Let’s learn the basics of character creation for West End Games’ Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game 30th Anniversary Edition. You can learn more about Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_The_Roleplaying_Game
You can pick up the original sourcebooks as PDF’s here: https://www.starwarstimeline.net/Westendgames.htm
Time Stamps:
- 0:00 Intro
- 1:49 Choose a Template
- 2:14 Customizing the Template
- 3:50 Create Your Background
- 4:07 Create Your Own Template
- 5:11 Create Your Own Alien
- 6:04 Create Your Own Droid
- 7:51 Outro
About Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game 30th Anniversary Edition
Few books or games have had as enduring an impact upon the Star Wars galaxy and its fans as Star Wars™: The Roleplaying Game. Originally published by West End Games in 1987, it arrived at a time when the future of the Star Wars galaxy was uncertain, and it captivated a whole generation of gamers with rules and guidelines that made it possible to design and enjoy adventures truly worthy of the Star Wars universe and its ongoing space opera.
Now Fantasy Flight Games is proud to offer faithful recreations of this influential rulebook and The Star Wars™ Sourcebook. Our Star Wars™: The Roleplaying Game 30th Anniversary Edition is a limited edition set of both books, printed with higher quality than the originals and packaged in a stylized slipcase.
These books were sent to Timothy Zahn as references when he started to develop Grand Admiral Thrawn and his Thrawn trilogy. They introduced materials that were later adopted into Star Wars canon, such as the names of alien races like the Twi’lek, Rodians, and Quarren. They even inspired members of the Lucasfilm Story Group as they worked on their writers’ bible.
Now, Fantasy Flight Games is proud to return Star Wars: The Roleplaying to print as a collectible set of two high-quality, hardbound books presented in a stylized slipcase. You’ll find all the original game materials—just as playable as ever—and they’re presented with the same graphic design and fake, in-universe Star Wars advertisements for the Imperial Navy, the R2 astromech Droid, and more.
Even the books’ use of black-and-white, blue ink, and full color sections have been recreated, along with its use of still photos and concept art, some of which have been updated for this new 30th Anniversary Edition. Finally, the books come with a foreword by Pablo Hidalgo, one of the creative executives on the Lucasfilm Story Group.
Transcript
Intro
Welcome to The Infernal Brotherhood of the Scruffy Looking, Nerf Herders! In this episode of How to Play West End Games’ Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game 30th Anniversary Edition, we are discussing Character Creation.
Discussion
With a stripped down, theater of the mind roleplaying system like West End Games’ Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game, it’s incredibly easy to jump in and start playing in minutes. There are three basic steps that you must complete: First you should select a basic character template, second you customize the character template to suit what you want your character to specialize in, and third you determine your character connection to the other player characters, or PC’s in the game with the other PC’s and the Game Master, or GM. It’s truly that simple. There are not many species and no classes in this 30th Anniversary Edition of the game, and upon release there were only a few alien species presented. Future supplements would introduce and name some of the myriad of species we spied in the Mos Eisley Cantina in Star Wars Episode 4: A New Hope, and many more besides. There are rules included to create and customize your own alien species as well, so don’t feel obligated to stick with what is presented.
Another note about this 30th Anniversary Edition, is that you are meant to play as a hero, working with the Rebel Alliance against the Evil Galactic Empire. So don’t expect to see alignments, or imperial character options. Even the Bounty Hunters are meant to be neutral in their actions at best, as if you turn evil, your PC is taken from you by the GM and it becomes a non-player character, or NPC. In the Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook you are presented with twenty-four different character templates ranging from minor jedi to retired imperial captain and everything in between. As these are just templates meant to inspire your imagination, you may ignore the boilerplate background, personality, and character connection information presented on the backside of each template, and write your own to fit your character.
