A What If Product Pitch: Star Wars Mega Dungeon

The above is a still from the new Star Wars Trailer. As I watched this I thought wow, that’s a Mega Dungeon waiting to happen. On my run Saturday morning I thought more about it and formulated a half mad idea of what I would do if I could use Star Wars IP in a OSR dungeon crawl setting.

Pitch: A sandbox set around Mos Eisley with a crashed Star Destroyer serving as a Tentpole mega dungeon. The setting would be in the Star Wars universe, but would use only Episodes 4-6 as cannon and is set 20 years before them.

System: A Sci-Fi version of the Peril and Plunder, with an expanded skill system and magic removed. (maybe add force sensitive, but no Jedis) compatible with any OSR system. Gritty and dirty with only the smallest hint of Space Opera.

Scope: Levels 1-5 no more no less. A finite adventure that serves as a mini campaign that runs 12-20 sessions. The characters retire rich or die trying.

The Back Cover: You are not a hot shot pilot, a space princess, or a farm boy with magical powers. You are a dirt poor scavenger hoping you can scrape enough credits together to get off of this rock they call Tatooine.

During the Clone Wars a Star Destroyer attempted an emergency landing in the desert north of Mos Eisley.  Damaged beyond repair the Imperial salvage teams took what they could, buried their dead, released bio-spores to soak up the radiation, and abandoned the ship.

The Jawas tell you somewhere in the vessel is a Type 11 Yelton-Brahs Hyper Pump and they have a buyer that is willing to pay top credits for it. It is up to you to risk the Imperial patrols, Tusken raiders, and whatever radiation spawned monstrosities have made their home in the depths of the wreckage in the last 15 years. Unfortunately it’s only a matter of time before the Hutt’s find out about the buyer and send their own team to recover it…..

Includes: Conversion rules for OSR game sets, new races, equipment, rules for salvage, the Star Destroyer dungeon, the home base of Mos Eisley including the Hutt’s palace, random encounters and side quest in the Dune Sea, new monsters (Krayt dragons, womp rat packs, sarlacks, etc.).

Sure it never going to happen but it made the run go faster.

Third Patron Book and Test

I have added a third Patron Book to DrivethruRPG (link at the right). I have not yet made the files available for free in my downloads as I have limited access to internet. All my game work goes slow as I have been without internet at my new apartment for almost two months.

This one is for The Order of St. Asclepius, a traveling order of healing monks. The first two Patron Books were solid analogizes to the druid and the cleric, but this is a little different, it presents a divine caster with better healing spells, but less armor and weapon choices and stronger restrictions on actions. It is a more “advanced” choice than the first two or at least a variation to the standard cleric presented in early editions.

My next Patron book will most likely be Vordon, a Primal Patron for barbarian warriors, a patron that would be a good stand in for Thor and presents few restrictions but limited spells.

I have also been working on a random dungeon generator using hex-maps. I am toying with a solo play experience that plays similar to the “Dungeon” board game with a random map and longer play time. It would also have more “Old School” elements like henchman and resource management.

 

 

The first step is creating 8 inch hexs with squares in them. I used excel for these and they came out good enough for the test. Each hexs has exits, but will not always connect to the next hex. they are laid randomly as you explore and get progressively harder. a Work in progress and one that is keeping me from finishing what I need to do, the Peril and Plunder Patron Guide and Arcane Magic. both about 75% done.....

More on Printing and Folding

I am 90% done with the latest Patron Book, but I have one more page of flavor text that I have been slowly working on that I just can't seem to get right.

I am include a link to a post by Matt Jackson on making booklets because it is inspiring and I didn't want to have no post in the month of February.

http://www.msjx.org/2014/06/diy-step-by-step-booklet-making.html

Do Not Let Your Players Watch This Video

I have no idea if this is real, but this video will have every player trying to convince their DM they can:

·         Jump in the air grab an arrow out of the wall and fire it before they land

·         Jump up into the air from behind their companion’s tower shield and fire at the enemy in front of them

·         Shot their bow at the poor sap across the table while seated in a tavern

·         Make 9 attacks in a five second combat round (or over a hundred in a AD&D 1 minute combat round)

·         Get an AC bonus for using a bow by splitting opponent’s arrows

Heck most of these were probably 4e abilities that I called ridiculous.

I Found this on: http://www.polygon.com/2015/1/23/7878129/bow-video-games-lars

 

Booklets

I am in the process of adding PDF versions of my books to DriveThruRPG.

the Patron books are free, and I am going to revise the PDF documents to make it easier for printing booklets like this. Make sure your PDF version has a blank page after the cover and before the back cover if not you have an early version and the below will not work.

This is a fairly simple process, though stapling can be a pain if you do not have a long reach stapler (check your office).

I have included screen shots from two different printers as my home printer and fancy work printer do this slightly different.

1. Load the paper you intend to use as the cover to feed first. I use thicker tan card stock for the cover and regular copy paper for the rest.

2. Select "Booklet" and Landscaping

or if you have a fancy work printer "Booklet Printing"

3. Make sure if you can't print double sided to pick "front side only"

or if you have a fancy work printer it prints both sides so hit print and your done.

5. Flip the paper over and you are ready to print the other side just pick "back side only", its ok if it shows a blank page this is the empty cover of the interior.

 

As you can see very easy. If you don't have a long reach stapler you can using two staplers, using one as the base and one as the stapler, I would suggest practicing on some scrap paper first. 

 

Best of luck and enjoy!

 



Slow and Steady

Tonight’s game was postponed till tomorrow giving me time to work on the finishing touches of my second Patron Book.

This one is for the All Mother, a good equivalent for the druid. It required additional formatting due to the numerous sidebars with charts; stats for animated trees, summoned elementals, and animal forms. This has four more pages, but only two real pieces of “art”, plus some clip art of leaves and vines I took from openclipart.org and the cover I took from an open source piece on wikipedia.

I just finished, so haven’t printed a test yet, but I really need a better stapler to make my booklets. I also need to see if I can get my editor to take a pass over these.

Oh well tomorrow I game.

Two for One

I have added my first Patron Book to the “Plunder” section. I picked the Order of the Crimson Sun as this is the Patron most closely associated with the Cleric as presented in B/X rules system. This book includes all the rules for using patron magic (divine or cleric) as presented in the Peril and Plunder Playing Guide. The rules in this patron book (and all other that will be added) can be used in other OSR rules systems as an alternative to the standard Cleric rules.

I have added both a standard (page in order) edition and a version ready to be printed and folded into a booklet (print and fold).

I am very happy with the booklet edition; I suggest you print the cover in color on higher weight paper, probably a tan, and the remaining pages in black and white.

Personally I need to go buy a better stapler to bind my copies. I intend to send some out to my players as gifts.

I expect to have two or three more patron books out before 2015.