Interested in Star Wars RPG - Where do I start?

[delericho]

Everything by WEG for Star Wars is ©Lucasfilm... and unless LFL gave explicit permission, they're pirates.

Yep.

The shortest copyright term within the Bern convention is, IIRC, 50 years. Most members have upped it to life+50 years. And corporations don't die as long as they have a legal existance.

Nitpick: I believe that in the case of corporate authorship (in the US, which applies here), copyright duration is fixed. Though it's at 95 years, I think.

 

[aramis erak]

Sorry Umbran - I was a bit overtired when I posted that.

 

[wingsandsword]

Just a quick advisory about getting into Star Wars gaming, especially if you are a relatively new fan of Star Wars or haven't paid really close attention to the details SW fandom beyond the fact that a new movie is coming out.

Disney announced in April of 2014 that they are rebooting Star Wars. The new reboot movies, new novels, comics ect. are all of a completely and totally separate and incompatible continuity to the old one (with only the 6 movies and the The Clone Wars TV series being common).

There's an incredible amount of materials in the pre-reboot canon (what Disney now calls "Legends") though, far more than in the reboot.

Thus, almost all the setting information you'll find in the RPG materials from before the buyout is separate from what you'll find in officially published works going forward.

 

[gribble]

Thus, almost all the setting information you'll find in the RPG materials from before the buyout is separate from what you'll find in officially published works going forward.

That's the theory at least, but in reality the two are rapidly converging. Unless you're dealing with specific Legends characters or events, much of it is interchangable. A lot of the "Legends" stuff is slowly being re-integrated into the "Canon" via references in novels and the Rebels TV series - things like planets (even if some of the details may have changed) species, the ISB, Inquisitors, Interdictor Star Destroyers, etc).

 

[wingsandsword]

That's the theory at least, but in reality the two are rapidly converging. Unless you're dealing with specific Legends characters or events, much of it is interchangable. A lot of the "Legends" stuff is slowly being re-integrated into the "Canon" via references in novels and the Rebels TV series - things like planets (even if some of the details may have changed) species, the ISB, Inquisitors, Interdictor Star Destroyers, etc).

Actually, they two are increasingly diverging.

They have completely eliminated the entire Old Republic era and everything to do with it, by explicitly stating that the Republic did not exist before 1000 years before the movies. Within the original canon that Disney now calls "Legends", there was the Ruusan Reformations at the end of the New Sith Wars at the Seventh Battle of Ruusan, at that time, but to Disney, before that was a dark age that ended with the defeat of Darth Bane and lead to the founding of the Republic. . .so KOTOR, KOTOR II, SW:TOR (and all the novels and comics tied to those games), the Dawn of the Jedi series, the Tales of the Jedi series, a total of around 35,000 years of documented history are irreconcilable.

The New Republic/New Jedi Order/Legacy eras are also irreconcilable too. You can't reconcile the events of Aftermath and the new movie with the original canons series of events. Not the least of which is that Luke Skywalker re-founded the Jedi Order in 11 ABY in the original canon, while in the Disney canon Luke didn't refound the Jedi and became an isolated hermit, or that Chewbacca died at the First Battle of Sernpidal in 25 ABY. . .while in the Disney canon Chewie is alive to the period of their new movies, set more further than that after the Battle of Yavin


. . .not to mention that in the new movie the galaxy is ruled by the "First Order", a copy of the Empire, with the "resistance", the Rebels by another name basically re-fighting the battles of the first trilogy. . .vastly and irreconcilably different than what was happening around that time in the original canon.

They are cherry picking a handful of ideas from the EU like inquisitors and interdictors, yes, but that doesn't mean they are converging. Rebels shows that they really don't care for the original Star Wars lore or storyline. Last week's episode completely re-wrote the origin story of the B-Wing Starfighter for example. In the original canon, the B-Wing was developed by the Verpine of the Roche Asteroid Field at Shantipole Station, working with Admiral Ackbar, around 1 year after the Battle of Yavin, a series of events detailed in the original d6 RPG adventure Strike Force: Shantipole (and also retold in the expansion pack B-Wing for the X-Wing computer game). In the Disney canon? It was invented by a lone inventor working with spare parts and scrap on a junkyard planet before the Battle of Yavin.

Even the places where they use the same name, they radically change what it means. In the original canon, the New Republic was founded several months after Endor, and fought a long war with the remnants of the Empire and ruled the galaxy from Coruscant as it fostered a New Jedi Order and eventually reorganized into the Galactic Alliance during the Yuuzhan Vong War. . .in the Disney canon, the New Republic was founded immediately after Endor, won a swift and decisive victory over the Empire as they crumbled, ruled from Chandrilla, and almost completely demilitarized as soon as the Empire was gone. . .and was quickly and completely overrun, conquered and destroyed by the First Order when they brought the Empire back.

 

[gribble]

Yes - as I said, if you're concerned about the details of *characters* and *events*, especially in eras outside of the now official canon, there will be changes. Using language like "completely eliminated" or "irreconcilable" for everything other than the NJO era is way overstating things though.

