Star Wars in a Bottle

"Star Wars, as a brand, is dead."

So the YouTubers say. But what I have here, on my shelf, is "Star Wars in a bottle" before the time of the sequels, before the marketing team got their hands on it, before they tried to change the meaning of the story, and before they tried to make the "franchise appeal to a new generation."

The Star Wars RPG is the last tool we have for telling stories in the Expanded Universe (EU). I am happy to have completed my collection of this series, but I hope to see it continue as is and be supported for the long term. I don't want to see this game replaced. As long as Edge Studio can sell this game, my support of Star Wars will remain strong, and I will always give new stuff a chance.

If the license for this game is ever pulled, yeah, Star Wars is dead, since the part of it I love will go away. Time to start mourning it and getting on with an OGL-like replacement for it all. But that is my mental math here, this game stays in print, and I will give new stuff a chance. As long as they can give fans something we want and support the things we love, we will always listen to their new ideas.

It is a fair trade.

I have this one book on my shelf that eliminates most of the EU characters, erases the comics from history, presents Star Wars in a "prequel and TV show light," and worst of all, makes all the classic characters look like old people. The main characters are all pictures of the older actors playing the sequel versions of their characters, with only a few small thumbnails of them in their prime. Some of the pictures are nice, and the presentation was well done, but this is way, way, way too much of the current stuff for my tastes.

It is clear what is happening here: the new characters are being presented as "young and the future," and the older characters as "old and in the past." It is a transparent, marketing-driven, and dishonest guide that presents itself as "everything" but shows only "the current corporate thing." Yes, honor the actors with current photos of them, and show them as they are, but let's be balanced and show them in their prime, too, as we remembered them.

If I were running a current-day, sequel-trilogy universe, which sounds painful, this would be my reference guide. You know, if I were to play in the current day, my adventure prep would be so easy since I wouldn't need published adventures, and I would just make everything up as I go along.

There is also way, way, way too much focus on the Clone Wars animated show, as if Star Wars is now someone's Clone Wars fan-fic cinematic franchise. I am sorry, the Clone Wars was a great show and a terrible movie. Very few people have seen all of it. A percentage of Star Wars fans know who any of these characters are. Why is there so much focus here?

They are losing fans daily.

So I guess my game can pull in random Clone Wars characters, and I, as the referee, will act astonished and shocked when the players don't know them, and punish their ignorance in-game. It sounds like a terrible way to play a game, but that feels like how the movies are going these days.

And I have a better Star Wars Encyclopedia set, released before any of this came to pass, and it treats Legends as canon. It has video games and comics. It shows the characters in their primes. It gives me a balanced look at all eras and stories. If you want a definitive source, pick this up before it's gone.

But I have Star Wars in a bottle, and even if you don't collect the books, and just have the three core books for this game, which you can still get, you can have it, too. The question becomes, with all the negativity around the new movies, can we still enjoy Star Wars as a medium for telling stories in the classic universe?

Yes, but it diminishes over time. Like the Jedi, those who remember those old days and ancient arts are fading, and every year we lose another piece. As someone who still remembers, I cherish those times and share my feelings of a better age, one in the past when the magic was real, and we weren't so wounded by corporatization and marketing-driven drivel.

I feel we can still tell classic stories and share them. After all, isn't that what the current owners are doing? Remixing Clone Wars trivia with the classic timeline and pulling characters randomly out of the EU without giving them context or meaning, just to say "nah-nah, we own them" and use them as a veneer of nostalgia without needing to put in the real effort to build new characters.

This is what they do with Thrawn and all the other EU characters they resurrect as corporate zombies, inserting them into the new timeline for no reason. It shows a disrespect for the people who bought into the EU, the creators of those stories, and the memories we had. This is the worst of corporate skinwalking, a blatant exploitation of our nostalgia and childhood dreams, stealing without putting any effort into creating.

When they steal Thrawn, and Mara Jade will be next, it shows a hatred for the fans, not a love for the source material. While I will give them a chance, I have strong feelings here. It is like remaking The Lord of the Rings, pulling characters out at random and using them in novel ways, unconnected to the original source material. If they created new characters, stories, and enemies, I would be more inclined to give them a chance.

But these are the feelings I need to "get over" to put myself in a state of love and creativity, especially when I tell classic stories. I have to pry myself away from the latest coverage of the new films, as some YouTube disaster coverage, wall-to-wall until the algorithm gives out, and block all that out of my mind to enjoy my stories, my characters, in a classic suniverse - one that I still hold fond memories of.

