Feb 032014
 

This is the second in a three part series on the history of Star Wars tabletop RPGs. In each post, I’ll be exploring each of the major Star Wars RPGs and discuss how they worked and how they affected both the roleplaying game industry and the Star Wars universe.

Star Wars

In the last article, we talked about West End Games’ Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game, a.k.a. Star Wars d6. After thirteen years of publishing, West End Games went bankrupt and had to give up the license to create Star Wars RPGs just as it was being revitalized with the prequel trilogy. Wizards of the Coast had just purchased Dungeons & Dragons and bought the license to Pokémon (resulting in a wildly successful trading card game) and parent company Hasbro already had the license to produce Star Wars toys. Purchasing the license to make a Star Wars tabletop roleplaying game was a natural next step.

System Mechanics

Sometimes people nickname the Star Wars Roleplaying Game “D&D…in Space!” (not to be confused with the actual D&D…in Space!) because it uses essentially the same rules system as Dungeons & Dragons 3e. Characters have the standard six ability scores, a class, a few feats, and a bunch of skills. Most every roll is done with a d20 and naturally this incarnation is often referred to as Star Was d20.

The major change from Dungeons & Dragons in the first two editions was that characters have “Vitality” and “Wounds”. Vitality works exactly like Hit Points in D&D. They are easily recoverable and represent the characters’ ability to shrug off superficial harm (or more abstractly, their ability to dodge lethal blasts). Wounds are equal to the characters’ Constitution score and represent severe injuries (like getting mauled by a Wampa) that require extensive treatment to heal. The later Saga Edition simplified this by reverting to Hit Points.

It is worth noting that Star Wars d20 was largely a testing ground for new mechanics to be included in Dungeons & Dragons. This was especially true with the Star Wars Saga Edition which introduced many new elements that were later introduced in Dungeons & Dragons 4e. For instance, the long list of skills were reduced to a little over a dozen. Skill points were eliminated in favor of marking a skill as “Trained” for a +5 bonus and every skill could be used untrained, except for the Use the Force skill which required the Force Sensitive feat. Saving throws are replaced by static defenses for Reflex, Fortitude, and Will. Later supplements added more test features, such as Threats of the Galaxy adding the Skill Challenge system that later became an integral part of 4e.

Force Powers and Jedi

While the Jedi in Star Wars d6 were designed to reflect Luke Skywalker’s limited abilities, Jedi in Star Wars d20 were based on the more powerful Jedi found in the New Jedi Order books and the prequel trilogy. As such, they were a bit more showy, especially in terms of combat powers.

Force powers were granted based on the characters’ wisdom modifier and functioned more or less like a D&D wizard’s spells. However, the idea of memorizing spells doesn’t make sense in Star Wars, so the limiting factor for the first two editions was that it took out some of your Vitality. The idea was that Vitality represented abstract things like energy, focus, and resolve, not necessarily your ability to take damage, but since we don’t really see movie Jedi get exhausted from using Force powers, it’s kind of an odd mechanic. Saga Edition changed it so that each power could only be used once until there was a short rest of one minute, but powers could be purchased multiple times to allow for multiple uses in combat. In a sense, this mechanic is the precursor to “Encounter” powers in D&D 4e.

Dark Side Points are awarded for evil acts. If you have a number equal to or greater than your Wisdom score, you’ve fallen to the Dark Side and typically become an NPC villain under the GM’s control (although as in Star Wars d6, there is the possibility of redemption). In the first two versions, calling on the Dark Side of the Force while spending a Force Point (i.e. using the Force out of anger) grants you an extra die to a bonus roll (“the quick and easy path to power”) while at higher levels calling on the Light Side of the Force while spending a Force Point (i.e. using the Force in a compassionate or humane way) grants you an extra die to a bonus roll. While earning Dark Side Points for committing evil acts were retained in Saga Edition, “calling on the Dark Side” was not.

Publication History

Picking up the Star Wars RPG during the time of the prequel trilogy was a double-edged sword. On one hand, Star Wars received a resurgence in popularity which no doubt spurred on sales and brought new gamers in. On the other hand, not everyone liked the prequel trilogy meaning that they had to also produce supplements to appeal to fans of other parts of the Star Wars universe. Plus a rapidly changing canon meant that there were some things that were sensible at the time, but made little sense later on. The early depictions of Senator Palpatine and his history, for instance, don’t exactly match up with later revelations of his character.

The Original Edition had sourcebooks for Naboo and Tatooine—both of which were featured in The Phantom Menace—and for the two major eras at the time: the Original Trilogy era that most people are most familiar with and the New Jedi Order era where the novels being published at the time were set (Lucasfilm vetoed any novels set pre-Return of the Jedi until the Clone Wars multimedia project commenced following Attack of the Clones). They also released several broad concept sourcebooks covering aliens, starships, and the Dark Side.

