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Showing posts with the label Star Wars

Adventures of the Starkiller

Star Wars has been a part of my gaming experience for a long time. I was born in the middle of the original trilogy releases, and it has certainly had an impact in my life. Whether through lightsaber battles as a kid, my introduction into role-playing, or my large amount of digital games, Star Wars has always been incorporated in my life in some way.  Some of my earliest memories of imaginary play were of Jedi and Stormtroopers. Sure, Pirates, Knights and He-Man may have all been in heavy rotation, but Star Wars was certainly up there. Just picture a young jedi, brown towel slung over his head as a robe, card board tube swung around to self-made sound effects, slashing off the arms of invisible stormtroopers. All kids dismember their imaginary friends right? Or slightly later, with the official Kenner “the Force” lightsaber, hollow green plastic tube and black handle whistling through the air as I charged through the house. It didn’t sound like a real lightsaber, but it was a pri

Star Wars Radio and Shared Action

Let’s start this off by establishing my relationship to Star Wars: I love Star Wars. Love it. I still spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about the brilliant storytelling of the Original Trilogy. I should emphasize, however, that I tend to think of anything outside those three films as addenda of sorts. To me, the prequels and recent trilogy occupy a similar space to novels, video games, The Ewoks and Droids Adventure Hour , etc. Being addenda isn’t a good or bad thing in itself - in fact, my very first exposure to RPGs was the original West End D6 Star Wars. It taught me a lot about gaming could be, and gave me my first lessons in the methodologies of storytelling.   I also love addenda that stretch the idea of what Star Wars is, especially at the very beginning when the first film’s success took everyone by surprise and imaginations went wild. The early Marvel comics, for instance, are an exercise in playful genre-bending as tropes from  westerns, monster movies, 50s