driving, which was fine.  My wife had looked up locations of places to eat that we can't get in Southeast Michigan, so we got to do a "nostalgia food tour" while we were at it.  First up was a Chick-fil-A in Indiannapolis.  It turns out that it was actually in a mall food court in the suburban town of Fishers, but we did it anyway.  We spent the night in Springfield, MO.  After passing through Oklahoma City, we saw the area that had been hit by a tornado, still strewn with debris and fallen trees and stuff.  It was pretty glum, even several months after the fact.  That part of the drive, until about Amarillo, was pretty miserable--so windy that it was hard to keep a straight course on the freeway, and surprisingly busy with traffic.  Once we were well into the Texas panhandle, it was easier going, though, and we made it to Lubbock, where my folks live, easily enough early on Tuesday evening.

Wednesday we took a sort of "down day" and hung out with my parents, including at their HOA pool.  The high temp was about 110° F, so yikes.  In fact, that was true for three days straight before a cool front and little thunderstorm blew into town.  We also went west to Carlsbad, NM and saw the caves--something I hadn't done in probably 25 years, and my wife and younger kids hadn't ever done at all (my parents went with my older kids about 6-7 years ago, but their memory wasn't great, especially my daughter who was only 7-8 or so at the time.)  The caverns are really fun--a pretty singular experience, I think (although there are two other big national park cave systems in the US, and plenty of other caves in other countries and in other venues in the US as well)--it's just amazing how big and spacious they are.  We spent about 45 minutes going down the "natural entrance" and when we got there, there's an elevator to take you back up.  My kids were about to hop on when I told them that we hadn't even started the self-guided tour yet--all that we had done was enter the cave--the vast expanse of the so-called "Big Room" was still completely unexplored.  There are, actually, a few bigger chambers in the world, but since it's unlikely that we'll ever go to Malaysia to see the Sarawak Chamber.

When I did this as a kid in the mid-80s, you could see the King's Palace (and the rest of that entire tour, including the Queen's Chamber and the Papoose Room) as part of the self-guided trip, but they've since closed that and made it a ranger-guided trip only.  That's OK; the caverns are so big and there's so much to see even without it that you almost start to feel like you're overloaded on scenic limestone cavern speleothems, to the point where even dramatically beautiful and fascinating features start to feel routine.

I actually was almost more interested in the Guadalupe Mountains, which straddle the TX/NM border and under which the caves reside, than I was in the caves.  This part isn't the most scenic (that would be Guadalupe Mountains National Park, which we could see from the parking area) and it had been burned a fair bit in wildfires.  I still drug my wife and older kids (the younger two hopped in the truck with Grandma and Grandpa) on the Walnut Canyon scenic loop, which I probably should have had a Jeep for rather than a minivan.  Although it was only 9.5 miles, it took a good hour to make the drive on this terrible, unimproved dirt road, and I'm sure I'm the only one who appreciated it (my kids fell asleep and my wife got carsick.)  I also saw the trailheads for the Rattlesnake Canyon trail (what a great name!) and the Juniper Ridge trails.  There was not a tree in sight, and even the scrubby mesquite, juniper, or whatever low bushes would normally have grown here was all burned by the fire.  We saw a few blackened branches still poking up into the air, but otherwise, it was all spiky grasses, yuccas and cacti.  I'd love to take a good week or more and really explore the backcountries of these two parks someday--probably in February.  Like I said, it was 110° F the day we were there, and there was not a drop of water in sight.  The views across the mountains were a little hazy too--a ranger told me that brushfires 50-60 miles away were causing smoke to interfere with the normally great views of Guadalupe Peak and El Capitan.

The next day, we went out in the morning to see the Texas Tech Museum which has both a great N. C. Wyeth collection, and some neat fossils (including a mount of (casts, no doubt) a T. rex facing off against a Triceratops horridus, the real classic dinosaurian match-up.  They've also got skeletons of a Deinonychus, Tentontosaurus, Quetzalcoatylus, an adult and juvenile Camarasaurus and a sabertooth, Columbian mammoth, dire wolf, Postosuchus and more.  It really is a neat museum, althought half a day is plenty of time to see pretty much all it offers.  If you're still looking for something to do, the Ranching Heritage center, literally right next door is pretty fun.  I've done it before, but we didn't do it this time.  I met my brother and his family at Double Dave's--another place my wife and I had been excited to eat at again, then we went back to my parents house, at which point another of my brothers and his family had arrived.  Now with three families full of kids (and a few more stragglers still to come) it felt like a party.

We stayed in Lubbock through Monday morning, at which point we went to San Antonio.  It was busy there, but we did the Alamo--a classic experience for any Texan (plus two of my four kids had done biographies on Davey Crockett for school in the past) and the Riverwalk.  Tuesday we did Schlitterbahn--which is the reigning Golden Ticket for best waterpark holder and has been every year running since 1998.

As much as I liked this, my favorite part of these few days was the drive there.  Once you get off the Llano Estacado, which offers absolutely nothing to look at for mile after mile, you get into some real interesting scenery, starting at about Big Spring, through San Angelo, the Texas Hill Country, and all the way into San Antonio.  The only thing that the Llano Estacado offers is wide open roads with little traffic and speed limits of 85 mph.  The Texas Hill Country, and the preceding Edwards Plateau offers a fusion of Chihuahuan desert and the more forested and well-watered climates to the north and east, and the Texas Hill Country in particular is noted for its scenic (albeit understated compared to some of the other landscapes of the American west) beauty.  It was also an area of particular nostalgia for me; I used to go to summer camps at El Rancho Cima on the Devil's Backbone in the Hill Country not far from San Marcos.  But similar scenic terrain extends far to the west of there; like I said, it started looking "El Rancho-like" to my eyes as far west as Big Spring.  This combination of short Texas live oaks, juniper/cedar scrub, dry grasses, and occasional prickly pears and yuccas, forming a mostly open forest (technically a savanna for much of it--a savanna is a forest/grassland environment in which the canopy does not close.  Most people are mistaken in believing that savannas are tree-less grasslands--those are really only typical of the part of the Serengeti that are in the rain shadow of the Ngorogoro highlands.)  Indeed, to make a quick DARK•HERITAGE reference, I imagine much of the savannas of my setting to resemble the Texas Hill Country--with maybe a little bit less dense tree cover--more than I imagine them resembling the grasslands of the Serengeti.

We finished up our trip by spending a few days in Bryan and College Station (the B/CS area, as it's called) where I lived most of my life until moving to SE Michigan, and where I met my wife, went to school and college, where my first two kids were born, and where my in-laws still live.  We looked at my old house, my old elementary school, my old high school, my old church, etc. and spent a day wandering around the campus of Texas A&M University.  We also spent the afternoon of the 4th at the George Bush (senior) Presidential Library, from where the local fireworks are shot, while accompanied by the Brazos Valley Symphony Orchestra.  I left my two younger kids with my wife's parents, who are going to spoil them rotten for a week or two before sending them back home, but I picked up two of my brother's kids, who's maternal grandparents coincidentally live just a few miles from where we live currently, and drove with them (and my wife and older kids) back to SE Michigan, through the totally different route of crossing through Arkansas, much of Tennessee, and then crossing Kentucky and Ohio south to north.  I have another brother who lives in the Memphis area, and we crashed at his place on the way back. 

I had really dreaded the drive through Ohio, because in my experience that's always been a miserable drive, but as it happens, once we got through the ugly, congested and sprawling Cincinnati-Dayton metro areas, it was pleasant.  Ohio was finally--since the last time I had gone through there three or four months ago--put on its big boy pants and joined the non-wussy states by instituting a speed limit of 70 mph on the interstates when not passing through major metropolitan areas.  This is also difficult because by the time we get here, we've traveled so long and for so many miles (literally every single one of which I drove personally) we're just really tired of driving.  After we finally go through Toledo and cross the border into Michigan, we've got less than an hour more until we're home.

I also noted that Mammoth Caves National Park is right off the interstate and only a few minutes from Bowling Green, KY.  Curiously, by coincidence, I need to be in Bowling Green in a few weeks.  By taking the entire day off work on Friday when I need to go down there (instead of just a half day as I had originally planned) I should have plenty of time to stop at the park and do one or two of the guided cave tours that afternoon.  Right on the heels of doing Carlsbad, that should be fun.  I'm not likely to see any of the other major cave sites in the country anytime soon (Lehman Caves, Wind Cave and Jewel Cave, among others, being far away and well off any beaten path I can imagine) so this will be the only major comparison to Carsbad that I'll be able to make anytime soon.

