Comic-Con 2010. Woah.

I last hit Comic-Con in 2003, and every time this week that I said “I was last here seven years ago” I felt like it was a huge gulf. Not much has actually changed about Comic-Con in that time, to be honest; it’s still huge, and the same sort of stuff is still being shown. On the other hand, an awful lot has changed about me in seven years. I started to wonder what 2003 me would think of 2010 me. Y’know, if they could have a conversation. Considering the amount of sci-fi entertainment media on display at Comic-Con, and the amount of geeks willing crazy stuff into existence during the show, it doesn’t seem impossible.

What’s up, 2010?

Nothin’. Sitting in the airport, drinkin’ a… actually I’m not drinking. Just finished the Con. Heading home to San Francisco. I live there now. Well, near there anyway.

Wow! Really? That’s great. How was the Con? Cool, right?

Well yeah, it was cool – I spent it working, though.

Working?? What as? Doing what??

Manning part of the Marvel booth. Showing off a Marvel game I’m working on. I can’t tell you too much, it’ll cause a massive paradox. Suffice to say it’s pretty darn cool.

Okay, alright. But working at the Marvel booth? That must be amazing!

It is, especially considering that they make movies and stuff now. About half the booth, maybe more, was focused on their movies, and building hype for them -

Marvel makes movies???

Alright, let’s not talk too much about the spoilers. What else did you love about the 2003 con.

I got to spend a bunch of time talking to some artists. They didn’t seem to mind me talking to them. I got a few sketches done, too.

Yep, started off a rather ambitious sketchbook as I recall. Turns out sketches aren’t free… but still, that Brent Anderson one is a doozy, right?

Sure is. I loved hanging out with these guys though. I could watch them draw all day, frankly.

Some things never change. Did you enjoy the panels?

Some of ‘em, but some of ‘em, I was just watching them to get to the ‘real’ panels that I wanted to see later on, so…

Well, you won’t have to do that next time. Frankly you won’t have time to do it… you’ll still get to a couple of cool ones, though. Just not the big, crazy, media presentations. Frankly that’ll all be on the web a few minutes later anyway. Or Twitter.

Twitter?

You’ll see. It’ll change your life. Well, sort of.

Okay…

What about the night life? Good times?

Pretty good times. I only knew the guy I came with, so -

Well, that’ll change. You’ll get to hang out with work folk, which is fun, but also with artists and other creative types. It’ll be pretty cool. Although somehow you won’t get to see many of the ‘big’ parties. You could work on that, starting now. Er, then.

Oh alright. I kind of felt like I was tired at the end of every day, though -

Exactly, right? Too tired to party. Well, admittedly, that’s the years adding on…

… sounds like an excuse to me.

It is, kind of. Hey, you’ve got it easy – you can sit down any time you want, go back to the hotel – I’m on my feet all day and my hotel is a mile away!

Cry me a river, buddy. Working the Marvel booth. Living the geek dream.

Alright, okay. I shouldn’t complain.

Nope, you shouldn’t. Also, you shouldn’t blog about it. If you even keep a blog going in 2010.

Point noted. Points, in fact.

Back in January I threw out a few predictions for the year. I’m sure if I could open a hole in time, stick my head through and say to my almost-a-year-younger self “By the time you look back at this post, you’ll be living in the US, in a job you don’t even know exists yet – oh and most of your predictions will be wrong…” Well I’d probably be half-surprised.

Let’s score me then – feel free to refresh your memory with the original post, although the important stuff is here anyway.

Known MMOG predictions

Champions Online will get released this year… but will still slip, probably to Q4. It’ll attract a solid 250K subscribers at launch. Oh: it won’t release on Xbox 360 at launch, either.

Well, it released, I’ll say that much – and in Q4, to boot – but boy is my face red about that subscriber figure. At launch? Maybe, perhaps that many boxes were sold, globally, at retail. But subscribers? Absolutely no way. I do have a smidgen of insider knowledge about this… but trust me. Champions Online has nowhere near 250K subscribers and never did. I guess I was thinking somehow they’d convert everyone then-subscribing to City of Heroes… and a few more, besides.

I was spot-on about the lack of Xbox 360 version, but honestly, that was sort of a gimme. Still, three-outta-four ain’t bad. Great start!

Final score: 3/4

DC Universe Online won’t get released, but will go into some sort of Closed Beta… probably about the same time Champions launches… and will announce a ’solid’ release date in 2010.

