Star Wars RPG Revised Core Rulebook

It’s like the second Death Star: cooler and better

Overall score:

Star Wars. Few two-word combinations in the English language can match this one for the pure deluge of cultural baggage caused by its invocation. Star Wars is big – very big. Many claim that Star Wars has become, in recent years, a grotesque mockery of its former greatness, like Michael Jackson. But, regardless on your opinion on the recent installments of the Star Wars series, this comparison shows that Star Wars exists on the same scale as Michael Jackson: global, influential, and pervasive. The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, now available in a new revised edition, is a product of this epic cultural phenomenon and exhibits all the strengths and weaknesses that come from this pedigree.

Little needs to be said about the setting of the Star Wars Roleplaying Game. Either you are familiar with it, or you have somehow managed to avoid the most iconic movie series of the last quarter century, and a paragraph-long blurb on the Star Wars universe is not going to help you. The world of the Star Wars RPG is, like the world of the Star Wars movies, the perfect backdrop for "space opera", the epic sci-fi setting where the emphasis is on heroic characters and dramatic action rather than hard science (the rule book eschews the traditional term "space opera" for some reason, preferring to call it "space fantasy.") The Star Wars universe is populated by dashing rogues, beautiful princesses, screaming starfighters, and gargantuan alien monsters; the Star Wars RPG brings this universe to life for gamers wishing to delve into heroic adventures in space.

A Long Time Ago, In a Roleplaying Game Far, Far Away…

While its setting is elementary, the history of the Star Wars RPG is more complex. West End Games released the first edition of the game in 1987, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the release of the original Star Wars. It was a fairly plain game, focusing on simplistic character archetypes and adventures fairly close to the core Star Wars storyline. This version of the game was simple and fun, but it also lacked depth and flexibility and could be frustratingly undemanding and vague. West End revised the rules in 1992 to allow for greater variety and made the rule system more concrete in some ways, but the additions didn’t add enough while draining much of the innocence that had made the game fun in the first place. As a result, the game languished in the same Limbo occupied by the Star Wars movies during the 90s. However, when the cinematic narrative was resurrected in 1999 with the beginning of the Star Wars prequel series, the Star Wars RPG was also reborn.

Wizards of the Coast brought the Star Wars RPG back to life, but the results were neither carefully devised nor totally satisfying. The RPG’s production was rushed so that it would be released in tandem with The Phantom Menace, capitalizing on the movie’s popularity and the series’ revitalized fan base. Wizards used their flexible d20 system, adapting it to the space opera setting while keeping many of the core concepts used in the original West End game. Many complained that the adaptation was not done artfully, resulting in an unbalanced system; others complained about aspects of the game like space combat that had not been fleshed out at all. The game obviously had a kernel of greatness, however – the multitude of complaints showed that a large group of gamers were interested enough in the game to want it fixed. So that’s what Wizards of the Coast attempted to do. The result? This Revised Rulebook. Because this book is a revision of a recently released RPG, this review will attempt to introduce it to those who haven’t played it before while informing owners of the first Wizards edition of the changes and revisions (almost all for the better) that have been made.

The Strengths: Character Generation and Combat Mechanics

The game does a good job of introducing itself to experienced gamers and newcomers alike, laying out the concepts carefully and explaining rules clearly. The inclusion of an example of play in the introduction is helpful to newbies, although the book dispenses with the ready-made characters from the first Wizards edition (which harkened back to the West End character archetypes). The character generation process might be a little hard to follow for those unfamiliar with d20 games; it sprawls across six chapters, and no one place contains a satisfactory summary of the creation steps. An example of the character creation process might have been useful to first-timers.

The character races and classes are fairly comprehensive, although the classes are intentionally general to allow players to diversify as they advance in play. Some players griped that the first edition had too much of a bias toward Jedi characters, and some rebalancing has been done in this area, beefing up the non-Jedi classes. The Jedi classes also get a little boost, receiving the Lightsaber Weapon Proficiency at level one (in the first edition, they didn’t gain this feat until second level). A new character class, the tech specialist, has been added to round out the classes, but it is an extremely unglamorous utilitarian class that will probably foisted on latecomers after the other players have all chosen combat-oriented classes. The problem is that space opera is all about epic heroism and romance, and computer repair is neither heroic nor romantic. The other character classes each have an allure that will draw players to them, though, and the varied character races, skills, and feats allow for more personalization of the characters.

