Welcome to the Deep Core!

 Welcome to the Deep Core!

Coming...Eventually! A Homebrew Clone Wars Campaign!

That's right, y'all. It's time I contribute a little something more substantial to the Star Wars Armada realm. I wanted to create a new Armada campaign forever ago, but I didn't even have time to play the campaigns that were out, so I dropped the idea. But lately, I haven't gotten to play nearly any Armada and I haven't played ANY X-Wing. I've been painting some minis so I can eventually play Kill Team. But my schedule's been kinda packed and my head has been so firmly in a design space lately. So I haven't written much in the way of Armada content on my blog. Not nearly as much as when I play regularly and have more to share. And I've been thin on ideas because I've only played so many games lately, but I haven't made enough headway on prototype playtesting yet to share anything in either of those two arenas either. So I've been thin on actual game time and thin on ideas. Neither of which is helpful for blogging.

So I got to thinking about how much I miss playing Armada, and then I thought about Clone Wars factions in an Armada campaign. I'm certain there's homebrew stuff already out there, and that's super cool. We've got a tremendously creative community and I'm grateful we love the game so much that we create even more content for it! Especially while we're still waiting for AMG to drop their own new content. The thing is that for any problems they've got, I really do enjoy both the campaigns that are out! Sure, some stuff can be frustrating when players are really invested, but it's a fun way to enjoy the game in a different way. So while I'm sure we could plug and play Clone Wars factions into either of those campaigns (and Lord knows that any Republic player would be insanely happy to finally have Ion upgrades on their ships), I got to wondering what a specifically CW campaign might look like.

Since this is partially an exercise to indulge my love of Armada and partially a game design exercise, I didn't want to look into the materials already out there. So please don't read this as a condemnation of or lukewarm reaction to any original CW campaign stuff already out there.

Yeah, I took the easy joke here. I was spending too much time figuring out what I should do instead, so I just took the low-hanging fruit. Sometimes, the easy call is the correct one...

Additionally, I didn't want to start by lifting the maps we already have. It's likely that I'll end up coming back to them because they're already there and so there's no sense in reinventing the wheel. But I also thought that since it's a different time period, priorities should be different, which means the battlegrounds are also different. I don't know a ton about CW history and I wasn't interested in spending hours upon hours reading all the extra curricular materials out there. So after going through Wookiepedia for a bit and considering what I do know about the Clone Wars, I decided that it might be interesting to pit players against one another in the Deep Core. If you're unfamiliar with the Deep Core, here's a brief primer from Wookiepedia: "The Deep Core, sometimes referred to as the Core of the Galaxy, was a brightly lit region of the galaxy that lay at its very heart. Despite the presence of important city-worlds such as Troithe and Empress Teta, much of the Deep Core was a thinly populated and densely packed mass of stars and planets, dangerous to navigate and largely left alone by galactic explorers. At its center existed an ancient, supermassive black hole that bound the galaxy together. Traveling towards the Core and away from the galactic rim was referred to as going 'coreward.'" This sounds interesting to me for a couple of reasons. The first is that it will allow for some fun and weird objective play, as players can anticipate that it will be "dangerous to navigate." The second is that it's space I haven't seen specifically explored in Armada. The third is that I can experiment with a resource mechanic. It exists in the Rebellion in the Rim campaign, but I want to go a little bit further with the idea of needing to possibly withdraw from a position in order to resupply. Basically, players will start stocked as they know they'll be heading toward the Deep Core, but the longer they campaign in the Deep Core without taking a break, the thinner those resources become. And of course, if the Core Worlds sojourn is timed poorly, fleets can give up strategically important positions to opportunistic opponents.

So I've got ideas I'm excited about. I've got a lot of work ahead of me. And given that I've been working and I have been accepted into an MSSW program that starts in January, my free time will soon become that much scarcer. Which is why I can't promise a drop date and I haven't even set a deadline for myself. It's too early in the process for a deadline to be of any assistance; it'll just stress me out as it approaches and it'll make me feel bad when I prioritize other, more time-sensitive things. But if I put it out into the universe like this, that helps keep me accountable. Plus, I like the idea. It might end up being crap, but for the moment, it sounds like fun and I'm excited about it. Hope I get to share some more design developments with y'all soon!