2 hours ago, Vorzakk said:When I read this I thought it was some kind of industrial food processor employed by some bad guys. I was quite disappointed when I realized what you were actually talking about.
Oh don't worry. The Ewok slicer still sets up a swinging log (actually chunk of machinery) trap in the cockpit...while she's slicing. The dumb burns hotter.
22 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:The Ewok slicer still sets up a swinging log (actually chunk of machinery) trap in the cockpit...while she's slicing. The dumb burns hotter.
In my campaign, the destruction of the 2nd Death Star laid waste to Endor. My main motivation was to shake up the political landscape of the Alliance, but I also did it to make sure that something like this could never be a thing.
15 hours ago, Nytwyng said:One narrated the “present,” one the Han flashbacks, and one the Lando flashbacks.
Ah. Of course. The makes sense.
It was still terrible.
Just now, Andreievitch said:Ah. Of course. The makes sense.
It was still terrible.
Hahahahaha
I stopped buying Star wars books with NJO stuff. Then decided to pick up Aftermath series, and finally "Heir to the Jedi" to see if it got any better.
stopped buying the books again
I bought a book that was two books in one, plus some short stories. "Tarkin" and "New Dawn", I think was the 2nd book. As well as a bunch of others. I liked Inferno Squad, and so far Twilight Company is pretty decent. *SO FAR* I've been doing alright when it comes to Star Wars books.
I'm going to have to remember this thread next time I go to buy books.
Rebel Rising isn't too bad either. A good insight into Jyn Erso, and I am using some of the settings for my pre-Battle of Yavin campaign.
I didn't think this book was nearly as bad as the OP makes it out to be.
It's not fantastic and is ultimately forgettable, and does have some rather silly elements that are apparently there for the sake of ham-fistedly attempting to highlight how "strange and different" the GFFA is, but it's still significantly better than Karen Traviss' Order 66 novel or Crystal Star or Darksaber.
As for the Ewok slicer... meh, I've seen weirder concepts in the quarter century that I've been playing Star Wars RPGs, enough so that the notion of an Ewok slicer (whether prior to or after the Battle of Endor) isn't even a blip on the radar, especially compared to things like Wookiee gigolos, Hutt ballerinas, Jawa luddites, or Rodian pacifists (which was an officially published template in WEG's Heroes and Rogues supplement).
Then again, Legends!Ewoks apparently aren't nearly as rare a species as Rotj originally established, as they've shown up in SW:TOR (a few thousand years before the OT), and the species' name was included in common parlance ("Rodian in Ewok's clothing). Source for those bits is the Wookieepedia Legends article on the little fuzzballs here . So given there's Ewoks out in the galaxy and they've been out there for a while, it's not completely out of the realm of possibility that an Ewok slicer might well crop up.
12 hours ago, HappyDaze said:Oh don't worry. The Ewok slicer still sets up a swinging log (actually chunk of machinery) trap in the cockpit...while she's slicing. The dumb burns hotter.
Tell me you haven't sat in a beer-league game and witnessed something silly like that. Seems like we always had an element of ridiculousness in our games, which seems to suit the setting just fine.
Why, you and I alone could shred the movies to pieces frame by frame and find equally preposterous events - heck, we could just focus on ewoks and walk away with the same distaste. Now, I'm still not attacking your opinion, I just want to point out that these sorts of things are the sprinkles on the Star Wars sundae. It can be found in nearly every canonical source including the films, so calling out this book seems a bit unfair to me.
Could the books be better? No doubt. Could the films be better? No doubt. Can they be enjoyed despite their many flaws? Of course! And is anyone allowed to like or not like pieces of it? But of course!
10 minutes ago, themensch said:Tell me you haven't sat in a beer-league game and witnessed something silly like that. Seems like we always had an element of ridiculousness in our games, which seems to suit the setting just fine.
Isn't that half the fun of RPGs sometimes, is coming up with oddball and off-the-wall character concepts? Ones that either just barely fit within the setting, or are so off the wall the rest of the group just rolls with it due to being afraid of what zanier concepts one could conceive if this one is rejected?
12 minutes ago, Donovan Morningfire said:Isn't that half the fun of RPGs sometimes, is coming up with oddball and off-the-wall character concepts? Ones that either just barely fit within the setting, or are so off the wall the rest of the group just rolls with it due to being afraid of what zanier concepts one could conceive if this one is rejected?
Maybe not at every table, but darn near every one I've played at or observed. One might conclude that the common silly element is me, but no!
I had an ewok pilot, a hard-drinking gambler, in my very first Edge game. We hit the ground running with silly concepts.
1 hour ago, themensch said:Maybe not at every table, but darn near every one I've played at or observed. One might conclude that the common silly element is me, but no!
