Epicenter

There's two versions of SW RPGs as people on here described. I've played them both. Heck, one of the writers for the West End Games (WEG) Star Wars RPG is (or maybe was, see below) a part of the WotC Star Wars effort so there's some things that feel very familiar between the two systems. They both have their plusses and minuses. D6 advantages: Their system is nice and simple. The d6 system allows you to generate characters quickly. Combat moves quickly. Stat-controlled skills lets you be pretty good in things even if haven't taken a skill specifically for it provided it's under that stat. There's no levels. There's plenty of sourcebooks out. The game is OOP, so you can get it pretty cheap. Jedi really feel like Jedi. The D6 "wild dice" system adds flavor to ability checks. D6 disadvantages: Their handling of the Force isn't so hot. Because of the way the Force is handled (there's three Jedi stats for the Force - you can learn many abilities, and they're controlled by three stats) it feels like when a Jedi turns on his or her lightsaber in combat everyone else in the group can go out and eat lunch or watch DVD movies in the front room while the Jedi cleans up. The D6 "wild dice" system essentially has you screwing up once badly one out of very six times. It was a mature system so a lot of the sourcebooks, especially the Imperial and Rebel have stuff that is obviously made up and feels a little contrived or just not very "Star Wars-y" (Torpedo Spheres, Victory Class SDs, and Imperial Army really come to mind) - especially since the d6 version was OOP before Ep1, you have a bunch of "older" equipment and ships WEG speculated on which has since been much more neatly explained in Ep1-3. The game is OOP so you won't be getting new 'official' supplements and the community is shrinking. D20 advantages: I much more prefer the way the D20 system (second rev) handles the Force (as feats). Jedi still feel powerful, but don't feel quite as powerful as they were in D6 - this is good and bad as it makes parties with Jedi and non-Jedi easier to balance but Jedi don't feel as "cool" sometimes. The breakdown of Hit Points into Vitality Points and HP is a pretty nice improvement over D&D's straight Hit Points. It's still supposedly being published, there's more people playing. It was published after Ep1, so there's some info about Ep1 and Ep2 stuff. D20 disadvantages: It's pricey due to the licensing mojo. There's also the typical gripes about D20 system in general like levels, classes, and experience points. The D20 system isn't well-suited to a skill-based RPG, which I tend to prefer for futuristic games. WotC hasn't published a new sourcebook in ages and looking at their planned releases, they don't seem to have any plans to release more SW:RPG books so I wouldn't call the system dead but certainly a bit comatose at the moment.

Twilight 2000 is certainly Post-Apocalyptic in that there's been WW3 and a nuclear exchange. However, it doesn't have the typical "wackiness" that people want when they speak of "Post-Apocalyptic" settings. There's like no giant scorpions or hordes of shambling mutants. No hidden US bases where they're testing powered armor or anything like that. It's pretty much GDW's attempt to create a "realistic" P-A RPG (back in the late 1980s all the way to like 2000 or so when they finally gave it up). It's was a big hit with the military crowd. If anything, think David Brin's "The Postman" more than "Wasteland." The world is unrelentingly grim, though some of the speculated events in the world are laughable (especially the scenarios of the later editions of Twilight:2000). The US is in a three-way near Civil War between the Military Government that seized control after the Civilian one collapsed, a shaky Civilian government with pretty dubious claims to authority, and New America who are white supremacists. What land the three factions don't control (and their enclaves are shrinking, with the exception of New America) are controlled by marauders. While the rest of the world (with the exception of Poland) is not covered anywhere in the same depth as the US, there's various materials of varying quality which describe what happens to the rest of the world. --- Gamma World isn't Fallout. In Gamma World, the Apocalypse occurs waaaay later, I have the first edition of that game lying around somewhere (yeah, I'm that old ). I think it's at least after like 2200AD or something. If Fallout is a projection of what if WW3 occured in 1950, Gamma World is more like the movie version of HG Well's "Time Traveler" filmed in like the 1960s I think. Stuff is supposedly so advanced they have stuff like blaster weapons and 'black ray guns' and personal cars that can fly you to the moon and so forth.