Some movie reviews

Well, needless to say, I haven't made a post in quite a while--nearly a month.  I've recently been on vacation--over two weeks of it, and prior to that, I was so busy getting ready to go that making blog posts was the last thing on my mind.  While all of this was happening, my department moved to a new building at work--again, requiring that I spend quite a bit of time gathering, clearing, packing, unpacking and generally doing stuff with my files and whatnot here at work.  I should actually be going through old emails that I missed while away, but after unpacking, I'm feeling like a need a little break, so here's my first post in a little while.  Later this week, I'll do a day-by-day post of my vacation, which will no doubt interest absolutely nobody but me.

Over the last few weeks we've seen several movies.  Two of them I was actually really excited for.  One of those two was quite good--the other was not.  Man of Steel takes Superman, a character that I often struggle to empathize with (and writers often struggle to challenge him meaningfully too, which is why there's a rash of really stupid Superman stories out there--see this link to see a little bit of what I mean.  So, perhaps my expectations for Man were a little on the low side.  As it turns out, I greatly enjoyed it.  I think it may have been a little long, and the flashback storytelling style was an experiment that worked, but I can't really say that I preferred it.  It was perhaps necessary to set up the conflict that came later when General Zod and the rogue Kryptonians showed up to threaten Earth.  Although I've gotta think by now that retelling the origin stories of well-known characters like Batman, Superman or Spiderman is superfluous, and I hope that future "reboots" forego it and just move on to us already accepting that the superhero is a superhero without having to show us all (again) how that happened.

Unlike in Bryan Singer's tepid Superman Returns, the titular character actually manages to be likeable and charismatic, as well as not a brooding social outcast (that probably says more about the writers than anything else that Garfield's Peter Parker was changed into a somewhat sociopathic, irresponsible, social outcast who rebels against authority and structure rather than simply a bit of a shy nerd, as Stan Lee wrote him as originally, for instance.  The same could be true for Singer's version of the Man of Steel.)  This makes watching him much more interesting, although a few changes felt more like deja vu than they probably should have (why does Clark's earth-father have to do an Uncle Ben and die, after encouraging Superman to not use his powers, for instance?)

However, when the movie really gets going, it has some of the best superhero on supervillain action we've ever seen on film.  So much so, in fact, that my 11 year old son bizarrely told me that the movie had too much action (I didn't agree; I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it.  But he's not the only one to make that claim.)  If The Avengers really raised the bar on what we can expect to see in terms of wild and crazy superheroes banging away at each other and blowing things up and smashing things, then Man of Steel seriously raised it even further.  Makes me wonder what Thor 2 is going to accomplish this fall, since in many ways, Thor is a comparable character to Superman (in terms of what he can do and the "yahoo" factor in action scenes that feature him, anyway.)

Now, The Lone Ranger, on the other hand, was a movie that I hoped would be good and which wasn't.  Kinda the opposite situation, in a way.  Not only was it too long and fairly slow and tedious at times, but it just got it all wrong.  Pundits and analysts can't ever seem to figure out why folks don't like certain movies (according to some post mortem I've read on this movie already, which is also already considered a bomb after one weekend) but for my money, the problems were as follows:

• Like I said, slow and tedious for most of the movie.
• I have a pet peeve about characters who know what needs to be done, but who spend most of the movie (or book, or whatever, as the case may be) refusing to do it on principle only to come around finally near the end.  The Lone Ranger as a reluctant hero--a pacifist nearly, in fact, who refuses to carry or use a gun--is just stupid.  It also seems like the kind of story that someone would write who knows absolutely nothing about guns and has an agenda around them--probably a poor choice for the writers of a movie about cowboys.
• Is it not tiresome to see this ahistorical reenactment of appeasement and white guilt?  The Comanche were represented as totally friendly innocent bystanders to white manuevering, which is absurd--there was no living with the Comanche.  It wasn't just the Spanish, Mexican, Texan and American forces who were consistently raided, killed, kidnapped and tortured to death by the Comanche--the Apache, the Kiowas, the Utes, the Shoshones, Tonkawa, Blackfeet, etc.--all of them hated the Comanche because of the violent and barbaric practices that they had.
• Lest you think I'm simply being "sensitive"--there was one scene in which Tonto, after waking up from being unconscious and finding himself surrounded by Chinese rail workers, says something about John Reid being a "stupid white man" and the Chinese all nodding knowingly.  This movie actively set out to offend and insult the majority of its audience!
• The characters of Tonto and the Lone Ranger are nothing like the prototypes from earlier works that they supposedly resemble.  What's the point of making them the same characters if you're going to change almost everything about them?
• The love interest was uncomfortable.  A love triangle is a fine situation for a movie plot to resolve, but when two of the principles are brothers... yeah, nobody wants to see that.
• My in-laws also pointed out that the action was cartoonish and silly.  Knowing that this was the same team that did the Pirates of the Caribbean movie, that didn't surprise me (also--I actually saw the trailers for the movie, where they showed some of it.)  It's still something to consider.  This is a far cry from a gritty New Western.

So, although I liked one movie and disliked the other, I did just order the soundtracks to both (both by Hans Zimmer) on Amazon.  Nice music.

Knights in Star Wars m20

So... when not listening to my recently compiled b-sides, non-album tracks and remixes collection of Depeche Mode of the 80s (and Violator era, which technically is 1990 and maybe 91) I've been listening to my complete Star Wars music collection.  I've got the Special Edition soundtracks to the original trilogy, which are two discs and include the entire score plus extra music of the first three movies (although I had to do a little bit of digging to get the original "Yub Nub" Ewok celebration song, as well as the original "Lapti Nek" Max Reebo band song in order to really call it "complete.)  I've also got the regular (albeit incomplete) 1-disc soundtracks for the three prequel movies.  I've got the Old Republic soundtrack, including the massive amount of "extra" tracks released for download by BioWare, and I've got the Knights of the Old Republic soundtrack as well. 

When not listening to Star Wars, I've been reading Star Wars: Legacy in trade paperback format (vol 11 is the only one left to go) and re-watching the Clone Wars on DVD (just finished Season 1 and watched the first few episodes of Season 2 last night.)  On the first disc of Season 2 is also the cinematic trailer for Force Unleashed II, which is really cool.  I actually didn't much like the game, although the first Force Unleashed was a lot of fun (I have the Wii version which is extra cool because you swing your wii-mote around like a lightsaber, which is excellent.)

It occured to me after turning the disc off and getting ready for bed that knights have been depicted with varying degrees of "over-the-topness."  In the season finale commentary by Dave Filoni at the end of Season 1, he makes the remark that George Lucas was adamant that the Jedi are not superheroes, and when Annakin is left without his lightsaber, he struggles to be as effective against Cad Bane and his highly professional team of bounty hunters.

This assertion is, of course, completely nonsensical, and almost embarrasing for Filoni to say.  What?  Of course they're superheroes.  They may be a bit low-key as superheroes when compared to really big guns like Superman, but they're still extremely over-the-top, and have an impressive suite of superpowers.  Even within the medium of mainstream comic books, you have quite a spectrum--street level superheroes like Daredevil or Green Arrow, compared to universe-shattering heroes and villains like Thor, Superman, Thanos, Darkseid, Galactus, etc.  Even on a single team you can see that--Black Widow, Hawkeye and Captain America really aren't in the same league as Iron Man, Thor, and Hulk in last year's Avengers, for instance.

That said, the depiction of Jedi has been highly variable in various media and various outlets for a long time.  In the original trilogy, we probably have them at their least over-the-top, as well as their most iconic, of course.  The prequel trilogy ramps up the superhero-ness of the Jedi considerably, but it's still the next step up.  The Clone Wars cartoon, which I like and campaign for as highly canonical to my own view of what Star Wars should be like does bring the Jedi up even more than the prequels in terms of over-the-topness.  And finally, the old "Sanurai Jack" style Clone Wars cartoon and games like Force Unleashed take them into completely uncharted territory.  In the former, there's an episode where Mace Mindu, without his lightsaber, still manages to defeat an entire army of supe rbattle droids using his fists and the Force.  In the latter, main character Galen Starkiller pulls a gigantic Star Destroyer out of space and crashes it on the planet with the Force.  There's no other way to put it, but those episodes have Jedi running around in the Big Leagues when it comes to superheroes.  They'd be the Big Guns on a team like the Avengers or the Justice League, not "street level" crimefighters.  These jedi would be a threat to Green Lantern, Superman or even Galactus.

Given this huge inconsistency in how Jedi and Sith are portrayed, one may be given to throw up one's hands in terms of reconciling that with rules for a roleplaying game.  Rather, I think you simply need to pick one of the tones and run with it.  My conception of knights is somewhere between the original and prequel trilogies, I think.  As much as I think the crazy superheroics of Galen Starkiller and the Clone Wars jedi in general is pretty cool, it really doesn't have much place in my iteration of Star Wars, and I also am extremely leery of creating a situation in which the jedi are so good compared to alternatives that who in the world would not want to play a knight?

