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Many things need to be said before I start with this review. First of all, it should be noted and understood well that converting any story from one medium to another is a great endeavor that rarely succeeds, be it from book to movie, movie to game, game to book - in all cases your audience will already have their own interpretation of the original work which will possibly and probably conflict with yours as a game designer. The problem is only worse with stories like Star Wars that have reached millions of people and conquered their hearts decades before you sit down to translate it into another medium. Therefore, as I review this game, I will do my best to review it not only based on how I perceive the Star Wars universe based on the movies and its expanded universe, but also on its own merits as a roleplaying game alone.
With all that said, the work in review is a very heavy and thick, hardbound core rulebook by Wizards of the Coast. A little bit on Star Wars d20 RPG's history in the hands of Wizards of the Coast may be appropriate here. I should clarify that this review deals with the Revised version of the Core Rulebook which was printed a year after the original Star Wars RPG Core Rulebook was printed. The Revised book aimed to fix several issues that the original game had (lacking and broken rules, mostly) as well as incorporating Episode II material into the core rule set. At any point necessary I will try to point out any changes made to the mechanics. The revised core rulebook is about 1.5 times the thickness of the original rulebook, however, and probably has more changes than I can summarize in this review so be aware that I may miss many. As a last note, the first printing of the Revised Core Rulebook (which I unfortunately own) differs from the subsequent printings. Errors found in the first printing have been errataed in the second and further printings. If you own the first printing like I do, you may find the list of these at Wizards of the Coast's Website.
Those among you who frequent the RPG.net boards also know of my general dislike of the d20 system and will probably be cynical towards the idea that I could ever write an objective review of a d20 product. They may be right, indeed - however, I will do my honest best to keep this review as objective as possible, but I will not refrain from pointing out the points where d20's Star Wars adaptation does not shine. Be warned, however, that this review is long, nearing almost 6,000 words in length. There are a couple of short Star Wars d20 reviews on RPGnet already, if you wish to have a general idea about the system. I should re-iterate, at this point, that I plan to do as in-depth a review as I can. Now, onto the review.
Substance
The book is meaty - there is no mistaking it. The weight of the volume makes this point very clear as soon as you pick it up. SWRCRB spans over 15 chapters and 382 pages of text. The book has been divided into two parts like the original edition, the Player's Section and the Gamemaster's section. I will review the two sections separately.
Section 1: Player's Section
The Player's Section starts out with a lengthy and well done Introduction that works perfectly as a quick-start guide you could photocopy and give to new players. From the game's theme to its core mechanics, this summary familiarizes a starting player to the game quite well. It also serves as a perfect guide for the casual shopper who flips through RPG books before buying them. You should keep in mind, however, that the game, as I will discuss later on, does not function as flawlessly as the Introduction would lead you to believe. While I found pretty much everything in this Introduction agreeable, I eventually had to disagree with the implementation of many of them. One thing, in particular, has troubled me greatly from the start until I reached the combat mechanics to discover whether my fears would come true or not was that miniatures were listed among the things you need to play SWRPGd20. I will return to this later on.
The Player's section is laid out in an order that will be very familiar to d20 players. It starts out with an explanation of the 6 standard Ability Scores, Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Wisdom, Intelligence and Charisma, and how ability bonuses work in general. This is standard OGL material you will find in both the d20 and d20 Modern SRD's on Wizards' website. The only problem with this section is the ambiguity about what Charisma actually is. It is not only strength of character, but also your general charm, appearance and the glibness of your tongue all combined into one. And when we start to go over Force Skills, you'll find out that it is actually a lot more than the chapter tells you, after all, so hold on a little bit more. In terms of character creation there is stuff here that will appeal to all schools - you can roll random scores or use a point buy system to create your character. You are also given the option of using a default ability package, but this ability package can be created using the point buy system anyway.
