Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.

After a LONG hiatus, I'm finally getting back into roleplaying games. I thought that with my work schedule, I simply didn't have the time, but I think it was more a lack of motivation. My time is just as limited now, but my enthusiasm is up, particularly with the choice of the game. My enthusiasm is up for my demo work with SJGames as well, and I'm planning on taking a more active role as MIB than I have in recent years.

The wife is also happy that I'm getting back into gaming, which is cool, and perhaps I can get her involved, as well. I think she's happy because I'm enthusiastic about something other than the occult for once, and I agree that it's good for me to broaden my focus a bit. I have been rather fixated, which isn't entirely healthy. Focusing like a laser on a single thing can't be good, no matter how good or fulfilling the thing is on its own.

I picked up some books for the old West End Games Star Wars game, which is the game that got me into gaming in the first place. I'm going to start running a campaign with some friends of mine. The WEG Star Wars is a dead game, but that simply means that I don't need to spend money on new supplements. West End went bankrupt a few years ago and lost their license, which Wizards of the Coast acquired. I've looked at the WOTC D20 version, but it's crap, just modified D&D, a game I've never been particularly fond of in any incarnation. The other game I spent time playing back in the day was MERP, Middle Earth Role Playing, which is another dead game, but that one has an uglier rules system and I'm more in a science fiction mood anyway.

I'm going to be running a smuggling campaign for the most part, set mainly in the Corporate Sector (from the Han Solo novels), and since one of the players is a Trianii (cat-like species) arms dealer, it dovetails nicely. The main premise will be that we're going to be running weapons from the larger SW galaxy into the CS for the Trianii resistance, and then stealing advanced tech from the Corporate Sector to sell to the Rebellion. I'm having fun designing NPC's for the game, and this weekend we should finish up character creation for all of the players involved.

This has also resparked my love for the Star Wars galaxy. I was bitterly disappointed in the prequel movies, and that soured me on all things Star Wars for a while. Now I'm just disregarding them as relates to my own personal conception of SW canon. We're starting off with a Rebellion era smuggler campaign, and I possibly might try out an Old Republic (Tales of the Jedi era) campaign if I want to do stuff with the Jedi. I'm not particularly interested in the Clone War period anyway, and while I enjoy the Expanded Universe novels, I don't see myself dealing with New Republic era anytime soon, either. If I did, it would likely involve how the NR governmental changes affect the Corporate Sector, something which hasn't been explored in the Expanded Universe novels/games, at least, not to my knowledge.

The Han Solo novels were the very first Star Wars novels I ever read, back when I was about 8 or 9. I found them at the library, and was amazed at the fact that there were Star Wars stories outside of the movies. I thus have a fond remembrance for the Corporate Sector setting, especially because it has a different vibe than most of the other Star Wars stories. I'm particularly enamoured with Han as portrayed in them, because that's the time when he's a straight up smuggler, before he hooked up with the Rebellion and went respectable. I think my fondness for those stories is why all my Star Wars characters have always been on the fringe; smugglers, bounty hunters, mercs and pirates, and why when the character sheet asks for "Connection to Other Characters", I always wrote, "Drinking buddies with Han."

Edit: I had to go through and reword some of this. I had some absolutely horrendous run-on sentences in there.