I had an ewok pilot, a hard-drinking gambler, in my very first Edge game. We hit the ground running with silly concepts.
Wookiee beat-boxer, Gungan gangsta rapper, and Toydarian opera diva, all in the same party, Saga Edition.
Sadly the campaign never got off the ground due to real life issues concerning the GM, but with that trio of PCs (none of which were mine; frankly my Rodian ex-hitman-turned-bodyguard was by far the most normal character in the lot), it certainly would have had some memorable moments.
But as you implied earlier, for some folks prefer their Star Wars to be much more straight-laced and that "oddball concepts" like the ones we've listed be kept as far away from the franchise. I agree that such "silliness" is part and parcel of Star Wars, being baked into the franchise's very DNA. Some folks can accept that and not get too bent out of shape when the official material (books, splats, movies) indulges in such, some folks can't or simply won't; I'm sure there are parts of the fandom that balk at Star Wars being considered anything other than a high-brow masterpiece of theater, when the reality is quite a different creature.
4 hours ago, themensch said:Tell me you haven't sat in a beer-league game and witnessed something silly like that. Seems like we always had an element of ridiculousness in our games, which seems to suit the setting just fine.
Why, you and I alone could shred the movies to pieces frame by frame and find equally preposterous events - heck, we could just focus on ewoks and walk away with the same distaste. Now, I'm still not attacking your opinion, I just want to point out that these sorts of things are the sprinkles on the Star Wars sundae. It can be found in nearly every canonical source including the films, so calling out this book seems a bit unfair to me.
Could the books be better? No doubt. Could the films be better? No doubt. Can they be enjoyed despite their many flaws? Of course! And is anyone allowed to like or not like pieces of it? But of course!
I don't mind some humor in my games, but I avoid "beer-league" and ridiculousness. I do realize it exists in the setting, but Last Shot seems to use stupid-silly as its primary building block. It would be like having everyone in the TPM be like Jar Jar exclaiming Anakin's "Yippee" except for one straight-faced actor foundering at explaining Midichlorians while Maul arrived standing on stilts upon roller skates. Last Shot just condenses the dumb to the point where it is very hard to look past it to see anything of value.
4 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:Isn't that half the fun of RPGs sometimes, is coming up with oddball and off-the-wall character concepts? Ones that either just barely fit within the setting, or are so off the wall the rest of the group just rolls with it due to being afraid of what zanier concepts one could conceive if this one is rejected?
Nope. Not for me. I'll reject a concept that seems too silly, and no one is afraid of zanier concepts because those too would be rejected. I've walked away from tables as both a player and a GM, and I've pushed away players that insist upon playing in such ways. I don't need to make time for them; they can go flock together with their own kind.
I really enjoyed it.
Gave a nice bit of worldbuilding post-RotJ, ran with some interesting concepts with droid sentience, probably the darkest B-Plot villain in SW so far (at least the most grizzly), and had some nice pre-ANH Lando and Han scenes.
Peepka the Ewok is fantastic, her introduction made me laugh and she cements Ewoks as a primitive but mentally dexterous people able to pick up new things quickly (in-line with the FoD shorts on Youtube). The Gungan introduced was a nice meta-moment, nice to see more L337 content and Han dealing with his anxieties as a dad is a good mirror for how he reacts to his son going dark many years later. Han grew up as a street orphan, it makes sense a lot of his emotional baggage he hides away beneath the surface and refuses to admit, but he still needs to adapt to living a now-normal life in Leia's world as opposed to the more high-octane life of a smuggler on the run he's been so used to.
It's nice to read, has a good amount of goof to offset the frankly morbid villain, and if you like Han or Lando there are some fantastic snarky exchanges between them (Bonus cameos from Sanna Starros and Maz Kanata that are fun to see)
Your loss.
I've had some great and memorable campaigns across multiple systems come about simply because one or more players came up with off-beat character concepts and made that concept work.
Halfling Barbarians (wielding axes bigger than they are), Half-Orc Troubadours, highly charismatic yet manipulative Dwarf rogues (created well before Tyrion and Game of Thrones entered popular awareness) are probably just the sorts of things you'd have squashed for being "much too silly"... and yet these have made for some great gaming stories and campaigns, both at games I've played and games that I've heard about.
In the hands of a player that's not angling to play a Fish-Malk or a Kender kleptomaniac (i.e. playing a silly character just for an excuse to be a jerk to the rest of the group), such odd concepts can make for highly entertaining role-playing sessions. I'd suggest actually giving games with those sorts of characters a try, but as you seem set in your ways with no inclination to reconsider, I doubt you'd even enjoy the experience even if you were willing to give it a try.
Edited by Donovan Morningfire15 minutes ago, Donovan Morningfire said:Your loss.