The ability scores chapter is followed by Species. The species list has been expanded slightly in the revised edition with a couple new species, each with their own descriptions, stereotype information and game rules. The player species included in the core rulebook are Humans, Bothans, Cereans, Duros, Ewoks, Gammoreans, Gungans, Ithorians, Kel Dor, Mon Calamari, Quarren, Rodians, Sullustan, Trandoshan, Twi'leks, Wookies and Zabrak. The list is long, and offers many choices, but not all the additions can be called very playable. My main problem is with the new Kel Dor race that can not survive in any atmosphere breathable to other species unless it wears a breath mask and safety goggles. Otherwise, the species are in most part fine, and a good representation of their examples from the movies and the expanded universe literature. Species balance does not seem to have been the main focus here; some species are clearly leaps and bounds better than others in combat and some were apparently created for technical tasks, but alien species in Star Wars do have archetypical professions attached to them so I see no problem with this. Your opinion may vary when very brawler wants to roll a Wookie or a Trandoshan, however..
Classes come next. You may or may not like classes in RPGs, but there is no denying the existence of heroic archetypes in Star Wars. In that sense, classes work well with the Star Wars genre. With the multi-classing rules being overhauled after the first printing (See Errata), multi-classing is now much easier. You get all starting feats of a second or third class, and there is no experience penalty for multi classing like the one in D&D, so diversifying your character's development is not that greatly hindered by the class system. A few changes to special class features have been made, since the first edition, but the Noble class and the Jedi classes have been pretty much overhauled and a new Tech Specialist class has been added.
There are 9 classes all in all: Fringer, Noble, Scoundrel, Scout, Soldier, Tech Specialist, Force Adept, Jedi Consular, and Jedi Guardian. While the classes are now pretty much enough to roughly define any major Star Wars character, there are funny things going on balance-wise. Checking the progression tables reveals that all classes excepting the Soldier and Jedi Guardian (who have very similar tables as well..) have pretty much the same BAB and Defense progression. Skills per level are closer now, as well, (4+Int Bonus to 8+Int Bonus) as are vitality points per level (d6 to d10). Except for the Soldier who gets a new combat feat every other level and d10 vitality points per level (a-la Fighter) the remaining mundane classes are balanced in terms of their combat abilities and class features - and it makes a lot of sense that the soldier shines with his combat abilities. Jedi are the problem here.
While in D&D the major spellcaster classes' special abilities are (arguably) balanced by their low HP dice or class skills and low skills per level, such balancing does not exist in Star Wars RPG. Jedi get good vitality dice (d8 for Consular, d10 for Guardian), normal skills per level (d6+Int Bonus for Consular, d4+Int Bonus for Guardian), a good and long class skills list, good BAB progression, as much Defense as a soldier (more with a lightsaber), better saves than soldier (+12/+12/+6 vs +12/+6/+6), better starting feats than any other class (IMO), the single most powerful personal weapon in the game, force skills and force feats. The Jedi are also so much better than the Force Adept that I can see no reason why anyone would want to play such a nerfed Force user class when they could play Jedi unless they want to start playing the Dark Side right off the bat. I don't truly disagree with these since the Jedi in Star Wars truly outclass any other archetype in about any situation. Your opinion may vary when every talker wants to roll a Jedi Consular and every brawler wants to roll a Jedi Guardian, however..
Flipping a few more pages, we reach the Skills Section. It is well laid out and presented, giving the player a good explanation of the differences between class and cross class skills with examples for character creation with them. Skill checks, and Difficulty Classes have been explained with good examples as well. Some new skills have been added in the revised edition, and some skills from the original rulebook have been omitted (or in some cases turned into feats). Another welcome change is mundane and Force skills being listed together and alphabetically. You also have separate summary tables for mundane and Force skills, detailing the key Ability for each, among other details. This is where I start to have my first serious problems with the game.
