Review of [Actual Play Week] Star Wars Roleplaying Game Saga Edition Core Rulebook
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Star Wars Role-playing Game: Saga Edition.
Star Wars has long and vibrant history in the RPG world, and it is a history I had previously not had any contact with. As such, the Star Wars Role-playing Game: Saga Edition is my first introduction to both d20 and a Star Wars RPG.
The game is intended for play with the Star Wars Miniatures also from Wizards of the Coast (WotC). However, I have opted not to use them, and treat all reference to ‘squares’ in the game as meters.
Initial impressions
The most obvious things are the unusual form factor of the book (9”x9”) and the high production values. This is a slick product that really captures the broad range of aesthetics from the movies, comics and games. Thankfully this is a product that doesn’t sacrifice readability for its looks (unlike for instance, the D&D 3.5e Dungeon Masters Guide). Pages are set in two columns, clear text and bold headings make for quick skimming and there are frequent tables providing summaries of important lists such as species bonuses, skills and feats.
One feature of particular note is that the chapters are noted on the outward vertical edges of the pages, and each chapter has a set of colored dots allowing quick access to sections without needless page flipping. This is something that I really appreciate in the fourth edition of GURPS and am glad WotC have chosen a similar path.
The first chapter consists of a foreword and an introduction to RPGs and Star Wars in particular and introduces the core principles of the d20 system.
A double sided battle map is provided as a perforated insert.
Character creation
The first half of the book is devoted to topics related to character creation and related reference material. Characters are defined almost exclusively in mechanical terms, such as attributes, skills, feats and derived statistics that should be fairly familiar to most d20 players. Classes and levels provide the base for characters and their development, but the classes used are broad and flexible. Eighteen species are present for the player characters to choose from, and 5 base ‘Heroic’ classes provide the groundwork for most conceivable heros. These are Jedi, Noble, Scoundrel, Scout and Soldier and cover backgrounds and concepts rather than rigid occupations.
The first thing that might strike some people is the use of flexible small groups of feat-like rules called talents. Talents are organized into trees of related talents with some dependancy. The average talent tree contains between 6 and 10 talents, with a number of entry level talents, and at most three levels of dependancy deep. Characters get to choose a new talent at every alternative class level. The heroic classes all provide four talents trees, but additional trees can become available if certain prerequisites are met. This can be in the form of feats, Prestige Classes or sometimes just character background.
Character level plays a big part in this game. Many statistics have either your characters level (in the case of saves) or half you characters level rounded down (in the case of skills) as a bonus. E.g. a fortitude save is equal to 10 level class bonus constitution modifier any miscellaneous bonuses. This means leveling directly feeds into character improvement.
Droids
Droid characters are a special case of normal characters. Basicly the act as a meta-species that you can pick instead of the organic options provided at the beginning of the book. Choosing to play a droid allows you either a custom droid made from a kitset parts and traits, or selecting a standard model from a short catalogue.
There is a large set of details to help you customize your droid character, and modify it later in life as well notes about standard roles for different types of droids and how they fit into the society and setting. Unfortunately i havent had a chance to playtest this specific section.
The Force
The Force comes to play in a number of areas in the game. Each character has 5 (Heroic Levels / 2) Force Points at the start of each level. These are a supply of non-replenishing points players can use to influence their luck, and activate some abilities related to the force. This allows every character some benefit for the force even if it is not their focus.
Secondly, every character can become a force user. To do so, you need to take the ‘Force Sensitive’ feat and become trained in the skill ‘Use the Force’. From there you gain access to a variety of force abilities, full fledged Force Powers and later force using prestige classes (Force Adept and Force Disciple, Jedi Knight and Jedi Master, and Sith Apprentice and Sith Lord). These prestige classes allow characters who meet their prerequisites to take additional Force Techniques and Force Powers that provide the final tricks to make a really powerful force specialist.
The dark side is managed using a scale from 0 to the characters wisdom score. Rules for adjudicating dark-side transgressions are provided as well as notes about different play styles.
The system
The d20 system is fairly traditional task-resolution based ruleset, if you have encountered it before nothing should really surprise you. There are many other reviews that will do the core system more justice than I can.
Vehicular combat is largely an extension of character scale combat, just at a larger scale. The core rules cover small skirmishes and a callout box recommends using the Star Wars miniatures game for larger battles. The rules aim to let all the players take part in space battles even if piloting isnt a focus.
