Rebellion Era Star Wars Campaign

Waylander

The Slayer
I'm a little ignorant of the Star Wars Saga Edition line of books (other than the core rulebook which I bought at launch). With the news that WotC are not going to renew their license I was wondering which books would be considered essential to a Rebellion Era campaign (i.e. one set in the time of the "Classic" trilogy)?

Many thanks :)
 

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ValhallaGH

Explorer
Starships is essential if you're going to do things in space.

Droids is essential if you're going to use droids.

After that, you get some dispute.
Generally, I'd go with the Rebellion Era guide and the Force Unleashed guide. The first covers the rebels, the second covers everyone else.
Galaxy of Intrigue and Galaxy at War are pretty good if you're going to have heavy emphasis in either area.
KOTOR and Scum & Villainy are just good books with mechanics that are useful for any campaign.
Everything else (except for Threats) has some good ideas but is unnecessary for a "classic" campaign.

Threats gets special mention for being awful. It's not bad as a pile of stuff to be beaten up, but you probably won't use more than 1/5 of the book over a 20 level campaign and the majority of the builds "cheat" the rules (GMs can always "cheat" without cheating but it's sloppy design to break your own rules; I wanted to get it for guidance on making certain player character concepts work, and then I saw that they broke a lot of rules). Not really worth the investment, especially since all the other books have stuff to beat up.

Good luck.
 

fireinthedust

Explorer
over at Talking the Talk we're working on Living Star Wars. It's a post-rebellion era game, and so far we're limiting ourselves to just the core book until we get some GMs and Players to join and vote in more books. In fact, I need some players right now for two games (hint hint, nudge).

Otherwise, the above books sound good. I'm so-so on Force Unleashed, if only because it seemed really bare for a lot of the advice. I see it as the early Rebellion era, with the exception that the PCs are creating the Rebellion (if they want to), or are fleeing the Jedi Purge.
The rules for organizations are good in that one, though. it's another form of reward/punishment by giving you points that add up to rank/regard in the organization: House Organa and the Bounty Hunters' guild are two notable examples. As a template for other groups, it'd help a lot. In fact, if you're raising help for the Rebels, have small tables that add up for different factions/planets: get X number of points and they'll give the Alliance a pile of ships or soldiers. if the players achieve enough, they strike a blow against the Empire and "win". This helps if the point is to run a lot of small missions around the galaxy, rather than just a BBEG showdown (which you can still do).

Personally, if you have the Core book you're fine. Starships is handy, as is Droids, simply from the point of equipment. Unless you're going to fight it, you don't need stats for it. If you have the Core book, you could theoretically make up all the non-monster stats you want, and droids, and maybe creatures (I don't remember if they also are in there).
 

Waylander

The Slayer
Thank you for the replies so far :)

I'd particulalrly like to hear a bit more information on Galaxy at War, if someone could give a brief breakdown of its contents that would be much appreciated!
 

MarkB

Legend
Thank you for the replies so far :)

I'd particulalrly like to hear a bit more information on Galaxy at War, if someone could give a brief breakdown of its contents that would be much appreciated!

There was a thread not too long ago about it on this forum, but unfortunately it's dropped off the viewable pages. Perhaps someone with Search access could link it.

The first chapter is pretty much your standard mix of races, feats and talents, except that it introduces a comprehensive set of Martial Arts options.

The Hardware chapter includes some fun stuff like Ascension Guns.

Military Campaigns and Military Units are the heart of the book. The first includes alternate methods of gearing up for characters who are parts of military forces, rather than having their own wealth and equipment, plus details on creating ranks, rewards and organisations. Military Units provides fluff on lots of in-universe organisations.

Bases & Battlestations is my favourite part - an intuitive kit-build system for creating buildings, stations and ships for players to explore, scaled to whatever their level.

Finally there are some decent encounters and a mini-campaign that I haven't looked at in detail.
 


pawsplay

Hero
Starships is a great book, probably the best beyond the core rulebook.

The Force Unleashed has some fairly decent stuff on the New Order, and an exceptionally decent selection of feats and talents.

The Rebellion Era book has some generic stuff on the Rebel Alliance and an alternative to the Destiny rules. I wuold personally say this is the weakest book in the entire series, even though it has fewer rules issues than some other books. It has no new alien species, even some that appear primarily in the Cantina scene, and a lot of the NPCs seem to be drawn from the X-Wing games and Dark Horse comics, meaning pretty uneven quality in the primary sources used. The IG-88 writeup is the worst offender, canonizing that which should not be canonized, and judging from the IG series action figures I've seen coming out for the Clone Wars series, probably already de-canonized.
 

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