However for the purposes of a role-playing game, things like (current) organisations, planets, species and technology are typically much more important, and for these things the Legends (i.e.: in this context RPG material, old and new) and canon are converging.

 

[wingsandsword]

Yes - as I said, if you're concerned about the details of *characters* and *events*, especially in eras outside of the now official canon, there will be changes. Using language like "completely eliminated" or "irreconcilable" for everything other than the NJO era is way overstating things though.

However for the purposes of a role-playing game, things like (current) organisations, planets, species and technology are typically much more important, and for these things the Legends (i.e.: in this context RPG material, old and new) and canon are converging.

Uh, the characters and events are just as important for a roleplaying game as anything else, those events define the universe the characters exist in.

I'll certainly call things irreconcilable, because they are. In the original canon of Star Wars, Luke Skywalker re-founded the Jedi Order in 11 ABY by founding the Jedi Praxeum on Yavin IV and taking his initial class of students, who went on to become prominent figures in the galaxy. . .while in the Disney universe, Luke ran off to become a hermit and refused to train apprentices and nobody has seen or heard of a Jedi in decades. That makes a huge difference in how you would play a Jedi character in a game, for example.

If you're playing a Force Sensitive character, say, 15 years after the Battle of Endor, are you playing one of a new, rising group of Jedi studying under Luke Skywalker (or maybe Kyle Katarn) and serving the New Republic and fighting the Empire, or are you a lone renegade figure with no allies or mentor in hiding from Kylo Ren and the First Order?

Setting matters. Try taking Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance and ripping out about 95% of the chronology in both directions, saying that only a few of the most famous works are still canon, but future setting materials may re-use some old elements at time as they tell completely and utterly different stories, and that's "convergence".

You say "current" like that means a specific time. The Star Wars setting, ignoring Disney's reboot, spans ~36,000 years, from the Dawn of the Jedi series on Tython around 36,000 years before the films, to the events of the Star Wars: Legacy series 140+ years after the films. There isn't one specific time for Star Wars, it's a vast saga that can have adventures across thousands of planets and tens of thousands of years. . .Disney Wars takes place over about six decades, and a couple dozen planets.

That's the vast, overwhelming bulk of the Star Wars setting that Disney is trying to toss down the memory hole with their reboot. I can point on my wall of Star Wars RPG books to large number of RPG books that are absolutely incompatible with the Disney Wars setting: Knights of the Old Republic Campaign Guide (contradicted by the pre-history of the Republic given in the novel Tarkin), Legacy Era Campaign Guide (contradicted by the new movies), New Jedi Order Sourcebook (contradicted by the new movies), Dark Empire Sourcebook (contradicted by the new movies), Truce at Bakura Sourcebook (contradicted by Aftermath), Thrawn Trilogy Sourcebook (Contradicted by the new movies), Courtship of Princess Leia Sourcebook (contradicted by the new movies), The Jedi Academy Sourcebook (contradicted by the new movies), Strike Force: Shantipole (contradicted by Rebels).

 

[gribble]

I mean "current" as in the timeframe that the vast majority of people are going to be playing - i.e.: around the time of the Rebellion/OT. Certainly that is the default setting for both the FFG RPG and the original WEG RPG. If I'm being generous, you could expand that to include the PT and the time between the PT and OT, and we would cover the default time period for every edition of Star Wars roleplaying ever released. Sure, there have been some sourcebooks that may need some (relatively minor, in the grand scheme of things) details changed, but the vast majority of the material will be completely usable as it is.

Of course things will be different if you're wanting to set the game in the NJO period (or, in fact any period up to probably around 50-100 years after the OT). But that will have exactly zero impact on the majority of campaigns.

Also, nothing Disney has done would prevent anyone from running a Dawn of the Jedi, Legacy (as in the comics, not the horribad books) or even Old Republic game. Sure, some minor details might change if you care about those things, but there's absolutely nothing that would prevent you from running a game where there is some sort of "old" republic allied with a Jedi order engaged in wars with some sort of Sith empire and some sort of Mandalorian empire. Or some sort of new republic (again, allied with a Jedi order) engaged in conflict against some other sort of Sith empire and reborn Imperial faction, with the lingering threat of a defeated biotech alien invasion from outside the galaxy (hell, even make them Vong if you're that way inclined).

I could *absolutely* run a FR or Dragonlance game without 95% of the chronology... I have in the past. In fact it'd probably be my default mode of operation in those settings. If nothing else because I'd personally be ignorant of what 95% of that chronology is! FR in particular the details of the history are completely meaningless for 99% of the games I've ever run or played in it. Even for Dragonlance, it'd be much more important to have dragons, draconians, absent gods, Solamnic knights and wizards of High Sorcery than to worry about which particular dragon highlord did what with whom when. Even the events of the Cataclysm would be a minor footnote for the vast majority of campaigns, and from the perspective of players played in a campaign around the time of the War of the Lance it could easily be replaced with a similar or even entirely different world shaking event that resulted in the gods departing.

