The Inside Scoop on Gaming

Long long ago in a galaxy far, far away….

Episode 8,462,928,006, "The Franchise Continues"

Ah, Star Wars, universe of universes and all-consuming franchise whose Luke Skywalker with the lightsaber hand was my very first action figure. I have always had a soft spot in my heart for Star Wars, based on the fact that they had Princess Leia in a gold bikini -- I saw that when I was 9, and the world was never the same again. How I longed to be a hutt, to have slave girls and laugh with my belly and say things like "puny Jedi." Years and years later, when I was but a wee geek, West End games came out with a Star Wars RPG, and my world was complete -- except for the fact that I couldn't be evil, wasn't supposed to kill people or chop off their arms (not without accumulating Dark Side points faster than a d6 player accumulates dice, at any rate), and could not play a hutt with gold-bikini dancing girls. Still it was a good system that gave me years of fun and frolic and never hurt anyone (save that time that my dice fell on my brother and crushed him, forcing him to wear a b! lack suit and breath like he was making an obscene phone call).

The Dark Side had its way with West End Games, however, and the Star Wars license was snatched up by Wizards of the Coast. I honestly did not know how to feel about this, and was a mass of confusion and fear. Yoda mocked me and refused to train me, which I felt wasn't really nice of him. Being a Jedi master and all that you would think he would be a bit nicer. While the muppet from hell was speaking his sentences backwards at me, I ran to the store and picked up the new game, fascinated to see what it would be. Let me tell you now, listen to muppets when they speak backwards new-ageisms at you, for the lure of the Dark Side is strong! I found myself reservedly liking the new Star Wars d20 game, though I have to pick and nattle about its flaws to prove how cool and non-fanboyish I am.

For those who don't know (and welcome to RPG.net, I hope it was nice under your rock), Star Wars uses the d20 system as its core mechanic. Many people were wondering if this would make the game Dungeons and Dragons in space. It did. Not that this is a bad thing, necessarily, as Star Wars has always had a heavy slice of leveling up (such as Luke going from farm boy to kicking Vader's ass all around the inside of the Death Star), type/classes (princess, Jedi, and scoundrel being actively used as identifying tags for characters in the books and movies), and orcs…um… stormtroopers (or Gamorreans, take your pick). There were, however, a few differences between D&D and Star Wars -- such as the ability to get shanked and dead in a single hit no matter how sly of a Jedi you thought you were. Luckily the folks at Wizards of the Coast, while scarfing down pizza and twinkies, thought of fixes for most of these problems. The biggest differences are in minor, but important tweaks such as t! he Vitality vs Wounds rule, and the defense bonus statistic. Vitality and Wounds was my favorite new rule, and I like it so much that I will probably move it into D&D. Basically, the rule works like this -- a character has a number of Wound points equal to their Constitution (this number never goes up unless Constitution goes up) which represent how much actually injury a character can take, so if you take Wound damage you have really been hit and are really bleeding. Vitality, on the other hand, represents a combination of luck, skill, and "karma" that keeps you from actually taking wounds. Vitality losses represent either fatigue or "near misses" that don't actually damage you (despite the fact that the game system "to hit" roll was successful -- in world it just was a "near miss"). You take Wounds when you either are hit with a critical blow, or when you run out of Vitality. The result is a game that does play fairly close to the Star Wars movies, so long as you are willing! to take things as a prop or convention, and not assign silly things like classes and levels to in world matters. Yes, you know that you are a 13th level Jedi, but all that anyone in the world knows is that you are a Jedi master. You know that you have 47 vitality points, all the storm troopers know is that the guns that were hitting the bulls-eye yesterday can't hit crap today. Remember that d20 is a system that relies heavily on game conventions and everything will be well. (Or strike it down! Strike it down with all your hate, then your journey to the darkside will be complete!)

