Fully Operational (P)Review

Presented here is an overview of what one can expect from the new Fully Operational supplement.

Page 1: Opening crawl

Page 2: Inside title page

Page 3: Table of contents

Page 4: Fiction

Pages 5-9: Overview and summary

Chapter 1 (pages 8-35): Building a Rebellion

This chapter presents new backgrounds and duties for Engineer characters; three new species, the Bith, Kaminoan and Skakoan; three specializations, the droid specialist, sapper and shipwright; a list of engineer motivations; and two signature ability trees, The Harder They Fall and Unmatched Ingenuity.

Chapter 2 (pages 36-63): Tools for Freedom

Detailed in this chapter are seven new types of weapons, five explosive devices, four types of armor, various equipment items, a handful of droids, some weapon and armor attachments, nearly a dozen vehicles, and some new vehicle attachments. All in all, this looks like good new gear.

Chapter 3 (pages 64-96): Crafting Victory

This chapter provides suggestions for incorporating Engineer characters in campaigns, as well as new rules for spending Advantage on Mechanics checks, guidelines for building repair facilities, and tips for designing campaigns around Engineer characters. I need to play around with these rules in order to have a stronger opinion about them.

All in all, this seems like another solid entry in the collection. As always, the production values are high and the art is gorgeous.

Solo...so soon!

Dawn of Rebellion (P)review

I know it's a bit late, but here's a preview of what people can expect from Dawn of Rebellion.

Page 1: Crawl

Page 2: Credits

Page 3: Table of Contents

Page 4: Foreword by Dave Filoni

Pages 5-9: Welcome to the Rebellion!/The State of the Galaxy/Life Under the Galactic Empire

This section provides an overview of the the Star Wars galaxy in this time period, which spans the years leading up to A New Hope—inlcuding events covered in the Rebels TV series and the film Rogue One.

Pages 10-49: Chapter 1—Worlds in Revolt

Presented in this chapter are overviews of numerous planets, including Alderaan, Atollon, Dathomir, the Death Star, Scarif, Jedha, Lothal, and five smaller ones. This seems like good material, including stats for creatures and modular encounters. Most interestingly, it also provides stats for characters from the TV series and films, including Princess Leia Organa, Saw Gerrera and even (former) Darth Maul.

Pages 50-89: Chapter 2—Organizations

This section describes numerous groups, including the Empire, the early Rebellion, Phoenix Cell, the Spectres, the Broken Horn Syndicate, the Free Ryloth Movement, the Protectors of Concord Dawn, and numerous “independent operators.” Here again there are stats, including Ahsoka Tano, Darth Vader and Lando Calrissian.

Pages 90-129: Chapter 3—Player Options

Presented in this chapter are four new alien species (the Drabatan, Gigoran, Iakaru and Tognath); six new universal specializations (Force adherent, Imperial Academy cadet, Padawan survivor, pirate, retired clone trooper and ship captain); six pages of new talents; new weapons including the lightbow and some heavy Gunnery weapons; four new droids, especially the KX enforcer and MSE units; and many different vehicles from Rebels and Rogue One.

Pages 130-143: Chapter 4—Game Master Support

This section provides guidelines for GMs, including treating campaigns like TV seasons, how to develop antagonists, and how to use Rebel cells in campaigns.

Page 144: Ad

All in all, this seems like a highly useful book. There's a lot of crunchy content for use in an Age of Rebellion campaign, of course, but also good material for Edge of the Empire games that involve up-and-coming Rebels. As always, the art is beautiful and the production values are top-notch. The decision to include stat blocks for major characters is an interesting one, and of course means that somebody's campaign will see the PCs kill Darth Vader.

Honorable Mention

Another good book, this the second and final entry into the Empire and Rebellion series, Honor Among Thieves (James S. A. Corey, 2014). The book takes place around 2-3 ABY, before Empire Strikes Back. An interesting note is that James S. A. Corey is a pen name for a writing duo from Albuquerque, Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck.

This was a fun read. Great Star Wars action, to my mind. While it does have a new superweapon, of sorts, it doesn't feel like a retread in that way. Good characterization, using the best characters we have: Han, Leia, Chewie, Luke. Plus introducing us to a remarkable and intriguing newcomer, Rebel spy Scarlet Hark. This was a fun book to read during Women's History Month, as two strong, intelligent, quick-witted women constantly get the best of Han, ol' buddy. Delightful!

Herein we meet an old smuggler frenemy of Han's named Baasen Ray. Ray is a desperate character who has fallen on hard times and taken up a new career as a third rate bounty hunter. He wants to turn Solo over to Jabba (get in line). Solo shoots his hand off. Ray doesn't care for that. Things work out in the end.