These kinds of things usually happen in campaigns, like "Masks of Nylarlathotep" or "Shadows of Yog'Sothoth" and other such where after repeated casualities and narrow escapes, eventually the players get something of a clue of what they're up against. That's when the clamoring usually starts for heavy weaponry (which is usually denied).

Just my .02 about d20. d20 was designed with D&D in mind. D&D has increasingly become an entry-level RPG. Concepts such as hit points, levels, and classes are easy to understand for beginning and not-serious players. While the game was cleaned up some and given more 'neat plug-ins' for your character such as feats and character abilities, it's essentially still a very simple game and easily understood game. Your class determines your role, and you can pretty much determine how workable a party formed of your friends will be at a glance by looking at their classes. d20 D&D has gone a huge way in giving a shot to the arm for an increasingly ecceltic and anemic hobby - Role Playing. It's brought new, younger players in and by appealing to the 'megaoverpower' of modern children's entertainment by the revamped classes, it hopes to bring (sucker?) in a new generation of RPGers. I think in this respect, it's an admirable success. I personally don't think D&D should ever veer away from classes, levels, experience points, phat lewtz, and so on. I think if one gets tired of that system (and who doesn't?) there are plenty of other systems to play with their own trade-offs. --- Try it. It works really well. :D Well, except when it doesn't. When it doesn't the phyiscally oriented brawns survive while the brains do not because the brawns can run faster (this being the single most important trait in CoC for overall survival). People often seem to think that the brawns have a short survival time, but it's actually untrue. Brawns actually have a pretty good life-expetancy if played intelligently. After all, it's not your job to seize control of the Shoggoth after you riddle the Shoggoth-Twisha with your tommy gun or bathe him in fire from your flamethrower*. That's the job of the brain and his or her magic spells. You don't need to be strictly divided between brain and brawn (unless you enjoy RPing dumb guys with guns), but you should have people who are decent with weapons who cope with the cultists / ghouls / deep ones rank and file, while you have the scholars with their low sanity and CM artifacts. For instance, in my games jobs such as driving/piloting, interpersonal skills, and the infamous Credit Rating are all divided amongst the Brawns to give them something to do when not in combat. * A flamethrower means having to say you're sorry less often. They did exist in the 1920s (if you're playing CoC by Gaslight, you could probably still fashion one). Try to get or make one ASAP when it is believable in-character for a brawn to start seeking one out. They're well worth the trouble of keeping working and smuggling around and the brains will sometimes even be able to concoct exotic fuels for it which only increases the fun for the whole family. And when it's time to take a hit for the team? You can at least go out in a fireball that'd make Brockheimer proud.

Diplomacy would be a fun game except that the economic model in the game is fundamentally flawed. I've seen some fixes to the rules floating around on the net that supposedly get rid of the gaping issues with the economics, though. It might be worth it to look those fixes up. As is, it's simply too easy for someone who knows the loophole to generate huge amounts of cash abusing it. And as, Cicero said, "Endless money forms the sinews of war."