The rules for combat, including vehicle and space combat, are very well written, illuminating difficult concepts like flanking and new rules like attacks of opportunity, (which are key to other d20 games but strangely absent from first edition Star Wars). The book provides new diagrams that help a lot in explaining these rules; the map of known space is also much better than the one from the first edition, which looked like a child had drawn it. The abstract space combat system has been changed to a concrete system, similar to the one used for person-to-person or vehicle combat. The glaring flaw in this new space combat system is that it is TOO much like the other systems, placing the emphasis on two-dimensional movement while almost completely ignoring the lack of a single plane of combat in the void of space. This is almost forgivable, though, in the context of space opera, where the space combat is almost always two-dimensional. (Remember the scene in Return of the Jedi where Luke looks out from the second Death Star at the ships in combat and they’re all lined up on a single plane?)

The Disappointing Gamemaster’s Section

Mechanically, this game is a wonder, streamlined and sleek and easy to tackle. It’s obvious that this system has been overhauled at the fans’ behest; every chapter has been gone over with a fine-toothed comb for flaws and imbalances. The Gamemastering chapter has been revamped as well, but I was disappointed with the results. The first edition of the game included a simple fight-and-chase adventure as a springboard to play, but the new edition nixed this and provides little help with adventure hooks and ideas even though it claims they are there. Gamemasters are forced to start completely from scratch or go out and buy an adventure module right away, which is unfortunate.

Also, the Gamemaster section contains very strict guidelines regarding the Star Wars continuum. This leaves gamemasters straight-jacketed by the movies instead of allowing them to be the catalyst for new adventures. Ewoks are available as a character class only after Return of the Jedi, and the Jedi classes are restricted during the Episode 4-6 portion of the timeline. Even worse, the terrible plotline of the post-Return of the Jedi novels is the only later setting given as an option in the game, and this setting is completely unfamiliar to all but the most hardcore Star Wars fans. No discussion of alternate settings or tweaked timelines is provided, suggesting that this would be heresy. "What do you mean, ‘What if the Fall of the Republic didn’t happen?’ Blasphemer!"

This section of the game also pushes too hard for the inclusion of Star Wars movie characters in the game. I’m sure we can all say, "Thank the Maker," because Jar Jar Binks’ stats have been removed, but it was only done to make room for all the Episode 2 characters they wanted to cram in. This is unnecessary, in my opinion, and acts as a disincentive to original storytelling. More appealing is the portion of the Gamemastering section that lays out an extensive list of ready-to-use NPC archetypes and monsters, but this section should be longer and the multiple sets of stats for Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia (three for each) should be pared back or stripped out.

These minor quibbles are indicative of my problems with the Star Wars RPG on a larger scale. The writers of the game seem unsure as to whether they are producing a tool for roleplaying in the space opera genre generally, roleplaying in the Star Wars universe specifically, or recreating the stories of the Star Wars movies exactly. When they provide only monsters, aliens, and characters right out of the movies, I say, "Come on - the universe is HUGE. There’s no way that every adventure is going to have Ewoks, Gungans, and Rancors in it! Give us something from outside the movies to work with." And when they do that, I end up saying, "Come on – they wouldn’t have THIS in the Star Wars universe. It just doesn’t fit." Recreating the mood and feel of Star Wars is very difficult without ending up recreating the stories from the movies without any original ideas.

The design of the rulebook doesn’t help with this problem much, either. The art in the first edition was composed almost entirely of pictures from the Star Wars movies (particularly Phantom Menace, for the purposes of cross-promotion), giving the impression that there is no Star Wars universe outside the storyline and characters of the movie. Thankfully, some new art has been added in the new edition, but there are still too many production stills (mostly from Attack of the Clones, of course). The book tells us that there are Wookie Jedi, but there are no pictures of one. What do we get instead? About twenty photos of Hayden Christensen’s pouting portrayal of Anakin Skywalker, which doesn’t add anything to the roleplaying potential of this book.

Conclusion

In spite of its intrinsic playability and high production value, I can’t give this book more than 4 clocks because of the flaws in the Gamemastering chapter. It’s also a mite pricey, but the dollar value is good enough if you can figure out how to wring good roleplaying from this book. If you’re an expert gamer who can walk the tightrope between losing originality and losing the feel that makes the Star Wars universe so special, this book is for you. It’s also good for recreating the adventures from Episode 2: Attack of the Clones with different protagonists (or, heck, go ahead and use the same protagonists from the movie, too) if that’s what you’re into. Say "hi" to Jar Jar for me.

Written by Nathan Jennings on July 17th, 2002