Campaign Chronicles

Today’s story is about the computerized masterpiece “Mines of Titan”. A friend had this back in high school and I have some very fond memories of the game. It was one of my earliest forays into rpgs. But before I get into that, I should let some of our younger players know that this game came on an actual 5-1/4” floppy disk, and if I remember correctly there were four or five in the box. I don’t remember much of the plot.  The main guy had crashed his ship or something like that and gotten stranded on the Jovian moon, Titan (“Jovian”, like how I slipped an actual astronomical name in there?  I do).  Anyway, the main guy controlled by the player is trying to raise money to get off of Titan.  If I remember correctly, we were supposed to find a missing city and find out what had happened to the settlers living there. My friend who owned the game played the main character.  Another friend played one of the first guys he recruited and I played “the chick”...

One of the very first articles I wrote was about a Star Wars campaign I ran that heavily featured Podracing .   A lot of effort went into preparing the campaign, from mapping out the courses from Racer’s Revenge to coming up with a race schedule for the season. I even made a homebrewed track on Hoth for the group to race on and drew a map for it.   (I really like how it turned out so I am sharing it with all of you today.   The “published” ones from Racers' Revenge were cool and all but this one just “felt” more lived in to me and my players). For those of you who have no interest in podracing or running a Star Wars campaign that features it, this track could be used for a horse (or ostrich or giant lizard, etc) race with different obstacles that the player characters must win to gain the favor of some NPC or achieve another goal they have been pursuing in your campaigns at home.   Either way, I hope you all enjoy! Details of the Hoth Cross Country P...

A long time ago in a galaxy... No, wait.  That's not right. Once upon a time, in a much warmer and hospitable land (except for in the summertime when you would swelter and broil under the blazing sun and needed gills to breathe through all of the humidity in the air), I ran a short-lived Star Wars campaign.   It was based around a group of rebels who traveled from planet under the guise of a podracing team. I wanted the campaign to be as “realistic” as possible – despite the fact that it was a science fantasy setting with lightsabers, the Force, blaster pistols, interstellar travel and the hazardous racing of sleds attached to large jet engines. My roommate and I went out and bought a copy of the Star Wars Podracing game for the PS2 and we sat down and proceeded to MAP OUT EACH ONE of the race tracks and recorded the placing results of the NPC racers so we could then determine gambling odds.   We spent weeks on the game, unlocking characters and generating game st...