Most of the Ability score associations have been carried over directly from d20 Modern, and my problems with d20 once again begin to bug me. I will never understand why Profession is a WIS skill and Handle Animal is a CHA skill - and I hope you do. And admittedly these are very small concerns and could easily be tailored to your preferences, but things get only worse, and absurdly so, when you check the Force Skills. Force Defense, Heal Self and Illusion are now CHA skills. Since this change from the previous edition simply insulted my brains I looked at the official Q&A, 4th question under Force Skills, and found that developers (J.D. Wiker, actually) admitted they just changed some Skills to CHA skills so that "CHA does not become a dumping ground" for Jedi characters. I think this is a horrible, horrible, and horrible way to fix CHA. It sounds even worse than Sorcerors in D&D3 using CHA as a primary attribute because no other class uses it enough. If the developers are aware that CHA is useless in their game, they should a) drop it, and admit that their game does not really need it b) make it useful through logical means instead of making people invest in an Ability score just because it helps with Skills that have no relevance to the Ability.
The Skill list has been mostly taken from D&D3 and d20 Modern with the exception of the Force Skills specially designed for the SWRPG. While the mundane skills work fine (as they should, since they have seen extensive playtest in D&D and d20 Modern) half of the Force Skills are problematic. And half of that half is simply broken. Let me try to explain with a few examples. The most obviously overpowered Force Skills are the ones that don't allow a saving throw: Fear and Friendship. Fear is exceptionally powerful because it can not be resisted in any way except taking a Dark Side Point. Its results are also profound; a Force user with 5 levels in Fear can impose a -4 penalty to all your rolls for 10 rounds automatically. Friendship is simply absurd; there is no other way to put it. It allows no saving throw, and automatically changes the mood of a Hostile or Unfriendly character to a better one. With 10 ranks in this skill you can automatically stop an angry Yoda trying to chop you to pieces go "Uh.. What were we doing here? Time to grab a hot dog, see ya." Yes, it can be used in combat, check the Q&A. Now that we have seen some of the broken skills, let's take a look at the ones that are problematic. Force Grip, for example - it causes 3d6 points of physical damage. Physical damage is dealt to VPs first, so a Force Grip on a heroic character causes Vitality Point loss, not Wound point loss - this takes the whole idea of Vitality Points being your ability to evade physical injury and throws it out of the window. The same problem exists with Force Lightning, which is even worse because both skills do not use attack rolls, so a Jedi can't deflect a Force Lightning, whereas Obi-Wan clearly can in Episode II. I won't even go into how you can use Move Object as a hurl attack and keep automatically dazing an opponent every round while someone else beats him to death. Add to this that there is no Sense skill that allows you to detect Life, and you start pulling your hair out..
Leaving the mess that is the Skills chapter behind, we turn to the Feats chapter. Once again, most of the feats are from D&D3 and d20 Modern, and these mundane feats work just the way they should in the game. Unfortunately, whether some of these feats were necessary or not (Whirlwind Attack, anyone?) is debatable. The Force abilities you see in the movies that you couldn't find in the Skill List are mostly dumped here as Force Feats. The Force Feats, fortunately, are much less problematic than the Force Skills. But it was at this point I realized a very important problem with the game.
Stun! Reading the description of the Dissipate Energy feat, I started wondering if you can dissipate stun attacks, or deflect them. I quickly flipped to the Equipment chapter and started reading the new stun rules. Each weapon has a Stun DC which you have to save against with a Fort check. If you fail, you are stunned for 1d4+1 rounds. If you succeed you are stunned for 1 round. Then I noticed that you can't dissipate stun attacks because they don't deal damage. Of course, 2 mooks, one with stun, the other with a blaster can easily kill you this way - stun, shoot, next round, stun, shoot, etc. This was where I flipped back to the Lightsaber Deflect rules and found out you can't deflect them either. Stun is the single most efficient attack in the game - after realizing this I used a bunch of Rodian mooks, half of them with stun weapons in one combat encounter and they almost eliminated a 7th level group of Heroes. It made me wonder.. There are other things that irked me about this chapter, such as the Long Sword being an exotic weapon for no apparent reason, while the spear is a primitive weapon. Or why the Ranged Weapons chart isn't listed alphabetically and I have to go through it three times to find where a thermal detonator is. Otherwise, though, the information in this chapter is OK, if a little thin.