It is a fight between hate and love.

You have it on one side with the corporate creators, and their frustration trying to get this "franchise" to "connect." They blame the fans, and the fans flock to the anger channels to vent.

And I fight this fight myself with the negativity I feel towards all of Star Wars, and then sandboxing the parts I love about it, and playing in this wonderful space where great times were once shared, and can still exist as long as my walls are thick, and reach high into the sky to block out the constant attack of hateful forces. Some of the hate is rightly justified, but I still need to keep it out of my creative space.

But, as we know in life, things can't always live in a bottle.

They need to live and breathe.

I watched the Michael movie last night, and I understand the struggle between trying to put hate aside, enter that transcendent state of creativity, and letting the good feelings I have flow into my work and hobbies. There was one OSR YouTuber I watched recently who complained at his chat for wanting negativity, and he said, "I want to get over all that. I am done complaining about this or that. Why are we wasting our precious time on negativity? I just want to be a fan again and have fun!"

That is how I feel about Star Wars and 5E these days.

Give me a version of the Star Wars lore, a universe I can love over here in isolation, and I will be happy.

Give me a version of 5E that speaks to me, that I can be a fan of, that I can create worlds in over here all by myself, and I will be happy.

I am done with the negativity.

I just want to be a fan again and have fun.

But I am not blind and stupid. This is not a free pass for creators to hand me garbage. They need to work a little harder.

But I want to be a fan again.

Renegade Games: Hasbro IP Goes 5.5E

https://renegadegamestudios.com/blog/june-2026-renegade-reveal-stream-recap-/

So, the Transformers, GI JOE, and Power Rangers RPGs are moving to the D&D 5.5E engine?

Interesting, and a smart move, since I never had time for the GI JOE game, nor the need to learn a new system. I am interested, and the more they make this directly D&D 5.5E compatible, the more interested I am. If they make this their own game, with their own systems, math-compatible but not class-compatible, then I am less interested. If Snake Eyes can take a level of wizard, then I am very interested.

Local Play? Mostly All D&D 2024?

I checked my local hobby store's game schedules, and they are nearly 80% D&D 2024. If you want to play in person at a hobby store, you will be playing D&D 2024. I don't blame hobby shop owners; they want more people through the door, and niche games are harder to arrange and support.

This store is pretty typical of the ones around here, 90% D&D 2024, with a few niche games, such as Daggerheart on Saturdays, and a monthly Star Wars campaign. We have some regular 2014 games and generic "5E" sessions in here as well, along with a handful of 3.5E games. The lack of Traveller, Call of Cthulhu, Draw Steel, Pathfinder, and a few other games surprises me. Also, Daggerheart having a regular weekend game is nice, but D&D 2024 is still crushing that game in live play every evening.

Most evenings, you have two or three D&D 2024 games.

Different stores, though, support different games. This one is more of a WotC store.

It is all about creating public events with broad appeal, since only a fraction of the gaming population will make time to play in person. The fall-off in D&D 2014 support also surprises me, given how vocal D&D YouTube is about "people sticking with D&D 2014" - I am betting there is a "reality distortion field" happening in D&D YouTube versus actual, in-store play. Some of those D&D YouTubers need to visit an actual hobby store and "touch dice" to get back in touch with the reality of what is happening in live play.

More people are playing D&D 2024 than they say, or even what D&D Beyond is reporting. That often-quoted "15% of created characters are for D&D 2024 on D&D Beyond" number seems pretty insane when I look at the above game schedule for live play. Also, you need to take into account that this is 10 years of character creation for 2014, versus a few years for D&D 2024.

Yes, my played games calendar is a very limited data point, since I am not looking at the schedules of thousands of hobby stores. But now I am wondering if the narrative on YouTube matches reality.

If every night of the week at a major metropolitan hobby store has two or even three D&D 2024 games going on, are you sure those D&D Beyond numbers of 15% are right? With this data, I am wondering whether more people play D&D 2024 in hobby stores, face-to-face, than on D&D Beyond.

Are you sure you want to go through with that digital-first strategy, Wizards? Is the whole VTT thing fading, and are people going back to traditional, in-person play? Wouldn't you want to double down on hobby stores and in-person play? I am beginning to wonder if a digital-first strategy is a disaster-ending one.

If I ran Wizards, I would hire a data expert and figure out where the game is being played. Then, I would go there, and that is where we would invest our resources. Hundreds of millions of dollars wasted on a VTT could have been invested in live-play programs, yielding a far, far, far better result. I am beginning to wonder whether the soft landing for D&D 2024 at launch was due to a lack of resources to support live-play programs.

