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Rashly Retreading Role Playing in Star Wars, Part One
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Let's play Starships and Supernovas... whoops, I mean, let's check out the Star Wars Roleplaying Game! We welcome back Tad Leckman to dive into all things Star Wars RPG. Want to tell a story and roll a LOT of dice? You've come to the right place!
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast and Guest
00:00:00
Speaker
We're rolling a bunch of dice with the Star Wars RPG and we're doing it real quick. Aren't you a little short? Aren't you a little short? Aren't you a little short for a Star Trooper?
00:00:13
Speaker
Welcome back to Short for a Stormtrooper and I am delighted to bring back one of my favorite Star Wars friends. He is Mr. Tad Lechman. If you recall our very first few episodes, Tad was a guest at the very beginning.
00:00:27
Speaker
He used to work at Lucasfilm and actually is in the Star Wars special edition somewhere. I don't think he's ever really figured out where, but he's in there somewhere.
RPG Passion and Star Wars Focus
00:00:38
Speaker
ah But we've had a lot of Star Wars adventures over the years.
00:00:41
Speaker
We actually met working together at a video game company. He was the director, well, he was the dean of art when I was working in the learning department there. And we struck up a friendship. We have a lot in common. And one of the things that we have in common is a love for role-playing games too. So things like Dungeons and Dragons,
00:01:02
Speaker
Daggerheart. We'll talk about Daggerheart in a few minutes, but we're going to talk about the Star Wars RPG with Tad. So let's dive in and here is me and Tad.
00:01:14
Speaker
As always, there are just a myriad of different Star Wars related or Star Wars adjacent topics that we could talk about. But what we want to talk about today is specifically the Star Wars role-playing game.
00:01:29
Speaker
Actually, you know what, let's say the Star Wars role-playing games.
Tad's RPG Journey
00:01:33
Speaker
Games. Yeah, that might be interesting. um And maybe let's start off with what's your journey and kind of your current status just in the field of of tabletop role-playing games?
00:01:48
Speaker
Yeah. So like, what's your cred, you know? Yeah. So, well, like many people of our vintage, uh, I was introduced to, was hard to not be influenced by Dungeons and Dragons in the eighties and played a little bit with friends and then kind of, it, it went away.
00:02:10
Speaker
from my life for a long role-playing games in general, but D&D specifically went away from my life for decades. I still would like buy books, but didn't ever play and kind of kept up with things like it's fun to read, rule real books and things. That was the same as me all through college. I kept buying books and be like, oh, I'm gonna find somebody to play this. And then like, we never did. No, yeah.
00:02:30
Speaker
And then ah fast forward to, um my gosh, almost like 15 plus years ago, Got invited by some friends um at work where you and I work together not to just join a weekly game that they had going at their um house and kind of got sucked back into tabletop role-playing games with, at that point it was Pathfinder, which is effectively kind of, it's pretty much D&D.
00:02:57
Speaker
um But before then, apropos of our conversation today, the first game that I was invited to play with that group was Star Wars. They wanted to start playing the Fantasy Flight, at that point, new Fantasy Flight Star Wars game, which was just Edge of Empire at that point.
00:03:15
Speaker
Gotcha. Okay, so you jumped in with the Fantasy Flight Yeah. Did you ever play the West End games version? I didn't. And it's again, I, um, I had, I think I had a couple of the books, the source books, cause they were just good general purpose, Star Wars source books.
00:03:31
Speaker
Um, and I had a ton of the miniatures. that they produced for that game, which were slightly smaller than normal D and D 28 millimeter. Yeah. But I, uh, our game store in town when I was in college, again, i was not playing games at all.
00:03:46
Speaker
Uh, they had a sale, they were blowing them out. And so they were like 50% off. So I bought like six boxes of star Wars minis, including the Rancor monster, which is amazing.
00:03:57
Speaker
Oh my gosh, you still have these? I do. ah Incredible. That's great. um Yeah, West End Games, I think was the first licensee of the IP to do a role playing game. And this was one of the games that again, I bought the book when I was in college with the intention of playing and I don't know if I ever even had a session but I do still have that original West End Games book.
00:04:19
Speaker
And I've recently borrowed a full set of them from a friend of mine just to go through them because i with the intention of finally playing it.
Comparing Star Wars RPG Systems
00:04:26
Speaker
Yeah. Because I have played. So even since that first game with coworkers of the Fantasy Flight Star Wars RPG of of Edge of Empire, I've had a chance to play a couple of times with my family and really like, and we'll talk about why, but I really do like that Fantasy Flight rule set for Star Wars especially because But there are people are very passionate about the West End Games.