A short story included at the back of the book, entitled Silver and Scarlet, is the only other place we get to see the wonderful Agent Hark in action. Too bad. I would read more about her any day.

A good entry into my preferred canon, boyo.

SWAJ 11

Hit a snag in my readership of the Star Wars Adventure Journal, in that Vol.1, No. 11 cannot be found on the second-hand market. I have searched high and low and this is the only issue where I have run into a brick wall, so to speak. I finally relented and read the issue in PDF form.  It is strange this one is so seemingly rare; I have the other 14; most were trivial to collect. The only other somewhat hard to get issue is the last one, No. 15. I will keep searching for the last piece of my SWAJ collection, however.

After all that horsing around, the issue is not the greatest. Love the cover picture. This issue is from November, 1996. To set the scene, The New Rebellion novel has just come out, along with Tales of the Bounty Hunters, and Tyrant's Test (book 3 of the Black Fleet Crisis). Look for them now, at a B. Dalton's near you! The Tales of the Jedi sourcebook is also new from WEG in this issue. I don't know that story line, but I might wish to pick this book up sometime as it purports to be a complete collection of the Force powers for D6 Star Wars RPG. Check the Yellow Pages for the Waldenbooks nearest you!

A new Zahn story entitled Command Decision starts us out. This is the sort of Thrawn story in which Thrawn confuses his underlings, even to the point of near mutiny, only to have them come to realize that he knows what he is doing and they do not. Nice read. The rest is a bit blah, in my opinion, including a long, poorly written piece by my new frenemy, Pablo Hidalgo.

I liked the Platt's Smuggler's Log feature. A long piece by Bill Smith thoroughly discusses the Star Wars Rules Upgrade. This covers the changes to the RPG as they moved to the Second Edition, Revised and Expanded.

This was not my favorite edition, as the book had very strange art direction. Filled with screen shots from the movies juxtaposed beside bad drawings, it did not work for me.

Best Laid Plans...

Just finished this fun book, part one of the two part Empire and Rebellion series, Razor's Edge (Martha Wells, 2013). The story takes place in 2 ABY, right in the heart of the Rebellion era. The main cast of characters includes Leia, Luke, Han, Chewie, R2, and 3PO. We see the Falcon. The group is working on gathering supplies for Echo Base, currently under construction.

Their task requires them to visit some unsavory locales, frequented by pirates. From page 1 this book dumps the good guys into the soup, so to speak, and challenges their ability to adapt, adjust, improvise, and overcome. It's a most Star Wars of stories, a fly by the seat of your pants series of plans, plan Bs, alternate plans, etc. Constant entanglements reward the hero's resiliency. A very good RPG-type novel.

The scale and scope is good, too. Pirates are encountered, and so are low-level Imperials. Leia et al are on an undercover mission, basically, so they don't have much in terms of back-up. They have to rely on their own resourcefulness to win. No new super-weapons, no crazy plot points, just a good solid adventure packed with action and an almost continual "change of plans".

Definitely a good read and a nice addition to my preferred canon.

The New Rebellion

Just finished reading this book, The New Rebellion (Kristine Kathryn Rusch, 1996). I saw an ad for it in issue 11 of the Star Wars Adventure Journal (which I am also reading right now).

Overall, I'd say it was a fun book. Good characterizations of the main people we love spending time with: Luke, Leia, Han, Lando, R2, 3PO. Even Mara Jade and Kaarde show up. It's a New Republic era book, taking place after the Thrawn trilogy (approx. 17 ABY). It heavily references many books that come before it, including the Thrawn series. At least one of the characters is a hold-over from 1995's Young Jedi Knights series of books. I may look into those at some point.

The good: a nice plot (not too crazy, but grand enough to matter), good character work (actually seems like our friends talking and acting), a huge number of new alien species added to the lexicon (some of them weirder than others). In fact, the Wookieepedia article says 22 alien species have their origins in this book as well as a dozen new creatures. Nice! The opening dedication mentions a group of friends who joined the author in a theater in Duluth, MN way back for their first viewing of Star Wars. Maybe Nate was there, too. Also great: the cover art.

The not-so-good: a bit weak on some details of the shared world (droids don't all come from a single factory, for instance), some names are silly-sounding (the worst being perhaps "Nandreeson", a "Glottalphib" crime lord on Smuggler's Run), a strange usage of Jawas in space, lots of graphic injuries are described herein; lost limbs, crushed torsos, etc. Not very Star Wars.

A nice enough book; primarily. Who couldn't be won over (or run over) by a stampede of astromechs?