But there's a trap there too--in my current d20 Star Wars game, in which I'm a player, that was accomplished by making jedi develop slowly via leveling up.  At 6th or 7th level, we're still not anywhere near capable of doing stuff that apparently all jedi in every show, movie or video game ever produced for Star Wars think is routine.  That can't be the right solution either.

I think the knights, as I've called all force-users of any tradition, of the m20 document, which although I've reflavored slightly, I haven't really done any design work that wasn't already done, manage to find that sweet spot.  They feel like the jedi do--even at lower levels--but they're not unbalanced vs. the other classes.  But I admit that I'm only able to accomplish that by assuming a much more low-key iteration of the jedi than has sometimes been presented--something more in line with what Luke, Vader and old Obiwan are doing in the original trilogy rather than the often ridiculous exploits of some other media.

Star Wars m20 Setting, Part II: Power Groups

The Bern Monarchy: Following the Battle of Endor, the Empire was dealt what appeared to a be a mortal blow, but things are never, of course, so simple.  Much of the Imperial citizenry--especially the military--saw themselves as the heirs of a glorious tradition stretching back thousands of years into the age of the Old Republic. If Palpatine was a bad seed, well that didn't invalidate generation after generation of tradition, and Palpatine was ancient when he died anyway. Surrendering to barbarians, anarchists and malcontents--as they saw the Rebel Alliance--or the traitors who colluded with them in the old Senate and elsewhere, was never going to happen.  Seeing themselves as the heir to the Old Republic through the unfortunate hiccup of the Empire, this ancient tradition evolved into the Monarchy. While not nearly as vast as during the heyday of the Old Republic, the Monarchy is still one of the largest and strongest of the superpowers in the galaxy. Protected by the Gray Marshals, paramilitary agents capable of standing toe to toe with Sith or Jedi when they were founded, the Monarchy is well-provided for with it's own Force and lightsaber wielding Knightly tradition.

The Revanchist Republic: The direct heir of the New Republic established by Mon Mothma, Leia Organa, and the rest of the architects of the Rebel Alliance, the Republic had many generations of hardship. While many of the Rebels were well-meaning idealists who wanted nothing more than a restoration to the way things were before Palpatine, it was clear that too many in the Rebel Alliance were little more than scoundrels, pirates, and other opportunists who took advantage of the chaos of the Galactic Civil War to line their pockets with what plunder and pillage they could.  Following short periods of relative peace, the Republic was plagued by periods of violence and anarchy, not unlike an extended comparison with France following the overthrow of the Bourbon monarchs.  After being reduced to a mere handful of Core worlds, the Republic finally got its act together and started aggressively retaking former territory, "liberating it" from whatever "tyranny" might have been occupying it. This revanchist policy has been adopted officially as its new name, the Revanchist Republic, an emerging, feisty superpower--not really a rival yet to the Monarchy or the Empire, but a growing power nonetheless.

The Sith Empire: Centered on the ancient capital of Dromund Kaas, the Sith Empire may be the most powerful polity in the galaxy--although that often works to its disadvantage when no other group trusts them, ad they are often "ganged up on" both diplomatically and militarily by wary other governments who find tenuous alliance in restraining the ambition of the Sith. But the Sith are patient in their ambition to rule the entire galaxy, and are seemingly content to hold strongly to their existing territory and advance slowly over their opponents over the course of generations. Black-garbed Sith soldiers bring a measure of order to the galaxy, or at least so say the Empire's apologists. And drawing from the ranks of both Sith acolytes as well as their allies the Nightsisters and Nightbrothers, the ranks of Force-using knights who serve the Empire's interests is considerable.

The Corporate Sector: In the chaos of the Dark Age, many large corporations were more stable and less corrupt than most governments. And in a large reach of the Inner Realm worlds, the corporations essentially became the government. Providing a high quality of life to those citizens willing to, in a way, combine civil service and their careers together, the Corporate Sector has beat back all attempts by traditional governments to integrate them fully.  Protected by vast droid armies and loosely allied with the many knights of the Cyborg Order, the Corporate Sector may indeed be mercenary--by definition even--but that doesn't mean that they're more corrupt or heavy-handed than any other government. The watchword of the Corporate citizens is professionalism in all aspects of life.

Hutt Cartel:  Infamous as making up the dark tentacles of a seedy underworld throughout much of the rest of the galaxy, there also is a patch of the galaxy where the Hutt's rule as undisputed masters continues as it has, indeed, without change for millenia. Rather than strong traditional military, the Hutt's have relied on each Hutt master's private militia, often consisting of eclectic and unusual companies of mercenaries. While this disunity might be seen as weakness, and certainly the Hutt's engaged in few overt acts of conquest or military adventurism, in reality the Hutt's maintain a strong enough presence that their place has not been seriously threatened in generations.

The Mandalorian Arm: Following the disastrous collapse of Duchess Satine's well-meaning but foolishly naive pacifist regime, the Mandalorians looked more to their glorious and storied warrior past on which to model their society. Death Watch themselves were still seen as an equally dangerous extreme as Satine's pacifism, yet the evolving Mandalorian society grew to resemble Death Watch more than many realized.  Initially allied strongly with the Hutts, the Mandalorian Arm--so known because its territory is centered on one of the spiral arms of the galaxy--has grown in power and prestige so that it can treat with the other Great Powers as an equal. Although some Mandalorians are born with the genetic predisposition to be Knights (as are most groups in the galaxy), there is no  real tradition of force-user training amongst them.  Rather, a fully trained and equipped Mandalorian supercommando can fairly be considered the equal of any Knight in combat without using the Force--a point of pride for Mandalorian soldiers.

Star Wars m20 Setting part I: Knightly Orders

Gray Marshals: The personal agents of King Maddav Bern, the Gray Marshals are famous for their devotion to the Monarchy. They operate with a great deal of independence in their role, and often can be seen on their own. Only fully trained Marshals are allowed in the field, so there’s really no good reason for an apprentice or padawan to be out on assignment, as with some other orders. While on duty, and not incognito, Marshals are famous for their black flight suits and their silver or white lightsabers.

Orthodox Jedi: The goal of the Orthodox Jedi is to recreate the old Jedi Order from before the Purge. Seeking out clues and lingering evidence of how the Order used to operate, the Orthodox Jedi are too involved in their own concerns to be overtly political, as other orders are. Orthodox Jedi usually travel in their errands by twos—a knight and a padawan together. Although not required, most Orthodox Jedi use blue lightsabers, whereas Skywalkers prefer green. But that’s merely a preference, not an absolute.

Skywalkers: Rejecting the rigid dispassion of the original Jedi Order, the Skywalkers believe that the compassionate and activist stance of Annakin and Luke is the way to balance the Force. They take their name as well as their approach from the order founded by Luke following the Battle of Endor. Closely associated with the Revanchist Republic, the Skywalkers are famous as do-gooders throughout the galaxy. They’re infamous for doing so with smugness, self-righteousness and a heavy-hand all too often, however. And a closely guarded secret of the order is the large number of Skywalkers who fall to the Dark Side…

The Cyborg Order: Knights who supplement their fighting abilities with cybernetic augmentations, as did the Chosen One himself, or so they imagine. In reality, these Knights tend to more closely resemble General Grievous than Darth Vader. They are loosely associated with the Corporate Worlds and their combat droid armies, making their resemblance to the erstwhile general even more pronounced, although not deliberate. Because of their location in the galaxy, they can more easily access yellowish lightsaber crystals, which grow naturally on Yuggoth, an icy planet in the Corporate Sector, making yellowish lightsabers more common amongst the Cyborg Order.

The Nightsisters and Nightbrothers: This insular and secretive order has grown tremendously since its days of isolation on Dathomir, where Count Dooku nearly destroyed them overnight to a galaxy-wide cult who settle in isolated enclaves and cells throughout the galaxy. Many are allied with the Sith Empire, although the Sith obviously have their own order of knights as well. Nightsisters and Nightbrothers do not typically use lightsabers, although some of them have discovered the ancient secrets of making darksabers, and more and more this antique-style weapon is showing up in the hands of Nightbrothers in particular.

Sith: After the disastrous risk to the order was revealed if the apprentice kills the Master and doesn’t ascend to his place (i.e., the death of Darth Sidious) those who have attempted to follow in the footsteps of the old Sith order have looked much further back to the ancient Sith Empire rather than the more recent age of the Rule of Two as their model. The master/apprentice dynamic is still important to the Sith, but many such pairings exist throughout the galaxy, reporting loosely to a Dread Council of Arch Heretics, and the Sith Emperor himself. The Sith are infamous, of course, for their red lightsabers, made of synthetic crystals. However, because synthetic crystals are often easier to come by than natural ones, seeing a red lightsaber is not necessarily a clue that you’re looking at a Sith Knight anymore.

