Star Wars Roleplaying Game Saga Edition: Opinions?

[Kurgan]

I confess, I've never played the Star Wars RPG. My experience with
pencil & paper RPG's consists of one short session my brother and I did
for one using Champions (a super hero/fantasy based system) once a
few years back. Back in the day we played "Hero Quest" a lot, but when it comes to games, I'm more of an action video game fan, though I also enjoy the typical board game. Still, I can see the value in p&p RPG's and would like to give them a fair shake.

I know opinions are strong, so I'm curious about all this...

Back in 2002, I saw the new "Revised Core Rulebook" of the Star Wars RPG out at Barnes & Noble (with the Episode II characters on the cover), and was tempted to buy it to try out the game. But then I remember thinking to myself "oh, in three years, they'll just have the Episode III version out..." and decided to wait.

Anyway, I seem to have missed this 2007 book release (Star Wars Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook, Saga Edition) which Amazon is selling for $22.

Is it worth it? Again, I don't own any of the books and I don't want to spend a fortune on it (and no, I've never played the miniatures game and I don't have the kind of cash to start a Warhammer-esque hobby with it either). But I wonder what the best experience would be.

I'd especially love to hear from gamer junkies who have played all the different editions.

I'd love to hear your opinions! Thanks in advance.

[Ritterin Sophia]

It's supposed to be more streamlined, I suggest reading the 4th Edition D&D Thread in G&C, since Saga was pretty much the prototype for that. I've yet to play it, but I do know a couple things that I think were good ideas and which ones weren't.

Pro's- The Jedi have been consolidated into one class, where you branch out and specialize.
Force Powers have been streamlined; in D20 SWRPG and Revised each Force Power was a skill unto itself, which meant a full fledged Force User had a lot of skills to choose from and not enough skill points to go around. Now they've all been consolidated into one skill, Use Force.
Con's- HP System implemented; in the first two D20's the game used a Vitality/Wound Point system, where Vitality represented a glancing blow and a Wound was a direct hit. When you got a critical you automatically apply damage to wounds, considering your typical stormie wielded a 3d8 weapon and your wound points typically were equal to your Con Score, this meant if you did something stupid there was a good chance of a one-hit kill. Thus the PC's are rewarded for using cover and this also means the GM couldn't be stupid and let the PC's get a clear shot on the Big Bad Evil Guy. It was very risky and you couldn't do the things you could do in D&D with a D12 HD character, like soak arrows.

The Cons can be easilly House Ruled Away by using the VP/WP System on the D20 SRD.

Also, unlike the previous version of Starships of the Galaxies, I hear the SAGA version does not have a ship building/customizing guide. So fuck you Wizards.

So, since I only see a 1/2 Con/Pro, I'm gonna say slightly better.

[Ghost Rider]

Off to G&C....

[Bedlam]

To me the best star wars system ever was the 90s WEG D6 system. So very simple to play, feels so heroic particularly the character and force points and had loads of cheap material published for it.

[Kurgan]

Well, it looks to me like buying all the books on Amazon for the Saga system is over 190$. How much do the other books cost?

And do you really even need the other books, or is it that without them you have to make up the numbers for "movie type items" in the universe?

I actually was kind of interested in the 1987 version of the game, just because so much of it has seeped into Star Wars Lore over the years. Are the older things cheaper or more expensive?

[Rogue 9]

Ummm... Last I checked, there were only three books for the SAGA edition out; there will be more releases later, but I thought that so far it was only the core book, Starships of the Galaxy, and Threats of the Galaxy (which I hear is in dire need of errata). Unless the latter two are selling for significantly more than $22 (which they're not; I'm looking at it now), you're probably looking at some books for the old edition.

If you're counting future releases available for preorder then yes, I can see it being that much, but several of them are specific campaign guides and so forth, so if, say, you don't feel like playing in the Old Republic era, you can skip the KOTOR Campaign Guide.

[Straha]

Here's what you do instead. Leave the book on the shelf. Go to your computer and download every single Star Wars WEG D6 book you can find. Read the rules to understand how bloody simple and yet brilliant it was. Then come back here and we'll organize a game which we can all play and enjoy instead of you having to play that D20 Crap.

[Old Plympto]

I love the WEG system. Simple but very versatile. You can create a very detailed NPC in a minute I kid you not. Very good for coming up with impromptu scenarios which doesn't consist of a simple quest and killing of mooks.

I bought the original rulebook and the 2nd edition blue book when they first came out. Got the Revised 2nd Edition (the full color throughout book) from Amazon's used books section a couple of years ago.

