Queen's Shadow

Just finished reading this nice new young adult book, Queen's Shadow (E.K. Johnston, 2019). It covers Padmé Amidala's story as she moves from Queen of Naboo to being the Senator from Naboo. She and her handmaidens have to adjust to the at times dangerous new life on Coruscant, amid the movers and shakers of the galaxy.

A very pleasant tale which fits effortlessly into the existing canon, Johnston fills out the picture of Amidala and this time of transitions before the Rise of the Empire. The tale takes place during 28 BBY, four years after the events of Episode I and six years before the Clone Wars erupt.

Well written, good characterizations of Amidala, Bail Organa, Mon Mothma, R2-D2, among others. The ending makes me want to learn more about Sabé's potential role in the Rebellion...

Tierfon Mission: Downtime

Detailed here are some of the training exercises in which the PCs can participate during their downtime in a Rebel base, be it at the Tierfon Outpost, on Yavin or Hoth, or in similar locations.

-Nate

Downtime

Tierfon Mission: Downtime

This collection of activities is intended to be used at times when the PCs have time between missions, whether it be at Tierfon Base, or at similar Rebel Alliance outposts. They can be run in the same manner as modular encounters, as featured in the supplement Strongholds of Resistance. Alternately, they could be used as a stand-alone session for PCs who've been newly recruited to the Rebel Alliance, giving them a taste of a soldier's life and thus earning some XP with which to start developing the appropriate abilities.

Target Practice

One of the more common activities for Rebels in training is target shooting, both with pistols and rifles—as befits the different situations in which they might need to operate.

• This involves five shots using either Ranged (Light) or (Heavy) or Gunnery skill checks.
• The range can start out at short, with one difficulty die, and then escalate to medium and long.
• The character with the highest number of successes after five shots is the winner; advantage can be used to break any ties.
• Target drones could be used to provide moving targets.

The Obstacle Course

This activity combines general physical fitness—that is, running—with a series of barriers that help development different skills.

• The running part requires Athletics checks, with the difficulty determined by the length of time.
• A climbing wall also requires an Athletics check, with the difficulty adjusted based on the height, slope and number of handholds.
• Various parts of a ropes course, such as crossing a narrow beam, crawling under a net, or the like, require a Coordination check.

Hand-to-Hand Combat

Another important aspect of training is unarmed and melee combat. This can be run as a typical combat between characters, with the following considerations.

• The characters fight with padded staves, which means that they do damage to each others' strain thresholds rather than wound thresholds—unless, of course, some chooses not to do so.
• They are also issued padded armor, which provides some protection from the attacks and thus makes the training bouts run longer than might otherwise be the case.
• At any time, one of the competitors can call off the bout after recognizing a superior opponent.

Medical Emergencies

While not part of the ordinary training process, it's likely that characters skilled in Medicine will be called upon to help in various situations.

• When a transport returns carrying wounded Rebels, refer to the Critical Injury table (from page 231 of the Core Rulebook) to determine the problems with which the medic must deal.
• After the initial first aid, characters can make Medicine checks to provide medical care for ongoing recovery, as detailed on pages 232-3 of the Core Rulebook.
• The medic could also be called on to deal with the outbreak of a disease in the base, requiring the collection of appropriate medicines and the treatment of those affected by it.

Wilderness Training

Given the potential for Rebels to find themselves stranded on alien worlds with hostile environments, they must know how to find shelter, water and food.

• Characters should make Survival checks in order to provide for their basic needs.
• Success means that they can pass a relatively comfortable night in the wilderness, and maybe even accrue boost dice for future business; failure, on the other hand, inflicts setback dice on ensuing endeavors.
• There's always the chance the a native creature could come prowling, forcing the PCs to scare it away, placate it, do battle, or handle the situation in some other manner.
• Finally, in the event that bad weather occurs during one of these exercises, the PCs might even need to make Resilience checks to deal with exposure, or could be called upon to rescue other Rebels who've been caught unprepared in such conditions.

Stalking and Guard Duty

This activity also takes the PCs outside the base; in this case, some of them are positioned in a particular location, while the others are tasked with sneaking up on that position, as detailed below.

• The approaching characters start out in the extreme range band from their fellows, and advance one band—to long, medium, short, and then engaged—with each successful Stealth check opposed by the stationary characters' Perception efforts.
• There could be some kind of target for the stalkers, in the style of capture-the-flag; the character who can close to engaged range can claim it.
• In that case, the defending characters could be armed with weapons set on stun, in order to address those who are not stealthy enough.