And now, onto Combat. This is where my worries about miniatures that I mentioned much earlier kick back in. The Combat rules clearly, and without a doubt, assume that you use miniatures for combat. Now, there are two questions here, the first is whether or not this is a bad thing. This makes combat a much more tactical experience than what the movies portray. You take steps, fire, avoid attacks of opportunity, place yourself where you are tactically most advantageous, etc. However, in all honesty, it does not feel like Star Wars. Does it work? Oh yes it does - I can argue that SWRCRB does a much better job of dealing with this kind of combat and Attacks of Opportunity than D&D3 did. Is it enjoyable? Yes, if you like this kind of combat. But in all honesty, it does not feel like Star Wars. Then, there is the second question of whether or not you can work around this miniature dependency. Yes, you can. You can take all combat modifiers presented, even attacks of opportunity, and use it without relying on miniatures but it takes a lot of cooperation on the players' part.
Otherwise, I have no problems with the combat mechanics at all. I am especially fond of the Vitality Points / Wound Points system - all characters have fixed amount of Wound Points (Equal to their CON scores) that represent their physical toughness and Vitality Points that represent their ability and luck at evading being hit - so in the Star Wars sense Han can be chased by a legion of stormtroopers shooting at him and manage to make it to safety before he has a hole in his chest by burning Vitality Points until he makes it to safety. Of course, we will test this system against the classic D&D3 pitfalls of hazard damage - falling damage specifically, once we get to the Gamemastering section.
Now, let's talk a bit about The Force. Most of the rhetoric here about the Force, its philosophy and history is old news to anyone who is interested enough in the movies to try the RPG. Two things here are worth mentioning - the first one is Force Points. These are like the bonus dice you receive in Riddle of Steel, but the number of bonus dice you roll is based on your level and whether you are Force-Sensitive or not. Force-Sensitive characters can call upon the Light or Dark Side of the Force (their choice) but Force-Insensitive characters use Force Points as pure luck. What has been updated from the original Core Rulebook is that now Force Points can be spent even after dice has been rolled but before the GM has not announced the resolution of the roll, effectively making them much more useful. Force Points are still gained when you level up or engage in acts of 'dramatic heroism'. I like all this. Actually, the only thing I dislike about this chapter is how much the Dark Side characters are at a disadvantage - I will not go into the details of the mechanics, but as you accumulate Dark Side Points through mischief and wickedness, you start running higher and higher chances of losing STR, CON or DEX permanently each time you level up. This phenomenon is explained by how the Dark Side devours you as you surrender to it - bygones. It makes strong high level Dark Side villains very difficult to exist, and all Dark Side villains in the movies are physically strong personas, excepting the Emperor who is about a hundred years old by the time of the Return of the Jedi anyway.. Uncanny - I don't like it, and I never used it in my games. Your opinion may vary, however.
The last two chapters in the Player's Section deal with Vehicles and Spaceships. I will go over the two chapters together because they deal with pretty much the same system. Players of the earlier edition will be delighted to learn that the abstract space combat rules that worked so awfully have been given a total rework, and now vehicle and spaceship combat is done on a tactical grid with rules very much like the tactical character combat rules described earlier. Admittedly, it is tons better than the earlier edition. But it's also still not good enough. Here are my reasons why.. (All reasons given apply to Starships and Vehicles both)
Firing vehicle and Starship weapons is dependent on your Base Attack Bonus. Your Pilot skill only provides a +2 Bonus if it is above Rank 5. While this makes sense for turret mounted vehicle and starship weapons that are crewed by gunners, it makes no sense for forward facing weapons that are under the pilot's direct control. Another thing that is definitely broken is Ion damage, similar to Stun damage as noted earlier. A ship that takes even a single point of Ion damage is ionized and can not move, fire weapons or perform stuns until damage is repaired. The difficulty of the repair depends on ion damage done - but no time window is given. Flip back to Skills and check the Repair skill and you find out that it takes about a minute (10 rounds) to make DC10 repairs, 1-10 points of Ion damage. If I were a group of Y-Wings attacking an Imperial Star Destroyer I would fire a couple of Proton Torpedoes, a couple of ion bolts, and then happily whack the starship to bits with lasers - and it's really that easy.