00:04:48
Speaker
Yeah. D6 version of Star Wars. And I want to understand why. And part part of my cred is I do teach game design at the college level and have had some really interesting conversations with some other tabletop role playing game folks about how well a system aligns to the fantasy that you want at the table. And they're having multiple versions of a Star Wars role-playing game.
00:05:17
Speaker
What a great opportunity to compare which one mechanically might do better at capturing the feeling of Star Wars. Yeah, well, let's talk about that. Let's go there. So now we're going into what's kind of the new version or the the current version of the Star Wars role-playing game ah created by Fantasy Flight Games. And I know, like, are they still publishing it under that brand? Because I know they've done some weirdness. They are not. So yeah, so maybe helpful to listeners to also let them know when I say Fantasy fantasy Flight, Star Wars role-playing game, you won't it is actually...
00:05:51
Speaker
No, because it is now an imprint of Edge Studio. Edge Studio, that's it. yeah Which is part of Asmodee, which also is the umbrella organization that owns Fantasy Flight, but they've been moving their...
00:06:04
Speaker
IP based ah games around a lot within their company. So, yeah, so it's, it's, but I mean, if you still, if you go to your local game store, if you go to a bookstore, if you go um searching online, if you look for star Wars role-playing game, you will find the current one.
00:06:21
Speaker
It's easily enough, especially um we should probably talk now about the fact that it's, the game is actually three different games who or three versions of the same game.
00:06:35
Speaker
So I mentioned edge of empire. That was the first one that came, came out, but they've also published since then, um age of rebellion and force and destiny.
00:06:46
Speaker
Yeah. All the same rules. Everything is the same. Like 90% of those rule books is exactly the same. Yeah. But um with a slightly different flavor and a slightly different focus.
00:06:59
Speaker
So yeah. Edge of Empire is more smugglers, underworld, outer rim, Han Solo and other scoundrels are the focus of that one. There's little, if any, force sensitive folks in that. There's certainly no Jedis in that. Yeah.
00:07:17
Speaker
Um, you're going to get your bounty hunters in there, right?
Understanding RPG Mechanics
00:07:21
Speaker
That's exactly. And so all the source books for that are like about bounty hunters and, and, uh, folks, folks living on the fringes.
00:07:28
Speaker
So kind of, if you dug the Mandalorian, yes, you're probably right there with edge of the empire. Exactly right. And, uh, age of rebellion is more military. So if you were more into kind of what the rebellion was doing, or for some reason, if you were excited about the empire,
00:07:44
Speaker
Yeah, then we have to talk, but then we have to talk. That's a whole nother podcast. It is a whole nother podcast. um But again, also that one, ah same rule set, just different focus.
00:07:55
Speaker
like a little A little bit more of our ah force in the rule set. But really, if you want to if you're really interested in Jedi and force sensitive folks, then force and destiny is the game that they kind of made the flavor of the game for you.
00:08:09
Speaker
Yeah. So that's Jedi Sith. You're getting into your force magic stuff. Yeah. And so you've got skills, skills you can build along kind of developing your force skills. So then you can do all the classic,
00:08:22
Speaker
Mind mind um influencing and yeah telekinesis and all that other good stuff is is in there. And then does it does it also get into that kooky Star Wars space magic that we saw in Clone Wars and like the Acolyte and stuff like that?
00:08:36
Speaker
ah A little bit, yes. Just, just if if for no other reason, just to give you more things to do if you've built a character sure and more more things more skills to grow into Yeah. So it's kind it's all the same rules, but those are just kind of the three different tones. And they're obviously all interchangeable. i You could take characters from from one to the other and and that will make sense.
00:08:58
Speaker
um I imagine that our listeners, most there are going to be a few people who have never even tried playing Dungeons and Dragons, but I bet everybody has at least tried it and kind of gets the basic idea of,
00:09:11
Speaker
You've got six attributes or six traits. Those influence the die rolls that you make. And then you want to do something. You roll a Dorney sided die and the DM for some reason has a number in mind and And you may have some, yeah, you may have some skills that will give you a bonus to that role to make them more likely that you'll succeed. Yeah.
00:09:35
Speaker
But that really is the of it. That's why they call it a D20 system. Correct. So that's, and that's, you know there are a huge number of tabletop role-playing games beyond, Dungeons and Dragons that use a very similar system or some, like you said, D20 is actually, it's, it's a term of art for a, so a type of rule set that uses as a 20 sided die to, to resolve those.
00:09:58
Speaker
Yeah. Those issues. Yes. Yeah. So yeah. How is star Wars different? Cause I know it's very different. It is very different. So yeah, you know, if you go into a game store and say, I need game dice to play a tabletop role playing game, they will sell you basically the same set of seven dice, which is D4, a D6, a D8, a D10, a D12, a D20.
