Clone Wars: Season Six on Netflix

One of the interesting things about Netflix, is that it has evolved and continues to evolve as time goes on. Their streaming is so intensive that Comcast, and I'm sure others, have gone directly after them. Their use of original media, like House of Cards, has also taken a little twist in that they premiered Clone Wars season six. Imagine a time when say a company like Showtime decides, "This Borgias isn't cutting it" and Netflix steps in and completes the series? That would be awesome.

In terms of the Clone Wars, I've always found Star Wars a mixed bag for a variety of reasons. I really, and I mean really, have to turn my brain off. The powers of the Jedi, as well as just their general perceptions of whats going on, are so poorly done, that in one scene they'll be smashing through dozens of droids and in the next getting stomped by some lone character for 'pacing' and 'story' purposes.

The Clone Wars also doesn't end with closure on all subjects or all maters. Some of the delves are interesting in "Oh, so that's how he learned that" but pointless in that I don't recall people screaming to learn every nook and cranny in the setting.

Overall I think that the Clone Wars is well done. It shows that should they ever choose, they could do a series in the Star Wars setting without Jedi and do it quite well. As a matter of fact, I believe that there is a new series already on the horizons.

For role playing purposes, there are a few things to keep in mind.

1. Consistency: Player's are not writers forced to pull their punches and not act in a consistent manner at all times. Players are not going to suddenly forget that they have access to abilities A, B, and C just because it would be 'cool' if Y happened at that particular time. Know the difference between what your characters have been shown to do when planning traps and hired encounters against them.

2. Closure: Sometimes there may be a player who does a great job with a character but then real life gets in the way and they have to leave. In the Clone Wars, Ahsoka Tano may have come into the series a little annoyingly but she left it on a high point and we have very little closure as to what actually happens to her during say, "Order 66".

3. Villains React: One of the things I've commonly seen blasted about Star Wars, is that the Emperor was just too clever. That he had too many controls in place. If you watch the show, the Emperor is a great villain because he has agents that can react to things as they happen. For example, when it's discovered that "Order 66" may be found out ahead of time? Oh yeah, the Emperor is all over that with multiple agents from different sides covering the issue. If your villains are just sitting around waiting for the characters to show up, they deserve to have their asses kicked. 

4. Unique to Common: Many genres and media share this particular bit. A new enemy appears, like say a Sentinel. At first it's such a vicious foe that it takes multiple times to beat it, or it takes a wide spread group effort that costs tremendous resources. Soon though the characters are taking on five or ten or more of them at a time. We see that with the 'Commando' droids, 'Destroyer' droids and the other leadership style droids that initially seem to be unstoppable and then come up short every time they're encountered after that. Combat changes and when something doesn't work, it will be augmented or changed. How many 'Marks' or generations of Sentinels are we up to now?

While I think Clone Wars could've been better, I think it did a fantastic job of providing a look into the Star Wars setting and look forward to seeing what else they can do.

Massacre: Clone Wars 4.19

When you watch episodes like Massacre, you know why people want to play the bad guys in role playing games. When you look at the design on the characters, on the good guy side, you have the jedi. For the most part, they have the cool, "I'm ominous and dark" thanks to their cloaks and hoods. But outside of that? They dress in rather drab colors, don't have a lot of variety to them and well, are boring visually.

Now look at some of the most iconic figures in the Star Wars setting like Darth Vader and Bobba Fett. It's hard to remember that Fett was punked like a tool in his second official appearance when you see exactly how popular his is now compared to what he actually did.

But more then that, this episode provides some interesting guidelines in how exactly an evil campaign can work and it boils down to the 'evil vs evil' camp.

One one side, we have General Grevious. Here's another character with a sharp visual design but another one who suffers the plot effect. He's a super ultra bad ass until he's not needed to be then he gets jobbed like any other mook. But the appeal of watching a cyborg run around with four light sabres is still strong.

Then we have the Night Witches. They make a nice interesting visual contrast with the reds against the background of their dark planet. While none of their designs pop out to me like Grevious does, they are still a good variant on a mystic order, like the jedi.

In terms of conflict, when Grevious and Ventress get to challenge each other, the Game Master could set different goals here.

1. Survive X amount of rounds in order for your back up to arrive. While it sounds 'cheating' and its something done in video games, having a timer to survive against lets the players know that there are tough times coming around here.

2. Steal A Tank. Who doesn't want to steal a tank eh? Once Ventress gets the tank, she's able to push through to the front and punch a hole into the enemy.

3. Engage the Enemy One on One. Now this is pretty much the simple that players normally do anyway but by adding the other two elements in there, you have some quick goals that the players have to meet and follow to survive.