Back on topic, I've not played Saga Edition. I've tried the 2nd Editon via PBEM years ago and didn't get into the d20 groove. However, a buddy of mine swears by the 2nd edition and seems to like it much more than the Saga Edition which he says makes SWRPG into more of a wargame than an RPG. (Obviously there are ways around that, but I guess it's too much work right now to mod the rules.)

Perhaps someone can verify or refute that here?

[Eleas]

In all honesty, much as I hate d20, I just can't find it in myself not to love Star Wars SAGA pretty damn unreservedly. If you want the reasons, ask me and I will deliver. Extensively. And I loved the WEG system, warts (power creep, unmanageable Jedi, bizarre scale situations) and all.

[Kurgan]

Go ahead, bore us to tears, I'd like to hear about it.

Ummm... Last I checked, there were only three books for the SAGA edition out; there will be more releases later, but I thought that so far it was only the core book, Starships of the Galaxy, and Threats of the Galaxy (which I hear is in dire need of errata). Unless the latter two are selling for significantly more than $22 (which they're not; I'm looking at it now), you're probably looking at some books for the old edition.

I was just going by this guy's amazon list which included like 8 books. I was including shipping for the "best price" used editions too (might be cheaper in some cases to get new and the bulk free shipping rate, I didn't bother to check).

If you're counting future releases available for preorder then yes, I can see it being that much, but several of them are specific campaign guides and so forth, so if, say, you don't feel like playing in the Old Republic era, you can skip the KOTOR Campaign Guide.

Anyway, you're talking to a n00b here (pwnt, lmfao!).

[Eleas]

Go ahead, bore us to tears, I'd like to hear about it.

All right.

I used to love the old WEG Star Wars. It pretty much exemplified the gritty matinee aspect of the Old Trilogy, the idea of heroes thrown together by circumstance and who were (usually) smart, lucky and canny, but always tended to skid from adventure to adventure, often by accident. We did try to play Jedi back then, but it just didn't work; for one thing, no-one had seen very much of a full Jedi in action, more than the fact that they could deflect blaster bolts, choke people telekinetically and lift huge-ass starfighters; for another, the system was punishing as a neophyte Force user, and then, when you moved beyond that, you were pretty much a god. Still, ignoring that, the game was nothing sort of awesome: quick, simple rules that premiered fast-paced space opera battle, cooperative storytelling, improvisation and rip-roaring adventure.

Then, of course, came the announcement that Wizards would develop a new d20-based Star Wars. We were pretty much united in skepticism; having seen what d20 was about, we figured nothing good could possibly come out of it, and certainly nothing worthy of the name Star Wars. But an incorrigible optimist - that would be me - decided to take the plunge and give the system a shot, just to be fair (and because I had the money to spend on a supplement, for once).

Oh dear God, Star Wars d20 sucked. Where to begin? Artificial and arbitrary distinctions between Jedi classes (I defy anyone to rationalize the Jedi Counsilor / Guardian paths and the prohibition to jump between them from an in-universe perspective), a clunky grind-based combat system, a starship combat system that just plain didn't work, fresh fallacies in terms of fluff, and the good old D&D balance madness. Graphically it was disturbingly stupid, fusing Wizards' love of heavy machine-like frames with chaotic layout in which vital information was effectively camouflaged. In fact, I will go so far as to assert that the only good thing SW d20 did was including the Vitality/Wound Point dichotomy, which at least was a decent attempt at avoiding the dread hit point yo yo. You could certainly not have an interesting character at any less than level 4; that too was lifted part and parcel from the d20 model, in which your character begins as a blank manikin and only gradually begins to exhibit life of his own. That wouldn't be so bad, of course, if the game hadn't been couched in language that I swear was deliberately chosen to stifle creativity. Remember folks - this is a sacred system, and not to be questioned. If you don't follow the rules, there's no telling what will happen!

Then came the Revised Star Wars d20 edition. It did feel a bit like milking the cash cow, but at least the game, though still unplayable, had been improved. It was prettier, if still hard to find your way through, especially in a hurry; what's more, it held all those basic Prestige Classes that allowed you to, you know, do something with your character. Given the stifling of creativity that was the original Star Wars, and its lack of interesting options for your character, that was a much-needed breath of fresh air. Still, to the core it remained shackled to the legacy it had brought with it from d20 Star Wars and D&D - a bloated, clunky, bland, thoroughly un-Star Wars combat system, a skill system simultaneously too detailed and too large-scaled, a house of cards with hidden cross-system dependencies so blatant that only a complete fucking retard could (and did, of course) call it modular. After rolling my eyes at the carnage of our game testing sessions, I resigned myself to adapting a Unisystem Lite Star Wars system, if only for the ability to use Jedi as characters.

