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Yeah, The Unifying Force maybe isn't as good as Traitor, but I don't think it's that far behind. And the two books have very different things to accomplish, too - one was a very narrow character study/philosophical deconstruction, and the other wrapped up a 19 book storyline that ranged wildly. I'm not sure Stover would really have wanted that task, although I guess his ROTS novel was kind of similar in how it drew from a lot of the prequel material that came before.
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Feb 27, 2014 17:53
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Timothy Zahn via Facebook posted:It is with deep sadness that I note the passing of Aaron Allston. Dammit. Got somethin' in my eye.
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Feb 28, 2014 06:36
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Aaron Allston passed away, apparently.  Timothy Zahn posted about it on facebook, but I can't find anythign else about it. Wikipedia says that he had a heart attack back in 2009, so I guess his health wasn't that great.
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Feb 28, 2014 06:36
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He had diabetes and heart problems. I met him at the very first con I ever went to, and we kept up an occasional correspondence through the years. Back in '07 after I had back surgery he commiserated with me on how much anesthesia sucked since he'd had eye surgery earlier that year, iirc. He just tweeted yesterday about going to this con, too. This blows.
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Feb 28, 2014 07:23
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He truly is a Wraith now
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Feb 28, 2014 11:52
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Now who will write the Porkins and Piggy team-up prequel adventure???
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Feb 28, 2014 15:01
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He was one of my favorite Star Wars writers. And even when I was starting to fall out of love with the Star Wars EU, Starfighters of Adumar made me think maybe I should stay a little while longer. drat, between this and Harold Ramis, the world is a little less funny after this week.
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Feb 28, 2014 15:09
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He will be missed, for he was a man who could actually writing entertaining EU stuff  .
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Feb 28, 2014 16:19
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My exposure to Aaron comes from his work on the Mystara Gazetteer series for OD&D back in the late 80's. I've been following him ever since. Horrible loss.
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Feb 28, 2014 17:31
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How spoiled will I be on the Thrawn Trilogy if I read some Yuuzhan Vong books when I was younger, so I know Mara married Luke, and the Solo twins, and all that? Will it detract from my enjoyment?
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Feb 28, 2014 21:45
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Not really much, you will know that no harm will ever come to the Twins and Jade isn't going to kill anyone important to Luke or seriously harm him and of course things don't end well for the Remnant but nothing major. That sort of tension will be gone but go for it anyway.
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Feb 28, 2014 21:59
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Hiro Protagonist posted:How spoiled will I be on the Thrawn Trilogy if I read some Yuuzhan Vong books when I was younger, so I know Mara married Luke, and the Solo twins, and all that? Will it detract from my enjoyment? Not especially spoiled. You know they eventually get together (in a later set of books than Thrawn trilogy) so that spoils a little bit because Thrawn trilogy is when they officially meet. The true detraction from your enjoyment is to find out just how much the latter books squandered the potential of every character.
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Feb 28, 2014 22:01
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The ysalami's suck and are lame to read about and horrible to spell
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Feb 28, 2014 22:10
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api call girl posted:Not especially spoiled. You know they eventually get together (in a later set of books than Thrawn trilogy) so that spoils a little bit because Thrawn trilogy is when they officially meet. Didn't Zahn have them briefly meet in Allegiance but it "doesn't count" because they didn't learn each other's names or something like that? I'm not sure if that was it exactly but whatever it was, it stuck out in my head. Part of the reason why I think Allegiance is Zahn's weakest Star Wars book by far, and the only one I am actively bored by.
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Feb 28, 2014 22:54
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Chairman Capone posted:Didn't Zahn have them briefly meet in Allegiance but it "doesn't count" because they didn't learn each other's names or something like that? I'm not sure if that was it exactly but whatever it was, it stuck out in my head. Part of the reason why I think Allegiance is Zahn's weakest Star Wars book by far, and the only one I am actively bored by. Allegiance had Vader Googling Luke. Choices of One had her assisting Luke or something without him knowing.
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Feb 28, 2014 23:18
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Hey now, nothing wrong with Allegiance. I like how the Allegiance characters go on to join the Empire of the Hand in Choices of One, but The Twist That Wasn't (re Ordos or whoever) is pretty much the worst moment in Zahn's Star Wars writing.