Chapter by Chapter

The "character" section of the book kicks off with a list of templates and the various methods for making a character. The templates are very useful for when you really want to play but are too drunk to make a character, and serve the added bonus of occasionally showing us what the different game classes come out to in the game world. Character generation is split into two basic methods -- roll some dice or spend some points. Both are right out of D&D, but lack the various options and miscellaneous goodies found in that game. Here you get either 4d6, drop lowest dice, or 25 points for cross referencing with a chart to determine your attributes. It is, of course, easy to tinker with these rules like the bad monkey that you are, but some options from the big boys at the farm might have been nice.

Finally, after all of this, we come to Chapter One! Now the adventure can really begin! Chapter One is all about Abilities, which is nice as the title of the chapter is "Abilities." It is touches like these that make Star Wars a really professional product. The chapter introduces us to the complexities of the 6-attribute system, and provides many examples of various levels of each attribute. This was actually fairly well done, as now we can all see how much cooler the characters from the movies are than our little 25 point/4d6 characters. Honestly though, it is a nice method for letting players see how their character fits in, as "Strength 13" doesn't mean much, but "Strong as Qui-Gon Jin, but a wuss compared to Darth Vader" does. (Though I had to wonder at Darth Maul, a skinny little Scot, being stronger than Darth Vader, but that is a pointless nitpick and really shouldn't be included in a review as professional as this one.)

Chapter Two is on the "player character species" and covers the general traits and game abilities of humans (who would have thought, having humans in a game is such a revolutionary leap), Cerans (aka: phallus heads), Ewoks (I will not scream, I will not scream…), Gungans, Ithorians, Mon Calamari, Rodians, Trandoshans, Twi'leks, and of course Wookies. In general this section is well done, with good (brief) general information about each race. The D&D trend to value certain stats over others is continued, however, as it seems that a -2 to Dexterity covers a +20 to Intelligence and Charisma, while gaining a bonus to Strength requires that your race be mentally-retarded social rejects who constantly shoot themselves in the face. The art in this section was wonderful, with the pictures of each race actually showing you what the race looks like (unlike other games, where you end up thinking that the non human races are charcoal blurs). There was, however, one major problem with this! section, and that was its inherent racism. No, I am not talking about the Gungans, I am talking about the fact that Hutts were not listed as a PC race. This is unacceptable and shows the gamer prejudice against invertebrates who feel that they are superior to the rest of the universe. (All European gamers are exempt from this criticism, as you have, by and large, accepted the French.) Plus it means that I can't say "Puny Jedi" and dress the princess up in a gold bikini, which is the whole reason I got into the game in the first place.

Chapter 3 is Classes, those lovely things that we must constantly remind ourselves are just a game convention to make life easy (or stiff and inflexible, depending on how you look at it). The moral of this chapter is: Soldiers suck. To be a bit more detailed, however, there are eight main classes; the Fringer, who is cool because he lives out in the boondocks; the Noble, who is cool cause she is rich and can make people do favors for her; the Scoundrel, who is cool cause he can lie, cheat, and steal; the Scout, who is cool cause they can scout stuff and stuff; the Solider, who can shoot stuff; the Force Adept, who lets you do stuff that Jedi can't do but still be a force user; the Jedi Consular, who can negotiate and choke people to death; and the Jedi Guardian, who can kill lots of thugs with their lightsaber skills, yo. In general the classes are all fairly balanced, and I was happy to see that there are several classes (such as the Scoundrel and the Jedi Consular) whose abi! lities are not based around beating the crap out of things. Of course, this being the blaster happy universe that it is they can still fight, it just is not their main focus. The result is a mix of types that is actually fairly representative of the characters we see in the movies and books, scouts and Jedi and nobles, all of whom can whup it up in a fracas, but some of who have skills that are more important to them (and that actually can have as much, or more, of an impact on the world as being good with a blaster). There were some design decisions that made me pause, however, though most are very minor matters that only an anal retentive rules-dweeb would even notice (and lord do I hate those guys -- except when they are me). Things such as soldiers "the best pure warriors in the galaxy" having the lowest defense bonus (yes they can wear armor -- but armor isn't cool, unless it's green and lets you fly). There are also a few very bad errata in this section, such as in the e! xplanation of the defense bonus stat where it says it -does- stack with armor (it doesn't, as the rest of the book makes clear). Things like this are just sloppy editing, and potentially harmful. I have several players that only read this section, and not the full book -- and so were led to a wrong idea about how the system works that affected how they created their characters. A bit of flexibility did allow us to solve the problem, but it is one of those things that should not have been an issue in the first place, much like Ricky Martin.

