Star Wars D6

[Ish]

A long time ago, in a hobby shop far, far away... I discovered the classic West End Games Star Wars The Roleplaying Game, it was the second RPG I ever played after D&D. With the buzz of the new movies, new video games, The Mandalorian, and what have you, I'm kind of itching to play the game again. 

From 1987 to 1998, West End Games released official Star Wars roleplaying game sourcebooks, adventure modules, setting guides, and all manner of other stuff. All of this material was approved by LucasFilm, even making its way into the the novels and comic-books that comprised the original Star Wars Expanded Universe. Timothy Zhan was famously given several giant boxes of WEG game books before he started writing Heir to the Empire, the firsrt book in the Thrawn Trilogy.  The massive success of the Thrawn novels led to the great boom in Expanded Universe novels and comics. The success of those, in turn, made LucasFilm and George Himself see the potential for making the Prequel Trilogy... and here we are.

Unfortunately, behind-the-scenes shenanigans -- namely massive embezzlement by upper management -- meant that West End Games went bankrupt and lost the Star Wars license... a year before The Phantom Menace hit theaters.  A year later, Wizards of the Coast picked it up, and ran with their own Star Wars game using D20 system for a decade until they let it lapse in 2010. Fantasy Flight Games now holds the license and continues to produce a great game... But I like the West End Games version, specifically their very first edition from 1987 the best.

West End Games' Star Wars RPG is a fun, easy-to-learn system. It plays fast, cinematic, and does a great job at emulating the tone of the films. Every character has six attributes: Strength, Dexterity , Perception, Knowledge, Mechanical, and Technical. These are rated by how many dice are in them; so your character might have a Dexterity of 3D, which means she rolls 3d6 every time he makes a Dexterity check. Skills fall under Attributes, and their dice are added to the Attribute when making skill checks. For example, if you have a Dexterity of 3D and you put one dice into Blasters, your Blasters skill starts at 4D. Roll them, add them up, try to meet or exceed the target number. Congrats, you've just learned 90% of the game mechanics.

I'm thinking of running a campaign, every other Tuesday night at WOW. Set shortly after the events of A New Hope, featuring a rag-tag band of Rebels (or at least, Rebel sympathetic scoundrels) having some old school, space opera adventures. "Have blaster -- Will travel."

You can find a fan-produced "Revised, Expanded, and Updated" version of the Star Wars The Roleplaying Game First Edition rules here: Star Wars Classic Adventures. Totally free. 

[Andrewgeddon]

2 hours ago, Ish said:

You can find a fan-produced "Revised, Expanded, and Updated" version of the Star Wars The Roleplaying Game First Edition rules here: Star Wars Classic Adventures. Totally free. 

Unable to commit to any kind of regular RPG group, but I have been wanting to check out these rules for a while. Thank you for linking them!

[Ish]

I’m hoping to keep the fairly story episodic, with a few recurring Big Bad Evil Guys and Big Ideas to link things, but have most individual game sessions be fairly self-contained.

So if you or other players can only join once in a while, there shouldn’t be any problems. 

[generalripphook]

I have a character for this that I take to cons. Although I am very near to it. I have survived 6 events. 

[Ish]

Sounds great. I was actually considering letting the players start with more experienced characters, maybe 30-40 XP, just to get over the “first level farm boy” stage of the game and let everyone feel a little more “veteran ace pilot.” 

Right now, I’m mostly just trying to gauge  interest. We can hash out specifics later on.

[Ish]

Well, looks like there wasn't much interest. C'est la vive.

[InfestedKerrigan]

It happens.  Another good resource for WEG SWRPG is thetrove.net

 https://thetrove.net/Books/Star Wars/SWD6/