And that's what the field looked like with the coming of Star Wars SAGA system. So why, burnt as I had been twice before, did I buy it? Well, first, I'm a sucker for fresh directions, and so the format of the new book (a square shape, whee!) and its comparatively tiny size made for a very nice change. Second, I had heard rumours of the creators actually wanting to simplify things, and include some D&D 4 changes into the engine, to speed things up and make it suck less. So I figured "hey, it's just one book." And, you know, it was.

So what do I mean by that? Just what I was saying. It's just one book. You don't need a Power of the Jedi or Dark Side Sourcebook. Everything formerly handled by five or six tomes, each twice the size of the new book, that new book could do, and do better. Sure, if you don't want to create your own starship stats for every crappy little skiff there is, by all means get Starships of the Galaxy (just be aware that you'll get a few kickass new rules additions on modifying and building new starships, as well as starship battles). Same goes for Threats of the Galaxy. Otherwise, you're not just fine with the SAGA core book; everything else is gravy. And that's something I find intensely sympathetic after the years of active gouging delivered by the previous editions.

The layout, then? I whined about it earlier, so is SAGA any better? I have to say, hell yes. It's obvious the SAGA team started over, because they managed to unfuck the mistakes of all previous editions without adding new problems. Instead of furiously wanking to bizarre graphical spatters, quasi-mechanical panels and random symbols, we're given a clean, colourful and eminently legible design that actually, you know, facilitates reading the fucking thing. The illustrations are in many cases retained, although new ones have been added - I personally have no problem with this, but I hear others have.

The game itself is, to put it in succinct terms, everything the old post-WEG incarnations weren't, and in wracking my brains trying to discover the underlying reasons, I think I've stumbled upon an answer. The designers of the first d20 Star Wars seem to have set down around a table and asked themselves, "right, now that we've bought the licence for a d20 Star Wars version, how do we make Star Wars into d20?" In other words, they adapted and conformed Star Wars to d20, instead of the other way around. The revised edition retained this, a sort of entrenched mindset of d20 veneration in which the core principles are sacred arcana. Whereas in SAGA, they were daring, they were experimental, and best of all, they seem to have built it on the principle of "hey, how do we make rules that encourage what we see in the films?" And in doing so, they removed many of the idiosyncratic one-of-a-kind rules that led people to create bizarre multiclassing comboes for "character optimization."

Said character optimization, in all its gangrenous glory, has largely been made obsolete through a hefty infusion of Star Wars. As mentioned above, the designers asked themselves how they would go about encouraging characters to act in a Star Wars fashion. One of the d20 legacies they euthanized was the absurd specialisation of characters in a team. Any Star Wars character, they reasoned, can help out in a firefight, pitch in in a repair session, or try their hand at piloting a ship, so it made no sense not to let them try. Thus, characters generally have a wide degree of basic competence, while still being head and shoulders above the rest in their respective specialities. This is the difference between the whole team taking part in a frantic dogfight and a single player having a blast for two hours of game time while the rest spend it twiddling their thumbs. This broad competence, by the way, extends to Force users.

Did you hear that right? Yes, I did mean that anyone can be a Force user (unless you happen to be a droid or a Vong, that is). You simply pick the Force Sensitive feat, and you're good to go. It was doable in the previous d20 games, granted. It was also nigh-useless, as the Force was so tightly intertwined with the Force Adept, Jedi Consular, and Jedi Guardian classes that you virtually needed to be one of those classes in order to use it. Now, of course, only one of these remains (the Jedi), and the Force Adept is simply one of the other core classes or a multiclass build who happens to have chosen the Force Sensitive and Force Training feats. Multiclassing in this game doesn't overly weaken the character; neither does it lead to godhood.

When looking at the classes, they've chopped away four of them. In the original d20 game you had Fringer, Noble, Scoundrel, Scout, Soldier, Force Adept, Jedi Consular and Jedi Guardian (the final class, the Tech Specialist, was added for the Revised Edition). SAGA has reduced them to Jedi, Noble, Scoundrel, Scout and Soldier; the new classes are instead flexible enough to allow the creation of all that the old ones were, plus a lot of concepts the old ones actively stifled. The difference between classes is uniform now - no more house-of-cards system of special rules precariously balancing one class against another. They differ in attack bonuses, class skills, starting feats, defenses, and talents; talents are the class-specific feat-like abilities that differentiate one class against another. Talents are grouped in trees, and you generally pick your talent from one that has to do with what you want your character to be like (for instance, if you want to be a computer whiz, the Scoundrel talent tree Slicer is probably up your alley). Certain feats, such as Force Sensitive, allows you access to unique talent trees (in the case of Force Sensitive, these talents generally represent an untrained or primal application of the Force, rather than the more specific Jedi or Sith talent trees, who often deal with more martial or sophisticated applications.