Next up is Chapter 4. For some reason this chapter followed Chapter 3, I'm not sure why. Anyway, this chapter is "Skills" and gives us all the lovely abilities that let characters mess up the world around them. There are two basic types of skills in Star Wars, normal skills that you, I, and Uncle Bob can do; and Force skills that only cool people with Force feats can do. The normal skills are fairly well done, keeping to a short list of skills that cover a fairly broad range of in-character activities. Skills such as Computer Use actually cover computers, security systems, starship systems operations, droid programming, and hacking. Skills such as Move Silently or Climb, however, only allow you to Move Silently or Climb, yet cost the character the same number of points. A bit unbalanced perhaps, but in line with the universe -- as in many campaigns the ability to sneak past the storm troopers is more important than the ability to program Age of Empires 3089. Force Skills are a! ll linked to certain feats that a character must have in order to purchase the skill. To gain Enhance Ability, for example, one must be Force Sensitive. To gain Enhance Senses one must have the Force Sensitive and Sense feats. In addition to this limitation most Force Skills cost Vitality points to use, meaning that if you want to pump up your Jedi's combat skills you have to pay a price for it in addition to all the points, feats, and time you sunk into just getting the power. In general the system seems to work fairly well, though for low-level Jedi the Vitality cost for certain skills can be prohibitive, and it seems that in trying to balance Jedi with other classes the designers may have gone a bit overboard. (Unless, of course, you get the Heal Self force skill, at which point you can just heal all the vitality points you burned on other powers with no negative consequences -- which makes high level Jedi out of balance again.)

Chapter 5 covers Feats, and once again there are two classes, normal and force feats. The normal feats cover knacks, special training and abilities, and certain social bonuses that help to flesh out a character. In general they seem to be fairly well balanced, and allow characters of the same classes to have slightly different focuses and skills. For those familiar with D&D there were a few changes to some feats --such as there being a larger number of feats that give a +2 to multiple skill rolls (such as Alertness), while the Skill Focus feat now gives a +3 to a single skill, which balances out much better. Force based feats are available only to those who first buy (or get for free as part of their class) the Force Sensitive feat, and even then many of them have more (many more) restrictions. This works fairly well, as the force feats give some very hefty advantages, but are difficult to acquire. In general the feats were better balanced than the skills, and do a good job of! representing the abilities that characters (even Jedi of high levels of power) show in the books and movies, without unbalancing the game. I could not, however, make myself as a character in this game without adding the feats Scarf Chocolate, Make Snarky Comments, and Think You're Clever.

We come next to Chapter 6, Heroic Characteristics. This handy little section covers important little details like names, ages, height, and weight, as well as numbers for how many miles you walk a day, how many miles you run a day, your hat-size, shirt-size, collar-size, how many ice cream cones you eat in a week, and how many ice cream cones you don't eat in a week. Very handy stuff. In the midst of all this is a section with some very short advice bits about such shocking and revolutionary subjects as character personality, background, and goals. It isn't much mind you, but it is there and is fairly well done. There is also another nice little rule in this section: Reputation. Reputation is just that -- how well known your character is, and how well you can use that rep to get favors, followers, and notice. All in all I found the rules nice, though perhaps a bit unnecessary. There was also a long and rather pointless digression under the heading of "Missions" in this chapter,! in which we were treated to half a page of an "example" mission that left me wondering what the designers where thinking when they used precious word count to spew this at us. Ah well, it is easily ignored, and the rest of the chapter has vast numbers of charts that I will promptly ignore.