Technical Difficulties

There is plenty for mechanically-minded characters to to in a Rebel base, including the following.

• It would be necessary to wipe the memory of a captured droid so that it can be used by the Alliance; in this case, success means that it has not remaining memories and serves faithfully, while failure means that it retains some old programming and could act against the Rebellion.
• Just as with critical injuries, technicians could be called upon to repair critical damage to ships, vehicles and other equipment; refer to the table on page 258 of the Core Rulebook for details.
• Characters could also be tasked with picking or locks or pockets, requiring Skullduggery checks opposed to the targets Perception efforts.

Vehicular Patrols

The Rebel base routinely runs patrols of the surrounding territory, either speeder bikes or airspeeders on the ground, or starfighters in space. To that end, the PCs involved in these tasks should make Piloting (plantary) or (space) checks as needed.

• These patrols normally follow pre-established routes, which means that characters need only make piloting checks in order to run the usual courses.
• Here again, native beasts could complicate these activities by attacking the vehicles that pass through their territory.
• In the event that a vehicle suffers damage, PCs trained in Mechanics could be called upon to make repairs during battle.

Star Wars Reading in 2019

We have a small-ish slate of books to look forward to in 2019, but they are not from the Sequel timeline, so they're promising.

Starting with a Young Adult novel on March 5, entitled Queen's Shadow, by E.K. Johnston. This one traces Amidala's path after stepping down as Queen of Naboo, but before becoming the Senator from Naboo. An intriguing time to explore. I am a fan of both Amidala and E.K. Johnston (author of 2016's Ahsoka and co-author of the short story By Whatever Sun found in the "From a Certain Point of View" anthology.)

Next in the sequence is another Prequel era book: Master and Apprentice, by Claudia Gray (Lost Stars, Bloodline, Leia: Princess of Alderaan). This one deals with Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan before the events of The Phantom Menace. Interesting! Love both of those characters, and quite like Claudia Gray (Lost Stars and Leia were better than Bloodline). April 16 release date, here.

Then we have a strangely named book (considering the SW inhabitants have Aurabesh, no Alphabet): Alphabet Squadron by Alexander Freed. This one is the start of a trilogy from the author of the excellent Battlefront: Twilight Company and the very good novelization of Rogue One. This one is slated for June 11. This one will also tie-in to a 5-part Marvel comic series called Star Wars: TIE Fighter (tie-in...get it?).

July 23 will see the release of Thrawn: Treason, by fan favorite Timothy Zahn. This is the sequel to Thrawn: Alliances. I didn't care for that one, but I will very likely read this one, too.

The last books for the year are set to be a part of the Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge media project, promoting the new attraction at Disney. First (in August) is a Young Adult Novel called A Crash of Fate. Then (in September) comes an adult novel Black Spire.

SWAJ 15, last one in print

The reading of Star Wars Adventure Journal, Vol. 1, No. 15 (WEG, November 1997) is behind me. This one was a bit rough around the edges. Many of the old favorite pieces were missing, starting with the "Admiral's Communique" (a word-from-the-editor piece up front, setting the tone for the issue) to the "Galaxy NewsNets" feature. Both were, of course, written by the former editor Peter Schweighofer. Now we got a new guy ("...for Issue 15 and beyond.") There were numerous editing-related mistakes found within, from mis-spellings to double sentences and generally unclear wording. Very disappointing. Not a great maiden voyage, Steve Miller (formerly of TSR).

The issue has ups and downs, content-wise, as well. Kevin J. Anderson chips in an original story, wherein Luke meets a Jedi-singer/bard-wannabe for the first time. I guess I'd have to have read the Jedi Academy books to know who Tionne is. Still don't care. Patricia Jackson had me at Twi'lek dancing girl in her story "Laughter After Dark", about a smuggler and his ties to the Rebel Alliance. "The Great Herdship Heist" by Daniel Wallace was too long, but a fun enough romp in the end. Paul Danner contributed a capital ship heist story called "Two for One", and the Angela Phillips short tale "The Draw" was a good read.

