The Knights of the Old Republic Campaign Guide debuted at last weekend's GenCon and has been on store shelves for several days now - not to mention in the hands of those lucky few able to somehow obtain a copy early. The response has been overwhelmingly positive. The book sold out at GenCon every day (though they admittedly had a limited supply for the show). It was a great product to work on, and we had a very good team. I'm very pleased with the results.

What I really love about the product, is that there is something for just about every kind of KotoR fan:

If you play the RPG, there is a wealth of new material, including new species, talents, feats, Force powers, prestige classes and a lot of equipment and vehicles. Equipment customization is greatly expanded, to the point where you can add templates to your weapons or fiddle with different lightsaber crystals. Though all created with the KotoR era in mind, most of this can be transferred to a game in any era, without too much difficulty.

If you are a KotoR videogame fan, you'll find new background material for the events and characters you're already familiar with from both videogames. You'll also see how we incorporated a lot of concepts from the videogame into the RPG. Although the videogame was based on the earlier d20 version of the RPG, enough had changed in the new Saga Edition to warrant something more than a straight one-to-one translation. Actually, a one-to-one translation would not have been completely possible, even with the earlier edition, given the changes made to the videogame version.

If you are a KotoR comic book fan, you should recognize comic book author John Jackson Miller's name on the cover. Having one of the primary authors of a Star Wars storyline on the project was a fantastic bonus. John was able to give us a lot of insight into what he had planned in the coming months, and how he envisioned the current state of the galaxy. He handled the write-ups and stats for his characters plus the Republic and Mandalorian chapters, and probably some other stuff I'm overlooking.

One of the best aspects of the book is the clarification (and actual naming) of the many wars that occur during this era. You can tell exactly what each faction is up to and when, thanks to several timelines that clearly call out when the major events occur. I'm very glad it made it into the book.

For this book, my own focus was on the rules-heavy chapters: Species, Heroic Traits, Prestige Classes, the Force and Allies and Opponents (which isn't rules heavy). That's not to say that I was only doing rules, as there is a lot of background, character history and other material intertwined in all sections. Aspects of the comics or videogames inspired many of the new rules. Plus, the new rules were constantly refined as they went through playtesting and development, most of which was done at Wizards of the Coast.

For me, one of the most exciting sections was the Force chapter. Along with adapting the Force powers, I had the opportunity to create and develop the non-Jedi force traditions. I got to expand on the Jal Shey (a group mentioned many times in the KotoR games) and included the Krath (from the Tales of the Jedi series). I revived and expanded one of Wizards of the Coast's early traditions - the Selkath based Order of Shasa - since it begins in this era. Finally, I had the opportunity to create two entirely new Force traditions: the sense-based Luka Sene for the Miraluka, and the Keetael for the long-lived Draethos.

My fellow authors own this product were Rodney Thompson (lead Star Wars designer at WotC), John Jackson Miller (the aforementioned KotoR comic book author) and Abel Pena (you can read his own take on the book here).

As I said before, we are very happy with the results. Even better, it appears that most of the fans agree so far. There will be more KotoR material to come, as additional web enhancements and other articles appear on the Wizards of the Coast website. As usual, I'll call attention to those as they come available.

It occurred to me tonight that this comes a little over 10 years after the release of my last Star Wars RPG books. They were two of the last three titles released by West End Games before its (first) demise. I have had an adventure and some other RPG material released in Star Wars Gamer Magazine and the Attack on Endor Scenario Pack, but this is the first major RPG print product for me since that time. I won't have to wait very long for the next one, since it comes out next month.