Let’s find out the background and basics of 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
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Transcript
Intro
Welcome to The Infernal Brotherhood of the Scruffy Looking, Nerf Herders! And welcome to this first episode of our How to Play West End Games’ Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game 30th Anniversary Edition.
Discussion
Background
Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game was written and published by West End Games or WEG between 1987 and 1999. While the rights to the Star Wars IP have been sold to other companies like Wizards of the Coast and most recently Fantasy Flight Games, this first Star Wars tabletop roleplaying game or TTRPG from WEG actually established much of the groundwork of what would later be referred to as the Star Wars Expanded Universe or EU.
Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game arrived in a time when the future of the Star Wars franchise was uncertain. The original trilogy was out, and there were no solid plans to create further content. The novels and comics had released a handful of stories, but it looked like the trilogy was all we were ever going to see on the big screen. When Timothy Zahn was hired to write the Heir to the Empire novel, Lucasfilm actually sent him WEG’s Star Wars sourcebooks for background material. In fact, many of the Star Wars alien names like Twi-lek, Rodian and Quarren first appeared in the sourcebooks. When Lucasfilm’s story group were working on their writer’s bible, they referenced this TTRPG.
In 2018 Fantasy Flight Games released the Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game 30th Anniversary Edition which was a beautifully reprinted slipcase containing both the original Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook and The Star Wars Sourcebook. They are 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.
Game System
Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game uses WEG’s D6 System, originally developed for the Ghostbusters roleplaying game in 1986. The basic premise of the game is that you have attributes and skills that are measured in numbers of six-sided dice, like 1D or 4D for example. You use these dice to resolve conflicts ranging from performing complex tasks like programming hyperspace coordinates or engaging in combat with stormtroopers. It is an incredibly simple game system intended for fast, action packed, story driven gameplay like the Star Wars films.
In that vein, the game is presented as theater-of-the-mind, meaning you have a Game Master, or GM, who describes the environment and situation your player character or PC is in. Then you describe what you want to do. It’s the basics of every TTRPG and can be distilled down into the phrase: collaborative storytelling. This style of roleplaying is not for everyone, so the game system does present options and rules for using maps and miniatures for more detail oriented play.
Combat is broken down into rounds and further into segments, with successive actions by a PC or non-player character, or NPC making all of their options more difficult. It also presents a Force system for characters with those abilities. Force Points are available to everyone as bonuses during a game, and the Force Skills Control, Sense and Alter which certain characters may be able to leverage by combining one or more of these skills during gameplay to recreate actions seen on the big screen and in your imagination.
The original setting of the game is set between Star Wars: A New Hope (Episode IV) and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (Episode V). So everyone is assumed to be working with or on behalf of the Rebel Alliance. While you can naturally play the game however you want, the TTRPG is built for you to take the part of a character in the Star Wars universe, struggling against the awesome might of the evil galactic Empire. You’ll fly faster-than-light spacecraft, trade blaster fire with Imperial stormtroopers, fight lightsaber duels, and tap the mystic Force which binds all living things together. You’ll live in a galaxy of a billion suns, and a billion star systems each with its own wonders and dangers to explore. You live in a universe of dire peril, where freedom fights desperately against the eternal night of tyranny and oppression. You will be faced with overwhelming odds, hard choices, and impossible challenges–but if you are brave and true, you may triumph, for the Force is with you always.
Now if that doesn’t get your blood pumping and your imagination going, you may want to double check if you have a pulse. This is all to say, that you are good guys, fighting the bad guys. So if your character does what the GM considers to be an evil action, you will earn a Dark Side Point, and have your character taken from you to become an NPC. You see, the PC’s are heroes, and while heroes may be faced with challenging decisions and at times make questionable choices, they are not overtly evil.
That is the game in a nutshell. So if you enjoy TTRPG’s and you have a passion for Star Wars like us, you may want to consider giving Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game a try. We will be presenting future episodes focusing on the different aspects of the game with the intention of teaching you how to play this groundbreaking system, so you can try your hand at exploring and shaping A Galaxy Far, Far Away!
Outro
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So until the Infernal Brotherhood convenes again my fellow scruffy looking, nerf herders “May the Force be with you.”