Oh dearie me… well, you would think that putting your superhero MMOG into some sort of Closed Beta at the same time as the new kid on the block launches would be a good idea, right? But whether SOE realised their game wasn’t ready for prime-time (which is what Beta is these days, make no mistake) or they had some psychic premonition that Champions wasn’t going to be much of a threat, I guess we’ll never know.

And a solid release date? No. I have ideas about DCUO in 2010… but we’ll leave that to the predictions post.

Final score: 1/3

City of Heroes will get a major product announcement. 5th anniversary aproaching? Rival super-MMOs releasing? Hel-lo, sequel.

Ohhh, I should have hedged my bets… and acted on my insider knowledge… ahem. Yes, I knew about the expansion. I guess I didn’t want to spoil the surprise. Or did I? Dun-dun-duuuuuhh… Strictly speaking I failed here. No sequel (yet) but we have an expansion to look forward to. I’m gonna say I scored zilch here, because otherwise feels like a cheat!

Final score: 0/1

Guild Wars 2 will finally get some marketing love; think videos, some press demos, at least. But no release date.

Damn close. The release of several Guild Wars 2 videos has everyone in a lather already. But… suspiciously… no press demos. Hmmm. (I actually had zero insider knowledge on this, although I had seen Guild Wars 2 footage a lot earlier than you did….) I’ll say that’s a…

Final score: 1/2

Jumpgate: Evolution will debut and attract a nice, solid 85K subscribers. We won’t be able to confirm or deny this though, as Codemasters are releasing it.

Ahem. Well, at the beginning of the year I had no idea I’d end up working for Jumpgate Evolution… without working for Codemasters. In fact that would have blown my tiny mind. Anyway, fair to say Jumpgate didn’t launch in 2009, although all signs did point to it for the first half of the year.

Further comment would compromise me professionally, so you’ll have to settle with my final score of.. dangit…

Final score: 0/2

Unknown MMOG predictions

Cryptic’s third, unannounced MMOG will be announced as a quasi-pulp game, set in the 1930s, featuring Indiana Jones style global hijinks and monster battling. Hey, I can dream.

Dreaming indeed. Struck out here.

Red 5’s unannounced MMOG will be announced as a… fantasy game! (Boy, I’m pushing the boat out.)

Red who?

38 Studios‘ ‘Copernicus’ will also be announced… as a dark fantasy game! (Yeah. I’m playing the short odds.)

Copernywhat?

NCsoft will finally take the wrapper off the Carbine Studios project.

Apparently NCsoft like to keep the wrapper on things now.

Blizzard won’t announce anything new. At all. Why bother?

I should have said ‘Blizzard won’t announce their new MMO’ because I could have told you the next expansion was coming… but I didn’t. So I guess I score a big, fat…

Final score: 0/5

Games industry predictions

The Wii will end up so far ahead of PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in sales terms, industry watchers will stop even mentioning it in sales figures. (They’re practically doing this already.)

Yep, I think that’s fair to say. It’s pretty much like the Wii doesn’t exist to the average gaming site. Or at least not the ones I go to. They’ve successfully crossed the divide to ‘average consumer product’ – and more power to ‘em. I heard more about people using Wii Fit this year than using it to, you know, play games.

Microsoft will drop heavy, unsubtle hints about the next Xbox. But won’t announce it, officially, until 2010.

Errr… maybe they did drop some and they weren’t that heavy?

PlayStation Home will get a major revamp by Q4… but will still be a complete flop.

I don’t know if launching an MMOG counts as a ‘major revamp’… but I don’t see any press releases touting Home as a massive success.

Activision will announce a Guitar Hero product that’ll have a ‘massively multiplayer’ component. Think: your band versus everyone else’s band in the world. There will be additional fees involved.

Nope, but instead they’ll flog the franchise to death with many products with ‘Hero’ in the name.

No-one in the business of MMOGs will pay much attention to articles like this over at Massively. (Sorry, Massively.)

I’d say I get a big fat ‘check’ for that, especially considering the two ‘big’ MMOG releases of 2009 – Champions Online and Aion – both got ripped in various quarters for many of the issues described in that article. Go read it, it’s still very applicable… sadly.

Final score: 2/7

Personal, uh, ‘predictions’

I’ll end up moving to the US of A.

Check!

I’ll make a public announcement about why I’m moving to the US.

Check!

I’ll make a public appearance (Oooohh!!) at a US-based gaming show or two.

Well if you made it to E3 – check!

I’ll keep blogging here, perhaps not as often as in 2008 though.