Independents: In addition to these major (and many other minor) Knightly orders, there are a great many individuals who can use the Force as their ally, and who carry lightsabers or similar weapons. Some have trained with an Order, but turned their backs to its traditions, while others have sought out solitary masters or even are self-taught. Because of this, there is no way to generalize what an independent knight looks like, thinks like, or what his philosophy may be, but they are indeed varied and often strange.

Star Wars m20, part III: Equipment

Well, it took some work, but I got the Equipment stuff done for my Star Wars m20 game.  This was a bit more of a mess, and I really wasn't totally thrilled with the system in the documents I had, so it took more work for me to clean it up.

What I ended up with is perhaps a little bit more cumbersome than the spirit of m20 calls for, but it's still pretty simple, and I do like the flexibility, even if I do say so myself.

I'm not going to cross-post this to the blog, though, because it includes a bunch of tables, which won't translate well into the Blogger template.  Since I started up a new Star Wars m20 wiki (and deleted the pages from my DARK•HERITAGE wiki, which really shouldn't have had Star Wars stuff on it anyway), I decided just to link directly to the page here, rather than try and recreate it and go through a formatting nightmare.

I will, however, cross-post other material, especially the setting stuff.  Starships, the last mechanical gap to be fixed (where, again, I'll have to work with a bit of a mess on my original m20 versions, to see what looks best of the two options and sort them out) may have some tables too, and may not be cross-postable, but the setting stuff certainly all will be.

http://starwarsm20.wikispaces.com/Equipment

Opening crawl

Check out this cool little app!  While I hope to get the system stuff finished today, I also couldn't help but whip up my own version of the Opening Crawl for my future Star Wars game...

Star Wars m20 rules, part II: Combat, Healing and the Force

Combat

Hit points are, as mentioned earlier, your STR score + 1d6 per level. Attacks will remove hit points. When HP reaches 0, the character is unconscious and near death. Any additional damage directly reduces STR. If STR reaches 0, then the character is dead. Most NPC antagonists follow these same rules, but certain NPC antagonists are considered "mooks" (also minions, goons, spear-carriers, etc.) and are not meant to keep fighting after being hit. These characters don't have any hit points, and any successful attack in combat will automatically kill (or at least incapacitate, if you're playing a less violent game) them outright. A good example would be most stormtroopers and battle droids. They are, however, assumed to have all of the other stats as any other character. A super battle droid could be a mook who goes down with only one hit, but because he has heavy armor and a high STR, he still makes a more formidable opponent than a regular battle droid. For example.

Combat is conducted in initiative order. Roll 1d20 + DEX to determine initiative order. Everyone can do two things during a combat round, (1) move and (2) move, attack, deflect a blaster bolt (if a Knight using a lightsaber), use a skill, etc. All checks or attacks target a DC, either a skill DC for skill checks, an opposed skill check result for opposed skill checks, or the target's Armor Class (AC) for attack rolls. Although a move is considered 30 feet, I'm not interested in using a battle-mat, or overly tactical combat, so that's more of an abstraction than anything else. Remember how you used to play D&D back in the 80s without mapping out combat unless it got really excessively complicated due to lots of opponents? That's how Star Wars should feel--combat is fast and loose and swashbucklery, not static and grid-based and miniatures game like. To facilitate this, unlike in D&D or most other d20 games, it's not assumed that you must Move and then take your move equivalent action (be it an attack, using the Force, or whatever)--rather, you are assumed to do them at the same time. This means that in d20 terms, all characters are automatically assumed to have the equivalent of the Spring Attack feat. If you don't play d20, and since this isn't a tactical combat assumption anyway, that may be irrelevant.

• Melee attacks are made as a STR + attack bonus (usually level, but for Soldiers and for Knight's using lightsabers it can be higher). Add your STR bonus to damage as well.
• Ranged attacks are made as DEX + attack bonus. This includes both shooting a blaster (or other gun) as well as throwing something, such as a grenade.

If a natural 20 is rolled, you do not need to confirm a critical hit, you automatically do double damage (roll damage dice twice, don't just multiply the result of a single roll.)

You may also take damage from other things than simply combat attacks. Here's a few examples:

• Falling: A character takes 1d6 damage for every ten feet fallen. You can reduce this damage by trying to land lightly by making a DEX + Physical skill check with a DC equal to the number of feet fallen. This will result in only half of the damage taken (rounded up.)  The Force Surge power can be used in a similar way.
• Hazards: When falling into a hazard, such as spikes, or something like that, at +1 point to the falling damage for every ten feet fallen, max +10.
• Poison: Make a STR + Physical skill check to avoid or for half, depending on the poison. The effect depends on the specific poison.
• Extreme Heat or Cold: If not wearing suitable protection, make a STR + Physical skill check once every 10 minutes (DC 15 + 1 per previous check), taking 1d6 damage on each failed save.

Healing
Characters heal their level in HP every hour, or twice this with medical care. Once per session, a character can automatically heal themselves of half of their total HP as a "second wind."

The Force
Although all characters have a Force skill rank (except droids) only Knights can actually use Force powers. Using any Force power costs 4 HP (because it's tiring and wears you out to rely on it too much) and requires a skill check of 1d20 + Force skill + the applicable stat bonus (usually MND, but there could be a few exceptions at the GM's discretion.) Sometimes the DC that a character is trying to hit with his Force check is the equivalent of a Saving throw, and other times it might be an opposed Force check--even for Characters who cannot use Force powers themselves, they still have a Force skill rank which they can use in opposed Force checks. Other times, it's a static DC set by the GM.

For simplicity sake, there are only ten listed Force powers, which correspond to almost all of the Force action seen in the movies, tv show and video games. There may be other Force powers referred to obliquely, or in Expanded Universe material. There are no rules for them here, if so, but if desired, they can be homebrewed into the game with GM approval and involvement. Some powers listed here are traditionally considered "dark side" powers, but my interpretation of the Dark Side is that it's more of a plot device than anything else; i.e., it should be used as a roleplaying tool, not a mechanics tool--your GM will work with you on what the consequences are of using the Dark Side. Given the ability of characters in the Old Republic games to be Dark Side specific characters and still play quite successfully, there's no rule for "losing" your character to the Dark Side or anything like that. Again, that's all roleplaying.

When using the Force in combat, you must make your opposed skill check. If you lose the check, you still lose the hit points--it always costs 4 HP to use the Force, but the opponent suffers no ill effect. Some powers can be used against multiple targets. That's OK, but there is a -2 penalty to the Force skill check for each additional target beyond the first, and it costs 1 extra hit point per each additional target beyond the first. So, for example, attempting to Force Push five battle droids at once would incur a -8 penalty on the check (which must be made separately for each target) and would cost 8 HP regardless of the outcome.

• Force Push: Force + MND check vs. Physical + STR or DEX (whichever is better) of the target. Force Push inflicts 1d4 damage per Knight level, and knocks the opponent to the ground. The opponent suffers a -4 to AC until they can use a Move action to stand back up.
• Force Surge: Force + MND vs. static DC set by the GM. Useful for the amazing feats of speed and leaping common to Knights. Failure consequences depend on the degree of failure, i.e., if you just miss your check on a Jump, you don't reach your goal and may have to jump again. If you blow it by a larger margin, you may hurt yourself falling in the attempt. This one is very situational in terms of what the penalties for failure might be, although a good GM should use the source material as a guide and not be overly punitive.
• Battlemind: Force + MND check. For every 10 points made, the Knight gains a +1 to attack, damage and AC for the duration of the combat. For example, if a 7th level Knight with a +2 MND bonus rolls a 10 on a d20 (for a total roll of 19) he would gain +1 to attack, AC and damage, but take 4 points of damage, as normal. If he had rolled an 11, for a total of 20, he would gain a +2 to damage, attack and AC.
• Negate Energy: Force + MND check--DC equal amount of damage taken. By taking the standard 4 points of damage, the Knight can negate the damage from one energy source. Unlike with other Force powers, the Knight can Negate as many attacks per round as he has HP to spend on activating the power without any penalty for multiple targets. It also can be done passively when it is not the Knight's turn, but it does cost a combat action to use. If used passively in this manner, when the Knight gets his next turn, he can still move, but is considered to have already spent his other action on this Force power. Obviously, this is only desireable to do if the damage is higher than 4 points, and the Knight does not mind giving up his next action. This can also be used outside of combat to walk through fire, or an irradiated room, or something like that.
• Force Grip: "I find your lack of faith disturbing." A Force + MND check vs. a Physical + STR check. If successful, the target suffers 1d6 damage per Knight level.
• Force Lightning: Force + MND vs a DEX + Physical to dodge the attack, or a Force + MND to oppose, absorb or block the attack (for example, on your lightsaber blade.) The target of a successful check takes 1d6 damage per level of the attacker.
• Stun Droid: Force + MND vs. Physical + DEX or STR (whichever is better.) Treat this Force power as if it were an ion attack; droid targets which do not make their save are shut off.
• Mind Trick: Force + MND vs. Force + MND (even characters that cannot use Force powers, i.e., non-Knights, have a Force skill ranking that they can use to oppose Mind Tricks.) A simple opposed check in which the Knight can make a suggestion seem amazingly reasonable. The GM may impose, as with any skill check, situational modifiers may apply if the target thinks the suggestion is outrageous or over-the-top.
• Farseeing: Often a Force + MND against a static DC set by the GM to see a person or place in the past or present, or even glimpses of possible futures.  The GM can also roll checks against this out of combat in secret to give the player clues or hints about things going on around them (such as sensing an old master or enemy nearby.)
• Telepathy: Force + MND against a static DC set by the GM to implant a message without speaking (and possibly across great distance).  The message is usually short and fairly simple, and comes with no compulsion to act on it.  Receptive minds may grant a circumstance bonus to the check (i.e., Luke trying to contact Leia so she can pick him up before he falls off the bottom of Cloud City) while resistant or unwilling minds may cause a penalty, at the GM's discretion.