A third problem is collision damage. What would happen if a pesky Z-95 Headhunter flying at Ramming speed collided with a stationary ISD? It would explode right? Wrong. Collision between a Z-95 (Tiny) and an ISD (Colossal) causes 6d12 points of damage, for a maximum of 72. The Z-95 has 10DR for shields, bringing it down to 62, 30 points of shields, bringing it down to 32, 10DR for hull, bringing it down to 22, and 120 hull points bringing it down to 98 - not even enough damage to cause equipment malfunction. You pretty much bounce back with enough hull points to do it again. The best thing about all this is, it causes the ISD only 12 points of Shield damage (60 Shield DR) - so they were fooling you when the A-Wing did its kamikaze into the Executor's bride in Return of the Jedi..
Then there is the problem of movement and actions. The mechanics have been directly taken from character combat, as I pointed out earlier, so starships can take double moves, a move and an attack or a full attack action. Does this sound stupid to anyone else? Since most starfighters have speed ratings within 1 square of each other, there is no way you can actually attack a fleeing starfighter. A Tie Fighter taking a double move moves 20 squares in a round, that's faster than a tracking missile, so in effect, if you launch a missile at an enemy craft he will just turn around and run away. Of course, there is the problem that an X-Wing following a Tie Fighter who is taking a double move can never hope to fire at it. The Tie Fighter takes a double move of 20 squares, X-Wing moves 9 squares - none of its weapons can fire 11 squares away. It can fire a Proton Torpedo which will travel 9 squares in his attack action but afterwards the Tie Fighter will keep moving 20 while the Torpedo moves 18 squares each round. Pfft. Combat mechanics assume that both sides are willing to fight - pursuit in tactical combat is nearly impossible.
Yet another problem is scale. An X-Wing in atmospheric flight becomes a vehicle of Gargantuan size, so now you know how to deal with it as a vehicle. But what about weapons? Your X-Wing Laser Cannons can fire 5 squares away, that's 250 meters in atmosphere compared to 2500 meters in space. That's less than the range of many heavy weapons in the game, which is odd. Finally, I would like to rant about how insufficient the starship stats in the core rulebook are. This is obviously some kind of plot to make you buy the Starships of the Galaxy book, but that book is now totally incompatible with the new rules, so I have no clue what's going on here. There are no swoop bikes, A-Wings, B-Wings, Tie Interceptors, Tie Advanced x1s.. It's a shame.
And at last we're done with the Player's Section - go grab some tea if you like, because there's still the Gamemaster's Section to discuss.
Section 2: Gamemaster's Section
The section starts out with the Gamemastering chapter, which can best be studied in two parts. The first part is standard generic Gamemastering and campaign management advice for starting gamemasters - these pages haven't added anything significant to my abilities as a gamemaster and I doubt anyone with gamemastering experience will benefit from this text much. And although it is probably useful for first time gamemasters, it's also slightly confusing. The text, in most part, has been directly taken from D&D3 Dungeon Master's Guide. As a result, although the Gamemastering section talks mostly about how to make your game feel like Star Wars, it also goes on about how central combat should be to a campaign - kick in the door, kill the bad guys (they omitted the take the loot part, though).. While at times one starts to feel like the book is giving good Star Wars campaigning advice, the next page feels like it's about how D&D should be run in space. There's a mixed message here, and I wish they wouldn't have been so lazy as to take text from DMG and edit it, changing 'tavern' to 'cantina' and so on..