I liked the character of Atris and thought it was one of the biggest tragedies of KotoR2 that they didn't do more with her, but I don't think she would have very much to add to K3. --- Forgive me for being a bit off-topic, but ... Looking at the responses, I'm struck by a question I've had for a while. Perhaps it was just me, but was anyone else confused about the relative ages of a lot of the characters in the game? It seems that a lot of people on this board are of the opinion that the Exile is pretty young, while Atris is pretty old. It particularly struck me in aimo's fanart where Atris is shown as being an adult when the Exile is just a child. This is reinforced by the re-used graphics from the first game for the Exile's portrait and the choice of VA for Atris. But I always had the impression that Atris and the Exile were actually of an age or at least not that far apart. Here's my (addmitedly conjectural) evidence: * The Exile is repeatedly suggested as being "old" by Mira (who's probably about 18-20?) and so the Exile is probably at least 30 given how people in their 20s feel about people who are even 30. * Atris idolized the Exile. Older people tend not to idolize people who are that much younger than them. There's also some suggestions that Atris and the Exile were actually "classmates" and one chose the path of the warrior (you) and she chose the path of the librarian. * The Disciple gives a clue as well. He says that he was waiting for your (female) Exile to take him on as a padawan. If the Exile was as young as many people believe at the beginning of the Mandalorian Wars, I don't think the Exile would have been allowed to take a student if (s)he were still only like 18 or 19 and the Disciple wouldn't have hoped for the Exile to choose him. Just going by conjecture, I think the earliest the Council would let a Jedi take a padawan would be in the mid-20s or so? * The years of the Exile's actual exile is listed from like 7 to 10 years after the end of the Mandalorian Wars. I'm guessing that your exile, despite how he or she looks is actually more in the 35+ range. What does everyone else think?

So where in the game is there any actual support that would validate your "last of the known Jedi" theory? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Yes, recall the whole dialogue in the Peragus fuelling base you have with one of the HK-50s? Recall how the information about you was spilled from the Coreward Databases to pretty much anyone who was vaguely interested in Jedi-matters by the HK-50s to flush you out. Everyone knows about you because Goto was trying to flush you out for the HK-50s to seize and bring to NS. For the record though, I thought Bastila walking around was pretty strange as a LSer, though.

Just repeat the encounter with the LS dialogue like three times and it should process properly and let you through.

It's an additional glitch. --- You get back Force Points if you're near or at 0 force points and you de-equip something with a wisdom bonus (like your lighstabers if your have the YOURNAME crystal - just switch to your secondary weapons set). In this way, by equipping and unequipping your lightsabers, I found I could get enough Force Points for another Force Lightning. Thus, a LS Jedi can still Force Lightning Hssis in those caves.

That's actually pretty typical. Consoles tend to be very cheap and have excellent technology over and beyond most PCs at the point they come out. Within a year or two, though, they fall behind.

IIRC you can attack it with your lightsaber and knock the shield down. Or if you have Bao-Dur around, have him do his Shield-Fu thing on it.

Heh, I like that explanation of True Sith better than my own.

I thought Atris' silver-on-white robes were better looking than Jocasta's. However, all that said, I have no idea how the other Jedi Masters didn't know Atris would fall to the Dark Side during the Exile's trial. Here, the rest of the Masters are in humble white and brown Jedi robes and the freaking librarian comes in with some silk and satin confection she'd have been able to attend a Queen's coronation in. Sin of vanity, anyone?

I'm guessing your savegame file became corrupted. Once I was playing around with my savegames and I ran out of swap space or something and when next I loaded my game, I had all sorts of goofy attributes on my lightsaber, like yours. Were you playing with the infamous lightsaber color change exploit?

Kreia is part of the triad of the Kreia-Atris-Handmaiden (if you play lightside) which both fulfills the archetype of the "woman" in myths (Kreia as the wise Crone - Atris as the Jedi Master fulfilling the role of Mother- and Handmaiden as of course, the Maiden) which plants the seed for Handmaiden's future tragedy. Both Atris and Kreia trod the same path and the ending of KotoR2 suggests that Handmaiden might end up down that same path. At some point, Kreia explains to you (or maybe someone else? Atris?) that she was essentially once Atris. She too was a Jedi Historian and she too delved too deeply into the Sith teachings to understand the history of the Force. From consulting Sith holocrons it didn't take long for her to probably visit places like Koriban, Malachor V, and other places not described to learn more about the Sith, probably eventually piecing together the history of the True Sith. To Kreia, the I don't think the True Sith aren't the tribespeople on Koriban or the hybrid Sith culture that came with the Dark Jedi. She states firmly that the Sith are not a people, the Sith is a belief.

