Another throw away plot.

You all might remember that I gave away a good plot a few months back - well, at least I thought it was a good plot. You can read that here.

Well, I have another one for you. My Star Wars group is talking about switching to the new Saga rules for the Star Wars RPG. Might be cool. We're still talking. I won't have to buy any books as I got my books for Xmas.

See, a friend of mine got a discounted core rulebook, got excited and wanted to play. As you can tell from my entry there in November, I was hot to play anything. So, I told the guy, I'll run anything you want after Xmas - I'll put the books on my list with high priority. My wife feels pretty safe buying me gaming books - especially if I point them out on Amazon. Cool. He wants to play something before the movies, something like Knights of the Old Republic and he wanted to play a Wookie Jedi.

Oh! Was I ever hip to that?! I dove into Wookiepedia head first! Before I knew it, I had floods of great ideas.

I told him to build a first level Wookie, best to be a Fringer type or a Scoundrel. (I hear the classes are different now, I didn't know that then.) But, I didn't want him to actually be a Jedi yet, just be Force Sensitive. And that's all I told him, other than the fact that I was setting the game before KotOR.

Matter of fact, I intended to set it WAY before KotOR! Something like 20,000 years before KotOR!

My thought was this: a Rakatan ship carrying wookie slaves crash landed on a planet in the middle of no-where. The ship was never found. The wookies freed themselves, and the Rakatan technology got loose and did to this planet what it did to Kashyyyk; namely, terraformed it.

A few thousand years later, the wooks were happy, healthy and unaware that their planet lay between Hutt space and Xim the Despot's empire. Xim and the Hutts fought a terrible war - and I thought it would be fun the make this poor little wookie planet one of the battle fields. I could just see Xim's giant battle droids taking on Klatoonian soldiers and Hutt droid tanks! All the while the PC would be in the middle, trying to save his home world. How epic is that?

I figured I would give the PC a phrik Rakatan sword. Sure, it pulsed with the Dark Side, but if the PC pumped enough Light Side energy into it, the weapon would change and become as good as a light saber in many ways, maybe even better. I thought I might get a Force ghost to act as the PC's mentor on the ways of the Jedi and the Force. I also figured there might be a Rakatan Star Map lying around that would point the PC to a non-hyperdrive fighter, like, oh, this one!

In the end, the guy in question was just too busy. He never even finished making his character. Too bad - I think this could have been a fun game. As before, it's yours to use - enjoy!

Bought a PSP

As my long time readers are aware, I have been looking at console games recently. If you aren't aware but want to be, read this post.

In that post I talked mostly about buying a a Nintendo Wii. The Wii is still a rare system, Nintendo is having a lot of trouble keeping up with demand. I guess that's good for them.

I was recently at a friend's house and was shown a copy of Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron, which is only available on the Sony PSP. I really hadn't seen much on the PSP. I'll admit that consoles are new to me, except for my venerable GBA SP. The PSP was quite light, bright and impressive for such a small device.

A couple of days ago I tripped over a "new" game: Warhammer 40k: Squad Command. Well ... I thought it was new. The videos of it out on YouTube had me under the impression that it wasn't even released in the States yet. It pays to look at the date a video was published on YouTube and to do a little further research. Turns out the game was released here last fall. It can now be had for $20. I've long been in love with the Warhammer 40k universe and the video games released for it have often been quite good.

So, between these two games, I was drooling!

I talked with the wife. I still hadn't bought a console and have been talking about it since Xmas. We went out and bought me a PSP last night.

I've been having fun with it. One of the things I love is that the games are cheap to begin with. The newest games aren't $60, they're $40. Plus, there is a whole line of "Greatest Hits" games that are $15 to $20 bucks! Last night I didn't buy SWB:RS, it's $40. I did buy Star Wars Battlefront II and Grand Theft Auto Vice City Stories. Those two games cost me less than the one Star Wars game. I haven't played either of these games, so it's all new fun territory for me.

I do plan to follow up these purchases with the Warhammer 40k game and with Dungeons & Dragons Tactics - also $20 bucks!