Time flies when you're too busy and traveling too much to post. Also, you know your flights are going to have some issues when your ultimate destination's airport evacuates for a tornado warning. No serious issue in the end, just some inconvenience. Among the items taking up time was one of many summer cons I'll be attending in some fashion...and it had a new Star Wars guest...
Planet Comiccon in Kansas City, MO continues to grow every year in terms of guests and attendees. I was too busy to run games this time around, but Kantcon and RPGKC were running a very full game room, so that was good to see. As for Star Wars, the 501st, Rebel Legion, Mandalorian Mercs, R2 builders and probably more were on hand as usual. Peter Mayhew, Daniel Logan, Jeremy Bulloch, and Tom Kane were the Star Wars movie and TV guests. Kevin J Anderson (novels and comics) and Jason Aaron (comics) were there. A relative newcomer to the convention scene who I met was David Ankrum. He did the voiceover for Wedge in Episode IV.
We had a fairly lengthy conversation about his experience with the movie and mine with the games. During the discussion, we had one of those occurrences that only happens at cons....we suddenly realized that Stan Lee was signing on the opposite side of the curtain behind David dividing the autograph tables. We briefly saw him as he made his way to a cart to take him off for pictures or something. I didn't make it to Stan's panel, but my wife did and had a good time.
We did see an Evening with Kevin Smith. He had no choice but to fly Southwest for the first time since his public incident years ago, but he made it. It was very entertaining, going on for about 3 hours solid. He's a good storyteller, and I like it better than many of his movies. An interesting guy around interesting people. I was hoping for some info on his new Buckaroo Banzai effort, but when it was mentioned in a question, he chose to address other aspects instead. Since his answers take about 45 minutes a question, he never got back to it (if he had wanted to).
I got a personalized sketch by Bill Amend of FoxTrot fame, so that was fun. Jason with a lightsaber. It was really interesting watching Bill draw. The card looks like it could be printed, the work and lettering is so clean.
I also caught up with Rick Burchett who I worked with on the Lady Sabre and the Pirates of the Ineffable Aether kickstarter a few years ago. Greg Rucka didn't make the trip this year, so I haven't had a chance to talk to him about his amazing Star Wars efforts since then. I talked gaming with Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt, who were selling the Sixth Gun RPG for Savage Worlds for their Sixth Gun series among their wares.
Beyond the convention scene, starwars.com started their new The Star Wars Show every Wednesday, guaranteeing I'll always have something to discuss if it's a light week. This week it features a segment featuring Fantasy Flight Games running Force and Destiny RPG, Age of Rebellion RPG, X-Wing, Imperial Assault, and more at Lucasfilm. It'sfun to see games I worked on running in the building. It now occurs to me....I wonder if Pablo Hidalgo was out of town at the time. It would have been fun to see him at the game table.
Something totally new that appeared online is an unofficial but awesome interactive Star Wars galaxy map at SWGalaxymap.com . The Star Wars Atlas has been one of my greatest resources on so many levels, and the map in the Star Wars RPG core rulebooks are based on that product. I could easily see the interactive map as a useful prop during a game. It would be great to use with a tablet for the players to use during a game session.