Ahem – check??

I’ll keep playing World of Warcraft. I know! I’m sorry!

Well, I did until April, and then I got bored.

Final, final score for 2009

It seems a little cheeky to give myself a score for personal predictions, so leaving that section aside it looks like I scored a massive…  7/24!! So basically almost 1-in-3… not terrible odds at a bookies. Although basically, you should have put all your cash on me guessing easy stuff about Champions.

Fairly big things that I totally didn’t predict this year – Star Wars: The Old Republic becoming the only damn game that anyone talks about; my employer, Gazillion Entertainment, revealing themselves; Facebook games becoming so bloody massive.

I figure I’ve got three days or so to figure out 2010. Place your bets.

Yes, that Gazillion Entertainment; the company I called ‘the new 800lb gorilla‘ when they de-cloaked back in March, and who are working on a variety of MMOGs, including two based on Marvel Comics.

Not so surprised now, are ya?

Yes, I’ll admit that when Gazillion’s acquisition of the Marvel licence was announced, my interest was very definitely piqued, if that wasn’t obvious. What really got me intrigued was that they had acquired NetDevil, a development team who I’ve been a fan of since we worked together on Auto Assault. I made some enquiries, heard some pleasing noises, and six months later… here we are.

You might think that I’ve spent the last six months scheming to extract myself from Trion, but that’s absolutely not true. In fact, I’ve had a blast over there, and I’m genuinely sad that I’m leaving. The development teams behind Heroes of Telara and the Syfy-MMO(Action)RPG are packed full of great people who I’m going to miss and in the case of the Syfy crew, now don’t get to work with – boo! Both games are looking great, and unfortunately I now won’t be able to help them across the finish line. Don’t think I’m forgetting the MMORTS in production with Petroglyph Games, either; a trip to Las Vegas earlier this year convinced me that they are going to unleash something that’ll shake up the genre. I still believe everything I said about Trion back when I announced I was working there, however… when opportunity knocks, you don’t just sit back in your easy chair.

Gazillion has got a stellar line-up of games coming, including some I know are going to surprise a lot of people, and my new role allows me to work on all of them, as well as tasking me to direct community strategies for the entire company. Once offered, I couldn’t turn that down, even if it meant leaving behind new friends and some great looking games at Trion.

Weirdly – at least for me – this means that I’m back to full-on secrecy mode. I thought Trion had a lot of secrets, but even after signing on with Gazillion, I still don’t know about everything they’re developing! Roll on Monday….

It’s been a crazy couple of weeks and I’m sure it’ll be a crazy couple of months ahead, but I’m very excited about it; perhaps even ‘stoked’ or ‘psyched’ if we’re being American. Here was me thinking I was done with big, tumultuous changes in my life. I guess all I can do is strap in and enjoy the ride!

Life progresses apace in the Land of the Free, and the ‘dark days’ of early 2009 seem a long, long way behind me now. Not necessarily for the better. While I certainly prefer the daily stability of going to a job and being steadily employed, I miss a lot of people back in the UK, and the support network I had around me then which I’ll admit, I took for granted. That’s probably because it didn’t feel like a support network at the time, but the best ones don’t. More like an invisible hand holding you steady.

Now, life is a daily high-wire act, and although I feel confident in my abilities as… umm… a high-wire act, that doesn’t mean it’s any less scary to perform. To complete the metaphor, you have to pay attention to what you’re doing, otherwise it’s a long, long way to fall.

To all of you back in Blighty, then, I miss you more than I probably expected, although I won’t be running back any time soon. I’m not one to give up that easily, and although it’s tough, we’re going to soldier on. What I will say is that even if I haven’t been in touch recently, that doesn’t mean I haven’t thought of you, and doesn’t mean that I don’t want to stay in touch. I’ve just been busy.

With what? Well, mostly the banalities of moving your life halfway across the world, setting up a new place to live and assimilating yourself into society. It’s pretty much all done now, from the Social Security Number to the California Driver’s Licence (License, sorry). I’ve even availed myself of the American Healthcare system and found it to be very helpful, but then again it should be considering what I’m paying for it.

The day job has been good to me, with a few trips (Germany, Las Vegas, Austin) to keep me busy, and other stuff besides. We’re still at a relatively early stage with things, so I can’t spill too many beans here, but one day we will.

With that, I seem to run out of things to says, so I’ll leave you for now. Just know I’m probably thinking about ya. Talk soon.

