Core Books
I say you don’t have to get just books, but definitely consider getting just books. If you know someone who has been playing D&D for a while, as a player who doesn’t have the monster manual and they’ve been talking about getting into DM’ing, get them a monster manual or the Dungeon Masters Guide. Same can be said for someone in any of the game systems. If they don’t have one of the core books, consider getting it for them. Or if you have someone who is playing Star Wars: Force and Destiny consider getting them the Edge of the Empire core book.

Extra Content Books
Hey, more books, but we’re just getting the different types of books out of the way, one more to go after this one. When I say extra content books, also known as splatbooks, I’m talking about things like Volo’s Guide to Monsters or Xanathers Guide to Everything. These provide extra content for your game and might be world or class specific in games, but they aren’t going to give you a specific game that you have to play. Most game systems the longer they are around get more of them, so consider buying your DM extra content, or find the books that have player classes and get those for players in the game.

Campaign Books
Final type of book, these are the pre-generated campaigns that DM’s can run. These I would say be most careful when getting. If the DM you are getting it for runs games in their own world or in an existing world but their own stories, they might be pretty improv heavy or like to come up with their own stories in a very specific way. So a campaign book might not be as useful for them. However, maybe that’s what your group runs, if that’s the case, go ahead and find one that your DM doesn’t have, or go onto something like DM’s Guild and there are lots of things out there for campaigns (as well as other things).

Dice
Maybe your DM or player already has all of this that they want. I have yet to meet an RPG player who wouldn’t gladly take more dice. Depending on what system you use, the dice might be different, but if they are playing Dungeons and Dragons or Pathfinder, you are going to be using the standard set of dice, so look for something that has a twenty, twelve, two ten, eight, six, and four sided dice. Or if they are playing the Dragon Age RPG, some six sided dice, or for the Fantasy Flight Star Wars RPG, the specific dice for that. Dice sets are generally not that expensive, so they make nice stocking stuffers. But it could be that you want to give a nice set of dice, consider Easy Roller Dice which can be made out of metal, so it’s a really nice set. I will say, I really like my metal dice from there, and because they are heavy, they roll very with a satisfying thud.

Dice Accessories
What are dice accessories? They are things like dice trays, dice towers and dice bags. These things just add a little bit of fun accessory wise for your game. A dice tray is nice, especially if you have metal dice because those can ding up a table or are just loud on a table. The dice tower means that your dice will roll a bit more randomly as it’s just something aesthetic to drop your dice into and have them bounce down through it. And a dice bag is really nice as it helps you move around your sets of dice more easily. For the dice bag, you could also just give them a bottle of Crown Royal whiskey as that can come with a bag that a lot of people use as a dice bag.

Spell Cards
Spell cards seem extra to the hobby, you can always just look up your spells in the players handbook or whatever supplement you have spells from. But Spell Cards allow you to track what you have available a whole lot easier and what spells you might have used or not have access to anymore. They aren’t that expensive when they are in print from Wizards of the Coast, so they can make a solid stocking stuffer.

RPG Video Game
Now, this one is completely different because it isn’t part of the table, it’s something that they can do separate from their regular gaming. While there aren’t a ton of amazing RPG video games out there, in my opinion, there are some really good ones. Consider grabbing one of them or grabbing a trilogy of them like the Dragon Age games. I’m sure there are a lot of other good ones out there, Diablo III comes to mind as well, so find one that you think would match what the person likes and get it for them on the system that they have. This can be trickier though, because they might not be a big video game fan, so if they aren’t, don’t force this one, there are plenty of other good things, or there are always dice.

I’m sure there are a whole lot more things out there for RPG players. If they are doing a podcast or video stream, that opens up a whole other realm of possibilities. Just spend some time figuring out what game they play as that might change up what they want, and I’m already thinking of other things that I could have put down, so use your imaginations for that RPG gamer in your life.

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As I’ve been teasing for a little bit, we are doing Star Wars trilogies. Using the Star Wars RPG system created by Fantasy Flight Games. So this is the first part of the Trilogy of Jedha Adventures where we have a group of Explorers who have just finished up a big game hunt. Matt, Courtney, and Scott were the players this time around.

Image Source: Order of the Gamers

Image Credit: The Geek Flag

Join as the players fly across the skies trying to cause troubles for the Empire as the Empire looks to rebuild the Death Star.