Evil campaigns that pit evil characters against one another are often easier to run because at the end of the day, it's not about watching evil triumphant, it's still about watching evil getting its ass kicked one way or another.

The Clone Wars: The Box season 4.17

If you've never watched the animated series The Clone Wars, a Star Wars series, then sometimes, if you're a fan of 'gonzo' Dungeons and Dragons, you're missing out. The latest free episode to watch is The Box.

I'll be doing some spoilers below so if you're not watching the show, there will be spoilers for that episode so read no further if you want no spoilers for this particular episode.

In this episode, our lone jedi Obie is in disguise as a bounty hunter. The Star Wars setting has a special place in its heart for bounty hunters. This hails back to the 2nd movie, The Empire Strikes Back and a classic line, "No disintegrations." where Darth Vader is speaking to a list of bounty hunters who, outside of one particular hunter, don't really do much.

Here though, these hunters, are assumed to be the best of the best of the worst of the bounty hunters for a very special mission but they have to earn this mission. To do so, they must overcome 'The Box' If you've ever seen the movie 'The Cube' or any of its sequels, you'll know what follows next. The hunters go into this death trap to prove their strength and are then treated to such threats as poison gas, fire, and walls that jut back and forth with what appear to be light sabers at the end of them. It's good fun stuff and should provide some quick visuals for those who like their dungeon crawls.

The other drama of the setting continues to build. The individuals like Bane, the bounty hunter, and Doku, the semi-leader of the Separatists force, continue to interact while another jedi looks to learn what happened to his mentor. These little slices of the setting are useful in connecting episodes from one to the next.

The Clone Wars is an excellent back drop for heroism, villainy and all the shades between.

L is For Law

I AM THE LAW

Fifteen years in the academy


He was like no cadet they'd ever seen

A man so hard, his veins bleed ice

And when he speaks he never says it twice

They call him Judge, his last name is Dredd

So break the law, and you wind up dead

Truth and justice are what he's fighting for

Judge Dredd the man, he is the law

DROKK IT!



With gun and bike he rules the streets

And every perp he meets will taste defeat

Not even Death can overcome his might

Cause Dredd and Anderson, they won the fight

When the Sov's started the Apocalypse war

Mega-City was bombed to the floor

Dredd resisted, and the judges fought back

Crushed the Sov's with their counter-attack

DROKK IT!



Respect the badge - he earned it with his blood

Fear the gun - your sentence may be death because...

Chorus



I AM THE LAW!

And you won't fuck around no more - I AM THE LAW

I judge the rich, I judge the poor - I AM THE LAW

Commit a crime I'll lock the door - I AM THE LAW

Because in Mega-City... I AM THE LAW



In the cursed earth where mutants dwell

There is no law, just a living hell

Anarchy and chaos as the blood runs red

But this would change if it was up to Dredd

The book of law is the bible to him

And any crime committed is a sin

He keeps the peace with his law-giver

Judge, jury, and executioner

DROKK IT!



CRIME - The ultimate sin

Your iso-cube is waiting when he brings you in

LAW - It's what he stands for

Crime's his only enemy and he's going to war



CRIME - The ultimate sin

Your ISO-cube is waiting when he brings you in

LAW - It's what he stands for

Crime's his only enemy and he's going to war



Thank you Anthrax for that little bit of homage to Judge Dread.

In games, its often useful to know some of the basics of how the justice system works. In the 3.5 era, Atlas Games published Crime and Punishment. A nice hardcover the provided 3.5 mechanics for a variety of things that might come up in dealing with lawbreakers.

In books I'm reading at the moment, C. J. Sansom's Matthew Shardlake stars in five books. I've just received book 4, Revelation, from good old Amazon.com. Some of the things that make Matthew a good lawyer, the trust others put in him, his dodged determination to discover the truth of things, his innate curiosity,his relatively corrupt free methodology of handing issues, and his friendship with others who reinforce those good things about him, make him an individual that others seek out time and time again.

When I was a younger man, Bard Games, a company that produced the Atlantis Trilogy, had three handbooks for use with AD&D; The Complete Spellcaster, the Complete Alchemist, and the Compleat Adventurer. That last book had a class called the hunter, and under that, several variants including the bounty hunter.

This individual was one that had its own material including how much to charge, how to capture your prey, and other neat little bits. It wasn't necessarily the first time I had seen such a use, as one of the Best of Dragon magazines had a NPC version, but that Hunter version by Bard Games was neat.

And further in terms of hunting down the villains of a setting, the Clone Wars is filled with various Bounty Hunters. They make a quick way of throwing out a group of individuals that can toss a monkey wrench into things if a situation gets out of control.