00:10:21
Speaker
yeah um And those are like the D&D dice. And if you go into the store and say, hi, I'm going to be playing Edge of Empire with my friends and I'd like to get dice, ah you will get some of those same shapes.
00:10:33
Speaker
But unlike the other dice, they will not have numbers on them. And some of the faces will not have anything on them. They have weird symbols. They're there're ah sometimes called funky dice.
00:10:47
Speaker
um And they're different colors. And what's what you described is exactly kind of the standard way to resolve ah combat or skill checks in a game like Dungeons & Dragons.
00:11:02
Speaker
where it really is, you're trying to hit a target number. It's very light math, but it is math. Yeah. Whereas for this style of game, for Edge of Empire and the other Star Wars, ah kind of contemporary Star Wars RPG games, they're based on a system called Genesis that you can actually buy separately, but it's like 90% of the people who play this system, it's it's playing the Star Wars RPG.
00:11:27
Speaker
And there are... ah in general, of those the the weird dice that you get, half of them are kind of positive dice and half of them are negative dice.
00:11:38
Speaker
And so basically the way that they work is if you want to do something, so say you're hiding behind some containers and you see ah stormtrooper patrolling and you want to shoot the the stormtrooper.
00:11:52
Speaker
Yeah. You and the game master together will start with your positive dice and like, okay, well, you've got these skills in mark and marksmanship.
00:12:03
Speaker
So we'll put in X number of positive dice for that. And then, oh, you're actually really good at using this type of gun because maybe you formerly were in the military or you've got some training. So we'll add some bonus dices for you for that as well.
00:12:17
Speaker
And then you've modified that blaster. You get a correct, right? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And, and maybe it's, you've got a completely clear site. It's a beautiful weather. Everything is great. Like you're well
Story-Driven Gameplay and Conclusion
00:12:29
Speaker
set up to do this. So you'll have a larger pool of dice and therefore a greater chance of success.
00:12:35
Speaker
Right. But then to balance out that pool, then the negative dice get added and the the game master will say, okay we got your positive dice sorted. Now here's, here's the sad news.
00:12:48
Speaker
He's actually like, you're farther away than you might be able to make a good shot. So I'm going to add a negative dice and that might had some negative consequences.
00:12:59
Speaker
um He's on patrol. So he's actively looking around. So he's, he's vigilant. So I'm going to add another die from the negative pool. And you wind up with a mix of,
00:13:10
Speaker
dice that have positive outcomes for you and dice that have negative outcomes. And it's what's really fun about it, Bob, is you have this big pile of dice and you roll them all. Yeah. they just Explode them on the table.
00:13:23
Speaker
It's so much fun. And, but then, and this is the thing that, folks who are used to traditional tabletop role-playing games sometimes bounce up against is now you're faced with 12 dice, all with weird symbols on them, different colors, some of them positive, some of them negative, some of them with no results showing on the face. It's just a blank face.
00:13:43
Speaker
And so there is a process that takes a while to get used to, but once you do, it's really satisfying. And we can talk about why in particular for Star Wars, but the process is you go through with the...
00:13:55
Speaker
the game master, some of those positive dice and negative dice cancel each other out. So you take them out of the equation. And once you do that, you're left with like, okay, overall positive result. You achieve the thing that you tried to do.
00:14:08
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, wait, but ah there's still a negative die left. So you achieved it, but there's a negative consequence. Okay. And then you and the game master, but usually the game master will say, okay, here's what happens. You hit the storm trooper.
00:14:24
Speaker
However, you've alerted a group of other stormtroopers around the corner that you hadn't seen. So you you move, the game moves forward. You're successful with that thing, but uh-oh, something else happened.
00:14:36
Speaker
yeah Likewise, you can fail by having predominantly the negative dice turn up um in a way that is positive, but you may have some positive dice left over that mean you failed, but something good happened.
00:14:53
Speaker
So you didn't hit the storm trooper, but you distracted him and he moves away and now you can get past him if you need to. Like, so it's it is not, most most tabletop role playing games are binary pass fail.
00:15:07
Speaker
So you you you hit the monster or you don't hit the monster. And on that cliffhanger, we are going to stop for today. We'll be back with Tad next week. We'll wrap up our conversation. In the meantime, please hit like, hit subscribe, write us a review, tell all your friends.
00:15:22
Speaker
May the force be with you. We'll see you next week. Use that mindless choice to do. Podcast, help you see them through. Star Wars is your favorite unit. Let's chat for 15 minutes.
00:15:33
Speaker
Aren't you a little short? Aren't you a little short? Aren't you a little short for sporn trooper? Aren't you a little so far enough?