"I am altering the deal..."
This past weekend was the KC Game Fair, where I ran a Star Wars RPG adventure called 3,720 to 1 and had planned on running the Star Wars Minis battle, Assault on Intran.
Planned being the key word here. After much planning, and a great deal of effort (expected by me, unexpected by my wife) to get the minis on site, the game evaporated due to lack of players. There were several reasons for this, but the main one was that I scheduled it for Sunday afternoon, always a dicey time to run a game - the last slot of a 4 day convention. I taught a few people the basics of the minis game and in that effort, realized that while Assault on Intran had a great number of entertaining pieces, it would have been overwhelming for new players unfamiliar with the game. I still hope to run the battle, but I will likely try to recruit people who know how to play. When that happens, I'll post the result here. I still intend to post the rules themselves as well.
As for 3,720 to 1, it was full every time I ran it, and the players had a good time. It is a very flexible adventure and I intend to post it here in the near future for others to use. It highlights the Unknown Regions and the Scavenger's Guide to Droids books.
This week's Star Wars Wednesday takes a look at a few online tools that can add some nice elements to your RPG or minis game.
First up, most every official Star Wars RPG adventure tends to start with an opening crawl read aloud. For years, GMs that wanted to have an actual crawl on a screen have tried various methods to do so. Back in the '90s, the Star Wars Screen Entertainment screensaver had a serviceable opening crawl creator, but it wasn't perfect and largely overlooked when the product became outdated. More recently, GMs created crawls for the Dawn of Defiance campaign and posted them on YouTube. A few made the videos available for download.
However, the best opening crawl creator is the official one now available on Starwars.com. You can run it full screen, and it adjusts the music for the length of your text. It looks good. You can't seem to save the actual text for later viewing, so write it up ahead of time and cut and paste it into the crawl creator before hitting play.
Another much requested item - sound boards for music and effects to set off during your game. One way to do this is to download a program called Scene Sound, which I have heard good things about, but haven't tried yet. I think you also have to assemble your own sound files for this to work. It works with any sound clip and for any game.
Another option is the soundboard from starwars.com. This one allows you to pick a theme (say Battle of Yavin) which then puts up a selection of related quotes, music clips and sound effects (blasters, exploding starships). You can trigger each sound by hitting the listed number or letter key, or you can string them together in two tracks to create a battle montoge. It appears you should be able to save the mix by emailing it to yourself, but I can't get that to work (it just emails a link the soundboard with a blank mix).
I'm sure there are a great many options out there, but these will get you started.