Using the Force outside of combat is a simple skill check, and since you're outside of combat, the HP cost is usually irrelevant, and therefore not applied, although NOTE: this does not mean you can use the Force without consequence on something like Battlemind right before a combat starts. Don't try to be a rules-lawyer, the GM is the final say, and I can't imagine a GM that would think that's OK. Static DCs are meant to reflect d20 standard DCs, in which a DC of 15 is a reasonably "average" task; difficult and requiring some degree of expertise, but should not be beyond even the capabilities of most lower level characters. Anything in the single digits is almost not worth rolling (unless the consequences of failure are suitably dramatic) and anything around 25 or more is a fairly epic task that only higher level characters should feel confident that they can accomplish. For example, Luke pulling his lightsaber out of the snow when hung upside down in the wampa cave probably wasn't difficult (DC 5) whereas pulling his x-wing out of the swamp was probably at least a 25 or 30 DC task--which is why Luke failed and Yoda--a much ligher level Knight--did not.

Design notes:
At the bargain price of 4 HP per power use, Knights start out somewhat weak but become more powerful as levels progress. But, because I effectively cap the game at 10th level, the real runaway force prodigies, like Yoda or Sidious, may not really be recreatable without breaking the rules and going higher level, or perhaps giving them a unique Affinity to using the Force that reduces their HP cost from 4 to 2. I don't recommend that for player characters, unless you desire a campaign in which Knights are much more dominant.

Star Wars m20 rules, part I: Chargen

I'm actually working these out on my wiki, but I may move them, since my wiki isn't really Star Wars related.  In any case, I'll cross-post stuff here.  This is mostly taken from the draft 1 Star Wars rules on the Microlite website, but I have tinkered with it a bit, so it's not exactly the same.

The second draft of rules is more detailed than I wish--I actually think the first version got it closer to right.

Intro

This Star Wars variant uses m20, an extremely flexible and rules-light approach to the d20 engine of game design. It's more or less compatible with d20, i.e., if you really wanted to, you could use d20 material with m20, although the d20 material is very rules-heavy in comparison. My description of the rules assumes a passing familiarity with both the notion of roleplaying and the d20 system specifically, at least, so it leaves a few assumptions unstated. But the core conceit of m20 vs. d20 is that m20 favors a handwavey approach to the game rather than a rigorous one, one that favors rulings over rules, and one that favors a narrative, fast approach for those who enjoy the "collaborative storytelling" aspect of RPGs much more than the tactical gameplay (which is almost entirely eliminated.) The approach is to follow the d20 engine as much as possible, but taking out all kinds of detailed information in favor of collapsing back to a much simpler approach, and multipurposing existing mechanics into a much broader array of uses.

Star Wars Character Generation

Stats
Characters in Star Wars m20 have three stats, Strength (STR), Dexterity (DEX), and Mind (MND.) To generate stats, simply roll 4d6 three times. Drop the lowest die from each roll to get a "high 3d6" and apply the scores as desired to the three stats. The stats are in traditional D&D format, i.e. 3-18, but what really matters is not the score, but the bonus. Each stat bonus is equal to the stat's value minus 10, and then divided by 2; rounded down. First level hit points are equal to your STR score (not STR bonus.) Your AC is equal to 10 + your DEX bonus plus any armor, race or class bonus.

A more "heroic" swashbuckling approach would be to allow the players to roll four stats, at 4d6, and ignore the worst one. This gives two levels of insulation from bad rolls, and should increase the average stat considerably. If desired, instead of rolling, you can take the standard PC array of 16, 13, and 11, but this must be decided before stats are rolled, if so. In fact, in best practice, the GM would apply that concept to all characters rather than having some characters take the standard array and others roll. NOTE: This is the standard PC array, but it also applies to "heroic" NPCs or villains. Standard NPCs have a standard NPC array of 10, 10, 10.

Skills
Characters in Star Wars m20 have access to five skills--Communication, Physical, Subterfuge, Knowledge, and Use The Force (or simply Force.) The skill rank for every character is equal to your level plus any class or race bonuses. A skill check is made by rolling a d20 and adding both your skill rank and the stat bonus applicable (your GM will tell you if it isn't very obvious) against a DC set by the GM. Saving throws are treated as skill checks, i.e., a Fort save would be (usually) a STR + Physical, a Reflex save would be DEX + Physical, a Will save against a Force power would be MND + Force. The GM, again, will tell you what applies, but those are general guidelines. Slicing a computer, to give another example, would probably be MND + Knowledge.

Only Knights can use the Force in terms of actually using Force powers. But all characters have rankings in the skill anyway, if nothing else, to use in resisting certain Force powers (which, as in d20 opposed skill checks, require both characters to make a check against each other.)

All of the skills equate to a few skills on the standard d20 skill list, but they are "collapsed" into fewer skills. So, for example, Communication is equivalent to Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, etc. while Subterfuge can be used for such varied uses as Hide, Move Silently, Disguise, Forgery, etc. For the most part, it should be obvious which is the skills on this simplified list apply to any given situation, but as in all things, defer to the judgement of your GM.

Classes
There are four classes in Star Wars. All begin at level 1. There isn't really a mechanism to multiclass, so pick your concept, pick the class that best suits it, and run with it. Given how rules-lite the system is, each class is easily flexible enough to accomodate a lot of variety in concept anyway. I can't imagine ever playing a game that went higher than level 10, so for my purposes, it's an effective level cap for each class (and for the game itself.) As always, NPCs don't necessarily always follow these rules. Then again, it's not really my intention that PCs could ever really be Yoda or Palpatine equivalents, so they almost certainly break the rules by being higher level than PCs can be.

Each class provides a class ability and a skill modifier.

• Soldier: Soldiers get Combat Bonus and +3 to their Physical skill checks. The Combat Bonus is +1 to all attack and damage rolls. This increases by an additional +1 at level 4 and level 8.
• Scoundrel: Scoundrels get Sneak Attack and +3 to their Subterfuge skill checks. The Sneak Attack allows the Scoundrel to add their Subterfuge modifier to the damage roll against an unsuspecting foe. Usually this will require an opposed DEX + Subterfuge check first, and only applies to the first attack if it doesn't kill everyone involved in the combat right away.
• Expert: Experts get one Affinity and +3 to their Knowledge skill. An affinity is a broad area of expertise, and any task (subject to GM approval) that falls under the heading of this affinity can be re-rolled if it fails the first time. Affinities are as follows: Piloting, Medical, Nobility, Droids, Starship repair, Galactic geography, etc. These are merely samples; you can think of others if you like. Be sure and keep them broad, but not too broad--the examples above are good samples.
• Knight: Since Jedi are not the only Knights (see setting info) this class applies to any light-saber and Force using character type. Knights get Lightsaber training and +3 to their Force skill. Lightsaber training allows the Knight to use the Soldier's Combat Bonus ability, but only when using a lightsaber. It also allows them to add 1/2 of their character level to their AC if unarmored. In any round after being shot at with an energy weapon, the Knight can deflect a missed attack back at the attacker (treat as if the Knight made a ranged attack) but cannot take any other action (other than Move) that round. If the Knight also does not move and "fights defensively", he can also use this ability to add an additional +4 to his AC against blaster attacks only, increasing the number of attacks that he can deflect (since, of course, the higher AC should mean that more attacks will miss.)

