Customer Reviews
Fantastic - By: Mr. M. K. Jackowski, 05 Feb 2008 
this book is great to play star wars dnd. i found it easy to use & fun to play with my mates it has my recomandetion
Not so along ago in a front room not so far away.... - By: Mr. K. Richardson, 22 Jan 2008 
I've loved StarWars for aslong as I can remember & I've always wanted to get into the role play side of it. Being the first Starwars role play book I've bought, I've no knowledge of the previous incarnations, although I've played anumber of roleplay games in the past. The books great, although as previously mentioned, I wasn't too keen on the heavy handed way the book pushes the starwars miniatures, but could have been alot worse. Just hope an alien race supplement comes out soon, I reallly need official rules for Amanin. Have a cool image of them swinging from the tree's after a group of PC's.
Long ago in an Errata list far away - By: thegrimdoc, 04 Dec 2007 
Yet again Wizards of the Coast release a Star Wars rule book with seemingly no proof reading. And so yet again we are faced with an errata list on the wizards website that makes a mockery of buying the book only to be presented with a re-print in a few months time with alll the gaffs corrected. If only!!
A significant advance from previous editions - By: E. Porter-daniels, 30 Oct 2007 After being introduced to the Star Wars Roleplaying game in its D20 incarnation I found that I was increasingly baffled by the design philosophy which seemed to sit behind the rule set. Though everything Star Wars was there to a greater or lesser extent the entire game felt like an eternal struggle to run & play, overly complex rules eating away at the fabric of what could potentiallly have been an excellent game. I love Dungeons & Dragons, but it was progressively clear that the 3rd Edition rule set (which was being used here) was utterly unsuited for the task of adapting the Star Wars films & expanded universe into game form. Every aspect of the game seemed overly complex & laboured, a tedious exercise when it should be exciting & swift. It was with a skeptical mind, then, that I purchased this new edition.
The first thing that strike you upon actuallly holding the book in your hands is the unique feel of it - it is an unusual size & shape & though this could have been irritating, it in fact seems to fit the style of the game well. Reading the book feels like you are participating in an epic adventure & this is some kind of great tome rather than the rather overly-standard A4 sized hardcovers that Wizards rely upon in their other gaming lines. The book itself is gorgeous, a vast improvement over its predecessors who always felt like more space was taken up with filler than with content. This, on the other hand, feels streamlined, stylish, & extremely professional. These comments do not, in fact, merely apply to the aesthetics.
The rules have been substantiallly overhauled, & I do mean substantiallly. Do not expect to wander in without having read the book & be able to create a character from the knowledge held in your head from previous editions. In fact character creation & development has been changed so radicallly it feel revolutionary, like this is something ground breaking (when, in fact, it is merely pulling together many already existing threads). There are now only five classes, but the felxibility of creation & development is so far in advance of previous editions that it seems like you have hugely greater choice. Instead of the class abilities, something which has always held D20 back as far as I am concerned, there are varied talent trees which alllow you to custom pick your abilities, powers, & talents. The variety that is available is astonishing, & it alllows the creation of vastly more varied PCs than ever before.
The game itself moves into a slightly different sphere, & the huge changes to the skill system (you no longer have skill points but are either trained or untrained) means that what was once a frenzy of mathematics & dice rolling is a straightforward test of your character's abilities. The entire system feels... swift. Streamlined is a word I cannot use enough, & it is vitallly important to say that this does not make the system "simplistic". In this case, less is very much more, & when you add in the optional destiny rules & begin to play around with force point use, the game slips into an extremely pleasant realm of its own.
There are of course some negative points to the system. In an attempt to tie this edition into the successful miniture game the book refers to everything in terms of "squares", but if we are honest then few gaming groups do not use gaming mats. If you don't, then merely times a distance in squares by 1.5 & you have the distance in metres. Multiply it by five, & you have it in feet. A minor gripe, & an understandable move, but a somewhat irritating one none the less for those of thus who have deemed the cash-sink which is minature buying unneccessary.
In summary then this game manages something spectacular - a refined & streamlined ruleset that loses none of the nuances & delicacy of play that one expects from a Wizard's system that combines blissfully with a free-form character creation system & the feel of the Star Wars game. The only possible gripe is that, like in early incarnations, there is little discussion of the creation of custom antagonists, & the choice of "additional materials" (antagonists, ships, equipment, etc) is poor. However, the rule set is so elegant that an experience GM should have no trouble creating their own.