We’ve recorded two episodes recently (#28 and #29) which are both online now, and actually just did show #30 this evening, which will be online later this week.

In case you’ve never heard it, it’s 30-minutes or so (when we run to time) about movies, which we both know far too much about. That is, when we don’t forget names of movies, actors, actresses, directors, plots… ahem. We try to be funny. Perhaps that was an example of humour?

Anyway, take a listen if you like. I’m also still guesting on John’s Limited Edition podcast, which has a new format now, so feel free to check that out too. Oh and feel free to let me know your thoughts on either.

Yesterday being awake early apparently spurred me to play Boy Philosopher, for some reason. As you can tell, a life-changing event like emigration can turn the most reasonable of men (yes, me) into some sort of navel-gazing fluffhunter. However, today, let me give you the right answer for the rorschach test; you know, the one you spout at parties.

We’re both fine, and settling in, just about.

Ahem…

Well yes I could go into a lot more detail than that, but there’s a limit to what I’ll say on an open page. I will say that we’ve almost done everything we knew we were going to need to do before we left, and now we’re down to discovering things that are all-new. By that I mean we’ve moved into our apartment, we’ve bought a new TV (woo!), we’ve set up a bank account (and one with a credit union), we’ve gotten registered with all the right people, and I’ve even been paid a few times (as it’s happening ‘semi-monthly’, ie twice a month). We have a couch, a cat, a dining table, a couple of chairs, and a whole new series of incoming bills.

In other words, it feels like normality, albeit an always* sunny, surrounded by America normality.

And I have to say it’s pretty darn nice, at least in a superficial way. Life is treating us well. We have a bountiful choice of fresh produce and product whenever we go to one of the many local supermarkets. We can see all the movies we want when they open here. We have many choices in restaurants, which of course usually serve massive portions for reasonable prices. Oh and everything is open late. In fact shopping after work is a norm, not something you do on a Thursday.

What’s the one thing we’re missing? Oh yeah. You lot.

At first, our minds were both so occupied with what we have to do now every day that not being amongst people we know and love didn’t really phase us. Every day we were both busy with settling into a new home, dealing with new challenges and trying not to get killed merging on the 101 expressway. Now, that we’ve been here a while, it’s starting to nag.

It’s not so much that there aren’t nice people here, or that I feel we can’t make new friends – I think we have already, to be honest, and that feels great. It’s just that every now and then, someone pops into your mind and you think “Oh, I haven’t seen them in ages, we should…” and then reality intrudes, and you remember that no, they’re not just a mile or two away and all you need to do is pick up the phone. They’re thousands of miles away, and even if you did pick up the phone, the likelihood is you’d wake them up. This is how being homesick starts.

That only really follows if you assume home is where the heart is, which I guess is true right now. I lost my heart in Brighton as opposed to 30 minutes up the road (Sorry Tony Bennett). This doesn’t mean that we’re ready to move back, literally or figuratively; we made our choice and we move forward. Doesn’t mean I don’t think of you though, and past moments, and great memories.

Did I mention we have a guest room?

* Except for this morning! Where it appears to be raining for the first time since I got here. I knew that those big grey fluffy things in the sky meant something.

There’s a lot to say, and simultaneously, not very much at all.

In case you’re wondering, I can say with some certainty that moving countries (even to a country where they generally speak English) is a bit of a bitch. Mostly just because of the ties that bind. The emotional ones, the physical ones, and not-so-physical, but still very real bureaucratic and political ties that prevent us from wandering this Earth like free people, man, free to do what we wanna do, even if that’s just sitting around playing our guitars and singing – kum-ba-ya, my Lord… ahem.

That, if I so choose, would be the ‘lot to say’. I could tell you of the swift break I experienced with friends and family, the lack of real feeling because I didn’t know how to feel, which gradually day by day is turning into a void in my heart which… I guess I’ll just have to tread carefully around. But I won’t.

I could bore you with tales of almost monk-like acts of charity as we gave away all our stuff – and then reversed that karma by buying almost everything again, here. I could try to convince you that the process of spending money can actually get quite boring, even depressing – that I actually heard the words “I don’t think I could spend my life shopping” from my wife, that I found myself resenting the fact I had to spend another evening researching electronics or cars or both. But I won’t.

And I guess I could summarise the tricky, but not insurmountable obstacles that we faced in getting here, but honestly, they were just tricky… not insurmountable. If you ever have to face the same, feel free to ask me about it, but I won’t enrich the world by recounting here.