Races
Pick a race for your character. Because in Star Wars, all races tend (mostly) to be just people in funny suits, any characteristic can apply to any race if desired (subject to GM approval.) But feel free to try and play your race to type, or at least to construct it to type. Picking a race is an a la carte option in m20 Star Wars. Rather than picking a race and applying preset bonuses, you can decide exactly what being a member of a given race means. The system for constructing race bonus is to use two Racial Template Points (RTP) and add them to your character at creation. One RTP is equal to:

• A +1 Stat bonus (requires taking twice to get a for sure +1 to the bonus, of course.) This could also include a +1 to AC as natural armor, even though AC isn't a "stat" per se.
• Two skill points (i.e., +2 to one skill of your choice, or +1 to two skill bonuses of your choice.)
• A special trait or ability (usually an affinity, as described above in Class. If a character has an affinity for both race and class, allow them to reroll twice! They clearly really want to be good in that area, and are spending character generation capital to do so at the expense of something else.)

Subject to GM approval, some races may give up the equivalent of a RTP to spend it somewhere else, but I wouldn't do much of this. Otherwise, however, players are strongly encouraged to play around with this race system to create the customized version of their character that they want.

That said, here are a few sample races that are considered "default."

• Human: +1 to all skills (except Force.)
• Cereans: +2 to MND
• Duros: +1 to DEX and Pilot affinity
• Gamorreans: +2 to STR
• Mon Calamari: +1 to MND and Swimming affinity (can swim with as much fanfare and skill as other characters can walk)
• Trandoshans: +1 to STR and +1 to natural AC
• Zabrak: +1 to DEX, +1 Physical and +1 Knowledge
• Wookie: +3 to STR, -1 to MND (NOTE: Uses the rule above that I recommended against doing much of. But a few exceptions is fine.)

Droids can also be created using the rules for RTP. Droids cannot be Knights, and have no Force skill ability. They do not recieve stat increases upon leveling as biological characters do, but in return are immune to mind-influencing powers and several physiological conditions which are problematic, if not fatal, to biological creatures (such as lack of atmosphere.) They never age or die as long as they are maintained. Here's a few sample droid types:

• Protocol droid: +4 Knowledge
• Combat droid: +1 to DEX and +2 to Physical
• Astromech: +2 Knowledge and Piloting affinity
• Super battle droid: +2 STR
• Keep in mind that droids seen in the movies are a combination of their racial traits and the equipment that they're built with, when creating NPC droid opponents. Super battle droids would have heavy armor, while regular battle droids would not, but that's a case of their built in equipment, not their racial stats. PC droids should be allowed similar flexibility (as can PCs of other races, of course. Equipment is an important part of modifing stats in any d20-like game.)

Droids must make a Fort (or Reflex in the case of an area effect, such as a grenade) when hit with an Ion attack. If they fail, they will be shut down. To reactivate a droid, they usually just need to be switched back on. A damaged droid with access to a repair kit (and in some cases, someone else to make the repairs, but usually they can do it themselves) heals like a normal character. Another character using a repair kit treats it as if it were a medical kit on a biological character.

Level Advancement
In general, characters advance when the GM says that they do, rather than against some formula of antagonists defeated. I expect in normal play to treat advancement as happening once every 4-5 sessions, but that can be speeded up or slowed down to taste and depending on the desired length and scope of the campaign overall. As I mentioned earlier, I do not anticipate ever having a campaign go higher than 10th level, so it becomes an effective level cap on the game and on characters.

Every time a character levels, he gains the following advantages.

• +1d6 to Hit Points (feel free to roll twice and take the better result. Getting a crocked hit point roll really sucks.)
• +1 to all attack rolls
• +1 to all skills
• On levels divisible by three (3, 6, and 9) add one point to STR, DEX or MND (except for droid characters.)
• Remember that soldiers gain an additional +1 to attack and damage at level 4 and 8.

Star Wars m20?

My Star Wars game, that I'm a player in, not GM, continues apace.  We played again this weekend, and after two sessions, have mostly "recovered the game" from our disastrous side trip to the Shining Market (which I personally don't think was disastrous at all--in fact, if anything, it was quite profitable and certainly very fun.  But I've always had a hard time with conforming too closely with pre-written campaigns anyway.  I never run them, but sadly, I seem destined to always play in them, since the GMs who run in my group all run that way.)

The announcement of Star Wars Rebels about a week or so ago, the new animated show that will premier on DisneyXD in 2014 and replace the excellent Clone Wars show on Cartoon Network, which I guess is actually now complete, and only awaiting the release of the 5th and final season on DVD to be nicely wrapped up, partly fuels my renewed interest in the franchise.  Clone Wars was one of a two-pronged approach that I'm fond of telling my fellow Star Wars fans was responsible for rehabilitating the franchise after the prequels so nihilisticly damaged them.  Clone Wars wasn't always excellent--among the main characters we have a number who are frequently quite annoying and whiny--Ahsoka is difficult to like for at least the entire first season, if not further on, for example.  And while Annakin isn't the terrible black hole of soul and charisma that he manages to be in the prequels, he's not my favorite character by a long-shot either.  But it's still a good show, contributes meaningfully to the canon while also being very enjoyable to watch, and managing to feel like Star Wars much more so than the prequels ever did.

The other prong of that rehabilitation (as well as being a prong in my renewed interest) is The Old Republic, series of games by BioWare (although one of the three games in this series is actually by Obsidian.)  I hadn't played too much of the actual Old Republic game, because I'm not much of a fan of its format as an MMO, but it's an odd MMO that plays more like the RPGs that preceded it in the series, I believe.  I've had a new graphics card for months ready to install, with the express purpose of making playing this game easier, but I haven't (still) gotten around to it.  That hasn't stopped me from starting the game back up again anyway; being a full (mostly) game in free-to-play format has made that easier than ever.  Long live the Empire!  My newish bounty hunter character has been fun, although I'm playing him mostly like a "light side" bounty hunter rather than a dark one, making him more like a Han Solo-ish scoundrel than anything else.

Between the two of those, and my kids' own interest in what I do on D&D night, which was piqued considerably more by my telling them that it's actually Star Wars, at least for now, I'm thinking of deferring my m20 DARK•HERITAGE test in favor of an m20 Star Wars test.  Luckily for me, there are already two drafts of an m20 document; a draft 1, and a draft 2 which adds more detail and more options.  Curiously, I'm interested in paring them down to a draft 3 which is even more lightweight than either.  Plus, I've been tinkering with my own take on Star Wars, a kind of "revisionist Star Wars" if you will, a la the concept of Revisionist Westerns.  Curiously, the prequels and much of the other more recent material in Star Wars is already fairly revisionist, although sadly, I don't know that it's necessarily deliberate.  My own setting conceits aren't exactly apologists for the bad guys, but they are a bit more sympathetic to them, as well as critical of both the Republic, the Rebels, and the Jedi in particular.  This is based entirely on canonical material mostly within just the movies themselves, supplemented a bit by material from the Clone Wars.  And, like the Legacy comic book (sadly for me, I had a similar idea long before they did, but then they went and published, making me look like the copycat.  Oh, well.) I moved it far enough into the future that I can feel free to do what I want to with the setting; an idea that I originally got after playing Knights of the Old Republic (which went backwards in time to do the same thing.)  Because Legacy did what I wanted to so well, in many ways, I specifically borrowed some ideas from it; the Roan Fel Empire as an evolved descendant of the Imperial Remnant, with its systematized Imperial Knights as rivals to the Jedi, is directly reflected in my Monarchy, for instance.

So, for the next little bit, in addition to my regular DARK•HERITAGE updates, as well as my updates on various other topics that I can't help but throw out here, off topic as they may be, I'll also continue the m20 series, focusing on my adaptation of the system to Star Wars, and some more noodling around with the setting as it will be in my game. 

For those who care about this sort of thing, my approach to canon is also perhaps less than rigorous.  Or, more accurately, I try to be rigorous in terms of following what I allow, but what I allow is considerably less expansive than the entire Expanded Universe, much of which I'm explicitly ignoring.  I consider canon to be the six movies, and the Clone Wars cartoon show (which, technically, includes the 7th movie, since the pilot was expanded into a full-length feature film and had a theatrical release.)  I also consider the Old Republic material (including Knights as canonical, or mostly so, although of a "junior tier" to the movies and tv show.  Any inconsistencies are chalked up to the Old Republic era being so long ago that some of the details have been lost or confused.

In reality, this isn't a big deal, though--I'm setting my Revisionist Star Wars 1,000 years after the Battle of Endor.  The actual events that led to the Jedi Purge, the otherthrow of the Old Republic, the actions of the Chosen One to bring balance to the Force, and his son Luke's re-establishing of the Jedi Order (albeit under somewhat different guidelines and principles) are all nearly legendary now.  This gives me the power to ignore anything I don't like without having to explicitly disallow it: I just claim that things have changed in the intervening 1,000 years.