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As I’ve been teasing for a little bit, we are doing Star Wars trilogies. Using the Star Wars RPG system created by Fantasy Flight Games. So this is the first part of the Trilogy of Tatooine Troubles where we have a group of Bounty Hunters taking on a mission. Jason, Scott, and Sam (who did a guest article on Magic the Gathering back a while) were the players this time around.

First, I would like to apologize for the audio, it isn’t good. It’s actually very unacceptable. With new players, I turned their mics up higher knowing that they wouldn’t be as on top of them as we’ve gotten for Dungeons and Flagons. However, doing that, we ended up picking up a buzzing noise. I’m not sure if it was a projector that was running on the ceiling on the floor below that was causing enough of a vibration or a large Windows update that caused the issues, but there is buzzing in the background throughout the whole thing. I was able to remove it from a chunk of it, but where it was the loudest, there wasn’t much I could do without ruining the audio for our voices. I also then had to adjust the audio so that the volume of all the players would be a bit closer to mine, since I’m used to being on a mic now. So the audio quality is bad, I’d recommend listening to it with headphones as that was the best quality I got was when I was using my headphones and the audio gets worse as it goes as the buzzing noise gets louder.

With all of that disclaimer in the front, Tatooine, shortly after Episode 3, the Empire is gaining ground and they are always looking for the smartest and brightest.

Join us for the epic conclusion of the Tatooine Trouble trilogy.

After being double crossed on their bounty they take to the skies to bring back the bounty.

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As I’ve been teasing for a little bit, we are doing Star Wars trilogies. Using the Star Wars RPG system created by Fantasy Flight Games. So this is the first part of the Trilogy of Tatooine Troubles where we have a group of Bounty Hunters taking on a mission. Jason, Scott, and Sam (who did a guest article on Magic the Gathering back a while) were the players this time around.

First, I would like to apologize for the audio, it isn’t good. It’s actually very unacceptable. With new players, I turned their mics up higher knowing that they wouldn’t be as on top of them as we’ve gotten for Dungeons and Flagons. However, doing that, we ended up picking up a buzzing noise. I’m not sure if it was a projector that was running on the ceiling on the floor below that was causing enough of a vibration or a large Windows update that caused the issues, but there is buzzing in the background throughout the whole thing. I was able to remove it from a chunk of it, but where it was the loudest, there wasn’t much I could do without ruining the audio for our voices. I also then had to adjust the audio so that the volume of all the players would be a bit closer to mine, since I’m used to being on a mic now. So the audio quality is bad, I’d recommend listening to it with headphones as that was the best quality I got was when I was using my headphones and the audio gets worse as it goes as the buzzing noise gets louder.

With all of that disclaimer in the front, Tatooine, shortly after Episode 3, the Empire is gaining ground and they are always looking for the smartest and brightest. Our heroes haven’t been affected by that though as they Bounty Hunt on Tatooine, looking to make a payday, get a bigger score, get free drink tickets and as many chance cubes as they can. They are approached by a damsel in distress and their adventure begins….

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With a way to get onto the pod racing course, the band of bounty hunters now starts searching for a secret hiding place that Jabba might have out there.. Jason, Scott, and Sam (who did a guest article on Magic the Gathering back a while) were the players this time around.

First, I would like to apologize for the audio, it isn’t good. It’s actually very unacceptable. With new players, I turned their mics up higher knowing that they wouldn’t be as on top of them as we’ve gotten for Dungeons and Flagons. However, doing that, we ended up picking up a buzzing noise. I’m not sure if it was a projector that was running on the ceiling on the floor below that was causing enough of a vibration or a large Windows update that caused the issues, but there is buzzing in the background throughout the whole thing. I was able to remove it from a chunk of it, but where it was the loudest, there wasn’t much I could do without ruining the audio for our voices. I also then had to adjust the audio so that the volume of all the players would be a bit closer to mine, since I’m used to being on a mic now. So the audio quality is bad, I’d recommend listening to it with headphones as that was the best quality I got was when I was using my headphones and the audio gets worse as it goes as the buzzing noise gets louder.

With a way to get onto the pod racing course, the band of bounty hunters now starts searching for a secret hiding place that Jabba might have out there…..

