Galaxy at War and Scavenger’s Guide to Droids Take Star Wars RPG in New Directions
The era of Star Wars RPG era guides is over, which is probably a good idea, since they’ve already covered every conceivable time period in the Star Wars expanded universe. These new (well, newish) books offer a plethora of options for droid builders and droid characters, plus inside info on Star Wars military organizations, perfect for a martial-themed campaign.
Galaxy at War came out a few months ago, and represents an interesting change in direction for the Star Wars RPG. Previous books have been almost exclusively focused on specific eras in the Star Wars fictional timeline. This book is an overview of military factions and themes throughout Star Wars history. It offers advice for military campaigns, new skills and feat trees for military characters and a ton of hot new equipment for making war. I like the background information, such as the military rank system used by the Imperial Navy and the slang terms used by military personnel to describe various enemies, pieces of gear or places. If there’s one thing any military loves, it’s jargon, so so referring to droidekas as “rollies” or TIE Interceptors as “squints” can add a colorful touch to a campaign.
The best part of the book, though? Scenarios! The Star Wars RPG has always been short on published adventures (they do offer some free adventures and even entire campaigns for free at the Wizards of the Coast website). The last section of Galaxy at War has a bunch of two-part encounters that would probably fit well into a single evening of gaming. They take place across several different terrain types and involve common military situations, like retaking a captured space ship, capturing a choke point, holding a defensive position against superior numbers and extracting a wounded comrade from a hostile area.
To top it off, Galaxy at War concludes with Operation: First Breach, an entire adventure set during the Clone Wars. The characters are dropped onto a hostile planet and have to infiltrate a bunker to take control of an ion cannon. It’s a solid adventure with opportunities for many different character types to shine, and a great excuse to put all the military flavor in this book to use. Reading through it, I found it would be fairly simple to adapt the entire adventure to the classic Star Wars era if you’re not really into the Clone Wars. You could set it some time after the Battle of Hoth, with the Rebel Alliance needing to liberate a planet from Imperial control to unblock the flow of crucial supplies and intelligence.
Scavenger’s Guide to Droids is a fun book with a simple premise. You can think of it as a toolbox for droids and droid owners. Of course there’s a huge list of new droids, many of which can be played as characters. One of the coolest things about playing a droid in the Star Wars RPG is the ability to install upgrades on yourself, and this book delivers a ton of new options. If you’re curious about the interaction between droids and organics in the Star Wars universe, there’s a section on droid politics and prejudices against droids (there have been quite a few droid rebellions, it turns out).
The authors put some effort into making this book something more than a glorified parts list. Each droid is described in terms of its historical significance, including what company produced it, why it was designed in the first place, how many were made, how they were used and common modifications. I love this kind of technical pseudo-history (it’s why I reread my Battletech technical manuals over and over). It really helps give the Star Wars universe a cohesive sense of logic. In addition, a few characters pop up after each droid description with a little story hook involving that kind of droid. Some of them are pretty weak (the droid dealer seems to lean on the “I had this droid that was probably really important, but it wandered away from my scrap shop” story a little too often). Still, there are some nice ways to integrate new droid types into your adventures.
You can order both Galaxy at War and Scavenger’s Guide to Droids from TrollandToad.com.
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