The Law is something that most players in a hard core fantasy setting aren't necessarily going to worry about, but on the other hand, it's not something that needs to be the end if they are captured. For example, what about a campaign variant around the Dirty Dozen? Here the characters are captured and 'executed' and can either work for the state that captured them, or be sent to their death for real. It's a trick used by both Raymond Feist in his Demon War series, and also used in the Warhammer setting for the trilogy Blackhearts.

The Law should be something that even as its worst, can be turned into another adventure.

G is For Guild

In the city, depending on the time frame, guilds are very powerful entities in and of themselves. They can often control whole swathes of the trade industry that they are tied to. They control the training, the secrets, and the access to the finer materials that each guild is known for.

But how does that tie into gaming?

In Paizo's evolution of the 3.5 engine, Pathfinder, the very name itself is that of a group of adventurers that seek to share knowledge and information about the world around them.

Sometimes the Guild membership has enough perks that players seek it out. Other times the players are either just so good at their job or just so independent, that they balk at the idea of joining a guild. The most famous type of area for guilds this shows up for is Thieves Guilds. For example, the Twain, Fafrd and Gray Mouser, are independents who have crushed the thieves guild in the past. The Order of the Stick has it's own member, Haley, who is a former member who went off to find a bigger and better destiny. In the web comic Weregeek, the latest storyline involves one of the rogue characters who is not a member of the local thieves guild.

In the Clone Wars animated series, season two had a subtitle of Rise of the Bounty Hunters due to the wide variety of characters and episodes that featured bounty hunters. In the comics that cross over into the same time frame, the Star Wars Omnibus Menance Revealed, showcases Aurra Sing, among others. Aurra Sing is so good that when the bounty hunter guild needs a rogue brought in, they call her.

Guilds, like unions, have their own dues, their own codes, and their own methods of handling things. Players might find themselves working for the a guild or against it. Depending on how tight a guild's control over things are, there might be competition from other guilds that do similar work as one guild seeks to expand at the expense of another's power.

F is for Food

While it may seem a little silly to be talking about food, it has many important parts to consider.

In Futurama, when they're spoofing good old Chef Emeril and Bender decides to become a chef, the very art of food preparation becomes an adventure.

In the 'old days', in one of the different perfect bound adventure books (either the Book of Lairs I or II or one of the others in that line), the adventurers find out the meats that a famous place prepares include such cuisine as purple worm.

In Warhammer, it's almost a running gag that you don't eat the sausage as there are various times when the sausage is more than it appears or worse, is tainted with Chaos!

Food can also become an important commodity in and of itself. In the Clone Wars, they pay homage to the classic film, Seven Samurai. In that film, the Samurai are hired to protect rice farmers.

In Usagi Yojimbo, in the graphic novel 17, on the way to the duel with Usagi's master, there is another homage or sorts as a small cadre of samurai fight against a group of bandits intent on wiping out the village and using their food to survive the winter.

In sieges, food also becomes an enormous issue. In fantasy games where clerics or magic items can summon food, its probably a good bet that the besiegers have specialists to assassinate or destroy such items.

Food can also be a cause for celebration in and of itself. Being a native of Chicago, we have many food events and some of them go back to E for Entertainment, in that they include music and other goods to enjoy while eating a variety of foods.

Wither it's working for one chief that's a rival to another, protecting a city that's under siege, or fighting off yet another band of bandits intent on making off with this year's crops, food has a vital role to play in any game.

D is For Disease

I would have went with P is for Plague but I've got something else in mind for that letter.

In keeping the material in line with books I'm working on or just finished off, disease plays a minor role in C. J. Sansom's third novel of Shardlake, Sovereign. Several of the characters, while not suffering the direct effects of the Black Plague or other plagues, note that the cities tend to breed the plagues and that they are a periodical problem.

Even in the times we live in now, diseases can run rampant if given the right breeding grounds and opportunity. Various things happen, even when the disease is under control, that the GM should take into account.

1. Quarantine. No one gets in or out until its all said and done.

2. Specialist. The doctors of the olden times with their hook beaked masks filled with various incense and herbs to prevent the spreading of disease have a unique look all their own and this look has been used in various fields ranging from movies to comics.

3. Overkill: One of the reasons families may have been large is that disease could come along and wipe out everyone. In Sovereign, one of the characters notes that his own family has died of the plague but he managed to avoid it. What type of mentality does it set up if every dozen years or so a disease cuts through the locals and its a matter of hit or miss?

