Mask of the Pirate Queen Act 1, Episode 7 – “Terminal Velocity”

As part of Barawyn’s “cunning” plan, the Heroes prepare to rappel down into the jungle of Black Wind Crater.

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247 – The Rumble Tale

An episode of Heroes makes Ben wonder about different ways of presenting encounters to the players. Rissa and Ben have some ideas on how to make sure that the players weapons aren’t always the first thing grabbed for.

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Mask of the Pirate Queen Act 1, Episode 6 – “The Best Laid Plans”

When someone pays attention to Kaav’s slicing efforts, the crew does the only logical thing: they start a brawl in a diner.

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246 – The Player Pet Tale

Recounting a few missteps in our own history we have a few ideas on how to make the pets of a player matter to the game and to the players in ways that aren’t always obvious.

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Mask of the Pirate Queen Act 1, Episode 5 – “Diners, Dives, and Destruction”

Two leads down, the crew of the Sky on Fire duck into a diner for a bite to eat and to conduct a little slicing into Sororonet.

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245 – The Growing Threat Tale

We said it was going to be a series, and we’re starting it. Threat is a tricky thing to use since it’s very easy to undervalue it, we have ideas on how to make it more vibrant and how to not try to steal the success of a roll with threat.

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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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Mask of the Pirate Queen Act 1, Episode 4 – “Good Neighbors”

One lead and a rental speeder down, the crew turns their attention to the remaining two leads: the fence and the network. Which will they investigate first?

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