Hell, even using your example, without having seen the episode of Rebels in question (one of the downsides of living where I do), there would be little to stop you from running Strike Force Shantipole and just saying that the invention of the canonical B-wing by Ackbar and the Verpine was based on earlier research by the lone inventor. Even the lone inventor's design could have been influenced by earlier Verpine technology - from what I've seen of the trailers it certainly doesn't look or behave like the canonical B-wing. It would not have any impact on 99.99% of the adventure and would be perfectly runnable changing that minor detail.

Even if I accept that the reboot has completely, irreconcilably invalidated the above sourcebooks (and I don't, in case the above isn't clear), that's what nine out of well over a hundred RPG books that have been released - or (very) generously 10% of content? Seems pretty trivial to me.

My point is that for most Star Wars RPG campaigns (certainly every one I've ever run or played in), especially those set in the default/expected time period, it's much more important that things like B-wings, Interdictors and the ISB exist, than the details of exactly which species (or individual) invented what, what happened in some war thousands of years ago (or arguably whether the war occurred or not), or even the details of what the ISB does and how it is organised. In the vast majority of campaigns, for the vast majority of GMs and players, it's just not relevant.

I for one am a big fan of what Disney have done in terms of unshackling the current products from years and years of mostly garbage content, while still allowing them to incorporate that stuff, when and how it makes sense to.

 

[Lancelot]

If you can find them for an economical price, I'd recommend the WotC Saga edition. It's the version I enjoyed the most. I've had exposure to the old d6 system, the original WotC d20 version, and the WotC Saga re-write. I have only a passing exposure to FFG's version.

The things I like about Saga include that they're enjoyable reading books. If you don't actually plan on playing the game, there's still a wealth of fun reading matter in there. They're clearly laid out and well-illustrated. There's a lot of interesting fluff. Pick up a book like Starships of the Galaxy, and you'll have a huge selection of ships from multiple eras. Pick up the (hard to find) KOTOR supplement, and you have an excellent single-book treatment of the era (whether or not it has been invalidated by Disney is up to you; I still find it fascinating). Pick up the core rulebook and you get droids, and force-users, and rebellion-vs-empire, and all the basic ships, and much more, in a single book. With the highest production standards of any of the older versions.

The newer and more easily available FFG material is also very good. However, there are some off-putting elements for the stated purpose of your original post. You say you probably won't get to play it, but want to read for setting information and general interest.

1) FFG uses funky dice and cards. They have some unique mechanics which create an interesting game at the table. But these same elements create a certain layer of complexity if you're not planning on actually playing the game.

2) The three "settings" released so far each contain some repeated material, because they're intended to be stand-alone games. Yes, you can absolutely combine elements of all three. However, if you're not planning on playing the game and are just reading for general interest, you might be better served by looking at something that doesn't have repeated information across multiple books.

3) Each of the three "settings" is complete in-as-much as it details a certain way of playing. But none of them are a general treatment of an era. If you want some of everything (rather than a deep dive in playing a smuggler, with a light dash of other topics), you'd be better served by one of the other rulesets.

These cautions notwithstanding, FFG makes a good game... they have excellent production standards... and the books are easily obtainable. If you want to go that route, pick whichever one (rogues, rebels, force users) that most appeals as a "taster" and see where you go from there.

...but I'd still personally recommend Saga edition as a reading book, given you don't intend to actually play the game. If you can get them for a reasonable price, of course.

 

[gribble]

FFG uses funky dice and cards. They have some unique mechanics which create an interesting game at the table. But these same elements create a certain layer of complexity if you're not planning on actually playing the game.

Generally agree with this advice, with 3 caveats:

1) The FFG RPG doesn't use cards at all. Well, that's not entirely true, there are cards available, but they are more akin to D&D spell/item cards. I.e.: everything on the cards is also in one or more books, FFG have just produced purely optional cards that make the information easier to reference at the table. It's a common misconception that FFG SW requires cards in a similar manner to D&D 4e, but that isn't true. FFG talents are more akin to D&D feats and class features than the "available actions" tracking of 4e powers. Your average FFG SW character would have a similar number of talents as a similarly experienced D&D character would have feats and class features (and much fewer talents than a similarly experienced D&D spellcaster would have prepared spells). I.e.: the FFG talent cards are no more necessary at the table than cards listing what feats, class features and spells do for D&D - that is to say completely unnecessary, but possibly helpful.

2) Also, with regards to the dice, once you learn the symbols - and it isn't hard - the more narrative nature and single core system makes reading the rulebooks easier and more fun than big tables of d20 DCs, effects and exceptions to the general roll 1d20 + mod vs DC rules (although saga is much better than previous d20 games in this regard). So for me at least, from a purely "reading the books" perspective, the FFG books were more enjoyable than Saga books, especially if you're not planning to play the game.

3) If you're after something in a specific area, the FFG setting books (Sons of Fortune for Correllia, Lords of Nal Hutta for Hutts and Strongholds of Resistance for rebel bases) are much better for a detailed look at that area in the rebellion era than anything available in the Saga line. However I agree that for an overview of a given time period the Saga books are much more concise.