277 – The Return of the Jedi

We look to the first ending of a trilogy in Star Wars, from murder bears to the ending of galactic crime lords we have ideas on where we can put stories that coincide and are inspired by the Return of the Jedi.

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276 – The Recap Tale

Getting going again at the start of a new session can be torturous, echoing our favourite hotshot pilot of who talks first. We have ideas on how to keep notes on what comes next and how to start off for your players to hit the ground running.

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Legends of the Hydian Way: Attack of the Clones by R.A. Salvatore

Hoo boy. What to say. How to explain? We all know that the film version of Attack of the Clones has some issues. Despite them, I grew up on the movie and it holds a special place in my memory. As I prepared to read the novelized version by R.A. Salvatore, I held out some hope that without the performances to distract, I might find a new appreciation for what is otherwise my least favorite of the mainline Star Wars films.

As with the novelization of The Phantom Menace, my review is going to focus on the differences from the film version or on things unique to the novel medium and avoid critiquing the film itself. I assume anyone reading a bunch of reviews of Legends Star Wars books has seen the movies, and the point here is to look at how the story holds up as a book.

Welcome to Legends of the Hydian Way, the chronicle of my attempt to read through and review all the novels that make up mainline Legends canon in chronological order. May the Force be with me.

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275 – Into the Fire Tale

Taking on deeper topics at the table can be a great way of working through your feelings as a group, but it can be intimidating. We have ideas on how to do it at the table without scaring your players away and to make it touch on the topics the players want.

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Mask of the Pirate Queen Act 2, Episode 7b – “Dangerballs”

K-1, K-3, and 3b depart the Sky on Fire to escort the tooka cat Thaddeus IV back to her starship: Hyperspace is Blue. What sorts of dangers await our collective droids and pets in the spaceport of Ord Mantell?

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265 – The Consequences Tale

There are times when players seem to not recognize when their actions should have consequences for their characters. We give advice on how to tie their actions explicitly back to the character actions and in how to make it more interesting when a die result means it’s complicated.

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262 – The Tale of Vergences

Adam from Force Majure asked about vergences and how to use them to guide the story and adventure. We have several ideas on how to make things even more out there for Star Wars and how we’re able to focus on making it fun and meaningful for the players.

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248 – The Composition Tale

Translating the inspiration for a campaign into what the players hear and see is hard. We have a few ideas on how to take that comncept that evoked your desire to run the adventure into what your players are having a blast in doing.

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Legends of the Hydian Way – The Approaching Storm

I recently managed to put into words a phenomenon in fantasy or science fiction fandoms that has bothered me for a long time, and I call it The Cantina Theory. It goes like this: early on in the life of a fictional universe, everything is new. Just like the Cantina scene in A New Hope, all these interesting creatures and aliens are just there. Anything goes. Later, subsequent entries in the series cement and define what was previously established. That’s a Rodian. This is an Aqualish. Etc. From that point forward it’s very rare to see many new creatures being introduced, because these original “cantina dwellers” have become signifiers to consumers that what they are watching or reading is a Star Wars story. We like the familiar, it makes sense.

Today’s story, however, spends a relatively short amount of time up front making sure we feel comfortably Star Wars before setting off to an adventure in completely unknown territory. We’ve gotten too comfortable at the bar, so Alan Dean Foster’s here to throw us out of the Cantina.

Welcome to Legends of the Hydian Way, the chronicle of my attempt to read through and review all the novels that make up mainline Legends canon in chronological order. May the Force be with me.

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244 – The New Advantage Tale

We start our discussion about the extra mechanics in the FFG narrative system with advantage, as we start talking about the scale of what makes one advantage a small boost versus making three or four amazing and how to scale mechanically and narratively between.

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Legends of the Hydian Way – Outbound Flight

Despite my love of all things Star Wars, I haven’t kept up as much with the new books and shows coming out of Lucasfilm and DelRay recently. Honestly I think I’ve held myself back, wanting to use this project as a farewell cruise through the Star Wars I grew up on before diving into the fresh and unexplored waters of the Disney canon.

Because of this lack of exposure, I am now in the strange position of talking about Grand Admiral Thrawn without having any true idea of what many fans think of the character now that he’.s been reintroduced in Rebels. What little research I’ve done while avoiding spoilers for new canon media I’ve yet to consume indicates that creating author Timothy Zahn does not consider the two incarnations separate characters and that those of you coming to this from a Disney-canon-only background should have a fairly good idea of who Thrawn is. So without any more hedging, let’s dive in to Outbound Flight, by Timothy Zahn.

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Legends of the Hydian Way – Jedi Quest Books 7-11

Up until now in our look at Jedi Quest the series has largely followed Jedi Apprentice’s pattern of one or two off books with an overarching villain lurking in the background. Much to my surprise and delight, the latter half of the series becomes a continuous storyline dealing with the hunt for villain Granta Omega.

Welcome to Legends of the Hydian Way, the chronicle of my attempt to read through and review all the novels that make up mainline Legends canon in chronological order. May the Force be with me.

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Legends of the Hydian Way – Jedi Quest Books 1-6

You would be forgiven for thinking that the Anakin Skywalkers of The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones were entirely separate people. Most of this is easily explained by the ten year time gap, but just what happened during those ten years to amplify Anakin’s anger issues and wear away at his gentle, compassionate side?

Welcome to Legends of the Hydian Way, the chronicle of my attempt to read through and review all the novels that make up mainline Legends canon in chronological order. May the Force be with me.

