Wednesday, May 22, 2024

Review: Star Wars Roleplaying Game (d20)

Star Wars Revised d20 RPG
 I am bouncing around a bit here on my cruise through the science fiction games from TSR/WotC to find one that I actually rather like, even though I know many do not. I am discussing the d20 Star Wars RPG from Wizards of the Coast.

I will freely admit that I have not played a lot of the West End Game's d6 Star Wars, though I do know it is widely held in high regard. I also have never played the Fantasy Flight Games edition of Star Wars (though my son has). So, my review might be a touch myopic, and I am OK with this. 

Star Wars and D&D

Before I begin this review I have to talk a bit about my background and why I think d20 and Star Wars was a good fit.

I have talked about Star Wars a few times here, but I am obviously a much bigger Star Trek fan. I had (and still have) a good sized collection of Star Wars toys from the Kenner era in the 1980s and I religiously have seen all the movies. I enjoy the Disney+ shows and find many of the fans to be exhausting. Ok, to be fair many Trek fans are the same way. But I am a causal fan. I had read some of the Extended (or is it Expanded) Universe books and I liked many of them. I thought Grand Admiral Thrawn was a great character and getting Lars Mikkelsen to play him in live-action has to be the most brilliant, or most obvious, casting choice ever.  When the EU went away...well I honestly felt not that much. Sure lots of great stories were gone, but Star Wars had a relationship with their canon that Star Trek novels could only dream of. 

But for me, my Star Wars obsession was in the 1980s. When I had action figures and playing out new scenarios in my head. When I took a Colonial Viper model, some extra action figure guns, and an AMC (or Revel, can't remember now) 1978 Corvette and built one of my first Kitbashes. I could not afford a real Slave 1 back then (so now of course I have three) but I did build "Slave II" and it was quite literally "Fett's Vette." And I was obsessed with D&D.

I have said it before, and I will say it here again, Star Wars, aka A New Hope, is a D&D movie. We have a hero, a villain, a princess (who is also a hero), an old wizard, a rogue, an impenetrable fortress (the Death Star), war, magic (tell me to my face the Force is not magic) and a quest.  There are sword fights, monsters, and interesting locales. It is D&D in all but name. They even meet the rogue in a bar! 

I can't even begin to count the number of times we tried to do "D&D Star Wars" and our attempts were lame compared to others. Do an internet search on "D&D Jedi" prior to 1999 and see all the stuff that was out there, though admittedly not as much now as it was at the time. 

Even later on I often likened the Star Wars EU to another line of novels and quasi-canon material; that of the Forgotten Realms. 

So for me D&D and by extension d20 and Star Wars seemed like an obvious fit.

Star Wars RPG - Revised Core Rulebook

2002, Wizards of the Coast. 384 pages. Full-color covers and interior art. d20 System.

This is the revised version of the Star Wars d20 RPG, first published in 2000. 

This game is very closely related to the D&D 3.0 edition that had been released in 2000. I don't own a copy of the Star Wars RPG from 2000, so I can't comment on what was changed, but there is a "feel" to me that this might be an early draft of D&D 3.5. Much in the same way that Star Wars Saga Edition was an early draft of D&D 4.0.

The game is built on the d20 mechanics, so there are alien species, classes, skills, and feats. The book is divided into a players section and a game master section, so I guess the better comparison here is d20 Modern. Especially once we get in to it in detail.

Characters have a species and class, and the same six abilities as D&D. There are same 3.x era saves of Fortitude, Reflex, and Will. There are also Vitality and Wound Points.  If you can play D&D d20 era or d20 Modern then you know how to play this game. 

Chapters 2 and 3 cover Species and Classes. There are 17 species to choose from, including standard humans and Ewoks (!). Classes cover the expected varieties, including Fringer, Scout, Scoundrel, Force Adepts, and Jedis. There are Prestige classes covered later. 

Chapters 4 and 5: Skills and Feats look and act like their D&D/d20 counterparts. Skills are mostly the same, but the feats take on some new aspects. While there are many that are the same, there are new ones like Force Feats (which does a lot to help explain Jedi Powers).

Chapter 6 covers the final pieces of building heroic characters, including some more "Star Wars" flavor.

Chapter 7 is our Equipment guide and it is a rather fun one. Lots of gear in the Star Wars universe. 

Chapter 8 covers combat, a needed chapter since "War" is practically the last name here. 

Chapter 9 though takes us into new territory with "The Force." This is more complicated than magic, but there are some great ideas here to take back to a D&D game for Game Masters that want to use the corrupting power of magic.

Chapters 10 and 11 deal with Vehicles and Starships, respectively.  Honestly, I could spend all my time on the Starships chapter.

Chapter 12 is Gamemastering. It covers a lot of ground from how to teach the game to new players, to setting challenges, to Prestige classes (Bounty Hunters, Jedi Masters, and more). The GM Characters from d20 Modern also get ported over here as the Diplomat, Expert, and Thug.

Chapter 13 deals with the Eras of Play. Or at least how they looked in 2002 before the Clone Wars series and Revenge of the Sith hit our screens. There are hints of the Expanded Universe here, but not a lot. Now I know that Wizards, with their own Star Wars books, helped expand the Expanded Universe. We even get stats for the poster girl of the Expanded Universe, Mara Jade Skywalker. I am actually really happy about that. I have a soft spot in my heart for Temporal Orphans

Chapter 14 covers Allies and Opponents, which, of course, can vary depending on what era you are playing in. This also contains Wizards of the Coast biggest contribution to the Expanded Universe, the Yuuzhan Vong, which I always found kind of cool and wanted to port them back to D&D in some way.

Chapter 15 covers the one area where Star Wars is superior to Star Trek. Droids. 

The game really relies a lot on the players' and game masters' own knowledge of Star Wars. Yes, you can play it without that, but it certainly helps. 

Is this the best Star Wars game? I can't say. It is the best one for me. It has enough to allow me to build a game universe and play. I can add in d20 Future material as I like, including some d20 Gamma World or even d20 Traveller

The Wizards of the Coast d20 Star Wars lines are out of print. The new owners of the Star Wars RPG, Fantasy Flight Games (bought by Asmodee in 2014) have their own system. My oldest likes it and has run a few games with it. I'll try it out. I suppose I should also review the d6 West End Games Star Wars at some point as well.

Star Wars RPGs


5 comments:

PT Dilloway said...

I'd almost want that just for the Mara Jade section. I was glad when they finally came out with an action figure of her last year considering there hadn't been one since the late 90s.

The Yuuzhan Vong thing killed the Star Wars novels for me. It wasn't that bad at first but it just droned on and on and on and like Infinity War so much seemed rigged so the heroes would lose more ground.

John de Michele said...

I ran a D20 Modern campaign about 10-ish years ago with a non Star Wars sci-fi theme. I adapted the Wounds/Vitality system to it, as firearms of various types were the primary weapons. I think W/V handles guns much better than the basic hit point system, at least for 3.5.

Sean P. Kelley said...

No mention of Saga at all. Bummer.

Timothy S. Brannan said...

@Sean P. Kelley, Simple reason for that. I don't own it and have not read it, so I can't really say anything about it.

Sean P. Kelley said...

👍