Then comes Equipment in chapter 7. In this chapter we are treated to lists of weapons, armor, a quick discussion on galactic economy and money that is worth its weight in gold, and a short section of miscellaneous nifty gear. The chapter was fairly well done, and the weapons and armor were all recognizable from the movies and gave a broad enough base to allow GMs to make new weapons based on the examples given. Perhaps the single biggest problem with the weapons is that multifire and autofire weapons were not clearly marked (or marked at all). The gear section (as opposed to weapons) felt a little short, however, coming in at only 3 pages where weapons and armor took up 9. There were staples such as bacta tanks and comlinks, but the shortness of the section meant that golden bikinis and slave chains were left out. Alas.

Combat gets its own hefty chapter, as we all knew it would. I mean what is a RPG without blood all over the floors, the screams of the dying, and the lamentations of the women? The chapter starts off with a fairly well done example of a combat between a PC group and some droids, and does a good job of showing (rather than just telling) the basics of combat. Combat, over all, is very much game based (rather than story based -- which is to be expected), though it does succeed in having a quick and cinematic style. The base engine is the d20 standard of rolling a d20 and adding all your many bonuses to hit in an attempt to beat your opponent's defense (armor class) number. If you beat it you hit, if not you miss. Despite the fact that this sounds complicated, having to compare two numbers and all, it really is quite simple. There are also some options presented, such as rolling for defense rather than just having a set number. These options were generally quick and simple, but we! re also very nice to see. Once you hit you do damage, rolling lots of dice to see if you get to kill things. Characters with heroic classes, or powerful creatures, take Vitality loss first, representing near misses and luck, and only take Wound damage from critical hits or when they run out of Vitality. Wuss NPCs, like stormtroopers, just take Wound damage, and so die quickly and easily -- the way we all like it. The result is a combat system that is survivable for careful PCs, but still has enough of a lethal edge to worry characters who just want to run around with no cover and blast things. A good solid hit (a crit) from a blaster is capable of killing a 20th level Jedi, but because it is hard to get a crit against said Jedi, he will probably live so long as he plays smart. The combat system has rules for optional bits like autofire, multifire and the like, but I was not sure that they were really satisfactory. By the rules autofire and multifire give a character extra atta! cks each round -- but there are no options for strafing, suppressive fire, or any of those nifty little things you can do when your weapon is capable of producing a hail of energy bolts that would put Zeus to shame. Despite these oversights the Combat section is well done, and should provide hours of bloody entertainment for all the children.

The Force chapter is very well done. Starting with a discussion about the Force through the ages and moving through different traditions, it looks at more angels of the Force then any other single book I have seen. The best section, however, is on the Jedi code and the ideal vs the actuality of its implementation by the Jedi. By the code Jedi are Zen masters who don't feel, think, or care. In reality, however, they tend to have to take a more active roll than a pure "wu wei" ideal would indicate. Thus we get Qui-Gon Jinn on one side, and that self righteous muppet runt Yoda on the other. The system for the Force in game comes last in the chapter, and is short and simple. You get force points for being heroic and gaining levels, and darkside points for being a right bastard. Force points can be spent to get you extra dice on most rolls, and thus increase your chance to succeed. All in all the system is smooth and simple, but at high levels it starts turning into a "buckets ful! l of dice" situation, in which Jedi Master roll 7 extra d6 (in addition to the d20 they already roll).

