Star Wars role-playing game (WEG)
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| Star Wars The Roleplaying Game |
|
 Second Edition Revised and Expanded cover |
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| Designer | Greg Costikyan |
|---|---|
| Publisher | West End Games |
| Publication date | 1987 (1st Edition) 1992 (2nd Edition) 1996 (2nd Edition Revised and Expanded) |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction |
| System | Custom (Precursor to D6 System) |
The Star Wars Roleplaying Game is a role-playing game (RPG) set in the Star Wars universe, written and published by West End Games (WEG) between 1987 and 1999. A later but unrelated Star Wars RPG was published by Wizards of the Coast in 2000.
The game, based on WEG's earlier Ghostbusters RPG, established much of the groundwork of what later became the Star Wars Expanded Universe, and their sourcebooks are still frequently cited by Star Wars fans as reference material. Lucasfilm considered their 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.[citation needed]
Many sourcebooks and adventure supplements were published for the game during its run through three editions. 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.
The Star Wars Roleplaying Game won the Origins Award for Best Roleplaying Rules of 1987.[1]
Contents |
[edit] Core Rule Books
1st Edition Rules
The Star Wars Role Playing Game (1987) ISBN 0-87431-065-2
2nd Edition Rules
The Star Wars Role Playing Game Second Edition (1992) ISBN 0-874-31181-0
The Star Wars Role Playing Game Second Edition * Revised and Expanded (1996) ISBN 0-87431-268-X
[edit] Spinoffs
The Luke Skywalker and Han Solo adventures were a kind of Choose Your Own Adventure book. The Imperial Doublecross gamebook used the Star Wars d6 rules and character's die codes. The Lightsaber Dueling Pack and Starfighter Battle Book were picture gamebooks, presenting viewpoint series of pictures and the possible next courses of action, similar to Ace of Aces.
Four board games - Star Warriors, Escape from the Death Star, Assault on Hoth, and Battle for Endor were published and coincided along with the RPG, and a miniature wargame was written in 1989, called Star Wars Miniatures Battles.
In the early 1990s, before the advent of the modern Internet, the FidoNet Star Wars Echo ran a message forum for playing the West End Games Star Wars Roleplaying Game on-line on computer bulletin board systems. The game also gathered a large internet following via such mailing lists such as the SW-RPG Mailing List.
[edit] References
- ^ Origins Award Winners (1987). Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design. Retrieved on 2007-10-09.
[edit] External links
- The Rancor Pit, a site dedicated to the game
- The Vast Empire, an Imperial Star Wars role-playing club
- Raptor Squad, a campaign-oriented site focusing on a rebel specops team using the WEG SWRPG D6 rules.