The second part of the Gamemastering chapter deals with additional game mechanics concerning environmental hazards and hazard damage. Now, those of you who know my gripes with D&D3 and d20 in general know my dislike of the HP system and how awfully irrational it is as demonstrated by the 20th level Dwarf who can jump off mountains and get back on his feet with a grin. After going through the hazard damages for SWRCRB, I have to say I am mostly satisfied with how they have been handled. Suffocation kills regardless of VPs, immersion in acid does wound damage, Radiation disregards VPs - but the falling damage mechanism still makes me sigh.. Although it is a step forward from the D&D3 falling damage mechanism, it still doesn't feel right. Damage, as per D&D3, is 1d6 per 4 meters fallen. However, if a character can make a Reflex save with a DC of 10 + 1 for every 4 meters of fall he has suffered, the damage is applied to VPs instead of WPs. This means that a 20th level Scoundrel with +4 Dex bonus can be 95% sure that he will take only VP damage from a fall of 7x4=28 meters of fall, which is roughly equal to the height of a 10 story building. Even if he jumps off a 16x4=64 meter high building, which is a 20 story building, he has a 50% chance of staying alive. Add to this that there is no DR for different materials of impact (water, vegetation, etc.) and it's still quite frustrating.
Then there is the disappointment that is the Eras of Play chapter. The back cover of the book reads "This product for use with all Star Wars eras." However, only three have been detailed inside, Rise of the Empire, Rebellion and New Jedi Order eras. The two etas that are the Old Republic and New Republic don't see even a single word of mention throughout this chapter. Moreover, the three eras that have been discussed take only two and a half pages, meaning there is absolutely nothing here to use as a campaign background or plot hooks in the revised edition either - if you haven't seen the Star Wars movies or read Expanded Universe novels, you are in real deep trouble. Actually, this is a problem with majority of the book - it assumes that you know Star Wars by heart. Whereas it is a good guide for running and playing games for a Star Wars fan, it falls quite short of the aim for the casual player who wants to play in a Star Wars campaign. In short, the information presented here is too thin to offer any gaming background or plot hooks, and you are doomed to buy an Era sourcebook for your game. The problem is that the Era sourcebooks have been written for the first edition. D'oh!
After only two and a half pages of Era notes, you get a couple dozen pages of major character write ups and stat blocks for personas like Luke Skywalker, Yoda, Count Dooku, etc. I have mixed feelings for this part. Its usefulness is questionable. Aside from satisfying the reader's curiosity ("I wonder what level Yoda is.." etc.) the characters presented here are very likely to appear only briefly, and usually at points where you will not need stats for them. How many games you will run will have Yoda wielding a lightsaber, anyway? Or the players engaging in combat with Darth Vader?
The next chapter, Allies and Opponents is a mini 'Monster Manual' for the Star Wars universe. You get species details and pregenerated commoner stats for each species given, followed by rules for creatures, pregenerated creature stats and rules for creating your own creatures. Finally, the chapter ends with a long list of several archetypes of allies and villains the players may run into during adventures, and pregenerated stat blocks for them. These archetypes include Clone Troopers, Stormtroopers, Yuuzhan-Vong warriors, Dark Jedi, etc. Overall, this chapter is a very useful and well done Gamemaster tool.
The book ends with a chapter about Droids. The chapter details many things such as droids' places in society, droid types, maintenance, accessories and memory wipes. The most welcome addition to the rules since the first addition, however, is rules for playing Droid characters. This option, available in the WEG Star Wars RPG was missing in the first edition, and it improves my idea of the book by a good margin - droid characters are great sources of comic relief in a Star Wars RPG. The chapter ends with a long list of stat blocks for several different types of droids which can be used as opponents or allies as well as character templates for droid characters.
Finally, we have the two page character sheet and a word index, but no table index.
Style
Gosh, I don't know where to start. There are so many things that irritate me about the layout of this book.. Wizards of the Coast are known for making eye candy books, but SWRCRB is quite an exception to this generalization. While many people will probably disagree with me on some my reasons for saying this, I have to note that the book simply didn't look good to me.