If you feel that you will be spending a lot of your games running starship battles the first supplement Starships of the Galaxy provides additional rules, including a system of techniques that is based on the same system as the force.
Negatives
The first real negative that struck me is the index. While I am glad they included one it is very small – one page – and mostly references talents. As a newcomer to the d20 I would also have really appreciated a glossary of terms.
Secondly, the book could have been served well by having a few more examples scattered throughout the more foundational sections of the rules. In particular related to applications of the core mechanics to the various types of checks present in the system.
More mook-type characters and a broader beastiary provided is quite skeletal. As a GM new to the system, having a somewhat broader collection would have been nice. As it is, it is easy to just dress up the basic units provided in different color and tweak a couple of numbers without affecting the overall difficulty of the challenges.
In more than 6 months, there has been only one supplement book produced for the game.
Playing the game
I ran two off-the-cuff adventures for a couple of my friends in addition to my regular gaming. One player was from my regular group and the other had never played an RPG before, but is a huge Star Wars geek. Getting buy-in to the setting was very easy.
The game “Enemies of the Empire” follows two young rebel heroes in the making during the gap between episodes IV and V. You can find actual play journals for the two adventures run at:
For our game we left out the jedi components, starship fights and droids. We found this let us pick up the game quickly, we learnt the core rules in a couple of hours and found play moved quickly.
Noticably, we all felt that the game did a good job of emulating the source material. The fire fights were a lot of fun and without needing a plethora of special rules you can still make good tactical choices.
The second session of the first chapter produced the most difficulty for me as a GM new to the system. I felt the chase scene that was intended as a brief and urgent run through the town felt stilted and choppy, although I am assured by one player that there was still “a fair amount of tension”. I would have appreciated stronger rules for governing non-combat conflicts, for instance where the players haggled for a power coil to fix their downed ship and had to settle for a second hand one.
Summary
Overall I feel this game is money well spent. The Star Wars Role-playing Game: Saga Edition is an attractive product that is fun and fast to play and in my mind really captures the spirit of the movies. Despite the games reliance on miniatures for play, my group had no trouble leaving them out.
Star Wars has long and vibrant history in the RPG world, and it is a history I had previously not had any contact with. As such, the Star Wars Role-playing Game: Saga Edition is my first introduction to both d20 and a Star Wars RPG.
The game is intended for play with the Star Wars Miniatures also from Wizards of the Coast (WotC). However, I have opted not to use them, and treat all reference to ‘squares’ in the game as meters.
Initial impressions
The most obvious things are the unusual form factor of the book (9”x9”) and the high production values. This is a slick product that really captures the broad range of aesthetics from the movies, comics and games. Thankfully this is a product that doesn’t sacrifice readability for its looks (unlike for instance, the D&D 3.5e Dungeon Masters Guide). Pages are set in two columns, clear text and bold headings make for quick skimming and there are frequent tables providing summaries of important lists such as species bonuses, skills and feats.
One feature of particular note is that the chapters are noted on the outward vertical edges of the pages, and each chapter has a set of colored dots allowing quick access to sections without needless page flipping. This is something that I really appreciate in the fourth edition of GURPS and am glad WotC have chosen a similar path.
The first chapter consists of a foreword and an introduction to RPGs and Star Wars in particular and introduces the core principles of the d20 system.
A double sided battle map is provided as a perforated insert.
Character creation
The first half of the book is devoted to topics related to character creation and related reference material. Characters are defined almost exclusively in mechanical terms, such as attributes, skills, feats and derived statistics that should be fairly familiar to most d20 players. Classes and levels provide the base for characters and their development, but the classes used are broad and flexible. Eighteen species are present for the player characters to choose from, and 5 base ‘Heroic’ classes provide the groundwork for most conceivable heros. These are Jedi, Noble, Scoundrel, Scout and Soldier and cover backgrounds and concepts rather than rigid occupations.
The first thing that might strike some people is the use of flexible small groups of feat-like rules called talents. Talents are organized into trees of related talents with some dependancy. The average talent tree contains between 6 and 10 talents, with a number of entry level talents, and at most three levels of dependancy deep. Characters get to choose a new talent at every alternative class level. The heroic classes all provide four talents trees, but additional trees can become available if certain prerequisites are met. This can be in the form of feats, Prestige Classes or sometimes just character background.
