The system that popularized the D6 System.
Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game is a role-playing game set in the Star Wars universe, written and published by West End Games (WEG) between 1987 and 1999. The game system was slightly modified and rereleased in 2004 as D6 Space, which used a generic space opera setting. An unrelated Star Wars RPG was published by Wizards of the Coast from 2000 to 2010. Since 2012 the official Star Wars role-playing game is another unrelated game, published by Fantasy Flight Games.
History[]
1987-1999[]
The game, based on WEG's earlier Ghostbusters RPG, established much of the groundwork of what later became the Star Wars expanded universe, and its sourcebooks are still frequently cited by Star Wars fans as reference material. Lucasfilm considered the West End Games' Star Wars sourcebooks so authoritative that when Timothy Zahn was hired to write what became the Thrawn trilogy, he was sent a box of West End Games Star Wars books and directed to base his novel on the background material presented within. Many of the first uses of Star Wars alien names (such as the Twi'lek, Rodian, and Quarren) appeared for the first time in WEG's Star Wars books. Even after Disney's reboot of the Star Wars Expanded Universe in 2014, much of this nomenclature still exists in new canon works.[1]
In 1992 West End Games published the second edition of the game, in which the title remained unchanged. In 1996 a revision of the second edition saw the light of day, but its title was slightly changed from Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game - Second Edition to The Star Wars Roleplaying Game: Second Edition - Revised and Expanded.[2]
By the end of the game's run around 140 sourcebook and adventure supplements were published for the game during its run through three editions.[3]
In addition fifteen issues of a magazine series, the Star Wars Adventure Journal, were published between 1994 and 1998. The Adventure Journal was published in novel format of around 280 pages, and consisted of adventures and articles for the game, plus short stories intended to provide inspiration for gamemasters and news relating to Star Wars.
WEG's license to produce Star Wars material was lost after the company declared bankruptcy in 1998, and the license was later picked up by Wizards of the Coast, who held the license until 2010.
Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game won the Origins Award for Best Roleplaying Rules of 1987.[4]
2000->[]
Fan communities continued existing since the game went out of print, making homerules, fan conversions of ideas from the newer Star Wars games.
In 2015 the sizeable REUP fan edition was released by REUP-team, based on Star Wars 2E R&E and included more stats, expanded rules from rulebooks & D6 Space.
In 2016 a fanmade 3rd Edition was made by LegendaryExGamer. It had it's 23rd revision 2018-18-04. Among 3rd Edition's changes from earlier versions was the 3 force skills was unified to one single force attribute, other force-related revisions and droid PC rules.
Fantasy Flight Games announced in 2017 they were going to make a 30th Anniversary Edition's reprint of the first rule book and a sourcebook, scheduled for Q4 2017. The release was pushed to for unknown reason to June 5th, 2018.[5]
A fan-version of the old Adventure Journal was released 4th of May 2018.[6] Later in the year Issue 2 was released.[7], and the first Glaxy Guide: Rotgut Station [8] at 180 pages was released in November 2018.
Mechanics[]
The game have had 3 official versions and 2 major fan-versions released, all with some variations, but still using the D6 system at its core.
Official Releases[]
- Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game (1987)
- Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game, Second Edition (1992)
- Introduces the Wild Die, minor combat changes, more force powers
- Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game, Second Edition, Revised and Expanded (2E R&E) (1996)
- Option to spend character points on rolls, other minor changes
Major Fan Releases[]
- Revised, Expanded & UPdated (REUP) (2015) by Womp Rat Press
- Include some expanded rules from sourcebooks and D6 Space, more force powers
- 3rd Edition (2017) by LegendaryExGamer
- Revised force-users, notably unified the 3 for skills to a single force attribute
Communities elsewhere[]
- Rancor Pitthe Star Wars D6 fan forum
- FB fan page
- Fan-run Adventures Journal FB page
- G+ community
- Discord channel
- StarWarsD6 on Reddit
- Roll20 Star Wars D6 Hub
- FFG subforum for the 30th Anniversary Edition
Other links[]
- Fan-made Supplements
- D6Holocron Everything for the D6 Star Wars RPG
References[]
- ↑ Template:Cite web
- ↑ All role-playing games' covers from West End Games can be seen in RPG.net, a role-playing games specialized website.
- ↑ http://www.sandcrawler.com/SWB/westend.html Star Wars Collectors Bible - West End Games List
- ↑ Template:Cite web
- ↑ https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2017/8/16/dont-underestimate-the-force/
- ↑ http://www.d6holocron.com/downloads/books/AJ050418.pdf
- ↑ http://d6holocron.com/downloads/books/AJ080318.pdf
- ↑ http://d6holocron.com/downloads/books/AJ-GG-1-1118.pdf