Despite the fact that my Star Wars is billed as revisionist and somewhat more critical of the "good guys" and somewhat sympathetic to the "bad guys"--in reality, all that is mostly to justified all of their continued existance for all this time.  It's certainly not my intention that Revisionist Star Wars no longer feel like Star Wars, but like some kind of "anti-Star Wars".  Although I will point out, like I said, that the demythologizing of the Jedi as nearly infallible fonts of wisdom and goodness was substantially done (albeit probably mostly unintentionally) by the prequels already, so I'm not exactly going way out on a limb here after all.

Also--one thing I realized about playing Old Republic is that I really like the non-Force using classes.  Some of the source material (prequels and Clone Wars in particular) made such a big deal out of the Jedi, that they seemed to be the real movers and shakers in the galaxy, while everyone else had to play second fiddle.  I didn't get that vibe nearly as much from the original trilogy.  It is absolutely my intention that a highly capable bounty hunter or gunfighter--a Cad Bane, or Boba Fett equivalent, for example, would be completely capable of going toe-to-toe with a Jedi or Sith and expecting that they could win.  I'm not going to fall into the trap that Lucas more and more fell into of making his villains too cartoonishly incompetent.  That leads to stupid things like Obiwan thinking that it's a good plan to just jump out in the middle of a meeting of all the bad guys and saying, "Well, hello there!" and that actually being a good, workable plan because his antagonists are so incredibly stupid and bumbling, and he's so incredibly cool.  This is, of course, only good game design to make all classes potentially equal, but it stands more and more at odds (at times) with the source material, so it needs to be explicitly mentioned, I think.

P is for the Primogenitor Vampires

I wrote this on my wiki some time ago.  It's a good starting point.

Primogenitors are truly monstrous vampires, creatures who have no humanity left in them at all. Primogenitors don't really feature in the campaign, and nobody has seen one in centuries, at least not that they've reported. The Primogenitors are the remnants of the once noble defenders who came to fight the Fallen One and contain him, and were in turn poisoned and corrupted by him. They are said to be literally the first vampires in the world.

Because of their great age, their appearance and power is completely beyond the ken of the otherwise oldest vampires in Tarush Noptii. However, for whatever reason, the Primogenitors remain in the catacombs deep beneath the city. Whether they slumber, or whether they prowl them for the unluckly lost soul who may occasionally wander his way there is unknown, but for mysterious reasons, no Primogenitor has surfaced for many hundreds of years.

According to legend there were twenty Primogenitors, and the various vampire houses are all "descendents" of one of these monsters. It is unknown if there still exist twenty Primogenitors under the city.

A few additional facts about these bad boys:

• Tarush, the Fallen One himself, is the god of the Primogenitors, but they don't worship him; they fear him and plot against him.  In the great ritual that sealed Tarush beneath the city, they found themselves trapped with him, sealed magically and only on very occasional instances able to communicate with the world outside of the catacombs beneath the city.
• There are persistent rumors amongst some of the nobility of Tarush Noptii that the seals are rotting, or failing, or otherwise in danger of no longer keeping Tarush and the Primogenitors sealed.  This is dismissed as persistent paranoia by most, but the rumors remain alive nonetheless.

• It is unclear how exactly the Primogenitors were formed from the Knight Magi heroes who went to seal Tarush in the first place.  It is also unclear how they were able to transfer the curse of vampirism to others in the Tarush Noptii area, but it leads to troubling speculation that the seals are not as absolute as they appear.
• The following are the names of the known Primogenitors: Vyrko, Dracul, Strix, Ubyr, Vetala, Nosferatu, Rusalka and Orlok.  This is obviously not even half of the twenty Primogenitors.  Some of them spawned vampire Houses which no longer exist, the rest are forgotten, but not gone.
• The fact above that the Primogenitors are literally the first vampires may be, actually a "factoid" instead of a fact--a comforting lie spread by vampires that have no connection whatsoever with Tarush, the Primogenitors, or their descendents who rule Tarush Noptii.  Vampire really refers to any type of cannibalistic parasitism in which feeding on the blood, flesh, life-force or soul of other people is used to unnaturally prolong the life of the feeder.  According to the Nine Books of Sotetseg, an Apocryphal work banned in most civilized areas but highly sought after by researchers into the forbidden occult, Tarush himself may have been the first vampire.  Many of his disciples were formed; some were slain by either mortal heroes, or in their internecine wars between each other, but the Primogenitors are something special and unique--accidentally occuring vampires when the Knight Magi were tragically corrupted by Tarush's blasphemous touch even as they heroically sealed him away forever.
• The Primogenitors are almost certainly insane in at least some ways, driven mad by centuries of isolation with only the horror of their cursed condition to keep them company.

Paizo and Yog-Sothothery—again

One of the things I've enjoyed about Paizo is their willingness to engage in blatant Yog-Sothothery in the same sense that Lovecraft himself imagined the term.  Their latest announcement, of a Bestiary 4 which will have a number of "high level" threats, including Cthulhu himself, is fairly recent.  I actually caught wind of it after seeing the cover art uploaded on Wayne Reynolds' facebook page.  So here it is.  Fun stuff.

Of course, the Pathfinder game itself is kinda going the exact opposite direction as me; where I like the d20 engine at its core, I want to simplify and streamline it, and make it more friendly to my preferred playstyle, which is more narrative and friendly to GM rulings and handwaveyness of sorts in regards to system, whereas Pathfinder has gotten even more enshrouded in ever more esoteric and Byzantine codification and calcification.  The Pathfinder developers (and customers, apparently) also like the d20 engine at its core, but they want it to be more complex and "complete"--more... Rolemaster, if you will.

That said, I've bought ever single Paizo Bestiary so far, and I'm sure I will this one too.  Typically, the pdfs sell for only about $10, and for that price, it's more than worth it for the art and fluff text alone, even if I completely ignore the stats. 

Which I don't have to do, because Pathfinder stats are still inherently compatible enough with d20 stats (and presumably my m20 stats) that I can use them without any real effort at conversion.

Also; those nosferatu vampires (publisher blurb seems to identify them) seem conceptually not unlike my Primogenitor vampires, who will be the topic of my next A TO Z post, when I get to it (with any luck, this weekend) which is serendipitously fortunate.  I'm still looking for a great image for them that really does what I want it to, though that I can attach to that post.

m20 conclusions

Well, other than spell lists and monsters, my little m20 ruleset is complete, believe it or not.  That's, of course, the beauty of m20--it's fully compatible with the SRD, yet almost outrageously simplified in comparison.  The only thing left to do now is to playtest it a bit and see how it works.

I'm a little bit hesitant to playtest with my regular group, as they're veterans of d20 play, and will just be mentally filling in the gaps all the time rather than really playing m20 with the "lite" approach that it begs, but my kids, who keep asking me about my "D&D night" (we still say that for simplicity sake, even though we're playing Star Wars currently) and have had a few good experiences with my running things for them here and there, might be a good group to trial it with first.  Their lack of experience will show how robustly it works, and point out where I've got holes that might need filling to get the experience I want, which is fast and loose, handwavey "rulings" favored play, but with a system that feels familiar enough to me, as a d20 veteran, that I don't have to wonder about rules questions, or how the game "should" be played, because it's either expressly not addressed and left in the GM's hands, or because it is specifically and clearly called out in the text of the m20 rules variant.

And while I enjoy the adult interactions and ability to focus on adult themes that is inherent in playing with guys my age, playing with my kids should be a rewarding enterprise in its own right too, as well as a good trial of what--if anything--my brusque restructuring of the m20 conceits need to be re-addressed.  So, in the meantime, I'm ready to let the m20 tag go a little fallow until after I've had time to playtest a bit, after which point I'll give an update and conclusions.

Dark•Heritage m20, cont.

Heroism Points

Heroism points represent a character’s determination and their importance to the plans of the gods or the forces of fate (i.e., the game and the GM.) A character has a number of Heroism points equal to his or her level x 2 (or simply equal to level, for a less heroic game). Heroism points can be used to add to any attack, damage or stat + skill roll at a rate of +1 per 1 Heroism point spent. You can only spend up to your level in Heroism points on one single roll (for example, a level 10 character can only spend up to 10 Heroism points, for a +10 bonus).

Heroism points do not need to be spent all at once, but when they are completely spent, they are gone for the rest of game session. A character’s Heroism points are restored to their starting amount at the beginning of a game session. Alternately, the game master may restore 1 or more Heroism points on a die roll of 20 and/or if the character does something especially entertaining (funny, exciting, or appropriate to the character’s personality).

