Fanworks Guidebook Vol. 1 Coming Soon
(source: Second Strike, 02-02-05)

For a while, things have been silent on the Second Strike resource front. Before Fanworks was launched, Rayzur's Edge Audio announced that the characters, locations, and events of Second Strike would be the basis for a Second Strike fan-made RPG sourcebook, produced by Nathan P. Butler and Alan Klassen of the Manitoba Star Wars Guild. A short time after it was first announced, it was expanded to also include the tales in the first five audio drama episodes of Anthology. That project was later renamed the Fanworks Core Universe Sourcebook, which would be followed by future sourcebook-style materials for other audio dramas in a Fanworks Adventure Journal.

Last year, we reported that the FCUS (and subsequent FAJ series) were cancelled, due to problems getting RPG statistic content, and that the project was being relaunched as a possible addition to the Fanworks website as a new area by Butler and Rich Sigfrit. That new area, though, has also been cancelled now, due to the realization that fans who really want text-based information about the "universe" of Second Strike and other audio dramas might wish to print that information out for reading, and the new addition, which would've been a Flash-based Databank area, would not have been printable.

And so, the project is relaunched again. In this final incarnation (which is being promised for release on or before June 1, 2005), the project again becomes an online, downloadable PDF "book" series. Now, the project will come in the form of the Fanworks Guidebook Vol. 1 (FG #1). This guidebook will act as what amounts to an "Essential Guide" to the materials found in all of the audio tales by Nathan P. Butler (Second Strike, Anthology I - V, Nothing Changes, Parallels, and the forthcoming Everything Changes and Always in Motion: Ambush on An'Kerra). Materials will be divided by source and include chapters for characters, starships, planets/cultures, chronology, and more.

The "Vol. 1" implies a hope that other fan audio creators will wish to provide information to have their own tales presented with such a reference work. As for this first volume, keep an eye out inside for artwork originally created for the project's "sourcebook" (rather than "guidebook") incarnation, some of which was done by StarWars.com's Tom Hodges, the artist behind the Reversal of Fortune webstrip.

We'll keep you informed as the project progresses.