Now that you have chosen your character template, you are given seven dice, or 7D to customize the skills in your template. Skills are abilities you learn, which fall under Attributes, the innate abilities you are born with. Every character has six attributes, dexterity, knowledge, mechanical, perception, strength, and technical. These attributes are leveraged by and influence the skills that fall under each. The skills represent your characters abilities and as each skill already has the number of dice their parent attribute has, you get to allocate the 7D into whatever skills you choose, as long as there are no more than 2D added to an individual skill. It’s worth mentioning at this point that as you cannot allocate any of your starting 7D to the attributes, you also cannot add any to force skills. I will be making a video all about the Force in the future. Everyone begins play with one Force Point which can be used to heroic effect, but that explanation will also wait for a future episode.
Now that you have completed customizing your character, fill in the remaining statistics like Character Name, Height, Weight, Sex, Age, and Physical Description. Also remember that each character template comes with starting gear and money, so now would be the time to equip your character and purchase any other beginning gear you would like before the adventure begins. Just don’t forget to check with your GM to make sure you are able to locate everything you want to purchase. The Empire does have a lockdown on certain equipment, and the black market can get very expensive. Finally, you will want to create your character’s personality and background, then present your character to the other PC’s and come up with your connection to each other.
And that is it! It only takes a few minutes and you can jump into the Star Wars universe feet first for your first adventure. If you want to fully customize a template from scratch, feel free. It only takes a couple more minutes than starting with an existing template. In this case, you begin with a blank character template, and you have 18D to divide among your six attributes. You can not have any more than 4D or any less than 2D in any skill, unless you are an alien. You can also break up your attributes into pips, or die modifiers like +1 or +2. Each die is worth three pips. You can use 1d to add +1 to three codes, or +2 to one, and +1 to a second. In this way you may add Force Skills at a cost of 1D each, but you cannot add more than 1D to them. Always remember this game is set during the Galactic Civil War. There are no Jedi, and you must have a good reason for knowing any force skills, approved by the GM. Now that you have your template, you can customize it as mentioned before, and begin play.
One more note worth mentioning is about aliens. Three are presented in the Character Templates: Wookies, Ewoks, and Mon Calamari. In The Star Wars Sourcebook that came paired with the Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook in Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game 30th Anniversary Edition, there are also Gamorreans, Ithorians, Jawas, Quarren, Sand People or Tusken Raiders, Sullustan, and Twi’lek for you to choose from as well. However, in the Star Wars universe there are thousands of intelligent alien races, you can always create new ones, just make sure you run them past your GM. To make your own alien race, consider how they live, what they breathe and eat, how do they reproduce? What is their culture like? Then design your own template for them as before, but note that aliens may have as many as 5D and as few as 1D in any attribute.
Finally, Droids are created to perform very specific functions, and are not presented as playable characters, but you can create a droid template if you like. While there are Astromech Droid, Protocol Droid, Medical Droid, Probe Droid, and Assassin Droid stats in The Star Wars Sourcebook as a jumping off point, much like creating your own alien, there are a few things to consider. First, what is the Droid’s function? This is the primary and often sole reason it was created. Next choose a name or model for the droid type if it’s different from an existing droid model. Decide what the droid looks like using its function as a jumping off point. Then allocate the 18D to one, two or three skills, remember droids are only created to fulfill specific functions, so they are limited in their skill spread. Then write 1D next to each attribute. You may add special abilities to your droid, taking dice away from the beginning 18D to do so. To add a built in tool, it costs 1D each. Increasing or decreasing your 5 meter base move, adding or removing from the base 50 kilograms of weight, or adding more than two or removing a limb all costs 1D each.
So, whether you use an existing character template or creating your own, all players begin with the same 18D worth of attributes and 7D additional for skills. As you can see there is a vast array of character types you can end up with and with such a simple method of creation, you should never find yourself playing a copy of another players or film’s character. I highly recommend you give this award winning roleplaying game a shot, and find out why so many Star Wars fans reflect fondly on this truly seminal tabletop roleplaying game.
Outro
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Until the Infernal Brotherhood convenes again my fellow scruffy looking, nerf herders “May the Force be with you.”