She may have been a romance at one time, but I think it was removed. In fact, a lot of the more explicitly romantic dialogue still exists in the files but aren't used in the game (and no, I don't mean moaning or kissing, but people coming right out with their feelings instead of alluding to them). There's an unused dialogue where she approaches Handmaiden and Visas and breaks up a catfight over your character and gives them both some dating advice (Part of the convo still exists when you play a female Exile and approach Mira about understanding men). As for being interested, I think she certainly is interested in the male Exile. She tells herself it isn't practical and doesn't really want to add herself into the brewing catfight between Handmaiden and Visas over your character. More to the point, her entire background and the things she says pretty much screams that Annah--err-- Mira is terrified of forming emotional bonds. If the game were longer (or Obsidian had more time) we might have seen a plot where the Exile could coax Mira out of her shell.

I usually like to max out Mira's levels as Jedi, so I don't bother levelling her up even once. You can get out of the area only beating Hanharr, four Kath Hounds, and two Ubese. The trick is to have plenty of personal melee shields, medpacks, and lots of mines, preferably "Deadly Frag" types (if someone is good with demolitions or med tech you should have quite a few by the time area comes around. If not, buy 'em). Avoid using gas mines. Remember, Mira doesn't set off mines. So what you do is you first let Hanharr chase you around that arena and run him over the mines that are already there. Keep running him around in a large-ish circle (about the same size as the 'circle' that the mines made). You'll notice that as you take turns, you'll start to widen your lead in front of Hanharr. Lay down a mine when that happens. Like five deadly frag mines is usually enough for Hanharr. Obviously, stuff will still hit you. That's what the melee shields and medpacks are for. Use them if you get hurt. Repeat for the Kath Hounds. Get the key and the stuff from the bodies. Lay down some mines at the opposite ramp. Five or six deadly mines should be enough. Run up the ramp, open the door. Lure the two Ubese down for fun and games. Go into the room, take a left then just make a beeline straight for the exit door and open a dialogue with it. Then the Exile comes in and the fur really begins to fly...

I'm imagining people kitting out their lightsabers like they were mobile phones. Next will come "what color is your lightsaber casing" and we'll be able to put faces on our sabers, or get it gold plated with "PLAYA" picked out in rhinestones. Then there'll be a poll if people want to change the "fzzzzt" of the lightsaber turning on to some other custom dialtone. Perhaps have it play "la cucharaca" or "dixie" or something. I'm imagining that conversation with Atton being different... Exile: My lightsaber had a 14k gold chain arcwelded around it and was electroplated in Darvian Iridium. In silver crystals of the purest Zaironium it said "PIMP"... Atton: Ohhh dizam, dude (Female: chica), I'm jes gettin' a chubby thinking of it. Wha happened to it? Exile: The MAN took it from me. Say, Atton, you're talking a bit oddly... Atton: Oh that? It's nothing. Lightsabers like that distracting. For the droids, I mean... On a tangent... A ghetto was actually a place in a city where a group of people (historically Jewish) were segregated off. In the case of a region it was referred as a Pale. While the title wasn't used in other parts of the world but similar conditions happened in many places. In Spain of Al-Andalus for instance, it was the Jewish Quarter. This didn't mean that ghettoes were destitute places. Many of them were quite affluent due to the higher standards of learning and education of those living within (that's not to say they didn't have their share of poorer people and layabouts like any group) and certainly weren't "concentration camps." Of course, then the Nazis happened. Places like the Warsaw Ghetto where people were crowded Ghetto far beyond capacity and without proper sanitation, housing, or food. So yes, during that period, it is as you describe. In the modern day, the definition and usage of the term "ghetto" has changed once more. I believe it was started during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s when the conditions inner city blacks had to live in were no better than the ghettoes of WW2. Hyperbole? Sure, but they had a point. But since that time, the definition of ghetto as slang is accepted to essentially a poor inner-city neighborhood. When something is "ghetto" it refers to something being "a poor man's version of." So, in my case, I was describing viridian as being a poor man's green and not a "nazi concentration camp" green.

