Which system for a Star Wars game?

Fellow EN Worlders, I’ve come here for your collected wisdom and experience. I’ve recently gotten the desire to run a Star Wars game. A re-imagining of what Episodes 1, 2 and 3 could have been. I don’t want to debate the merits of those movies, but to ask what your experience has been with different systems and your feedback on which system you would use.

Since the campaign will be set some years pre-episode 4, Jedis will be around and viable as players and whatever system I use must take this into account. While I admit I have NOT run it, reading the Star Wars D20 Revised Core Rulebook, the Jedi seem overpowered when compared to other classes, and while the possibility exists of an all Jedi campaign that is NOT what I would like to create.

My options right now are:

Star Wars D20

Star Wars D6

True 20 Star Wars (there are two Versions out there that seem sound)

What are your opinions on those systems, your experiences, any suggestion on house rules?

I know it’s a pretty broad subject but any input is welcome!

Thanks…

I would suggest the star wars d20 system, the best chance of using any other adventure and converting it over for that campiagn.

I would recommend the Star Wars Roleplaying Game (Second Edition), published by West End Games -- it's the blue book with the picture of vader's mask on the cover.

This game is easy to learn and teach, runs faster than d20 Star Wars does in combat (IME, anyhow), and is far easier to customize than d20 Star Wars (to wit, I've seen it used to run a World of Darkness game, a Highlander campaign, and an X-Files campaign).

You can find the core book and supplements for next to nothing on eBay, so it's also a good choice financially speaking -- although you may not need supplments (the game is remarkably self-contained and even comes with an introductory adventure).

Overall, it's a very good game. I played in a very entertaining three year long campaign that used only the core book and two supplements (those supplments being the Tatooine Manhunt module and Galaxy Guide 4: Alien Races).

It all depends on if for the D6 system how many books you have in your collection. I would recommend the 2nd edition or even the 2ed revised and expanded and since there is still a big following for the older edition for Star Wars and you can find converted rules of the D20 system through the Internet. Like Rancor Pit has alot of Downloads for 2nd edition and they might even have the D20 conversion to D6 system for you as well.

I did play the D20 system and it was Alright but as for the feeling for Star Wars you would need to do the D6 system for that and there are others who will agree with me on that subject as well.

I've played both the D6 and D20 systems for Star Wars. The D20 system is completely wrong for it- it bogs down in modifiers, builds, prestige classes, and it feels like D&D in space. Also, jedi are horrendously overpowered, and other characters are demoted to roles of watching the jedi do cool stuff.

I'll be branded a heretic for this too, but D6 Star Wars isn't much better than D20. The sourcebooks are great, but the system itself has some big holes in it, and once again, jedi are horrendously overpowered. Starship combat is also really clunky, and the combat system is somewhat awkward in use.

Recently, we started a Star Wars campain using Savage Worlds, and its the perfect fit for Star Wars. The mechanics are very simple, and extremely easy to pick up. The prep time for a game is nearly nothing (MAYBE one hour to stat out 30 or so characters), and fully developed characters can be make in about 10 minutes. Combat is fast, furious, and brutal- I've run fights with 70 characters in under an hour. Savage Worlds can be used for any genre, and works well for anything from high action (Star Wars) to horror, and anything from fantasy to sci-fi. Best of all, the jedi in SW aren't superpowers- they are more like wizards with some martial skills. We've been extremely happy with how well it plays, and this is from a group that are veterans of the D6 system and D20 Star Wars- we'd never go back to either. Best of all, there is ALREADY a Star Wars SW conversion done for you, and its VERY well done. You can find it for free at this website (along with lots of other fan-supported conversions and works):

http://www.savageheroes.com/conversions.htm

or here is the link directly to the download site:

http://home.mchsi.com/~savagestarwars/

(there are also conversions there for Savage Worlds Fallout and Battlestar Galactice there as well)

To play Savage Worlds, there is only one $30 book ($20 PDF if you prefer that), and you'll need a standard set of polyhedral dice, and a deck of playing cards (used for initiative). Savage Worlds has been a breath of fresh air for our group since people don't worry about builds, the rules are very solid, and its so versatile. Check out Savage Worlds- the publisher's website is:

www.peginc.com

and there is a free test-drive (called Test Drive Rules 4.0) of the rules at:

http://www.peginc.com/Downloads/Downloads.htm


Hope this helps- happy gaming!

Savage Worlds should work well for Star Wars. I also liked the WEG d6 System version. The d20 Star Wars is surely one of the better d20 conversions, and I also liked how it plays.

I would just go with what system you prefer generally. They all work well enough here.

Bye
Thanee

I've no experience with True 20, so cant comment on that version. I have run Star Wars D6 and D20 for several years each though. In my experience, once I started running the D20 version I put down the D6 forever.

One of the main reasons was game balance. It's hard to balance Jedi in any system, D20 did the better job in having the powers draw on vitality and in general expounding on the limits of powers. By the D6 rules, any Jedi with telekinesis that could lift his own weight could fly. This kind of rules light design means lots of house ruling on your part to add some realism. Or, you could just play it breezy.