Character level plays a big part in this game. Many statistics have either your characters level (in the case of saves) or half you characters level rounded down (in the case of skills) as a bonus. E.g. a fortitude save is equal to 10 level class bonus constitution modifier any miscellaneous bonuses. This means leveling directly feeds into character improvement.
Droids
Droid characters are a special case of normal characters. Basicly the act as a meta-species that you can pick instead of the organic options provided at the beginning of the book. Choosing to play a droid allows you either a custom droid made from a kitset parts and traits, or selecting a standard model from a short catalogue.
There is a large set of details to help you customize your droid character, and modify it later in life as well notes about standard roles for different types of droids and how they fit into the society and setting. Unfortunately i havent had a chance to playtest this specific section.
The Force
The Force comes to play in a number of areas in the game. Each character has 5 (Heroic Levels / 2) Force Points at the start of each level. These are a supply of non-replenishing points players can use to influence their luck, and activate some abilities related to the force. This allows every character some benefit for the force even if it is not their focus.
Secondly, every character can become a force user. To do so, you need to take the ‘Force Sensitive’ feat and become trained in the skill ‘Use the Force’. From there you gain access to a variety of force abilities, full fledged Force Powers and later force using prestige classes (Force Adept and Force Disciple, Jedi Knight and Jedi Master, and Sith Apprentice and Sith Lord). These prestige classes allow characters who meet their prerequisites to take additional Force Techniques and Force Powers that provide the final tricks to make a really powerful force specialist.
The dark side is managed using a scale from 0 to the characters wisdom score. Rules for adjudicating dark-side transgressions are provided as well as notes about different play styles.
The system
The d20 system is fairly traditional task-resolution based ruleset, if you have encountered it before nothing should really surprise you. There are many other reviews that will do the core system more justice than I can.
Vehicular combat is largely an extension of character scale combat, just at a larger scale. The core rules cover small skirmishes and a callout box recommends using the Star Wars miniatures game for larger battles. The rules aim to let all the players take part in space battles even if piloting isnt a focus.
If you feel that you will be spending a lot of your games running starship battles the first supplement Starships of the Galaxy provides additional rules, including a system of techniques that is based on the same system as the force.
Negatives
The first real negative that struck me is the index. While I am glad they included one it is very small – one page – and mostly references talents. As a newcomer to the d20 I would also have really appreciated a glossary of terms.
Secondly, the book could have been served well by having a few more examples scattered throughout the more foundational sections of the rules. In particular related to applications of the core mechanics to the various types of checks present in the system.
More mook-type characters and a broader beastiary provided is quite skeletal. As a GM new to the system, having a somewhat broader collection would have been nice. As it is, it is easy to just dress up the basic units provided in different color and tweak a couple of numbers without affecting the overall difficulty of the challenges.
In more than 6 months, there has been only one supplement book produced for the game.
Playing the game
I ran two off-the-cuff adventures for a couple of my friends in addition to my regular gaming. One player was from my regular group and the other had never played an RPG before, but is a huge Star Wars geek. Getting buy-in to the setting was very easy.
The game “Enemies of the Empire” follows two young rebel heroes in the making during the gap between episodes IV and V. You can find actual play journals for the two adventures run at:
For our game we left out the jedi components, starship fights and droids. We found this let us pick up the game quickly, we learnt the core rules in a couple of hours and found play moved quickly.
Noticably, we all felt that the game did a good job of emulating the source material. The fire fights were a lot of fun and without needing a plethora of special rules you can still make good tactical choices.
The second session of the first chapter produced the most difficulty for me as a GM new to the system. I felt the chase scene that was intended as a brief and urgent run through the town felt stilted and choppy, although I am assured by one player that there was still “a fair amount of tension”. I would have appreciated stronger rules for governing non-combat conflicts, for instance where the players haggled for a power coil to fix their downed ship and had to settle for a second hand one.
Summary
Overall I feel this game is money well spent. The Star Wars Role-playing Game: Saga Edition is an attractive product that is fun and fast to play and in my mind really captures the spirit of the movies. Despite the games reliance on miniatures for play, my group had no trouble leaving them out.