It's too late from the moment you turn your lightsaber on. Everyone and their brother and their pet Bantha is going to know who you are. Queens of Naboo will change their travel plans in their own palace to avoid being in the same room as you. The word "Viridian" is cool. Unfortunately, it's like a ghetto green. So I'd go with violet myself. Or white/silver would be pretty neat as well. Black is just too ... too ... 16 year old Metallica fanboy for my own tastes. Your milage may differ.

Was it just me or did the VA for Atton kinda drop the ball on these spoken lines? He sounds like, well, let's just say he sounds like he needs more fiber in diet instead of breathing his last. Maybe it sounds better with the Exile's dialogue options in between to break them up, but just listening to dialogue, it's as painful as Mira's VA during the last parts of the "being turned into a Jedi" sequence.

Tactic Name: Ring-Around-Bad-Pathing Cheese Factor: Very High Author: Various There's a pool in the tomb there. If you took even one ranged character (ie; non-Jedi) you can pretty much run around the pool there. Don't worry about the other characters. Just control one. Run around the pool letting the Sith Masters chase you, around and around like some ghetto "Dxun 500" and "kite" the Sith Masters. Turn every so often and take a shot at them, using medpacks as needed. Eventually the bad pathing makes them "catch" on the edge of the pool and they won't chase you and just stand around while you shoot them. If you position yourself correctly, they'll turn off their lightsabers and just stand there let you blast them.

Atton's a racist, so to speak. The ugly truth is that droids are the slave race of Star Wars. They exist in servitude and nobody cares about it. I always assumed that Atton could understand T3 earlier if he wanted to, but his dislike of droids made him not want to bother to translate what the droid was saying. Later on, he had to listen to the "cargo cylinder."

It's the spiked ball that gets most people. The morningstar, from the best sources I can find is simply a variety of mace that happens to have a ball shaped head with spikes on it. A weapon with one or more smooth or spiked balls at the end of a chain connected to a haft is a ball-and-chain (some very imaginative naming going on there ), sometimes called a flail or war flail (though I believe that flails have a rod-shaped head at the end of a chain). However, I've seen the term "morningstar" used to describe ball-and-chain weapons in some sources, even sources that I would have thought would know better. It's entirely possible the vagueness began years ago or even in ages when those weapons were still being used. After all, this excessively technical taxionomy of weapons happened after the fact - there were no non-partisan (or non-ranseur for that matter ) medieval commisions devoted to enforcing weights, lengths, and names of these weapons.

As far as balance of power goes, I think LS is a shade more powerful than DS, especially considering that as a LSer you can use DS powers with little more than an additional cost in force points (which I always find is more than covered up by my unreal Wisdom score by mid and late game) but DS can appeal to your ego if that's what you enjoy. The LS / DS question is a bit more troublesome in TSL because one of the major (to me) failings of TSL is that you only have a barest idea of what you did and how you did it you did to get Exiled from the Jedi Order for much of the game, and if what you did on Malachor V becomes clear in the story, how you did it isn't really that clear (what is a Shadow Field Generator, anyway?). You're not an amnesiac like you were in KotoR1. One of the big parts of fun in KotoR1 was to play a LSer until the big revalation (revanation?) and then get really bitter at how you've been used and become DS or vice versa. I wish it was more clear what you did earlier in the game in KotoR2 so a player could look at his or her past actions then consider the Council's actions and decide what kind of Jedi they would be. As far as lightsabers go, if you're going for just number-crunching power, I think using double lightsaber is best until you get enough crystals to kit out two lightsabers, then go for one standard and one short.

Freelancer was a fun game, I enjoyed it on the playthrough then exploring some afterwards. FL was an attempt (consciously, I recall) to re-create the sense of wonder and exploration that people felt when playing Privateer. They originally wanted to make FL a much bigger and more ambitious game (sort of like KotoR2, I guess) but for various reasons most of that fell through. If you dig around the universe as well as the reference files in FL you can see the bits and pieces of what might have been.