February 15, 2013: Star Wars Roleplaying, Take Three

In 1987 I tackled and ran with West End Games' Star Wars RPG. Far, far too many hours were spent on weekends and evenings after school running games inspired by the movies, the Marvel comics, and the few novels that existed at the time (remember, this was before Zahn's Heir to the Empire launched the Expanded Universe and changed the face of Star Wars forever). And the Star Wars fun continued for several years, eventually leading to the point that I contributed to a few of the West End Games releases in the mid-nineties. Now that was a bit exciting, and I still regret never pushing myself harder to work with WEG on the game.

In 2000, Wizards of the Coast published their own Star Wars RPG. Based on their D20 System mechanics, the game had some fun ideas -- I think applying Feats to the Star Wars universe worked very well and I loved the Hero's Guide that they published -- but the game never seemed to gain legs and was eventually replaced with the Saga Edition in 2007. Another D20-based game, I never once played the Saga Edition . . . but I do have a large collection of the books since they make fantastic resource books. In 2010 the game was let go and that was the end of new Star Wars RPG material.

Until now.

Now Fantasy Flight Games has the license, and from what I saw in the playtest book their new Star Wars: Edge of the Empire Roleplaying Game has potential to be a lot of fun. It features custom dice, gorgeous production values, and a focus on the seedier side of the Star Wars universe. I read through the playtest manual a few times, and decided that once the full game sees release I'll have to give it a shot.

Well, it looks like I've been so deep in Ogre work that I completely missed the release of the Edge of the Empire Beginner Game.