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Feb 28, 2014 23:26
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I like the stormtrooper defectors in Allegiance, and I wish the plot had just focused entirely on them being the Space A-Team. But every time the focus shifted to a movie character/Mara, I completely lost interest. Choices of One was definitely better.
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Feb 28, 2014 23:30
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So, even with the minor spoils, still worth the read, right? And I should start with it, not X-Wing, even though that's first?
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Mar 1, 2014 08:11
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X-Wing comes first chronologically (At least up through Solo Command. Isard's Revenge is set immediately after.) but only really affects the choice of setting for the Zahn trilogy. Most of the movie characters save Wedge don't really figure heavily into the plot until Han gets in on the action in Solo Command. Also, RIP Aaron Allston. I just started rereading Wraith Squadron the other day
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Mar 1, 2014 13:59
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Chairman Capone posted:I like the stormtrooper defectors in Allegiance, and I wish the plot had just focused entirely on them being the Space A-Team. But every time the focus shifted to a movie character/Mara, I completely lost interest. Choices of One was definitely better. I was still really enjoying the Mara bits where she was being a detective/spy. Apart from the Hand of Judgment parts, easily my favorite part of that book was Vader being a brat whenever he interacted with Mara. The Main Three were pretty boring, though.
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Mar 1, 2014 16:46
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RIP Allston I suspect Zhan was ordered to include the main 3 in the Hand of Judgement books.
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Mar 1, 2014 19:53
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Sad news indeed about Allston. I enjoyed his X-Wing books, of course, and there was so much promise in that first LOTF book too.
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Mar 1, 2014 22:49
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No there wasn't. As soon as it began we Borsk'd a return to one of the most incompetent villains in the entirety of the EU, and that's before we got MYSTERY OUTSIDER casting Sith False Dichotomy Rank 13. Mercy Kill was really good though, too bad we'll never get those characters back in the way that they deserve.
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Mar 2, 2014 00:18
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Haha, yeah, maybe I wasn't being terribly objective.
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Mar 2, 2014 00:50
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I'll say that I honestly do think Allston is kind of overrated, but I do cut him some slack for Betrayal. It wasn't like he was the one who decided Jacen had to go dark or that Lumiya would show up again, since those both came from Denning's outline for the series. And it's also not (mainly) his fault that a lot of the stuff he set up in Betrayal got ignored later on. And really compared to any other LOTF/FOTJ entry it's pretty good. But on the other hand I fully hold him accountable for how bad his later LOTF/FOTJ stuff was.
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Mar 2, 2014 01:14
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He probably just said gently caress it, but thats ok because so did I
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Mar 2, 2014 18:18
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Chairman Capone posted:I'll say that I honestly do think Allston is kind of overrated, but I do cut him some slack for Betrayal. It wasn't like he was the one who decided Jacen had to go dark or that Lumiya would show up again, since those both came from Denning's outline for the series. And it's also not (mainly) his fault that a lot of the stuff he set up in Betrayal got ignored later on. And really compared to any other LOTF/FOTJ entry it's pretty good. When you think about how bad his later stuff is you really should consider that this is a man who had been stuck in an authorial partnership with Denning and Traviss for years. Imagine being a good author and having to deal with these people having equal creative control to you, and how many times you would say "no, that's dumb" and be shot down before you shut up and just wrote about Admiral Daala's affair with a dreamy Mando for a paycheck. Allston really should have cowritten with the guy who did those M*A*S*H in space EU books, if anyone.
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Mar 2, 2014 21:29
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Was Star Wars: Rebellion (the game) any good? I've been playing the poo poo out of EU4 and really wanna play Grand Strategy Star Wars.
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Mar 3, 2014 09:06
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StashAugustine posted:Was Star Wars: Rebellion (the game) any good? I've been playing the poo poo out of EU4 and really wanna play Grand Strategy Star Wars. It's an acquired taste, but it can be really good.