The "Player" section of the book ends with chapters on Vehicles and Starships, and I am going to ram these together and review them at the same time -- as they have (mostly) the same strengths and weaknesses. The strengths of the system are based around an abstract and player-character centered method of resolution that allows for cinematic and furious battles without needing miniatures or the like to keep track of location. I like this approach as it keeps the action centered on the characters, allows for quick resolution, and lets the game remain a roleplaying game rather than a vehicular combat simulation. The main weakness of the system was that large vehicles and ships, such as AT-ATs and Star Destroyers are far too weak. Either of them could be taken out by far inferior craft (landspeeders or X-wings, respectively) in just a few rounds, and because of the defense modifiers for size, would have little chance of taking out the smaller craft. Also the abstraction of the sys! tem, and its interest in being quick and simple, led to several options I would have liked to see being left out -- things like systems for resetting shields, or diverting weapon power to them (both of which are done in the movies), or having miscellaneous actions or solid rules for multiple crewmembers. All in all I liked what the designers tried to do with this system, and think the abstraction (including the starship range diagram) should be kept, but there do need to be more options and more detail. As it was the system felt incomplete and a bit flaccid. I'd recommend the designers hook up with Bob Dole, who could get them some stuff to firm it up.

After the vehicular manslaughter chapters, the rest of the book is devoted to "GM resources," chapters about running the game, using droids, monsters, and prestige classes (though I haven't a clue why droids are included in this section, rather than in, or immediately after, the equipment section -- especially as there are no options for PC droids given). The first of these is Chapter 12: Gamemastering Star Wars. This section is filled with tips and ideas for the poor idiotic fools who want to GM Star Wars (morons, all of them). Most of it is fairly standard fare ("make sure everyone has fun!" and "a good GM makes sure the game stays balanced"), but there are some interesting bits based around the Challenge Codes system. This system rates encounters, both combat and non-combat, by how difficult they should be for a group of characters of a given level. Now given that game balance is a joke, and that making a real challenge for players is more art than science, this mechanic is! actually fairly useful -- especially to new and mid-level GMs. The experience section, on the other hand, kinda bails on us, simply awarding experience based on how long the game session was -- not on what was accomplished or what the level of challenge was. While it is a very simple system, it isn't one with a lot other than that to recommend it. This monster chapter then continues its mad rampage with a selection of Prestige classes for when your PCs get lots of experience and want to really be able to slay mooks. The classes were relatively well done, and fit with the standards of the game -- bounty hunters, crime lords, ace pilots, and so forth. These little crunchy bits are followed by a section on Game Master Characters, with such amazing abilities as "die at hands of heroes", "rescue heroes", and "have no dramatic class." Really these bits are fine, but are just something to differentiate between the nifty keen people and the not so nifty keen people, and so mostly pas! sed under my radar. The chapter finishes out with bits on drowning, suffocating, falling, and many other wonderful forms of damage to inflict upon players. I, personally, like to do them all at once -- drowning while falling and being poisoned in space while on fire and starving. You all really should try it some time.

Eras of Play comes up to bat next, though the title is a bit of a misnomer. It really should be called, "Big NPC people who can squash the player group single handed." After a couple of rather short pages going over the three eras, each getting about a paragraph, the bulk of the chapter concentrates on stats and write-ups for the personality characters of the Star Wars Universe. (Though for some reason we don't get Luke's stats as a pre-fetus during the rise of the empire age, a design flaw that I am at a loss to explain). Most of the stats are well done, though one does wonder why Jar Jar Binks is missing the "piss off fans" feat, and why Princess Leia is missing the "look good in gold bikini" feat. Personally I would have liked fewer massive NPC write-ups and more detailed information about the actual universe, but in a fan based game such as Star Wars I can understand why the designers went with NPCs. (Though once again the hutts got shafted again, as Jabba was totally igno! red in the most brutal snubbing since Jim Carrey got overlooked by the Oscars for his work in "The Cable Guy"). It was also, I thought, interesting that C3P0 and R2D2 got full write ups (as they should), but that at the same time there is no possibility for Droid PCs. The designers seemed to have noticed the importance of the droids as characters in the movie, but didn't care enough to transfer it over to the game.