Magic

Magi can cast any arcane spell with aspell level equal or below 1/2 their class level, rounded up. They have access to all arcane spells in the SRD spell list. Casting a spell of any kind costs Hit Points. The cost is 1 + double the level of the spell being cast:

This loss cannot be healed normally but is recovered after 8 hours rest. There is no need to memorize spells in advance. Just because a character can cast any spell, doesn’t mean that they should. Choose spells that suit the character. Select one "signature" spell per spell level from 1st upward that they prefer to use over any other. These spells are easier to cast due to familiarity, costing 1 less HP to use.

The Difficulty Class (DC) for all spells is 10 + Caster Level + Caster's MIND bonus

Combat

Hit Points = STR Stat + 1d6/Level. If HP reach 0, unconscious and near death. Further damage directly reduces STR. If that reaches 0, death.

Roll d20 + DEX bonus for initiative order. On a combat turn, a character can take TWO actions, usually [1] move and [2] move again, make an attack, cast a spell, attempt another activity (requiring a stat + skill check), etc. Movement of 5 feet or less, drawing a weapon, speaking or similar activities are “free” and do not count as an action.

Melee attack bonus = STR bonus + Level
Missile attack bonus = DEX bonus + Level
Magic attack bonus = MIND bonus + Level

Add attack bonus to d20 roll. If higher than your opponent's Armour Class (AC), it’s a hit. Natural 20 is automatically a critical doing maximum damage.

Fighters and Rogues can use DEX bonus + Level as Melee attack bonus instead if wielding a light weapon. Fighters and Rogues can wield 2 light weapons and attack with both in a round if they take a -2 penalty on all attack rolls that round.
If the total bonus is +6 or more you gain the effects of the Spring Attack feat, i.e., you can split your movement on either side of an attack option.

Add STR bonus to Melee damage, x2 for 2-handed weapons.
Armour Class (AC) = 10 + DEX bonus + Armour bonus.

Other Hazards

Falling : 1d6 damage per 10', half damage on Phys+DEX save. DC=depth fallen in feet
Spikes : add +1 point to falling damage per 10' fallen, max +10
Poison : Phys+STR save to avoid or for half, depending on poison.
Effect varies with poison type.
Extreme Heat & Cold : If not wearing suitable protection, Phys+STR save once every 10 minutes (DC 15, +1 per previous check), taking 1d6 damage on each failed save.

Level Advancement

Leveling up comes at the GM's discretion, based on the pace that he wants the game to have.  Personally, I prefer a pace of about 1 level for every 10 play sessions.
Each level adds:
+1d6 to Hit Points
+1 to all attack rolls
+1 to all skills

If the level divides by three (i.e. level 3,6,9,etc.) add 1 point toSTR, DEX or MIND.

Fighters gain +1 to their attack and damage rolls at levels 5,10,15,etc.

Magi gain access to new spell levels at levels 3,5,7,9,etc.

m20 D•H does not really support or encourage play above 9th or 10th level at the most.

O is for Outsiders

I was looking at my list of A TO Z topics and realized that the topic I had in mind for S is one that I've already written about.  Rather than change the topic and create more work for myself, I relabled the post I already had.  Of course, this meant that I now have S done, almost immediately on the heels of N, and clearly out of order.  While this isn't exactly a problem per se, it is motivating me to get caught up to S more quickly because I don't love that situation.  So, hot on the heels of writting N and changing an existing post to be S, I figured I better throw out O, which is for Outsiders.

One of the things that I like about D&D is the presence of a wide assortment of interesting Outsiders.  Many of them are esoteric, but for the most part, they draw on the rich cultural heritage of Europe and the middle-east--demons, angels, genies and more.  And D&D itself has done some really interesting things with a lot of them; even when they're taking names from mythology or esoteric eschatology.  How can you not love the D&D lore around iconic demon lords like Orcus or Demogorgon, neither of whom is a D&D creation, but both of whom are known almost exclusively from their D&D lore rather than from the paucity of actual information from mythology or literature.

In D&D itself, the nature of Outsiders is strongly informed by their concept of alignment.  This is even further detailed in the 3.5 version of the rules, which split out Celestials into three types--each corresponding to one of the varieties of "good" that D&D allows.  But what happened in 3.5 was a minor shift towards furthering what was already part of the way things worked in D&D.  It was just more obvious with the "evil" outsiders previously--indeed, from the early monster manuals.

So, although I quite like the idea of Outsiders, and want to have them in the DARK•HERITAGE setting, some thought needs to be given to how they work in a setting that doesn't have alignment, and doesn't really have a regular pantheon, including friendly or helpful gods at all.  In fact, I've said before (somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but somewhat not) that in DARK•HERITAGE the only real difference between angels and demons is that angels are better looking and have better PR.  My vision of Outsiders heavily favors some D&D paradigms, but also equally favors a Lovecraftian intepretation of outsiders, particularly demons and other nasties--who, in true Lovecraftian fashion might actually be Insiders, at least in the sense that while they aren't "native", they could be stuck here, sleeping in sunken cities on the sea-floor a la Cthulhu or Dagon, or something.  Add to that borrowings from implications in The Black Company of gods all being insanely powerful and paranoid (and just insane) sorcerers who managed to claw their way up the divinity ladder, and from The Deepgate Codex of Heaven being shut and all gods, angels and anything else being at best Fallen angels or whatever, and you've got a general idea of where Outsiders fit into DARK•HERITAGE, and it's--well, unsurprisingly, it's a dark kinda paradigm.  tvtropes.com calls that paradigm a "crapsack world" and it applies a fair bit, given that I consider DARK•HERITAGE a Lovecraftian fantasy, and use the subgenre tag coined by Shane Magnus--SWORD & SANITY--to describe it.

How is that consistent and how does that all make sense, you may ask?  How can Outsiders be a combination of D&D (which is largely esoteric Judeo-Christian Apocrypha in its roots), Lovecraftian, the Ten Who Were Taken, and Fallen angels all at once?  Well, you're right.  It doesn't necessarily make sense.  The setting doesn't, because like the real world, it's too complex to be understood by any given mind.  It's too complex to be understood by humanity in general--the famous quote by Lovecraft from "The Call of Cthulhu" about man not being able to comprehend reality as it really is and maintain his sanity applies to DARK•HERITAGE quite well.  As with Yog-Sothothery, a lot of these elements are also better viewed as plot devices rather than a systemic description of cosmology anyway.

But this may help.  A metaphysical conceit of the setting, which I've never really described on this blog before, but which underwrites a lot of it, is that it's really more science fiction in a way than fantasy (believe it or not.)  The presence of magic and monsters and whatnot is attributable to elements of brane cosmology, which is an esoteric theory (really not even developed far enough to be considered more than a hypothesis or mathematical model) from particle physics.  How does it apply to DARK•HERITAGE?  Simply that the setting is on a brane (as is the observable universe we live in) and sorcery comes from outside the brane--either from another brane, or the environment of the bulk itself (read the wiki article for more details.  Brane is short for "membrane" which is a simplified representation of the entire universe being a sheet, or membrane, suspended in a "bulk", stacked possibly next to other branes.  Occasionally the branes brush against each other, causing things like the Big Bang and whatnot to happen.  They also can be "leaks" for power--explaining why gravity is so much weaker than the Strong force or the Weak force in particle physics, for instance.  Or, according to some models, dark energy has as its source motions and actions taken outside the brane.  The tentative "discovery" of the Higgs-boson particle may make all this more unlikely, in which case I'm either at odds with current science, or I revert to this being more exactly fantasy and don't care.)

If "magic" is really the manipulation of dark energy, which comes from Outside the known universe; either from another universe "adjacent" to this one, or from the spaces between the universes (a very Lovecraftian notion if ever there was one) then Outsiders can be inhabitants of other universes.  Or they can be inhabitants of our universe corrupted by forces from outside the universe.  Or, then can be strange and inexplicable beings or sentiences that float in the spaces between universes.  Or, they could be all of them, depending on the specific Outsider in question.

And that approach, without bothering to necessarily claim for each individual what it is, gives me room to wiggle and slip anything I want or need into the setting, while maintaining its essential SWORD & SANITY nature quite well, thankyouverymuch.

Star Wars Rebels

http://starwars.com/news/new-animated-series-star-wars-rebels-coming-fall-2014.html
BAM! The series that will replace the Clone Wars.  It looks like the status of Clone Wars is a bit uncertain.  The fifth season finished broadcasting recently, and will come out on DVD presumably this October (as all the prior series have done.)  Dave Filoni has made several cryptic remarks about additional Clone Wars stuff he wants to do, or that is in development, etc. but I've got to think it unlikely that it will come out now.  If it's relatively small, maybe the rest of the material will be bonus content on the Season 5 DVDs or something.