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Peder and I first learned about the Star Wars RPGs through Campaign, a podcast run by One Shot. Campaign is just one of the many great podcasts One Shot runs, but it’s the one I’m most familiar with, and was a great (and hilarious) way to get introduced to the Star Wars RPGs. Through listening to Campaign, I learned a bit about how the game is played — and a LOT about how absurd and fun it can be when your RPG story regularly goes off the rails…but I digress.

There are currently three different modules of the Star Wars RPG — Edge of the Empire, Age of Rebellion, and Force and Destiny. But even though the one Peder and I were most familiar with prior to playing AoR is the Edge of the Empire module, since that’s the one the Campaign group used, this knowledge still served us well. As I mentioned, gameplay is very similar for all three modules; there are just some different options and basic storylines/timelines within each.

AoR is, to my understanding, meant to be set at about the time that the Rebel Alliance was at its peak (so, close to when Luke, Leia, and Han were entering the picture — or at least, that’s how I choose to imagine it). In our session, we and the other players played as the motley crew of a Corellian YT-1300f freighter — the same type of ship as the Millenium Falcon. Together, we had to work together to stop the evil Director Lucas from releasing edited versions of a certain trilogy of beloved films to suit his “great vision.” We had to destroy the master copies of the edited (read: degraded) films before they were released across the galaxy — and before the original versions were destroyed forever! Much quoting and some George Lucas impressions (even one from me…) ensued.

This storyline was a really fun one, and struck the perfect balance between casual fun and high-stakes action that you want for a one shot session. Some of us played as human characters, and some as aliens (I was a young human woman, Peder was a Bothan); this let us get a feel for the spectrum of different characters you can play within the Star Wars RPG universe. And even in that short time, we were able to pack in a fair amount of character development. I kept on rolling horribly throughout the game, so I used that to style my character as absurdly clumsy and absentminded. And during our first combat encounter, Peder had his character use his knife — he then took this moment and ran with it to make his character super sneaky, sly, and obsessed with stabbing people, and used that element to hilarious effect several times.

Though the Star Wars RPGs have character sheets and skill mechanics that are similar in some ways to what you’d see in a few other RPGs, what’s really interesting and unique about these games is the dice system. This is because these RPGs use their own special set of dice — instead of using the usual many-sided numbered dice like in most other RPGs, the Star Wars games have different colored dice printed with symbols, which correspond to different aspects of the game. There are green dice, which determine how successful a given action is, yellow dice, which determine how successfully a skill is used, purple dice, which influence an action’s difficulty, and red dice, which are added in for especially difficult actions. There are also blue dice, or boost dice, that can be used to make a skill more effective, and black dice that add in extra threats. The white die you see in the image is a Force die; however, we didn’t use this much, and it’s one that never really seems to get used often, so for our purposes, I won’t go into it for now.

There are a couple of elements involved in how the type and number of dice to be rolled is determined. Beside each skill on the character sheet, there are symbols showing which dice should be rolled when using that skill. In addition to this, the GM will let the character know how many dice to roll for the difficulty level when the character performs an action.

For a quick example–let’s say I’m dressed up in a stormtrooper uniform, trying to bluff my way past a superior officer. I’d likely use my deception skill to do this. We’ll say I’m really good at BS’ing, and that there are three green symbols and a yellow beside my Deception skill. The GM decides this is a reasonably difficult maneuver, so he’ll tell me to add in two purple dice. So I’ll roll a total of six dice (getting to roll huge handfuls of dice is another great feature of this game, incidentally) to get my result. Successes (on the green and yellow die) and failures (on the purple and red die) cancel each other out, as do advantages and threats. So we’ll say that, all told, I’ve rolled well and gotten two successes, one advantage, and one threat. I would then need to describe just how I succeeded, what my advantage was (maybe I’m so good at bluffing that I strike up a friendship with the officer), and what the threat turned out to be (maybe I don’t know the answer to a key question the officer asks and I have to make up something on the fly).

If it sounds complicated, well…it is, a bit. And this isn’t even touching on some of the other elements of the game (which I’ll avoid going into for now for the sake of keeping this simple as I can). Getting used to the way the dice interact with each other can take a little time to figure out, and I was glad that I already knew at least a little about the dice mechanic from listening to Campaign. However, once you get going, it starts to feel pretty natural, and the GM can likely help out if there’s a dice roll with a particularly confusing result.

