The Gamemaster Section
This is about half the printed material in the book. As you might expect, this is where most of the rules actually are. Also, lots of advice about how to run a game, in varying quality.
Chapter One: An Introduction to Gamemastering.
In true 1980s RPG mode, the gamemaster does all teh work. He's supposed to provide a story with a climax (note implied railroading), make sure the players abide by the rules of the game, impartially referee the results (except he's pulling difficulty numbers out of his ass), playing NPCs, and maintaining suspension of disbelief.
Some of the advice is not bad. 'Use all 5 senses' is something that a lot of GMs really do need to be told, because we so often default to just describing what characters *see*.
"Be willing to improvise" - railroad, but be prepared to lay new tracks? I don't even know. 'Make sure they get to the climax you had planned no matter what they do'? Despite having one designer, he seems to have contradictory goals here - you're supposed to lay out a story without player participation, but also be willing to let players participate in creating the story AT THE SAME TIME. fuck.
Be consistent. Basically, the rules and the world should remain constant unless there's a reason for the difference. Ie, objects don't suddenly explode unless something causes them to explode, and rules don't suddenly operate differently unless there's something causing them to operate differently. This is the kind of thing that shouldn't need to be said, yet for some reason does, and I'm glad it got a paragraph.
Be responsive to players - it's their game too! *yay*
Then we talk about setting the tone. Banter with the players (the example is truly awful), lots of aliens, sci fi settings, etc... Also, because the source material demands it, "pseudoscientific gobbledygook". Ie, servomotors instead of gears and hydrospanners instead of wrenches, because George Lucas was a wanker. Fortunately the tavern is still a tavern... okay, it's a cantina, but that's at least a real word. (Sadly, you can't just order a beer).
The eight things to remember about being a gamemaster on page 28 is something every gamemaster should have to read at least once. Sadly, it is too much text to reproduce here, but to quickly summarize: You don't know everything, do understand the rules, be prepared to extend the rules (make shit up) as needed, expect to be wrong sometimes, be fair, be impartial in player conflicts, be prepared, be entertaining.
Chapter Two: Attributes and Skills
Rules Note: There are 6 attributes - Dexterity, Strength, Knowledge, Perception, Mechanical (Aptitude), and Technical (Aptitude).
It is page 30 and we get guidelines for how hard difficulty numbers should be. Actually, that's really good, especially considering 11 of the preceeding pages had nothing to do with rules at all.
Difficulties are sadly and obviously not balanced to any game standard. They just took numbers that looked nice and round, came up with a progression, and away we go. For the record, suggested difficulties are 5/10/15/20/30 for very easy, easy, moderate, hard, and very hard tasks.
Rules Note: Every (non-droid) character has 18D of total attributes, divided between 6 attributes (and possibly losing up to 3D on force skills). No attribute is lower than 2D and with only one exception, no attribute is higher than 4D.
It should be immediately obvious that a 15 is not 'moderately difficult' for most characters - even if they have invested a little into the relevant skill (so they're rolling more than their attribute). The average roll on 4D is 14, which is almost fair for moderate, but most characters won't even get 4D on most tasks. (And if you think character advancement actually encourages generalizing, you're fooling yourself). So most characters are basically starting off the RNG at most unopposed tasks and have to invest xp into getting on the RNG.
Also, the difficulty tract assumes that increasing by a linear amount is a linear increase in difficulty. This is patently untrue of course, but it's the 80s, so game designers knowing anything about probability or variance is a lost cause.
A not-stupid difficulty progression probably looks something like 5, 8, 11, 15, 20+. The last category really does need to be unbounded. On the one hand, if you play long enough you really will have someone rolling 7D on astronavigation, and figuring out a workable hyperspace route in 5s between two planets that are rarely traveled between should be a crapshoot at best. But on the other hand, stuff people invest time in should stop being challenging unless it really is a crazy feat. When you're the best shot in the galaxy, a merely hard task isn't really. But shooting the apple off your brother's head at 300 meters is more than just 'very hard'. (Opposed rolls, obviously, scale off the opposition).
But 5,10,15... is easy to remember, and you can kind of fake it by handing out a few extra dice at character creation and enforcing the 2D limit on spending to one skill at creation.
Amusingly, the GM doesn't have to tell the players the difficulty ahead of time. (They have reasons, some good and some bad, why you might choose not to. But it is kind of dickish).
"Roleplay it out" - 3 paragraphs to tell you that Magical Tea Party is a legitimate way to handle things. You can "roll in secret", and let the roll determine how well the players have to MTP to get what they want. Ah roleplaying in the 80s.
'Interpreting Rolls' - letting how well a player succeeds at something based on their roll is entirely optional, and left up to teh GM to interpret. The example involves letting the player get a permanent bonus on their starship for a great roll, so the sky's the limits here on how much having a nice GM can ratchet up your power. I mean, the idea is nice in principle, but considering that permanent bonus on the starship would have otherwise cost skill points (re: experience reward), whether or not stuff like that happens is a huge factor in how the game plays.
Skill Descriptions
We couldn't be bothered to actually tell players what their skills do, but someone has to know.
Probably one of the more 'interesting' (ug) things about SW d6s skill system, in light of future systems, is that it let you add skills to the sheet for stuff that wasn't covered. This means there was an infinite number of possible skills, and players had finite skill points to spend, of course. This isn't necessarily a terrible thing, except mostly it gets used for dickery. Want to use a wookie bowcaster? Gets its own skill. Archaic weapons like black powder firearms? Gets its own skill. Fuck you for wanting to use 'Blaster'. Oh yeah, and there's seriously a published adventure where stitching emperor beanie babies together to give to an orphanage is the
climactic moment where you're expected to spend your force point, and they make it use
its own fucking skill. I mean, fuck. So, not a totally awful idea if used wisely, but mostly it was just used for dickery.