The Revised Edition came out just after Episodes II was released and I suspect that with the Clone Wars causing sweeping changes to the canon, Wizards was reluctant to write era-based sourcebooks that might become totally wrong in a year or two. Almost all of the books released for this edition are splat books providing things like force powers and gear. The only setting-based sourcebooks that were released were Coruscant and the Core Worlds and Geonosis and the Outer Rim Worlds, both of which were more stable canon-wise.

The Saga Edition came out after the Prequel Trilogy was complete and Wizards’ main focus was on era sourcebooks (called “Campaign Guides”). This time, they included not only the Rebellion era, but also the Clone Wars era, The Force Unleashed era, the Knights of the Old Republic era, and my personal favorite, the Legacy era (detailing the amazing Legacy comic line, not the mediocre Legacy of the Force novels, thank you very much). This is one of the greatest strengths of the Star Wars d20 line in that it gave you the tools to play in whatever era of Star Wars you wanted to, rather than confining you to the Rebellion era.

Interspersed amongst these is a book each for starships and droids and several designed to provide splat for one of of the five core classes while still providing resources useful to everyone else (although there isn’t much for anybody else from the Jedi Academy Training Manual except some New Jedi Order setting info).

In 2007, Wizards of the Coast sent out a press release saying that they had decided to drop the license for creating a Star Wars RPG. Most of the RPG sites at the time speculated that it was a monetary decision. After all, the license was no doubt expensive and there wasn’t anything new on the horizon except for the Star Wars: The Clone Wars TV series. For a long time the license went unclaimed until rumors arose that another company had picked it up, which was eventually revealed to be Fantasy Flight Games.

Impact on the Expanded Universe

The major impact of Star Wars d20 was that it was the first to fill in gaps in Star Wars canon that were left by the Prequel trilogy. For instance, it was the first source of further information about planets like Geonosis and Kamino which were introduced in the Attack of the Clones. It also filled in the gaps for several other maturing eras, such as the The Knights of the Old Republic era, merging the successful video games of the same name with the earlier Tales of the Jedi comic line upon which the games were based.

Several adventures were also set during the gaps of other Expanded Universe content, such as an Old Republic adventure where the players assault Revan’s starship during the battle that the Sith Lord was first captured (although naturally they are forced to let Bastila Shan actually confront him). The related Star Wars Miniatures Game similarly revisited events such as Kyle Katarn stealing the original Death Star plans from the Imperial base on Danuta.

Some original content was created as well. The very last book, The Unknown Regions, is notable in that it expanded on several alien races that were from obscure sources, including the old Marvel comic series. (There’s an interesting article about the development of these alien species).

Availability and Gaming Legacy

Getting a copy of the Star Wars d20 core books can be a bit tricky. As of this writing, Amazon has one copy of the Original edition and it’s going for $50. Fortunately, the Revised Edition is more reasonably priced at $12. Demand for the Saga Edition, since it was the last version, puts it at $48.

The general consensus I gather about Star Wars d20 is that the Saga Edition is considered the best version, as it streamlined the system from its Dungeons & Dragons in order to better capture the feel of the setting and it had some of the best supplements. However, I still see a game of d20 Revised every once in a while at a convention, so there is still a following for that, I imagine because of the system similarity to Dungeons & Dragons 3.x and Pathfinder.

Some gamers argue that Saga Edition is what Dungeons & Dragons 4e should have been because it introduced many well-received changes, such as a simpler skill system, without creating radically different concepts, like combat powers. Indeed, several of the changes from D&D 4e that continue on in D&D Next originally appeared in Saga Edition.

I think that because Star Wars d20 was derived from Dungeons & Dragons, it works best if you’re looking for a combat heavy Star Wars game where you’re fighting Storm Troopers or Battle Droid or whatnot. If you can get a copy for a good price and that’s the sort of Star Wars game you want to play, it’s certainly worth picking up either the Revised Edition or the Saga Edition.

Next time: Our history of Star Wars RPGs concludes as we talk about Fantasy Flight Games taking a different approach to the Star Wars RPG license by splitting it into multiple games, which are occasionally referred to collectively as Star Wars FFG.

Will Herrmann

Will is a writer, programmer, and all around gamer. He currently runs Journeyman Games (where he develops apps for roleplaying games). He also writes homebrew conversions and occasional gaming articles over at The Journeyman GM.

  One Response to “The History of Star Wars RPGs Part 2: Star Wars d20”

  1. I certainly enjoyed Saga due to the combat system. Because of that, our group collectively said that we would never play off of graph paper again. And that decision greatly influenced all of the games we chose to play after that.

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