Written by Bill Slavicsek, Andy Colling and JD Walker, the Star Wars Roleplaying Game was published by WoTC in late 2000 and revised 2002. I think that module is pretty much the epitome of how I see Star Wars modules. It has everything a good Star Wars module needs investigations, Rebel heroes, evil bounty hunters and the Empire on the PC‘s heels. Since WEG published many great modules it’s hard to pick one, but since I’ve both played and gm’ed Tatooine Manhunt and it’s always been great, that is the one that I always recommend to fellow Star Wars fans. The modules and sourcebooks focused on retaining as much as possible of the spirit of Star Wars, and what’s even better, many of the modules didn’t involve grand scale galaxy threatening events, but were more modest in their approach to Star Wars. The modules promoted, for most parts, roleplaying and problem solving, though of course they contained a fair share of blaster fights, dealing with the ordinary scum and villainy and searching for droids some guy on a moisture farm misplaced. The WEG system was both fun and challenging. Jedi powers had their own subsystem and could be quite powerful. you could have 4D in dexterity.Ĭharacter actions were resolved by making dice rolls against a difficulty number, and there were two types of rolls, standard DC rolls and opposed rolls. Every attribute had a number assigned to it which represented how many dice you’d roll for that attribute, e.g. the Blasters skill was linked to Dexterity. It used 6 attributes (Dexterity, Strength, Perception, Knowledge, Mechanical and Technical) and many skills, which were linked to each of these attributes, e.g.
WEG published about 140 sourcebooks and modules for their Star Wars RPG, which was twice revised, and many of these have become classics. WEG put a lot of effort and work into the setting and Lucasfilm was so impressed that when Timothy Zahn wrote the Thrawn trilogy he was sent a box with source materials from the roleplaying game and told to base his story on that material (oh, man, did I love my Dark Force rising source book!). The system used was a d6 system, based on the Ghostbuster RPG (Yes, that game existed!) which WEG had published earlier. West End Games (or WEG) was the first publisher to introduce a Star Wars RPG. Each of these has introduced their own roleplaying system to Star Wars and produced modules and sourcebooks, some of which that have been quite good while some others, not so much.
#STAR WARS ROLEPLAYING GAMES CHARACTER CREATION LICENSE#
The license to publish a Star Wars RPG has been in the hands of three different game developers over the years, West End Games, Wizards of the Coast and finally Fantasy Flight Games. Since then Lucasfilm and Lucasarts produced not only the prequel (though some hardcore Star Wars fans refuse to admit their existence), introducing probably the most hated character in the history of movies, but also many great computer and video games (X-wing vs. At that point, there were no plans in producing more films and the setting was only dictated by the three films. The first Star Wars RPG was published in 1987, four years after the release of Return of the Jedi. Millions watch the movies every year and there have been published over 100 novels taking place in the Star Wars universe, some penned by brilliant writers, e.g. There are few fantasies (yes, Star Wars is a fantasy – Space fantasy!) that have a fanbase as loyal and strong as Star Wars. Fantasy Flight Games, which now have the rights to publish material for Star Wars, recently announced that it planned to reproduce the first books ever published for the Star Wars RPG.Ī long time ago in a galaxy far, far away… In the three decades since we’ve seen different publishers try their hand at creating a system to bring this great space fantasy to life.
In 1987 West End Games published the first Star Wars RPG.