Also, lightsaber is a skill that characters who learn to use one add to their character sheets, because it couldn't possibly work like other melee weapons. Fuck you force users.
Most of this section is dedicated to providing a bit more guidance on what difficulty scales are for different skills, which is of varying helpfulness. Some of it tells you what opposed rolls you might call for and when, which is more useful.
Note that the rules for Con and Command are *very favorable* to PCs, because its entirely based on how gullible the target is (or likely to believe the person using the skill), not how crazy the thing requested is. If you kill an imperial admiral, you can put his clothes on and seriously con the crew of a star destroyer or any fucking stormtrooper you run across ever and command them to do whatever you want. Social monsters are the road to real ultimate power if you go by the guidelines. Fortunately, most GMs have some sanity remaining, and because they're just guidelines and the players aren't even supposed to read this (but they will), you can just make difficulties reasonable, like impersonating an admiral *and* commanding the star destroyer to open fire on another star destroyer is an epic difficulty requiring a 50 or something, because fuck starting characters shouldn't even have a shot at that. (And people can fucking end up with 12D in Con).
Chapter 3: Combat
While nominally having a strict 5s/round pacing and referencing meters, the SW combat system is very forgiving to playing without a battlemat. Part of this is that most characters would rather fire a blaster than attack someone with a vibroblade. (Lightsaber? fuck you force users). That means that you just have to really declare whether each target is in PB, short, med, or long range, which gives you approximate distances in meters and thus how much movement would be needed to change those.
Of course, having an approximate map always helps.
Rules Note: A combat round has a decision segment, a declaration segment, and then a series of action segments until everyone is done. Once you declare for the round, your actions execute as described in order, one per action segment, with some responses (dodging) allowed.
Basic combat involves rolling to hit with the appropriate skill code, rolling damage (usually the weapon code, although melee uses str+weapon code; melee weapons just have a smaller code), and target soaking with str + armor.
A hit character either suffers a glancing blow (no effect), is wounded, is incapacitated, or is mortally wounded (or i suppose dead outright is the next step). Which depends on a comparison of damage to soak rolls, and works multiplicatively. (Damage > soak = wound, but Damage > 2x soak = incapacitated.) Taking a similar wound as one you already have increases the wound category by one.
Since damage codes are frequently on teh same order as soak codes, this means lots of hits deal no real damage, and most real damage is just a wound. Most mooks have absolutely worse attributes than the players, so enemies are more often incapacitated. (Melee is absolutely the road to real ultimate power here, and lightsabers even more so, which may be why they tried to fuck force users so much. Of course, a social monster just never fights, and isn't hated by the rules).
Being wounded makes you worse at most things by taking a die out of your dicepool.
Theres a section on using maps, miniatures, and other optional things you might choose to use. Note on miniatures: fuck squares. Come up with an inch to meter conversion, get a tape measure, and just measure the damn things. (Actually, in a game like SW this has a lot to recommend itself, since we really don't have to worry about stuff like reach weapons, because most of the combat game should be blaster fire).
As with all 80s RPGs, we also get a description of what each weapon is. No, not mechanics. Flavor description. This is actually kind of useful, since most people have never seen a 'blaster carbine' and you can't go find one in real life. Many entries reference a character in the movies so you can get a visual image.
Chapter Four: Wounds and Healing
This is seriously only 1 page long. There's a short bit on wound effects, then most of it is on how you heal. Falling and collisions somehow made it into this chapter too...
The gist of it is: being more than wounded sucks, don't do it. If you do, hope your buddies have enough credits to get you a rejuvenation tank somewhere, because natural healing is not recommended.
Chapter Five: Starships
Some of this is mechanical information, like what stats ships have (with stats for common things from the movies, like x-wings and TIE fighters). Some of this is how players without their own ships might adventure in SW, like book passage on a ship. Some of this is basically plot hooks (Pirates and Privateers, Imperial Patrols).
Rules for hyperspace travel are going to come up all the time if players have a ship. (And if they don't start with one, you're probably going to want them to get one).
Rules for Astrogation: How to railroad your players in space. Let me quote:
Gamemastering Tip: Making Rules Serve the Plot
How long does it take to get from Planet A to star system B?
The correct answer is: as long as you want it to take.
This is just after discussing standard rules for determining travel times. Because, you know, adhering to the rules you *just made* is too hard.
Also, random crap can drift in and out of hyperspace routes by GM fiat, so you can have that space encounter with ghost people from Denebulon 17 or whatever. Your sensors pick up an object and wham! - out of hyperspace. On the one hand, yay railroading? On the other hand, stumbling across stuff in space has a niche. Unfortunately, there's no advice about moderation in using this.
Starship combat: kinda like ground combat, except even less specificity. Seriously, these rules are made for IRC games. They're not terrible if you're riding a stock light freighter like the Millenium Falcon and a small group of TIE fighters or an Imperial Customs Frigate gets into a firefight with you. They are awful if the PCs ever have more than one ship. I mean, you might be able to handle 2-3, but it will suck, and after that its total crap.
They're pretty forthright in telling you 'this is not for mass combat in space'. Heck "We could design an game on [multi-ship combat] (and have)". Yep, that game is called Star Warriors, its a boxed game from the 80s, and it plugs into d6 SW pretty well. (Seriously, recommended) But if you just bought the RPG, too bad, you don't have it.
The rules for improving ships are ass. People can spend skill points to work on the ship and improve it, but only if they can make suitable rolls on Starship Repair. Generally, this means the one guy who has Starship Repair (typically the owner of the ship) gets stuck holding the bag, and can choose to reduce his own power to make the ship more awesome. Ick.
((Two chapters to go, I'll finish this sometime today)