The ground game matters.

But like D&D 5 itself, things are picking up a few years in.

This hobby-store data is also about curating an "audience" in these stores who will play one game, show up, and buy the overpriced drinks and snacks. Supporting fewer games builds the population of people who will show up every week. They do what they gotta do, and I don't blame them.

You follow the audience.

Also, if I am running a game? Yeah, I want people to be at my table, and I want the most people to choose from. D&D 2024 all the way, standardize on what 90% of the people play, and not waste a trip to the store for nobody to show. Even though I like other 5E variations, I can play D&D 2024 if that is what others are playing.

Two or three D&D 2024 games per night? Do I want a game? Do I want overflow players? Yes to all of the above. If you are in this crowd and find a good store and group, why wouldn't you jump in? The pool is hopping, jump in!

While I may prefer a more niche version of the game, such as Level Up A5E or Tales of the Valiant, I can play D&D 2024 if need be. 95% of it is the same game. It is not that big of a jump, as say, from Daggerheart or Draw Steel. Also, I suspect many of these are hybrid games that use 2024 books, but pull in popular house rules from 2014.

Online is a different universe, where any game can be played at any time, and you can usually find (or set up) a game with whatever version you want. One limitation is game support on your VTT of choice; if you are on Roll20, you don't have full support for Tales of the Valiant or Level Up A5E, as the platform is 90% D&D 2014 and 2024, plus other games with official support. Foundry is a different experience, as is Shard VTT.

I can play on a VTT for a niche game with fewer than 500 total players worldwide and still find a game.

But D&D 2024 is the game people will drive to a store to play in person, face-to-face.

Mail Room: Compendium of Dungeon Crawls (Volume One)

I can almost hear the people asking Goodman Games this, "I love your adventures, but our group plays 5E. I wish you made old-school-style adventures for 5E!"

So, they did.

These are actually kind of cool. If I am considering playing Level Up: Advanced 5E again, I don't want the Wizards' adventures and worlds. I am looking to get away from them and do new stuff, rather than retreading Ravenloft for the third time in 5E. Nostalgia only goes so far before I get sick of it all.

And while I love the Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk, they feel so overused to me, known, cosmopolitan, and done with after playing in them since 1980. The Realms especially feels so overdone and overblown; every time I look at it, it feels like walking around Manhattan, and it's too much to grasp and comprehend.

I play in the Realms, and it is "what about the Harpers, this group, that group, or the video game characters?" I don't want a world like that; it is too busy, too pop, too hard to grasp the lore, and I would rather make my own world than be forced to deal with a stream of canon and adventures 40+ years in.

Even Greyhawk feels too much like nostalgia bait to me. If I accept Greyhawk, that gives Wizards the license to re-release every AD&D module in that world, and I am doomed to never see anything new. I played all those adventures when they came out. I still have them. I am not interested in them.

I want Wizards to prove that they can write an all-new, all-time classic like The Tomb of Horrors. They have a few out, but they come from the early days of 5E. I have not seen too many absolute bangers from Wizards lately, and it all feels like nostalgia.

These are very creative and inventive adventures, written a lot like the all-time classics of the Original Adventures Reincarnated series, which I am blessed to have a complete collection of on my shelf. If you loved those and want adventures in the old-school style written just like these, then the 5E Goodman Games releases are a perfect continuation of that theme and series.

If you loved those, you will love this.

Oh, and these get a pass on nostalgia from me since these are amazing, faithful, and incredible recreations. I have these. I would love to see Goodman do more of these, but they will likely never revisit this line, and the reprint licenses have expired. This is the best nostalgia, since it includes history, interviews, the original adventures and maps, and is a complete history of the moment.

Nostalgia, the original adventure, plus history and interviews? Yes, please. This is preservation of the hobby and creating a historical document. This is not a remaster or rewrite.

Would I play them? Maybe, maybe not. I appreciate that they are not CR-balanced and they "are what they are." Playing without balancing and letting the players balance things without the referee needing to worry about it is how I play 5E. You set up a dungeon, stock it, let the players roam around it, and the players will figure out when they need to stop or if they can take a fight. This is the OSR way.

The adventures in the Compendium of Dungeon Crawls feel like they were balanced with the CR tools. I can live with that, since I am free to expand these as I wish. Having them balanced is good for groups who play that way, but I can always create my own themed dungeons as add-on areas to these. Plus, if I want adventures not CR-balanced and "as it is," I always have my 5E megadungeon adventures.

