Star Wars (West End Games)

The force is strong with this one.

Overall score:

Since I was on the kick with WFRPG and Paranoia, I thought I'd regale you with another hit from the OOP archive. Long ago there was a company named West End Games. And they made good games. Among these were Paranoia and a DCU game.

But their crowning triumph was their edition of Star Wars.

It was a Star Wars game that truly felt like Star Wars, not like D&D transposed into a pseudo-science fiction atmosphere (blessedly, this was also before the New Jedi Order novels, so we don't have all that baggage cluttering us up).

WEG's version of Star Wars used their now famous d6 model. Skills were ranked in dice, possibly with 1 or 2 "pips" added. So your strength (and the default skill level for all skills based on strength) would have a rating of something like 4d (four dice) or 2d 2 (the results on two dice plus 2). When ever you were checking against a skill, you would role the appropriate dice and add up the total, comparing it to a difficulty number or an opponent's skill roll. If you wanted to perform more than one skill or action in a round, you took a -1d penalty on all skill rolls for each skill used beyond the first one. This made it impractical to do too much, as you'd be getting enough penalties that you'd be incapable of accomplishing anything, but it also left the possibilities wide open, rather than strictly defining what you could and couldn't do.

Every character also had force points, starting with just one, which could be spent to increase roll results.

That's it for normal characters. There were varying base stats depending on the character's race and template, and you added to those by spending points to build a character. There were a lot of races available. A good selection of templates appeared just in the main book, but then the expansions allowed for a lot more.

Jedi were a little different. They too spent force points, but they also had three additional skills not available to non-force wielding characters, which made a range of force powers available. Through a combination of these three skills and force points, Jedi became powerful quickly. Character balance got out of control quickly as well, but it remained fun.

You could also play droids, though character building and advancement worked very differently for those characters. Still, the books were clear and quick, and it was never difficult to build a character of any type.

The biggest drawback to the system was that it gave rules for playing an ewok or jawa. Though not really WEG's fault, it seemed that every party of characters ever made for a WEG Star Wars game had at least one of these miniscule menaces and a player who insisted on playing the comical archetype to the hilt. Nevermind what an ewok would be doing infiltrating the Death Star Mark III (as you can tell, I'm still bitter about it).

The bulk of core rule book was caught up in a lot of GM advice, such as how to use music or sound effects--they liked to point out that this was based on an action movie and should FEEL like an action movie. Since there's a huge assortment of videos, soundtracks, and color prints available for Star Wars, there was no excuse not to use them for explanations, descriptions, etc. The advice was mostly what you'd expect, though there was some emphasis on Star Wars specific items.

The Star Wars Sourcebook was also available, which contained mostly setting information and new races. This was also handy and well worth the cover price.

Basically, the game was fast and fun. It managed to maintain the feel for Star Wars and didn't get caught up in complications. The system was simple enough that it didn't even require GM intervention. Sadly, WEG is gone and the game is out of print. However, you can still dig up copies on eBay or Amazon for the original core book or the Star Wars Sourcebook, and I recommend doing so. [Editor's note: so do I.]

Written by SaintEhlers on September 15th, 2003