Way too much, in my opinion, of this issue was taken up with the extra-long piece called "Tasariq: The Crystal Planet" by Tom Moldvay and Steve Miller. A decent initial idea, perhaps: develop an in-depth visit to a new world, new species, flora and fauna, etc. Certainly in keeping with the spirit of the SWAJ. This one did not interest me. I suspect Mr. Miller had some new ideas for how to lay out each issue, etc. Sadly, they won't amount to much, with the coming WEG collapse.

And with that, we bid adieu to the print version of the Star Wars Adventure Journal, as published by West End Games. Some great times were had, reading this magazine, over the 15 issues which made it to print. Some mediocre times, as well, struggling through subpar content. Not too many outright bad or boring times, thankfully, but they were present. I had to skip ahead only two or three times. Not a bad run, that.

SWAJ, you will be missed.

SWAJ 14

Just finished reading Star Wars Adventure Journal, Vol 1, No. 14 (WEG, August 1997). Available at your local B. Dalton booksellers, or via mail order (for four issues send $35, check or money order, to West End Games, Ltd., RR 3 Box 2345, Honesdale, PA 18431-9560).

A pretty good issue, I'll say. Barbara Hambly (Children of the Jedi and Planet of Twilight, neither of which I've read) wrote a piece about Gamorr called "Murder in Slushtime". In it, she does for Gamorrean culture what A. C. Crispin did for Hutts in The Han Solo Trilogy. Interesting. John Beyer and Kathy Burdette write a nice piece that ties into the SpecForce Handbook called "Special Ops: Drop Points". I liked the story by Charlene Newcombe and Rich Handley called "Crimson Bounty" (related to the cover image). The "Galaxywide NewsNets" feature by Peter Schweighhofer was also nice.

They don't yet know that this is almost the end. At least the don't let on anywhere in the issue. There is a note up front that Mr. Schweighofer is stepping aside as editor as of this issue. Steve Miller (formerly of TSR) will be taking over for "...issue 15 and beyond." Yeeeeah. About that...

I'll be sad to see it go, the good ol' SWAJ. Not even sure if they'll know it's going away in the last issue itself. As I have seen online, Vol.1, No. 15 was the last one printed. They did have a Vol. 1, No. 16 fully ready to go (and just didn't print it, as I understand) and they had something like a galley copy of Vol. 1, No. 17 in some stage of the process. You can find them all here:

http://d6holocron.com/downloads/wegadventurejournal.html

By the way, as I was looking for that link, I noticed a brand new pair of entries, both entitled "Star Wars Adventurers Journal". Looks like an unofficial continuation, not affiliated with Star Wars or Disney. One released on May 4, 2018. The next released on August 3, 2018. I will definitely be checking these out.

***

As a side note, as of the writing of this SWAJ issue, WEG as we know it is less than a year away from Shoe Company Bankruptcy (July 1998). The Star Wars RPG license will leave that same year, as WotC releases the first d20 version in November of 2000.

Punch it, Chewie

Just finished reading this delightful, fast paced book, Solo: Expanded Edition (Mur Lafferty, 2018). This is the long awaited (by me, at least) novelization of the Solo movie. It purports to be an "Expanded Edition", as I guess there are some extra scenes tucked inside that aren't from the film.

I was very pleased with the book. The characterizations seem spot on, from the wonderful droid libertarian L3-37 to the beautiful and dangerous Qi'ra, the cape-clad Lando, the lopsided grinning Han, Chewie and the rest. This is a great Star Wars story and a very entertaining read.

Makes me want to purchase this movie on Blu-Ray, and to watch Rogue One again. They are truly the only recent breaths of fresh Star Wars air, in my opinion.

With the Disney imposed slow-down in Star Wars movie releases, as Nate mentioned, I wonder when we will get to learn more about Qi'ra and her mysterious new Crimson Dawn benefactor and Teräs Käsi master.

The Return of Cassian Andor

Well, now, this is interesting.

I believe that both Brent and I have been pretty critical of The Last Jedi, and that has thrown my interest in the Sequel Era into a tailspin. I was also disappointed that Solo: A Star Wars Story underperformed at the box office, and thus seemed to jeopardize other potential projects set in the time of the Original Trilogy. For those reasons, I was pleasantly surprised to read the following article on Starwars.com.

Cassian Andor Live Action Series Announced

I'm glad to see there's still interest in exploring this time period, and that this project will focus on a character that I really liked. The more I watch Rogue One, the more I love it. This seems like it'll include stories filled with inspiration for potential future Star Wars RPG adventures and campaigns.

-Nate