And really, they are a perfect fit for a more old-school themed version of 5E, such as Level Up A5E. This version of 5E supports the exploration pillar of play, which makes it unique and matches the old-school feeling of these adventures. This is a peanut-butter and chocolate combination; having exploration play supported and written into the rules makes A5E play like an old-school game, but with 5E rules and builds. The social pillar, fully supported by the rules, helps, too, and it makes my social characters shine more than they do in either D&D or ToV.

A5E is a unique mix of 5E, 4E, and old-school gaming. The danger is here. Pop-up healing and other exploits are fixed. The martial classes rock. There are rare spells to collect. The three pillars of play are supported in the rules. The exploration game is real and supported by class features. Multiclassing is expanded upon and fully supported. The characters are more complicated than straight 5E or ToV characters, but the details are appreciated and needed for the new rules systems.

Yes, you are doing extra work on the characters to support the new subsystems, but that extra work matters. Paired with adventures written in the old-school way and keeping the library pared down, perhaps this fixes everything.

A generally innocent and fun series from Goodman for 5E, and it shows the system can take on a different complexion and feeling with the right adventures, and a system written in that style.

Star Wars: Inspirations

https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/starwarstheoldrepublic

Watch the Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO cutscenes on YouTube if you want inspiration for characters and adventures. Yes, they are not the current setting or world, but all of Star Wars is pretty much interchangeable in terms of lore, gear, and stories. There are parallels across every role, ship, and faction in that game, as there are in "modern day" or even "1970s" Star Wars.

It is all the same universe in look and feel, with slight changes in lore and backgrounds.

The MMO is still fun, too, if that is your thing, and you will find many Star Wars fans there. Sometimes, being inspired to do something takes a little immersion in the source material.

Also, there is nothing stopping you from playing Star Wars as an SWTOR-style game, with strong Jedi and Sith factions playing a larger role than they do in the canon universe. In fact, the Force and Destiny game assumes there are quite a few Jedi and Sith in the current universe. You could run with the theme of strong "Jedi and Sith" users all over the place in Episode 4 continuity, along with major factions, and be just fine. Or you could simply play in the SWTOR universe of the MMO, if that feels better for you.

Information about SWTOR is mostly online, and many guides and books are out of print. I am lucky enough to own the SWTOR Encyclopedia, which is becoming hard to find. It gives me all the information (though a bit outdated compared to the current game), and it remains a rock-solid campaign sourcebook for SWTOR roleplaying. I am lucky to have this in excellent condition.

I do hope the MMO keeps going strong. I played it a few times, and it is classic BioWare, with voice acting, and a fun experience that is better than most single-player games in terms of voice acting and storylines. The cut-scenes for this game are worth the price of admission, and they are instant inspiration for roleplaying in this universe, or any of the related Star Wars timelines.

The comics and EU books are also solid sources of inspiration, as is going back and watching the original movies. Stay away from newer TV shows and movies if you feel disappointed by them, and just focus on the things that make you happy and help light that spark of inspiration.

Als, start small, in the micro, and in the moment. Just make a small scenario and nothing big, like stormtroopers hunting for

Thinking About: Level Up A5E

Ever since I standardized on Tales of the Valiant, I have had my Level Up A5E books in the garage, in an airtight plastic case, protected, yet waiting there in case I wanted to return to them. I have missed this system because it is one of the best-designed and most well-thought-out revisions of the 2014 5E version on the market.

If you are bought into LUA5E, Tales of the Valiant is nothing to write home about, since it is just a "patched 2014 5E." With Level Up, the game was rebuilt, the SRD rewritten, and the game designed around core pillars of play. I have never seen exploration done so well in a 5E system, and the entire system supports wilderness adventuring beautifully. 

With ToV? It is more of the same as 2014 5E, which is honestly a good thing. But if the exploration pillar of play is not supported, why even choose a ranger? At least ToV keeps the "soft powers" for exploration from D&D 2014, but they have no mechanical benefit since there is no exploration system to support them. Many A5E players never jumped to ToV, preferring the rebuilt classes of A5E, and not seeing enough new to switch. This market fragmentation hurt both games, ultimately helping D&D, but A5E is still out there and doing well.

A5E should be doing better; it is that good.

D&D 2024 is nothing to write home about either. For the ranger, they eliminated all survival powers and focused solely on VTT powers. The design of D&D 2024 is horrible at supporting anything other than VTT play, and it is really the weakest version of 5E out there today in terms of supporting the different pillars of play.