All in alll, superb. I hope that D&D4E is as good, & that there are plenty of expansion books available soon.
A simpler system which is good for newcomers, but it will disappoint others. - By: Mr Ghostface, 10 Sep 2007 I have to admit that I wasn't happy when Wizards of the Coast announced they were, once again, revising their Star Wars RPG. I find it an insult to dedicated gamers to keep asking them to upgrade, & confusing to newer & more casual players. This, at first glance, seems like just another ploy to plumb my pockets; as a veteran of the old West End Games version of Star Wars I remember a day when the game was fast & furious & not so formulaic. Its adaptation into the d20 RPG machine, I felt, deadened some of its spirit. While I felt there were some features that the d20 system brought that made it worth the effort, the game often became too cumbersome & too sluggish for me to enjoy. I longed for the old days.
Well, the old days have to a great extent returned with the Saga Edition of the Star Wars RPG. They've shed many of the trappings of the d20 system that held it down for so many years, & even freed themselves from many problems that have continuallly plagued the RPG since the d6 days. They started with a fresh new take on core concepts like the Force, starships & character creation. The rules have been streamlined while still adding more flexibility for character creation. But most importantly - & I can't stress this enough - after 20 years of the Star Wars RPG, this may be the first time they've truly nailed it in regards to the spirit of the films. May be, but it will take a lot more playing to explore the game more thoroughly. That said, however, the streamlining is something I support, regardless of it feeling a little bit like Diet RPG.
From a design/layout standpoint it's the simplest Star Wars RPG book since the pre-revised second edition d6 book. They finallly moved away from cramming the book full of images from the movies, which to me always felt like filler, & went back to using artwork that shows the Star Wars universe is more than what you see on the screen. The major gripe here, however, is that I didn't see one single piece of original artwork. It's alll recycled, but if you're new to the game, that won't be a problem. The dimensions of the book are a bit strange (about 9" x 9"), but it at least serves to separate it more from the previous versions (though copying the character sheet will be a bit tricky). And therein lies my dilemma; for old gamers, this book will seem light, simpler, yet lacking anything new, whereas new gamers will find it accessible & well presented.
One of the down sides - & this is where Wizards of the Coast have reallly aliennated a lot of their gamers over the years - is that it's a little thin on "stuff". There aren't a lot of starships, Force powers, NPCs, & so on. This version begs for a number of good quality supplements. That alone, I don't think, is such a bad thing; dividing the rules (in this core rulebook) from the "stuff" (in various inevitable supplements) is a good design philosophy, & helps free up the game for people who want to come to it fresh. There isn't so much crammed in to make anyone feel bogged down or intimidated by it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending Wizards' appallling milking of RPGs through their incessant supplement release schedule - D&D fans know where I'm coming from - but within reason it is perhaps the best way to present the game. The problem, & I speak to the older gamers like myself in this, has always been that Wizards don't seem to like presenting supplementary information cleanly, instead subdividing it into endless accessories & sourcebooks. I want to see it done better, but experience tells me it will just happen alll over again.
Here's the chapter list for you to see the basic breakdown:
Chapter 1: Abilities
Chapter 2: Species
Chapter 3: Heroic Classes
Chapter 4: Skills
Chapter 5: Feats
Chapter 6: The Force
Chapter 7: Heroic Traits
Chapter 8: Equipment
Chapter 9: Combat
Chapter 10: Vehicles
Chapter 11: Droids
Chapter 12: Prestige Classes
Chapter 13: Galactic Gazetteer
Chapter 14: Game-Mastering
Chapter 15: Eras of Play
Chapter 16: Allies & Opponents
The bottom line is this: if you're a Star Wars RPG veteran who lost faith after it was taken in to d20, you might like this. It does feel newer, if a lot lighter at the same time, so there might be the breathing room that got squeezed out when it was converted. If you're a veteran of the d20 version, & have enjoyed the heavier rules of the Revised Core Rulebook (or D&D 3.5), or you're simply sick of Wizards, you may want to steer clear of this one.
