Star Wars RPG Resources: The Essential Atlas

The Star Wars: The Essential Atlas is a book I cannot recommend highly enough, especially if your group is serious about playing in Fantasy Flight's Star Wars RPG universe.

First off, there is a lot of Legacy/Expanded Universe universe content in this book, but you can look at this three ways:

1. The EU is cool and pull from it what you want.
2. We play in a specific EU period.
3. We play in the current Star Wars cannon and timeline and this book lets you identify cannon versus EU lore.

The third one I find interesting, because of the state of Star Wars, there are things in the RPG and also the general community that may have more of a place in EU than the current timeline. This book gives you enough timeline to decide if something fits, and gives it a place in the universe. Me? I am part of the crowd that enjoys some of the EU content, and I will pull from it freely to develop my own timeline for the universe going forward. I would like to start with the movies, but have familiar faces drop by and make the universe my own combination of the best of Star Wars - Legacy and current movie timeline.

Hey, it's the "my universe" (MU), and it's all Star Wars. It's cool.

What I love about this book is the sense of place and time. You get maps of the movies, where people were, how they got there, and a chronological order of what happened. Each movie and the flow of how things happened gives you a broad perspective on how to run the game, especially with planet hopping and action that can take place light years apart. The maps of the movies are perfect 'sample adventure models' for the game, and they provide a model for how your game should flow.

Of course, you get pictures and descriptions of the major planets, and detailed star maps for everything else, so you can use this as a master atlas to run your own campaign, and drop in iconic planets and places as you see fit. The roleplaying books give you a couple planets and a starmap, but this jut goes to town, gives you maps and history, and drills down on specific events and tears them apart in detail.

You could create a campaign that parallels the movies and play in that, like a squadron of X-Wings that is running a diversionary operation for the attack on the first Death Star, or rebels protecting supply lines for the battle of Endor. If you love one-off historical roleplaying adventures, this is a great source book to base your own creations from. Those sorts of 'what if' scenarios can also be inspiring for your own adventures should you stick with the official timeline, have your own battles of Endor, or kick off the threat of a third Death Star upon the galaxy.

It is the "your universe" (YU) after all, so do what you want.

This book is useful for all three game books, no matter if you play Jedi, smugglers, or rebels (or Imperials) - you will find something to pull inspiration from and use. It is also a great player's guide, especially for smugglers plotting routes and avoiding the long arm of the Empire, rebel plotting their next move, or Jedi seeking artifacts from long-lost civilizations. Give this to players and watch them dig in and create their own adventures, it is that cool and inspirational.

So a must-buy for this today, and a highly useful and cool book to flip through when developing your own Star Wars adventures. May the force be with you, and oh yeah, remember to bring a map.

Player's Pit: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying Game by FFG

Big Crate of Fun!

After some mail delays we finally got our huge boxed set from amazon of Fantasy Flight's Warhammer fantasy Roleplaying game deluxe set! Here is our un-boxing review:

Deluxe Packaging

I was surprised at the quality of the set! You get a ton of character cards, power cards, dice, high-quality cardboard minis and such. The only ding is they only give you 16 plastic stands or all the cardboard heroes, so we ended up 33 short. we found a deal on FRPGAMES.com that sells 10 stands for 3 bucks so we ordered a set of 4. One thing I love is that this big box game experience feels like getting a Christmas present with lots of goodies in it. FFG knows how to make game that tweak my collector's itch! I must resist ordering the GM, played, and monster add-ons before we've had a chance to get our game on with this....

Fresh Car Smell

The box has tons of room to add expansion books if you buy them, and from the look of the offerings, each one adds a different aspect to the game. they have a royals set for playing, royals, a war based set for military RP-ing and such. I love the focused product design aspect and you need to only add whats important to your game when you need it. My evil twisted royal idea may need the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: Lure of Power expansion though... so....tempting....FFG...you are a tease.

*pout* Game Envy!

The whole production makes me wish other companies spent this much time on engineering the "out of box" experience like FFG does. I like the feel that you get when you get something like this. You feel like your going to have a ton of fun times with all the toys you get. You could imagine a spy game or even a super hero game with all the trimmings like this game has.

So it spoils me to the standard "hey here are two 400 page books to digest and deal with it" approach many roleplaying games have. I do respect if your a small game publisher and putting out a couple books for people to enjoy your ideas; but when you get to the big budget games, I would more expect a nice velvet glove treatment in the way Fantasy Flight Games does. It is an impressive set, to say the least.

Overall: Imposing and Impressive!

If you plop this crate on a gaming group cold, you'll have casualties if you don't do some reading and mastering of this set ahead of time. I suggest getting up to speed first in a private session s a referee and them like a seasoned and suave host, and with a little impressive swagger, plop this down on your friends and start in. My first impression is like getting a huge 10,000 piece puzzle for my birthday and then settling in afterwards to dig into it and have fun.

My First Character

Evil duke bent on carving out his own kingdom in the chaos of the Empire through deceit, plotting, and good old fashion politics. Done. We'll see how it goes with the initial session and post a second part when we get there!


Stay tuned!

~G