Owen K. C. Stephens

I'm having mixed reactions to this version of the game. On the one hand, they've added some useful mechanics to make character development more flexible and gotten rid of the plethora of Force skills (replacing them with a single Use the Force skill). The combat section is clear, marred only by the transparency with which it's shilling for the Star Wars miniatures products. (The fault for this may lie with Lucasfilm rather than WotC, though; the Lucasfilm lawyers are formidable.)

On the other show more hand, there are now Force powers, Force talents, Force techniques, and Force secrets that can interact with each other. There are some very artificial and bizarre mechanics, such as having to rotate among different Force powers as if they're a deck of cards rather than abilities a character possesses, and linking Force points (a mechanism for heroic effort) to level progression (so the frequency with which one can perform heroic feats is related to the frequency of XP rewards). There's also a new notion of Destiny, which gives yet another mechanism for fudging events in the service of a long-term goal; I'm rather dubious of a system that gives advantages to characters who have picked a Destiny, while those who aren't as heavily immersed in the setting have nothing to match it. And the gamemastering section isn't as richly detailed as that in the previous edition.

This is still worth keeping around to raid for ideas while I build a Star Wars game using the FATE rules. show less

A way cleaner system than Dungeons and Dragons (even 4th edition)

Even if you're not big on Star Wars, the various role-playing possibilities of that universe are effectively exploited. There is far less emphasis on number-crunching, and yet the rules derived from the fairly-simple numeric structure seem far more intuitive than the grand D20 framework it borrowed from.

This will be immensely useful if I can get my players to take the pilot skill. In the meantime, I can just drool over the many space battles that I can't participate in, and pine over that particular starcraft that I could never afford unless I had pulled-off that last great heist against the trade confederation. Sigh. Gimmie that really old-time feeling, in a galaxy oh so far away.

If you're into playing dragon-people then this is for you, but it didn't grab me at all and I'll stick with my dwarf cleric!