Allies and Opponents is up next. This chapter has tables. Lots of tables. We're talking like, all totaled, probably 12 full pages of tables. So if you like tables you'll like this chapter. I, personally, would have liked more races (though there were a very decent number included I would have liked more, as I am greedy and nasty and generally in love with bug-eyed monstrosities from the Outer Rim). The race write-ups that were included were well done, and if one wished could be fairly easily converted for use as a PC race -- so all the Noghri and Dug fans can rejoice. We also are treated to a brief, very brief, sampling of creatures and monsters, though really there are only highlight creatures from the movie, and the rest are crowded out by the massive numbers of tables. (I kept having flashbacks to the actuarial books I used to have -- so many tables! The horror!)

At last we come to Droids. This chapter is very solid if you are looking for Droids as props, and possibly as enemies -- in the case of battle droids and the like. If you are like my little brother, who always wanted to grow up to be a droid (he was successful, by the way, he now works for Microsoft) and wanted droid PC's then you are as out of luck as the girl that had to play Leo's love interest in "The Beach." This section has a decently comprehensive system for designing and using droids, including rules for repair, modification, and notes on their place in the universe and their relations to humans. It also has a heavy selection of pregenerated droids, covering most of the main types from the movies. There are, however, some mildly annoying typos and omissions here -- such as the lack of DR of the shields on the Droideka, the rather annoying autofire rules, and lots of little niggly bits that don't hurt the game, but do make it less clean than it could be. (I was also hop! ing that the book would have stats for the robots they used to make the Dungeons and Dragons movie -- especially the one that looked like Jeremy Irons, but I guess the book came out before they could be included.)

The last real chapter is Shadows of Coruscant: The First Adventure. Look at that lovely title, roll it about in your mouth, taste it, enjoy it -- because that is as good as the adventure gets. While this adventure was not horrible, I wouldn't have minded it if it was a free PDF on the web site, it really was not good either. Completely linear, based around shooting people, and with a rather unlikely premise; it really didn't stack up against many other recently released adventures for other d20 games. There is also one part of the adventure where the GM is urged to give advice to characters that results in the villains being able to break into an area the PCs were trying to protect. Now I don't know about the rest of you, but if I tried this with my group -- nearly lying to them OOCly to situate them where I wanted to for a linear adventure to progress on line -- they would lynch me. (With my tighty-whities, no less. A gruesome fate.) I would, in general, recommend skipping th! is adventure completely unless you are a complete newbie to the game and really need help starting off.

Finally we have an appendix. (Well, I don't, I had mine out years ago when I swallowed a BB and it rolled down in there -- but the book does, cause the book is too smart to swallow BBs). This lovely little bit is a conversion guideline for old West End Games characters to be ported into the new rules. I have not actually used it, so I really can not say how it works -- but it was well written and clear, and was a very good idea for inclusion.

Conclusion

The Star Wars Role Playing Game is a good product, but not a great one by any stretch of the imagination. For those who do not mind a game based system with levels and classes, the game does a good job of modeling the Star Wars universe in a fun and accessible manner. For those who cannot stand game based systems it does a good job of taking up space on the shelf. While the core elements of the system are solidly based off of the d20 system, and many of the new addition, such as wounds and vitality points are good, several of the extras -- such as space ship combat and droids -- seem very rough and not well enough tested. The book is well laid out, the art is good, and there is a lot of material presented; but in the end it does not quite pass the higher benchmarks of achievement, and so gets a final score of above average, but not great.

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Note for Gamer Grrls: We all know that Star Wars has sex issues. No, I am not talking about the Princess having to be rescued (which I don't buy as the Princess had to rescue the men more times than they had to rescue her), I am talking about the fact that the lightsaber is so obviously a phallic symbol that it made Freud blush. (I mean really -- it's shaped like a penis, makes a sound like a zipper when it comes up, glows brightly, hums, and can cut through blast doors -- you make the connection). The game book, however, is one that is well balanced and sexually equal. The art is very decent, showing many female characters -- including female Jedi Guardians and Dark Jedi, and there was not one cheesecake picture that I can remember. There are even several pictures of females wielding the peni.. er.. lightsaber, which is a nice change from the movies and well in line with the books. Brand Robins

Star Wars Core Rulebook