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I like the design, it's straight and to the point, not wasting any space. There's no artwork whatsoever and there's not much fancy font work. It's black text on a white background. Nothing else to say, but I wish other RPG designers would take a cue from this (not much hope, given this was released in 2005) as readability is the most important issue.
The 14 pages are split up into 5 chapters. Chapter 1 is the One-Roll Engine. In short, you roll between two and ten dice and look for sets (pairs, triplets, etc) of numbers. You could turn up something like two 9s or three 4s. This tells you a number of things, depending on the context. In combat you get how quickly you hit, how hard you hit and where you hit from one roll. You can also combine actions together - still in one roll. If you want to do more than one thing at a time, you need to look for two sets in the roll. If you only get one set, you need to make a choice about which of your attempted actions succeeds and which one you bail on. I have played other games which use O.R.E. and it is very quick, easy and elegant in play.
Chapter 2 is combat, which you can see I've already touched on (showing how slick and well integrated the One-Roll Engine is. It goes into detail about the types of maneuvers you can do, and also covers armour and weapons. The armour is of the damage reducing type, not the harder to hit type. The weapons modify the damage you'd do with a successful set.
Chapter 3 is tools and vehicles. It could have really been named vehicles, there's a paragraph on tools and the rest is on vehicles. Like chapter 2, it's largely on the types of maneuvers you can do. It has 3 sample vehicles, an AT-ST, T-47 and of course an X-Wing. That really isn't enough for a Star Wars game, but it is enough to give you an idea of how you'd put things together yourself. Since I have some Star Wars 2nd Edition books myself I'd compare stats with the 3 that are given and build them for the other vehicles myself. Someone else I'm sure could likely do the same with Wookipedia.
Chapter 4 is characters. This version of O.R.E. uses the age old stand by of stats and skills. (As an aside, I understand this is different from Wild Talents, which I only mention since it is supposed to be based off it, but apparently not too closely). The skill list is fairly free form, there's a decent number of skills, but each skill only has a one sentence description. I actually like this way of doing it, as it means there isn't any need to check the rulebook. Characters are created with a point buy system, fairly simple and straight forward, although with the number of points given for characters relative to the cost of stats, skills and abilities character creation won't be very quick (although it's nothing ridiculous like Rifts - it's a 14 page 'microgame' after all).
Chapter 5 is the force. Force is governed by a stat called Willpower which is probably the most logical name for it given how it's presented in the movies. It's not a standard stat in that it's a number of points that are depleted to use the force. If you use the force a lot, you end up mentally strained and can't keep it up. I find this is a good balancing system without breaking suspension of disbelief. Force powers are split up into four categories; force sense, physical control, energy manipulation and mental influence. I can't think of anything in the movies not covered by these four descriptors. A cool thing is every sentient creature gets some force sense.
What I was really interested in in particular was how the dark side was handled. It was done very similarly to WEG's Star Wars 2nd Edition in which if you use anger or hatred while you're using the force, you acquire dark side points which are used separately from your willpower. Once you've acquired dark side points, using willpower becomes much more difficult and it's hard to shake. No need for me to hack anything on to it, as it's a very elegant way of handling it.
A plain single sided character sheet is included at the end (as the 14th page, making the actual game content only 13 pages). It has space for everything that's necessary on it.
The substance rating of meaty might seem odd given the low page count, but I'm comparing how much was worked in to the small space. There's simply not enough pages to give it a rating of excellent, particularly given the wealth of information out there about Star Wars, but there's plenty there particularly if used as a conversion point from one of the official RPGs.
The link for the download, since it's a bit hard to find is here.
