New Day, New Character
Day 16
Star Wars
I'm not sure I can give the West End Games version of Star Wars a proper introduction. Others have written about its influence not only on RPG's, but in a perhaps unique occurrence, influence on the original IP itself. In any case, I'm certainly not qualified to speak of the game in terms of its "greater impact," only in terms of my history with gaming.This version of Star Wars was the first licensed RPG I ever played, and my first experience delving into a world I had already "played" in, even if that play was classic make believe of running around with friends and having "lightsaber" battles with flashlights, or smashing our toys together in pretend battles for the fate of the galaxy. Being able to combine my love for the movies with my love of RPG's was absolutely amazing! Even if the first games I played tended to focus a lot of time on smuggling "spice" under the watchful glare of imperial authorities. Still, the magic was there, and it was incredible.
The game is a "D6" game, with everything being decided by throwing six sided dice. Characters have various attributes that have a value in these dice--for example, a really strong character might 4D6 in Strength. Various skills are tied to each attribute, such as Brawling for Strength. These have their own ratings, and one combines them for the pool. All the results of the thrown dice are then added together, and then compared against a difficulty to determine success or failure. In addition, there are "in between" stages, referred to as "pips"--either "+1" or "+2." So, a character might have Brawling of 1D+2, and they would roll 5D6 and add 2 to the total. There's no +3--one just goes up to the next die at that point. As I'm restricted to only the editions I have in print, I will be using the Second Edition for this post.