Which brings me to saying not very much at all.

I’ve been going back to basics, like prehistoric man. My primary concerns have been with the most basic of things: shelter, food, safety, money, transport. Now all of those things are accomplished, I ask myself, what’s next? Discover fire? Invent the wheel? Even those have been done, so really when it comes down to it – what is there for me to say that hasn’t been said a million times before?

Everyone’s story is unique of course, a beautiful delicate snowflake etc, but I’ll tell you; there’s nothing like detaching yourself from family, friends and familiar surroundings to make you sit back, look at your own life, and go: woah. Is this it?

Too philosophical? Well I haven’t had breakfast yet.

One, I secured a job with Trion World Network, which was still in ‘stealth mode’ when I got the job, meaning I couldn’t talk about… well anything, really. Not the company, not the job, not the game(s)… so I just kept my big mouth shut.

Two, I was going through the time-consuming, tedious and nerve-wracking process of getting my US immigration visa. This would have been a tough enough process at any time, but considering it was connected directly to me taking up the job, I felt in some way I should just keep quiet. Didn’t want to jinx things. I only broke silence when the internal mental pressure began to get so much that even endless games of Civilization IV weren’t enough to keep The Voices in check, and I had to vent somewhere.

Well, now I’ve officially got The Job, and I sure as hell have The Visa. So I can talk. A bit.Trion’s an exciting company to be part of. With three games in active production (Heroes of Telara; the MMORTS project with Petroglyph, and the MMOARPG being made in collaboration with Sci-Fi/SyFy) there’s a hell of a lot to do, and lots of exciting possibilities down the road. I’ll admit it; before I found the job opportunity last year, I didn’t know much about Trion. I’d read the odd press release, but it was only when I started to really do my research, by reading every single scrap of info and interview I could find, that I got excited about what I might be getting into.

When I flew out to Redwood City and met the various team members there, I got more excited. These guys had a vision; a definite idea of what they wanted to do in the MMO ‘space’ and how they wanted to move the genre forward. The idea here wasn’t just to make a carbon copy game, or move things forward by inches. This is potentially revolutionary stuff.

Without trying to lapse into pure hyperbole, what I saw and what I heard during my two days of interviews was enough to make me very interested in being part of the company, and very anxious to get started. As you can imagine, kicking my heels for much of the following eight months while my visa processed was pure bloody torture.

Then suddenly everything came together. In late May my visa finally got approved, and days later I was on a plane to Los Angeles, to officially start the job as part of the E3 team. Due to a last minute delay in my visa processing which added another month to the wait, I hadn’t been as involved in the E3 planning as we’d initially hoped. As a result I expected to feel like the ‘odd man out’ at E3, the guy who didn’t know what was going on. (“Don’t worry,” I told my boss, “I am able to fetch and carry coffee.”)

What surprised and delighted me was how quickly I was welcomed by everyone. I felt like an important team member from the moment I arrived, and by the end of the show I felt proud to have been part of such a tight-knit, hard-working team. Without getting too sappy, I couldn’t have had a better welcome to my first ‘official’ work in the US, and for a new company, to boot.

(I’m not sure whether to stand up and salute right now, blow my nose on a tissue, or beg off because I have something in my eye.)

So what’s next?

Well, I leave the UK ‘officially’ on July 9th, with Tom (the cat) and Amanda (the wife) following closely after. We’ve found a nice little apartment in Redwood City, not too far from Trion’s office (by California standards, anyway…). We’ll settle in and start adjusting to our new life. It’s already been a whirlwind of paperwork and decisions; it’s probably not going to die down any time soon. Someday soon though, I look forward to relaxing on my big American sofa, watching my big American TV, with my big (well, medium-sized) American car outside.

And while I am there, my brain shall hatch big American community plans. Believe me: you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

“Bum!”

I’d hoped to have a post primed and ready to rock, but given general secrecy and my rapid departure from the UK, that wasn’t to be.

More details soon, no doubt, but for now you might have a few questions, like:

“Trion World Network?”

“What are you working on?”

“What’s keeping you busy at E3?”

More soon.

Last time out, looking at Ghostbusters, I talked about the wonderful simplicity of the game’s system, and how it could only be betterered by one thing: taking that system and combining it with the greatest science fiction movie trilogy of all time. Well, at least, it was in 1987….

