Best Starwars Game

Wiseman · Post by **Wiseman** » Thu Aug 13, 2015 4:53 pm

I've been in a sort of Starwarsy mood and I'm wondering what starwars games are actually good. Any recommendations?

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Thu Aug 13, 2015 5:18 pm

Well, only 3 Star Wars games actually exist: WEG, WotC, FFG. And while it pains me to say it, I think WotC is actually the best one. In WEG starting characters are below the level of C3P-0 or even Porkins, and the game is full of artefacts of old design (like becoming a NPC after N eaten kittens). FFG is the only one I've actually played, and while it's not bad, I hesitate to call it good. It also wants you to be a very small fry, Edge of the Empire is pretty much an equialent of street level Shadowrun. The character progression is boring and slow for the most part, and funky dice are funky. At 'high' levels the game breaks on invincible Brawl monsters, and heavy weapons having infinite damage.
SAGA edition appeals to me because it has a lot of Extended Universe stuff, and allows you to become a sith lord or a body switching droid or something. Star Wars d20 is the highest powered SW game.

If you are into DIY gaming, I would recommend looking into Mindjammer (a FATE hack which can be fairly easily converted into Star Wars), or PDQ engine, for which you can write your own set of star wars qualities.

RedstoneOrc · Post by **RedstoneOrc** » Thu Aug 13, 2015 5:54 pm

I too vote for saga as best star wars rpg.

inb4 phonelobster meltdown.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Thu Aug 13, 2015 5:59 pm

Best Star Wars game I ever played was in the Hero system.

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Thu Aug 13, 2015 9:28 pm

There are (at least) three Star Wars d20 editions:

Star Wars Roleplaying Game
Star Wars Roleplaying Game revised (armor-as-DR and some other minor changes)
Saga (I haven't read this one)

Fucks · Post by **Fucks** » Thu Aug 13, 2015 9:52 pm

FFG (Edge of the Empire, Age of Rebellion, and Force & Destiny combined), hands downs.

silva · Post by **silva** » Fri Aug 14, 2015 12:11 am

1. WEG Star Wars, FFG Star Wars
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.
.
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(a very distant second)
2. Star Wars Saga.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Fri Aug 14, 2015 12:34 am

RedstoneOrc wrote:I too vote for saga as best star wars rpg.
inb4 phonelobster meltdown.

Look, I got an incredibly extensive comprehensive list reasons of why it is incredibly terrible. (which I should get back to to review some splats).

You got a "meh I like it/dislike it the least for no reason".

I'm comfortable with that position and that's why the review exists.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Fri Aug 14, 2015 3:13 am

I've only played SAGA and WEG. If forced to choose between what's available SW wise I'd go for Saga. Currently I choose just not to play SW because I don't like what's available. I have run Saga and played in it once (Though I won't count that terrible experience against the system). I only played the other a few times and each time was bad.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Fri Aug 14, 2015 3:38 am

MGuy wrote:Currently I choose just not to play SW because I don't like what's available.

You have made the correct choice.

Though I sometimes wonder whether star wars is even a suitable setting for a tabletop RPG.

Jedi are better you, force morality is a barrel of cocks, and no one anyone cares about cares about the extended universe which mostly isn't even cannon anymore (hah).

Ultimately a star wars RPG needs to deal with those problems. Which might mean mugging even movie cannon in a back alley and giving it a severe surgical makeover.

I'm not sure they are insurmountable problems, but I don't think I've even seen a star wars rules set that has even come close to even looking like it made a convincing good faith attempt at them.

Mind you there ARE at least two star wars rules sets I know next to nothing about, but I don't hear anything good.

Fucks · Post by **Fucks** » Fri Aug 14, 2015 9:41 am

This is my favourite board for discussing FFG Star Wars.

Stinktopus · Post by **Stinktopus** » Fri Aug 14, 2015 3:07 pm

The best Star Wars RPG is Traveller.

Dean · Post by **Dean** » Fri Aug 14, 2015 6:03 pm

I too choose Saga. Saga has the baseline functionality that the other systems don't which is why it's winning this little vote off.

This means there are two good reasons to vote for it, one because that's correct and second because it means Phonelobster will lose his MIND and write another 70,000 words about Saga and do that weird thing where he "wrytes quotes of other people like this11!1" and tells you what you said and claims victory a lot. It's the most fun we can have without Zak S around and I think we can get it rolling by page 2 if we just keep talking.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Aug 14, 2015 6:50 pm

My local Star Wars fanatic likes Saga. I'm not a super big fan of SW to begin with (too loaded with 70s genre fiction aesthetics), and in my experience most SW gms are canon whores to boot, but I trust his opinion on what's a good game for it.

Of course, to run a proper game, you need to decide whether everyone is a Jedi or no one is.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Fri Aug 14, 2015 8:42 pm

I didn't realize Saga was basically a full up reboot of D20 SW so I never bothered with it. The D20 Star Wars game was fucking atrociously bad. And I do mean *intolerably* bad.

So between WEG, the original iteration of D20 SW, and FFG offering... well... I'll take WEG. It's kind of outdated but it mostly functions as intended. The problem is as always Angel Summoner vs BMX Bandit with Force/not force users.