In any case, I really like this mechanic overall. Due to the way the advantages and threats affect the successes and failures, players have to be more creative and detailed when they explain what’s happening, and this adds a lot of flavor and depth to the story overall, in a way that feels more baked-in than with other systems. As I tend to favor the narrative side of RPG play over the combat element, this is my favorite thing about the Star Wars games, and getting to experience it firsthand was as fun as I imagined. Beyond the compelling story element, we had a great GM and a player group that gelled well, making for a truly enjoyable session as first-time AoR players!

So, have you played AoR or any of the other Star Wars RPGs? How do you feel about the unique mechanics of this game? If you haven’t played it, is it on your list of systems to try?

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Quick recap: What is AcadeCon?

AcadeCon is a 3 day convention in Dayton, Ohio where people get together and play RPG’s, board games, and generally just hang out.

Let me start out by saying that I had a blast at AcadeCon, every game that I played in, I had a ton of fun with, from the Dungeons & Dinosaurs where I played a dinosaur of a variety that I cannot pronounce, to fighting off assassins in ancient Egypt, to stop the release of an extended and recut addition where someone shot first who wasn’t supposed to have shot first. The only downside to it was that I wasn’t able to finish out the week strong as the lead-up to AcadeCon was busy and I didn’t get enough sleep and ended up being exhausted and feeling like crap the last day, so I didn’t get to play in a game by Shane (@Mundangerous) where I would have been playing some more normal D&D, and playing in another Star Wars game run by Chris from the Redemption Podcast.

Next, let me also say that I’m and extrovert, so I recharge and get energized being around people, which is great most of the time. I do need to do a better job of balancing that out, but more on that later (as in another post that I’ll put out in the next couple of weeks). So when I’m super excited about it, understand that it was a super high for me. If you want to know more about how an introvert dealt with AcadeCon, check out Kristen’s post (double posts today)!

This post is really going to be a highlight post, so let’s talk about some of them:

1. I got Metal Dice! Easy Roller Dice! They are really cool and copper/brass colored. They are also really heavy and fairly expensive, but did I say that they are really cool. I’m super happy with that purchase. That was about the first thing that we did while waiting for our first game to start. We also bought a die tray to help make it less noisy when we record and Kristen bought a dragon (not living) and some dice as well.
2. I ran a super awesome game. It was supposed to be a horror/suspense sort of game, but I found out quickly, that does not work. Without being able to control factors, like light, and people playing games around you, it’s kind of hard to set the mood. So I just went along with it (and along with having five people even though the last time I had checked there were only 2 signed up), and it ended up being a great name. The adventuring party called themselves the Shadow Hawks (or their defacto leader did), and it ended up being referred to as the Chartreuse Parrots or the Black Crows or so many other combinations.It was great, the players were really funny, and I killed off a character which was fun, right as the game wrapped up, so they weren’t sitting around. First time that I’ve managed to kill of a character.
3. The Nefertiti Overdrive game was something totally new. This is the game that was set in ancient Egypt. And instead of asking the GM (game master) “Can I do something” you describe what you are going to do, that determines how many dice you get to use, and then you roll to see what happens. It really helped some up with a ton of stuff on the fly and stretched my improv skills. It ended up being very epic, and the tension was high even though the combat speed was a little slow. But the mechanics are unique and they would be pretty easy to recreate again and could work really well in any setting.
4. I really want to run a Star Wars game now. We got to play in a Fantasy Flights Star Wars system, Force and Destiny to be exact. We were a team that had found out about someone name Lucas who was going to re-release some films, remastered and redone and we needed to stop that and keep the originals around. I played a Bothan who was really into stabbing people. For those of you who don’t know what Bothans are, in Star Wars the biggest thing that I know about them is that many Bothans died when getting them the information about the second Death Star. I’m going to write more in detail about this system and have plans for more podcasting around the Edge of the Empire system, so look for that.
5. Finally, all the people. They were really nice. Meeting so many people who I talk with on twitter is great and being able to put a face to names was a blast, many thanks to everyone there who made it so much fun. We are already planning on coming back next year.

6. 

That’s all I got room to write about today, but checkout some more and new articles that we will be putting up on the system and checkout The RPG Academy (@TheRPGAcademy & @TheCalebG). They do a ton of awesome podcasts, and are worth supporting with some listens and reviews, and maybe you can join us for a game in 2017 at AcadeCon!

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