9) Star Wars

Remember how Traveller, well, just didn’t do it for me? Remember how I was essentially seduced by that image of a Luke Skywalker-lookalike on the box? (Damn you, GDW….) Well, it took five years or so, but finally my sci-fi roleplaying prayers were answered in 1987 with the release, on the (gulp) tenth anniversary of the movie, of Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game from West End Games.

If Marvel Super Heroes had opened my eyes to how a game system could work with you in creating a setting, Star Wars blew out of the back of my skull. Designed by Greg Costikyan, Curtis Smith and Bill Slavicsek, the simple D6 system in Star Wars expanded on the initial principles of Ghostbusters, and was an absolute joy to read. The original rulebook filled my head with the potential excitement of adventures across the galaxy, where the players would fight for the Rebellion against the evil forces of the Empire. Blasters would be fired! Quips would be uttered! Lightsabers would be drawn! Heroes would be made!

So naturally, in the first session of my campaign, the players stole a starship and then – I remember this quite specifically – spot-welded the ship merchant to the inside of his own safe.

Yeah, they weren’t really looking to be heroes.

Despite what you may think, that incident kicked off one of the best campaigns I’ve ever run, although it was a classic example of the lunatics taking over the asylum. The ring leader of this band of lunatics – the McMurphy character, if you will – had asked to play a rogue Imperial agent, a man who was only interested in looking out for himself, and wasn’t anxious to work for the Rebellion or the Empire. Thinking this would make for a kind of Han Solo-like rogue, I said yes; not knowing that what he was actually going to play was the classic Traveller or D&D anti-hero. Chaotic Neutral, in other words; everyone else can go hang, as long as I come out of it with cash.

Now, there’s a place for that kind of character, but not necessarily in a classic Star Wars campaign. The original rulebook suggested you set your game between the end of Star Wars and the beginning of The Empire Strikes Back, when the Rebellion has won a major victory by destroying the Death Star, but the stakes are high and there’s plenty of danger. I liked the sound of that, and I particularly liked the high drama inherent in the setting. But, we didn’t really get to that; instead we created some high drama of our own.

That was mostly because a latecomer to the game asked to create a Jedi – a very rare thing at this point in the Star Wars timeline, as you might realise – and I said yes, thinking that perhaps that with him in the group, we’d get some of that good-vs-evil stuff that I was craving. Well if you thought of him as good and the rest of the party as evil….

What happened was what always happens when you drop a Lawful Good Paladin into the middle of a Chaotic Neutral party: lots of arguing, scheming, backstabbing and ultimately, bloodshed.

The thing is, it was immensely entertaining to watch every week, simply because both of the players were very good at sticking within their roles. The rogue agent lied, schemed, double-crossed (the rest of the party) and generally acted in accordance with his personal code. The lone Jedi proselytised, argued, defended innocents (from the rest of the party) and generally acted in accordance with the Jedi code. I just sat back and occasionally prodded them towards something, and somehow that eventually led to them turning up to the battle of Hoth to help Darth Vader.

Mmm. Well, it was certainly a memorable campaign.

Long rambling personal reminiscences aside, Star Wars was (and really, is) a classic in roleplaying design, and to date is one of the few RPGs which I liked enough to actually buy supplements for. Unfortunately not long after my campaign started, it ended, as I moved away from the area and my roleplaying group. As a result my dreams of a classic Rebels vs Imperials campaign never came to light.

By 1992 I had an entirely new roleplaying group at my disposal – and West End Games released Star Wars in a Second Edition. However, on reading reviews at the time, I found out the Second Edition expanded the rules quite a bit, which frankly I never thought they needed. I understand now that Second Editions are a natural part of any large RPG line’s progression, but at the time, I didn’t see the point in buying into it. Besides, I hated the cover art.

Since then the Star Wars licence has proved perennial in RPGs, although I stopped paying attention long ago. Today Wizards of the Coast publish the official RPG, although the original D6 System Star Wars came from is still knocking around in various forms. For a good overview of Star Wars’ RPG history, I recommend this article on – where else – Star Wars.com.

Today, even after the wildly uneven Prequel Trilogy and the relentless exploitation of Star Wars by the Lucas Empire (Hey, it’s either that or Howard the Duck spin-offs), I still have a hankering to run a Star Wars campaign that evokes the classic era, the original trilogy.

Being realistic and boringly adult about it, I know there’s an element of wanting to recapture those glory days, when I felt like I was running a campaign by the skin of my teeth, barely keeping up with an older, smarter and wilier group of players. That’s unlikely to happen, but I still have my rulebooks – you never know.

It took Lucas 16 years to get back to the movies, after all….