I've had some great and memorable campaigns across multiple systems come about simply because one or more players came up with off-beat character concepts and made that concept work.
Halfling Barbarians (wielding axes bigger than they are), Half-Orc Troubadours, highly charismatic yet manipulative Dwarf rogues (created well before Tyrion and Game of Thrones entered popular awareness) are probably just the sorts of things you'd have squashed for being "much too silly"... and yet these have made for some great gaming stories and campaigns, both at games I've played and games that I've heard about.
In the hands of a player that's not angling to play a Fish-Malk or a Kender kleptomaniac (i.e. playing a silly character just for an excuse to be a jerk to the rest of the group), such odd concepts can make for highly entertaining role-playing sessions. I'd suggest actually giving games with those sorts of characters a try, but as you seem set in your ways with no inclination to reconsider, I doubt you'd even enjoy the experience even if you were willing to give it a try.
I don't squash concepts that are outside the norm. I squash concepts that make everyone at the table groan, especially when the player is just trying to be a special snowflake. There's a real difference that is readily apparent and trying to appease such players isn't worth my time. No gaming > bad gaming.
So in summary...
Book suck.
No, other book suck more so this book not suck so much.
No!? Book not suck, I like book!
People who think book suck are not nice talking about book, but can say book suck, but should not say book suck.
I think that sums it up....
52 minutes ago, 2P51 said:So in summary...
Book suck.
No, other book suck more so this book not suck so much.
No!? Book not suck, I like book!
People who think book suck are not nice talking about book, but can say book suck, but should not say book suck.
I think that sums it up....
Pretty much every internet conversation in a nutshell.
"Forget it Jake, it's the Internet."
2 hours ago, HappyDaze said:I don't mind some humor in my games, but I avoid "beer-league" and ridiculousness. I do realize it exists in the setting, but Last Shot seems to use stupid-silly as its primary building block. It would be like having everyone in the TPM be like Jar Jar exclaiming Anakin's "Yippee" except for one straight-faced actor foundering at explaining Midichlorians while Maul arrived standing on stilts upon roller skates. Last Shot just condenses the dumb to the point where it is very hard to look past it to see anything of value.
Oh, but we cannot forget that Qui-gon gets a single gut-stab and dies, but Maul is cut in half and survives a fall through a reactor...somehow. Ridiculousness is everywhere if you look. How did ewosk learn to pilot an AT-ST? How did they have a dress in Leia's size? Why didn't the slain tauntaun attract vicious predators acclimated to the climate? We could go on and on. I do agree it was perhaps overused but I don't feel like it was the basis, even with jetpacked space men toting guns that can blow up a tie fighter. It's just the same sprinkles, applied more liberally.
Like @ALFRED1182 points out, it's a good bit of world-building and perhaps that's why I enjoyed it so much. Plus Lando.
2 hours ago, HappyDaze said:Nope. Not for me. I'll reject a concept that seems too silly, and no one is afraid of zanier concepts because those too would be rejected. I've walked away from tables as both a player and a GM, and I've pushed away players that insist upon playing in such ways. I don't need to make time for them; they can go flock together with their own kind.
Hey, different strokes for different folks. I do think you're doing yourself a disservice but hey, if you don't like it, nobody can make you like it. I hope you are able to find groups that share your feelings on the matter.
57 minutes ago, 2P51 said:So in summary...
Book suck.
No, other book suck more so this book not suck so much.
No!? Book not suck, I like book!
People who think book suck are not nice talking about book, but can say book suck, but should not say book suck.
I think that sums it up....
You forgot the inevitable "think of what benefit you could bring to the world if you spent your efforts on something more worthwhile than arguing about space wizards and technical implausibilities."
I didn't think it was totally terrible. It has a lot of cringing moments, like Lando thinking about how his bulge is looking and so on.
Personally, nothing has topped the absolutely horribad of Dark Disciple.
16 minutes ago, onebadveggie said:I didn't think it was totally terrible. It has a lot of cringing moments, like Lando thinking about how his bulge is looking and so on.
Personally, nothing has topped the absolutely horribad of Dark Disciple.
I haven’t even bothered with that one simply because it stars Quinlan Vos. That character has always rubbed me the wrong way.
29 minutes ago, onebadveggie said:I didn't think it was totally terrible. It has a lot of cringing moments, like Lando thinking about how his bulge is looking and so on.
Personally, nothing has topped the absolutely horribad of Dark Disciple.
So, ehhhh, book kinda suck but kinda not suck. Other book suck.
11 minutes ago, Nytwyng said:I haven’t even bothered with that one simply because it stars Quinlan Vos. That character has always rubbed me the wrong way.
Yes, other book suck, cuz character rub sucky.