Again, A5E players saw this and said, "Why waste our time?"

In Level Up A5E, we need rangers! All martial classes gain fighting techniques at a stamina cost. Mages can find rare versions of spells. The social pillar of play is supported. There are massive environmental challenges built into the system. Where ToV is content to patch and provide the same thing, A5E rebuilds the entire 5E system in every area, keeping it 80% the same, but that last 20% of the rebuild is what takes an engine from a rough idle to a smooth, powerful purr of power and responsiveness.

This is still 5E, but in every darn way it has been rebuilt and improved. We lose 3rd party subclass compatibility, but when the existing classes are this good, why do I need junky, made-to-fix-2014 subclasses ever again? Many 3rd-party subclasses are either flavor or patch material, and they are nothing I can't simulate by sticking to what is in A5E, rebranding it, and making a few tweaks.

The downsides? It takes a lot of work, by hand, to create a character. The process is slow and painful. But you learn more about the system this way, and if this is the way it is, then I accept it. You want to play 5E, and no VTT will hide the pain for you; play it raw and accept the truth. If you can't, then play an easier system. A5E is a more in-depth system than 5E, and why I would ever want that seems like a recipe for disaster, but somehow, it works.

My low-level character sheets run two double-sided pages per character in A5E.

I do not know how bloated they get at higher levels, which is something I am interested in finding out. Hand-run sheets are generally more compact than a VTT print-out.

A5E is like AD&D for 5E. While I feel 5E character sheets are too long, A5E gives me the extra depth that makes the game actually work well enough to he considered a serious system, rather than "just another 5E." 5E character sheets reprint a lot of rules they don't need to, and some of these "print to PDF" character sheets from VTTs are atrocious and make the game worse for everyone.

What we have in A5E works so well that I feel many 3rd-party subclasses take more away from the rebuilt game than they add. Many 3rd-party subclasses are worthless bloat or are meant to create a style of play that the corebooks should have supported. 

What we have in the core game of A5E, plus the expansion books, is excellent. Multiclassing is not an exploit, but it is celebrated and supported here with multiclass synergy feats and builds. They thought of this stuff! Amazing!

And so many of 2014's issues are fixed, and these continue on into 2024 D&D. Like character death. Fixed. Supplies and survival. Fixed. A weak social game. Fixed. Martial class disparity and boredom. Fixed. Exploration. Fixed. Page after page, if you sit down and read these rules, every one of them fixes a huge problem in 5E, and many of these are still unfixed today, or heavily houseruled in 2024 D&D.

Level Up A5E is the 2024 D&D we should have gotten.

I may revisit this game.

Dungeon Crawl Classics: Built for Fun

There is no "off the shelf" with DCC; it is still firmly "on the shelf" for me. This is a game built for fun; it feels like a heavily modded 3.5E, but does things its own way, drawing on old-school tropes while taking them to crazy places. This game took all my shelf space for D&D 3.5E and Pathfinder 1e, and it proudly sits as the most gonzo and insane game I have, filling that power fantasy need, while still delivering loads of unpredictability.

Note, this does not replace 5E for me. 5E and I are complicated. Currently, C&C is replacing 5E for me while 5E and I work it out. My 5E books are in the closet until they can find an answer to the character sheet problem they have.

I wish 5E were better.

But, at this time, I can't support a game that forces me to do more work and flip through pages of a character sheet every round. It is in the closet until I want to fight with it again.

DCC is my 3.5E replacement, and it sings as that.

DCC drives the engines of many games, most of which are built and played out of zines and strange books that clutter my shelves. It is a crazy existence, one moment playing what feels like traditional fantasy, while the other powering a science fiction game. It really is more of a "game engine" driving any type of game you can imagine, with whatever random character classes you find being "tonight's entertainment."

Veer off into mutants and mahem? Fine. Bug hunts? Great! Surviving on strange alien-filled worlds? No problem. Crawling through the esophagus of a sleeping giant to rescue a singing parakeet? Sure! Fighting marshmallow goop creatures from a random gate a mad wizard opened? Works here! Playing "Keep on the Borderlands?" Why not?

DCC is the role-playing game equivalent of a Sharpie pen. A million and one uses, and it leaves a permanent mark on your psyche that makes all other games seem boring.

And the game isn't complete! You can pull in monsters from other editions, steal treasure tables and magic items from other games, pull an equipment list in from over here, use an adventure from over there, and generally mish-mash whatever you have lying around into your DCC game.

This one is sticking around, and it displays amazingly well.