4. Magic: Dungeons and Dragons has a huge array of races, magic items, locations, planes, and other bits that can be used to spice up the normal disease. In a recent book I just finished, The Wolf Age, Ambrose suffered from a 'ghosting' disease that worked its way from his hand trembling to going insubstantial and that ghost like effect working its way toward his heart. Diseases don't necessarily all have to be about the standard bile and pus.

5. The gods. This goes both ways. While there are gods that help to cure the diseases, such as Lathandar in the Twilight War series, there are gods whose whole specialty is the spreading of diseases, such as Nurgle, one of the four Ruinous powers behind the Warhammer setting and whose creatures plague the witch hunter in that series.

6. A Weapon: Disease can be used as a weapon. In an old movie I recall, I believe, Flesh and Blood, disease is used in the water as a biological weapon.

When using disease, like many other large scale elements though, the GM has to decide what the role of the disease is. It's it a manufactured disease like the Blue Shadow from the Clone Wars that the players have to actively avoid, or is it a background element that for all intents and purposes, the players have plot immunity from unless they do something really stupid?

Is it something already in play or something that is coming? Is it a plot point that the players can stop, and if so, what happens if they fail to stop it? The Years of Rice and Salt provide one answer, but you'll have to decide if that's the answer you want for your own campaign.

B is For Besieged

The city is often a place for characters to unwind. There are numerous forms of entertainment, different locations to visit, different items and equipment to buy, rumors and gossip to catch up on, and otherwise, outside of the odd encounter by say, assassins, feel save.

But what if the city itself is in danger?

When I read Bernard Cornwell's Agincourt, a large part of the book dealt not necessarily with that particular battle itself, but with the besieging of the city, Harfleur, before it.

The work of being Besieged is also famous in fantasy thanks to the Lord of the Rings movies and the siege not only of the citadel in the second movie, but of the city proper in the third movie.

Even gaming fiction doesn't escape the use of the siege as Gortex, a massively squat and powerful drawf that seeks death throguh the time honored art of being a Troll Slayer, has been engaged in one in the far north. While gaming modules themselves don't often use the siege, WoTC's Red Hand of Doom has a scenario where the party is in a city when it comes under attack.

When doing the city under attack bit, there needs to be a few realizations of the party's role in things before hand. For example, is the party part of the local militia or national army? Are they part of some special forces? If they are just some random wandering mercenaries, the chances of them staying to fight if the have the means to easily escape, and let's face it, most such characters by the time they're 8th+ generally have a means of hitting the road.

Then you have to think of the opposition. The Lord of the Rings movies are good for this in one way. These are essentially classic sieges. Sure, there's a massive battering ram that has its own lore behind it. Sure, there are troops in there ranging from trolls and warg riders to elephants. Sure, there is a Nazgul attack there. But compared to a traditional fantasy kitchen sink game? That's purely standard troops in action. We don't see magic involved in the fighting on either side. We don't see a repeat of the use of explosives that we saw at Helm's Hold. We don't see armies of Giant Spiders and Giant Eagles and other fantastic monsters that wouldn't be offput by walls for example.

When preparing to siege a city, as the GM, you have to decide have fantastical you want the elements.

In the Gortex example, when a Chaos army is trying to take over the city, Gortex and Felix, his bard noble comrade who must document his life, act in many ways like special forces, going out and destroying cannons and other dangerous targets, allowing the city defenders to do what they need to do without fear of the big guns.

In the Lord of the Rings, the king of the Nazgul doesn't fall to arrows, but to a specific target that would probably be a player character in a game.

It might be best when running a siege, not to have the players have to fight the armies one on one, but to meet and break certain goals. In the siege on Helms Deep for example, in the movie when Strider throws his drawf comrade and them leaps across to hold the bridge on the outside, would be an example of a specific mission.

To tie it into Appendix N, let's look at the carton movie The Clone Wars. The movie has Anakin and Oobie in a city holding back the 'bots or clunkers as they're often called when the 'bots use a force field to protect their army. The 'bot army starts its advancement on the clones and cannot be attacked through the force field. The player's goal? Shut down that force field. In fact, much of the main character's work and deeds throughout the Clone Wars series that follows, are special missions.

Set up scenarios and goals for the players that will challenge them as a party instead of a slog to only drain their resoruces. Of course if draining their resoruces is the whole point of the siege...

For counter example, if you've been running a little fast and loose with the funds and magic items and the players don't always carry those things with them, if their in some pit uncovering more loot and come back and find the city they stayed at under enemy flag or in the midsts of a siege, making it difficult to get back to... well, their wealth and non-carried items might have new owners.

But don't be surprised if the city is only under siege that they don't either sneak into the city, or outright join the army doing the besieging on the condition that their own items within the city are untouched. Players are a funny and often unpredicitable lot.