Another factor was play time. IN D6 you only need to roll a number of d6's to resolve anything, but that number could slow pacing incredibly especially at higher levels. As the only limit on how many actions per round you have is the amount of dice in a skill (-1d per extra round action), you could roll 40-50d6 to resolve a single round with just two combatants. A single force ability might take three rolls to activate.

D20 is for me, if you like classes and a detailed rules set I recommend it for you. If you like looser rules and skill-based systems I'd recommend d6.

Diggus Rex said:

Another factor was play time. IN D6 you only need to roll a number of d6's to resolve anything, but that number could slow pacing incredibly especially at higher levels.

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Well, in fairness, D6 doesn't have levels and gaining the amount of power roughly equivalent to a d20 level takes a long time -- you can only raise skills one pip at a time, and raising Attribute values costs an insane amount of character points (and then, of course, you have the rules that protract an already lengthy process by one to three weeks of in-character training).

If you actually play by the RAW, it takes a very long time for characters in D6 Star Wars to obtain the level of power that you're complaining about (if they can obtain it at all -- many can't due to point caps). Gaming once per week for a year, it's still unlikely that a PC would have come anywhere close to maxing out his abilities and skills if the RAW are adhered to where character advancement is concerned.

During the three-year campaign that I played in, we met once a week on average, and I played the same human character with a Venom-like symbiote attached to him throughout the game. Even with the 'super' aspect of my character At the end of the third year, the most dice that I could roll at one time, for a single action, was ten (with cap bonuses from the symbiote).

As a regular human I would have been clocking in at roughly an eight die total. As a Wooikie about nine dice. As a drioid. . . well, I probably would have been dead well before the three year limit

As the only limit on how many actions per round you have is the amount of dice in a skill (-1d per extra round action), you could roll 40-50d6 to resolve a single round with just two combatants.

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This is more than a bit misleading. First, the -1D penalty aplies to all subsequent skill or attribute rolls made in a round. Second, the typical chracter has a point cap of 4D on their attributes, which means that they're usually rolling 9 dice tops per action (and that assumes a character who has been around for a while).

Taking multiple actions can increase this to a maximum of 45 dice, assuming that the above exemplary character takes nine actions (not a very common occurance, given that the more actions one takes, the more likely they are to fail).

Honestly, all said and done, you're likely to roll just as many dice to resolve combat in D6 Star Wars as you are in any dice pool system (and that's probably being generous -- when compared to many other dice pool systems, the pools in Star Wars D6 tend to be fairly small). Ultimately, you're right though -- non-pool systems do have an advantage over pool systems when it comes to the number of dice that you roll.

That said, as some other posters have already pointed out, in this case, tallying the multiple die modifers of d20 and resolving actions on the tabletop takes, for many people, just about as much (or more) time as rolling and counting multiple dice does.

I've not seen the d6 version.

I've played in one d20 OCR and two d20 RCR campaigns, and I preferred the OCR feel for the non-jedi classes by a long shot.

If I was to run something myself today, I'd use True20 for star wars without hesitation though.

Of the three, I'd go for either d20 Star Wars or the True20 homebrew version (may have to take a look at that particular ruleset).

I've played d6 Star Wars for several years (since the early 90's), and either advancement was at snail's pace (if sticking to RAW for advancement), or could happen incredibly fast. Also, other than sacrificing a couple beginning attribute dice at character creation (and maybe not even that), there were really few limits on Force-users of any stripe, since in most cases if they failed a power check they could just try again next round. And once a Force-user got about 5 dice in their Force skills (enough to reliably hit the difficulty class for most of their powers), it could get very problematic to challenge them, worse still if they got their mitts on a lightsaber, which for highly-skilled Force-users meant that combat went to the first hit. People complain about Jedi being overpowered have never seen a Jedi Knight (about 7 to 8 dice in their Force skills) in d6, which barring visiting Sith Lords can mow thru most opposition with minimal effort. Also, you get a high Strength character and put him in a suit of heavy combat armor, and he becomes nigh-invulnerable to everything except starship weapons and lightsabers, which sucks a the tension out of combat as fast as the Jedi beat-stick who only needs to hit you once to end the fight.

While I'll admit the d20 version isn't perfect, to me it's better overall than the d6 version. Yeah, it's level-based, but that makes it easier to challenge a party since they're all fairly even. Only problem class from my perspective was the Jedi Counsler, since it could be both party mouth-piece (something typically the Noble covered) and beat-stick. Jedi Guardians are awesome beat-sticks, but lack the sheer versatility of the Soldier. Not to mention that Force-users can't use their powers excessively (at least not until they hit 6th level or so). I've also found d20 combat to be a lot cleaner and quicker to execute than d6 combat, but that just might have been the people I've gamed with.

As much fun as I had with d6 back in the day, I'm a d20 man these days.

But as others have said, go with what you're more familiar with. If you and your group is more familiar with d20, then go with that. Nothing sucks the fun out a game quite as fast as everybody trying to learn a new ruleset.