OK, Let's start with the pages. The first edition of the rulebook had white pages with blue borders for the Player's Section and Red borders for the Gamemaster's section - which looked quite good too, I have to say. The revised edition, however, has bluish green pages for the Player's section and greenish blue pages for the Gamemaster's section. Whose idea was this? Really, not only does it make reading the book more difficult, but also after handling the book for a while, or trying to erase pencil marks on a page, the green and blue page backgrounds start to smear around! Why, oh why not print on white glossy paper and save on printing costs so we can have the book in a more convenient format for cheaper?..
And speaking of the border art, the border art of the revised edition, compared to the original edition, is with one word, horrible. I don't really know how to describe it, but it looks silly, ugly, and takes up too much space on the page. And what were Wizards of the Coast thinking when they decided to print page numbers on only odd pages? Yes, there are no page numbers on even pages, not a single one.
Now, my third rant is about sidebars. Not only is there too many of them, but they are also annoying. The sidebar format is like this: Main Title, Subtitle, Text. Sounds good, right? Wrong. The subtitles are a bunch of useless text thrown in just because they look cool. Here's an example: Every sidebar in the Starships section has the subtitle [ CRAFT = KOENSAYER BTL-S3 Y-WING ]. So you get a sidebar that can say: CRITICAL HITS [ CRAFT = KOENSAYER BTL-S3 Y-WING ]. Also, have you ever seen a sidebar that takes two full pages? I have, on pages 224 and 225 of SWRCRB.
Cartoonish art makes a return from the original core rulebook, and it looks good. So do stills taken from movies - and I think these two are pretty much what save the book from ending up looking awful. There is neither too much nor too little art in the book, and it really helps give that Star Wars feel to the reader. Also worth a mention is the existence of an extensive and very useful index. But although you'd think, for a game that has probably over a hundred tables, they would also include a tables index, but there isn't one. You have to keep flipping through the chapter until you find the table you're looking for, which is a shame.
Normally, I would have considered a book with this many problems a poor effort, but the book has two redeeming features that really improve my opinion of it. The first is that although it has been written by several authors it manages to maintain a single tone and feel. The second is that it has definitely seen good editing; I haven't found any typographical or grammatical mistakes or word repetitions in almost 400 pages of text, that is quite a feat. This is not something you can see every day in RPG books, these days.
Conclusion
I have a lot of mixed feelings for this product. I love it because it's Star Wars. I hate it because it's d20. But eventually my love and hate seem to have balanced each other out. Despite being a very thick book, physically, the contents are far from what I would have expected from a core rulebook for an RPG line. Rules seem rushed, untested, and at points broken or contradictory. It manages to capture the feel of the movies in some ways, but falls short in others. At times it works, it works rather well, but when you hit one of the rules pitfalls (such as outrunning missiles..) it fails miserably. In terms of substance, it is definitely a huge step forward from the first edition. But after reading 400 pages of rules all over, I now see why it isn't named 2nd edition - because it isn't up there just yet.
So, beware. Although SWRPCRB is thick and full of information, it is still far from being a complete resource for running a Star Wars campaign mostly due to lack of setting information, and therefore has a hard time justifying its cover price of $39.95. Also, this book has been out for a while, and around the time of release of Episode III in 2005, there will inevitably be a new release that should iron out the shortcomings I have noted, and many that I have missed or omitted because the review was too long already. If you are a rabid Star Wars fan who can't do without a Star Wars RPG until then, this is as good a book to get as the Revised 2nd Ed. WEG game. I will not go into a detailed comparison of the two, since this has been done many times already, but the two games both have equal if not the same shortcomings. The game does work, but it is not spectacular in any way. For these reasons I rate SWCRB as average and I give it a substance rating of 3.
As noted earlier, I have serious problems with the book's layout and color choices. Not everyone will agree with these personal rants of mine, but they did, to a large extent, hinder my enjoyment of reading the book (and hence this review was delayed). Despite all these shortcomings, it is still an average looking and reading book, saved mostly by its Star Wars stills, cover art (which is worse than the original edition, though..), uniform voice and splendid editing. Torn between a style rating of 3 and 4, I will choose to give it a four because of the nightmares the border art has given me.
Substance: 3
Style: 3
