I’ve posted a write-up on the Storm Dragons of Tarl as part of Nuketown’s Monster Week. The storm dragons are colossal beasts that hunt the skies of the Outer Rim world Tarl.

The latest Shadows of the Force campaign arc has begun. In Episode 9: The Mandalorian Wars, we’re taking a break from our regular characters to play Mandalorians at the start of the Mandalorian Wars, the precursor conflict to the Jedi Civil War featured in Knights of the Old Republic.

• Sub-campaign overview in the Holocron of Zend.
• Thoughts on the start of the Mandalorian Interlude at Nuketown.

Scavenger’s Guide to Droids is the definitive droid sourcebook for Star Wars: Saga Edition, introducing a new chassis-based system for creating droids, a new streamlined “protocol” format that lets players run droids as equipment rather than NPCs, new droid manufacturing traits and personality quirks and a 96 page codex containing dozens of droids.

The Droid Codex, with its myriad combat, technical and utility droids, makes it tremendous resource for game masters, particularly for those running Clone Wars or other droid-heavy campaigns. This is easily the most statblock-heavy book since Threats of the Galaxy, which may makeScavenger’s Guide to Droids less essential for players. Those who enjoy playing droids will find plenty of new options for their characters, and tech specialist types should appreciate how the protocol format allows them to put their creations to work, but even they may be disappointed by how much of the book has been dedicated to the codex.

Read my full review of the book at GameCryer.com.

The Holocron of Zend is the companion wiki to Shadows of the Force; while our original intent was to include all of the campaign information in the blog, after a year of gaming it became clear that option was untenable. There’s just too much information.

To that end, we’ve been migrating content to the Holocron. Hardcorhobbs and I recently returned to that task, and I’m pleased to announce we’ve made some significant headway. Here’s what’s new:

• The Episode Index: The Shadows of the Force episode index is almost current; it now includes entries for Episodes 1-8, representing over a year of real-world gaming. Each episode’s chapter entries include at least the crawl for that chapter; we hope to add summaries later on.
• The Primer: The Primer lists major PCs, NPCs, starships, organizations, and locations in our campaign. It’s a great way to get an overview of the major and minor players in Shadows of the Force.
• The Ghost Walk Cluster: I’ve uploaded my notes for this remote Outer Rim star cluster to the wiki.

The wiki remains a work in progress, but I think we’ve made some good headway. Next up will be tweaking the theme so that it better represents the campaign (including a campaign specific header) and adding information to support our upcoming “Mandalorian Interlude” mini-campaign (in which we’ll be putting aside our normal characters to play Mandalorians during the initial days of the Mandalorian Wars.

The Six-Shooters & Spaceships sourcebook for the Serenity RPG provides plenty of what a body needs to stay alive in Joss Whedon’s space western universe: weapons, equipment and spaceships. My review of the book is up on GameCryer.com. While it’s not a Star Wars source book, the numerous deckplans for freighters and transports in this book are handy for anyone running a fringer-style game.