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Legends of the Hydian Way – Rogue Planet

When I started this project, I wasn’t expecting to have to keep asking all of you readers out there to do quite so much remembering and pin-sticking. Legends has so many call-forwards and retroactively written tie-ins to events that happen later in the timeline it can get a bit exhausting. Two weeks ago with Lockdown we had a very minor call-forward (more of an in-joke reference, really) to the New Jedi Order series with Maul’s boxing match against a Yuuzahn Vong. This week, the whole book is an NJO tie in!

Welcome to Legends of the Hydian Way, the chronicle of my attempt to read through and review all the novels that make up mainline Legends canon in chronological order. May the Force be with me.

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Legends Of The Hydian Way – The Phantom Menace

We have, at long last, reached the first film in the Star wars franchise. 20,000 years of galactic history in under a year ain’t bad! Today we’re looking back at the novelization of The Phantom Menace. I plan to take a slightly different approach to the film novelizations in this project. Since most of you reading this have seen the films, I’m going to be focusing more on where the novels differ. Do they add new scenes? Do they recontextualize parts the film? And do these changes add or detract from the story? Let’s find out!

Welcome to Legends of the Hydian Way, the chronicle of my attempt to read through and review all the novels that make up mainline Legends canon in chronological order. May the Force be with me.

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Legends of the Hydian Way – Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter

This week’s novel takes us right up to the the cusp of The Phantom Menace. In fact one of the final scenes in this book is Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan departing for Naboo. However, our Jedi duo is not the focus of this book, and honestly neither is its titular character. Instead, today’s story introduces us to Darth Maul as a force of nature. An unstoppable juggernaut that will not stop pursuing the book’s true protagonists until he is certain they cannot reveal what they know.

Welcome to Legends of the Hydian Way, the chronicle of my attempt to read through and review all the novels that make up mainline Legends canon in chronological order. May the Force be with me.

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Legends of the Hydian Way: Maul-Lockdown

Although not aware of this when I started reading it, today’s offering is, as far as I can tell, the second-to-last book published under the Legends canon. Though quite early in our reviews since we’re going chronologically and not by publishing order, the book was released a scant 3 months before Disney officially discontinued Legends.

Welcome to Legends of the Hydian Way, the chronicle of my attempt to read through and review all the novels that make up mainline Legends canon in chronological order. May the Force be with me.

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Legends of the Hydian Way: Cloak of Deception

We pick up with Legends where we left off: the Outer Rim Mining world of Dorvalla. When last we left this project, Darth Maul was earning his stripes as a Sith saboteur by ruining the prospects of two independent mining companies and forcing them to crawl to the Trade Federation to ship their cargoes of lommite ore.

Welcome to Legends of the Hydian Way, the chronicle of my attempt to read through and review all the novels that make up mainline Legends canon in chronological order. May the Force be with me.

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234 The Variable Party Tale

We talk about the need of theatrics at the table and how and why the need grows the less you know the players at the table as well as how it can become harder to do at the table.

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The Social Tale

We’re back and talking social skills, how we use them, how the intent of the rolls are a good indication of how they should be adjudicated, and how two skills can be used for the same roll

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Legends Of The Hydian Way: Darth Maul – Saboteur

Leave it to James Luceno to reignite my enthusaism for this project. As you may have noticed the past month or so was rough for me reading wise, cramming in 20+ young adult novels about Obi-Wan Kenobi to the point that my phone can now write entire coherent sentences about Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon using only autocorrect. Watch:

“Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon discover that the Jedi Temple and Siri herself are going to be attacked by the Offworld Xanatos Company and I don’t know what to do about it.”

It’s unreal. Anyway, after all of that, it has been refreshing to dive in to James Luceno’s short story Darth Maul: Saboteur and remember that Star Wars is for grown-ups too.

Welcome to Legends of the Hydian Way the chronicle of my attempt to read through and review all the novels that make up mainline Legends canon in chronological order. May the Force be with me.

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Trouble Brewing Episode 6 – “Capers and Cave-Ins”

After facing down the vile Daro Blunt and his gang of smugglers, the crew make their way to the flophouse. What will they find inside? Will Billie be able to keep Kaav away from the blasters? Will Vuren ever discover how to turn off the annoying ringtone on his pilfered comlink?

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Legends of the Hydian Way: Secrets of the Jedi

I really should have seen this coming. Today’s book really could have been a part of last week’s look at Jedi Apprentice Special Editions because although it does not bear the Jedi Apprentice branding it most definitely is a third special edition for that series. What makes this one different? It’s all about Jedi in love, at least ostensibly.

Welcome to Legends of the Hydian Way the chronicle of my attempt to read through and review all the novels that make up mainline Legends canon in chronological order. May the Force be with me.

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Legends of the Hydian Way: Jedi Apprentice Special Editions 1 and 2

The Jedi Apprentice series was a natural fit for a young adult novel collection just after the release of The Phantom Menace. Obviously Obi-Wan was a popular character and his teenage years in the Jedi Order provide a fertile field for adventure stories about someone the age of the target audience. Equally natural then was the decision to do a sequel series about Obi-Wan and Anakin in the wake of the events of The Phantom Menace, called Jedi Quest.

It’ll be a bit more time before we get there, but Jedi Quest was also written by Jude Watson and has two crossover specials with Jedi Apprentice. Since these books are both published under the Jedi Apprentice name, it feels appropriate to review them now.

Welcome to Legends of the Hydian Way, the chronicle of my attempt to read through and review all the novels that make up mainline Legends canon in chronological order. May the Force be with me.

Continue reading “Legends of the Hydian Way: Jedi Apprentice Special Editions 1 and 2”