Shady314 · Post by **Shady314** » Fri Aug 14, 2015 9:44 pm

I wouldn't play any of those systems for good reason. If I had to I'd use Mutants and Masterminds 3e.

mlangsdorf · Post by **mlangsdorf** » Fri Aug 14, 2015 9:56 pm

My most successful Star Wars games were the ones when I completed ignored canon beyond aesthetics and just let people do what they wanted. I used Savage Worlds because its fast to play even if it sucks.

I've played in 3-5 different Star Wars games in the last decade with a dozen different people, and only one person cared about canon at all. And he was the biggest pain in the ass because he cared about canon. Everyone else was all, "laser swords and space princesses and blaster guns and rubber forehead aliens? Cool! Count us in!"

SAGA or WEG aren't too bad until you get a lot of experience, and then they fall apart. d20 Star Wars is bad at every level and is just unfun.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Sat Aug 15, 2015 12:43 am

Saga. It helps that there's not a whole lot of competition, but Saga is legitimately a pretty good game. Not great and certainly not flawless, but good.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Sat Aug 15, 2015 3:43 am

mlangsdorf wrote:My most successful Star Wars games were the ones when I completed ignored canon beyond aesthetics and just let people do what they wanted. I used Savage Worlds because its fast to play even if it sucks.

I've played in 3-5 different Star Wars games in the last decade with a dozen different people, and only one person cared about canon at all. And he was the biggest pain in the ass because he cared about canon. Everyone else was all, "laser swords and space princesses and blaster guns and rubber forehead aliens? Cool! Count us in!"

SAGA or WEG aren't too bad until you get a lot of experience, and then they fall apart. d20 Star Wars is bad at every level and is just unfun.

I'd almost like to hack Spycraft into a Sci Fi Star Wars setting. The ship based combat would be legitimately interesting, everyone would have crazy fun abilities, and the idea of working for a mercenary company or a spec ops department of the Empire or Alliance is appealing to me.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Aug 15, 2015 1:48 pm

To be honest, Star Wars doesn't really seem to be that demanding in terms of game system. There are a lot of aliens with different foreheads or whatever, and if you spend enough time on wookiepedia you might even know what some of them are called. But so what? I mean yes, you could look up all the information about Psandans or H'nemthes or whatever, but what would that tell you about what they are capable of in a game? If a Psandan was given a blaster and a name, would you expect it to be better or worse than a H'nemthe at shooting things? The reality is that even if you're enough of a canon whore to know what those species even are, you still likely have no expectations whatsoever of such humdrum questions of aptitude.

The races and devices in Star Wars are canonically essentially interchangeable, and no specific mechanics are needed to define them. Thus, any game system could be used for "Star Wars" with very minimal alteration.

So it seems to me the "best" Star Wars game would be something that worked at all and could be given a new coat of paint in a hurry. Feng Shui or Fate. for example. I think it would be trivial to write up some Star Wars flavored Feng Shui archetypes, for example, and then you're done. Seems obvious that would be a better Star Wars game than any of the officially licensed offerings.

-Username17

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Sat Aug 15, 2015 4:30 pm

I've heard 4e D&D's combat system described as "swashbuckly", which suggests it would do well for lightsaber duels.

Now we just need:

Something for space combat
a bunch of quick and simple mechanics to cover all that other minor stuff you might want to do like sneaking around and gathering information.

Stinktopus · Post by **Stinktopus** » Sat Aug 15, 2015 7:54 pm

RadiantPhoenix wrote:I've heard 4e D&D's combat system described as "swashbuckly", which suggests it would do well for lightsaber duels.

Now we just need:
Something for space combat

a bunch of quick and simple mechanics to cover all that other minor stuff you might want to do like sneaking around and gathering information.

4E D&D is padded sumo and tactical positioning that doesn't look like anything that ever happened in a Star Wars film.

Star Wars kinda demands a system where actually getting hit fucks you up.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Aug 15, 2015 8:09 pm

Stinktopus wrote:4E D&D is padded sumo and tactical positioning that doesn't look like anything that ever happened in a Star Wars film.

Not in any of the good Star Wars films anyway.

-Username17

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Sun Aug 16, 2015 4:11 am

I'll admit, I was kind of assuming that people would want to go with prequel-style lightsaber battles rather than classic-style. Classic style probably doesn't want 4e as a combat system from what I recall.

Stinktopus wrote:Star Wars kinda demands a system where actually getting hit fucks you up.

Rename HP "Battle Reserve" or something, rename Bloodied "winded", and declare that you're not really hit until you're out of Battle Reserve.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Aug 16, 2015 6:02 am

RadiantPhoenix wrote:I'll admit, I was kind of assuming that people would want to go with prequel-style lightsaber battles rather than classic-style.

No one liked any of the lightsaber battles or any battle where Jedi played a prominent role in the prequel trilogy except for the Darth Maul battle and maybe the Obi vs. Jango fight. And I suspect that the only reason why people liked the Darth Maul battle is because Ray Park is a genius and that was the closest the first movie came to having a decent action scene.

Honestly, I'd like to use the Gennedy Tartakovsky cartoons as a model for Jedi fights in Star Wars but they pretty much established that Jedi > you in those. Maybe Frank's idea to just write a Feng Shui hack was the right idea all along. After all, is there something you can do in on-foot fights in Star Wars that you couldn't do passably in Feng Shui?