Skills are one facet of the game that honestly have elicited my naked admiration. Not content with simply pruning away extrenous skills, the SAGA team decided to create a system in which you simply choose whether you have a skill, or not. Your basic level in any skill is the Ability bonus plus half your total level. If you are trained in a skill, you get +5 to it, and are able to use several applications of it that aren't otherwise allowed (you can also take the Skill Focus feat for an additional +5, which can be... devastating). This is the same system used in D&D 4, but in my opinion to much greater effect here, because Star Wars has a far greater focus on skill usage. When first I read about the skill system, I thought it would take away freedom of choice. In practice, it beats the hell out of the previous system, which just feels like it's punishing you if you don't optimize the hell out of it; the new system lets you make meaningful choices instead of devolving into micromanagement.

The Force itself, rather than the nightmare of Feats and skills in the old games, simply requires you to be Force Sensitive, which lets you employ the Use the Force skill untrained. The skill gives you a host of abilities right off the bat: you can enter hibernation trance, you can use telekinesis on small objects the size of a milk carton, you can use a short-term Force intuition, you can sense disturbances, you can sense the presence of people nearby, and you can send brief telepathic messages. Nothing overly impressive, but certainly useful. The feat Force Training (combined with a number of nifty talents) is what makes you a Force user extraordinaire. It lets you pick a number of powers that you can discharge in a given scene. In the previous editions, you had to fuel the Force by vitality points, a nightmarish bookkeeping situation I'm happy to be rid of. The rules for these powers are generally straightforward. It generally involves making a Use the Force check, and exceeding something (in the case of Negate Energy, the "something" is the amount of damage dealt by an energy attack). Not to harp on it overly much, but in my book, simplicity = good.

The removal of Vitality is another controversy, but to my mind, Vitality (a good idea though it was) is simply not needed anymore with the addition of the threshold and condition track system. The resultant system is a tad more abstract, but grounded by the condition system, which gives a clearer picture of what's happening.

Instead of going on, I'll simply say that the best thing about the system is this: it feels like the old WEG system in all important respects. It allows you what the previous d20 iterations took away from you - the creation of a spur-of-the-moment hero who was quirky, brash and fun to play from the get-go, not at the conclusion of a year-long campaign. A friend of mine, for instance, created a character for a Rebellion era game. It was supposed to be pretty dark, so he made an ISB infiltrator, a talented young agent who had been sent undercover to root out rebels. I can't recall if he was a Scout or a Scoundrel - it's not germane to the example - but the kicker was, he was unknowingly a Force-user. In fact, his uncanny powers of perception that had made him the apple in his superior's eye were a direct result of him channeling the Force. So how to create such a character? Well, take the Force Sensitive feat, pick the Use the Force skill (or don't), and from the Sense talent tree, pick Force Perception. With a free feat and at least four skill picks to spare, there's your unknowing Force adept.

So yeah, I love the system. It's not perfect - the grappling rules in particular I feel have been neutered for anyone without the requisite feats, and I still have some questions about the Destiny system. But still... it's impressive, it's fast-paced, it's fun, and by God, it's Star Wars.

[Raesene]

I'll not vote, as I don't know previous editions and therefore can't compare SAGA to its ancestors

I'm DM'ming my gaming group in Dawn of Defiance. So far, we finished the first adventure and (from the feedback I got) people like the system. It's easy to learn. The proficiency system is more logical with everybody being able to do everything, poeple who are trained are just better and have more options of things they can do. Talent trees and feats allow you to design your character flexibly, and multiclassing ins no problem, even encouraged. The combat system with HP and damage threshold (which reduces your abilities if you get hit severely) is almost intuitively understandable, and character death can be avoided by spending Force points, which can also be used to provide additional boni to attack or skill rolls.

The SAGA edtion rulebook provides a lot of different possibilites for character creation, the other books out (Starships of the Galaxy and Threats of the Galaxy) are additions, but not necessary to play. SotG delivers additional options for starship combat (by taking a feat, you can choose from a list of space combat options), TotG is basically the Monster Manual containing a lot of ready to use NPCs. It might be in need of errata, but for me it's an aid to me as lazy GM who doesn't care wether the NPC mercenary they want to hire is correct in every feat and talent prerequisite, I just need an NPC answering my PCs because they turned left when I planned on having them turn right and don't have the time to spend creating and fine-tuning one when I'm in the middle of a session.

In short, I'll echo Eleas and say I'm lovin' it.