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Mar 3, 2014 09:19
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StashAugustine posted:Was Star Wars: Rebellion (the game) any good? I've been playing the poo poo out of EU4 and really wanna play Grand Strategy Star Wars. It's an excellent blockade management simulator. (I like it - partly from nostalgia, i admit - but it's a little simplistic in places and the battle AI is pretty braindead)
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Mar 3, 2014 10:48
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Last time I attempted it I thought I had a really good handle on the macro scale stuff, then a battle started and I had no idea what I was doing.
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Mar 3, 2014 16:50
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gently caress, Aalston dying really blows. I didn't know about his health issues, but I loved his work and he'll always be one of the few I don't feel scared to recommend to a newcomer. Odd coincidence, he was going to be at VisionCon this last weekend (Feb 28) and I was going to go just to meet him. Weather scared me off and I didn't end up going...but I found out about him being there the very day he died. That feels...weird, to me. edit: Also I continued to plan to go and see him for 24 hours after he'd passed. I never thought I'd say this but I think I need to read the internet more edit edit: HOLY poo poo. I was wrong. Wikipedia says he collapsed AT Visioncon, and died in my town later that day. The gently caress. McGann fucked around with this message at 20:46 on Mar 3, 2014 |
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Mar 3, 2014 20:35
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We just had a page long discussion about Rebellion in the Boston thread, of all places. It's a really fun game I think that definitely has its quirks. I would say if you let the space battles auto resolve you'd be a lot better off. Plus, you get to make death stars and blow up planets and pretty much every game you can do that in is preeeetty solid.
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Mar 3, 2014 20:57
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Conquistador posted:We just had a page long discussion about Rebellion in the Boston thread, of all places. Well as I said I'm coming into this from Paradox games which have no tactical combat and I'm cool with that. On even more  Star Wars stuff, I'm toying around with homebrewing a Rebellion-era card-driven strategy game (a la Twilight Struggle.) Any major events during the Civil War I should remember? (I've basically only read the Zahn stuff from that era and played a little bit of Dark Forces.)
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Mar 3, 2014 21:26
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Rebellion is an awesome game except that the battle system is terrible. I always auto-resolve but the downside is that the auto-resolver will still give you random things like 1 TIE Fighter holds off an entire rebel fleet with multiple mon-cal cruisers and poo poo 
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Mar 3, 2014 21:29
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StashAugustine posted:Well as I said I'm coming into this from Paradox games which have no tactical combat and I'm cool with that. I'd read the more recent Han Solo trilogy if you haven't, as that takes place in that era. I think the period between EP3 and ANH is my favorite by far, especially in the 5-10 years pre ANH. E: Clicking on my profile revealed that my 10,000th post was in the Star Wars thread 
Tom Brady fucked around with this message at 21:48 on Mar 3, 2014 |
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Mar 3, 2014 21:38
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Rebellion was a whole lot better when you explained what was happening instead of actually playing it (kinda like how EVE is). Using spies and diplomats to convert systems to your cause, sending in ground troops to suppress unwarranted uprisings, and conducting counter-espionage is really cool in the general sense but it purely amounted to "send 'X' character or generic unit to location, await RNG result". If the tactical battle screen didn't suck balls, it would've been really cool to command pincer movements and strategic stuff. But it just boiled down to who has bigger numbers and a generic counter system (frigates beat starfighters, capital ships beat frigates, star fighters can maybe beat capital ships). I've never seen a game generate as many wacky stories as Rebellion. Like this one time I sent Luke in to capture the Emperor and he kept failing or getting injured. So I sent Ackbar in because he wasn't doing anything AND HE CAPTURED HIM  .
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Mar 3, 2014 21:56
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I would kill for a remake of rebellion with the Homeworld space combat engine. Or just a Star Wars Homeworld that isn't a mediocre mod. Or just any Homeworld really.
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Mar 3, 2014 21:57
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Rebellion was made in the era of Star Wars where the force just sort of happened and wasn't some badly written blood condition. Meaning a fuckload of the EU minor characters could become force sensitives and Jedi/Dark Jedi.
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Mar 3, 2014 22:08
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SeanBeansShako posted:Rebellion was made in the era of Star Wars where the force just sort of happened and wasn't some badly written blood condition. I really think that among all the terrible things that the prequels did that midichlorians being the source of the Force was the worst.
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Mar 3, 2014 22:10
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