Today I was at a book shop. Upon the shelf, they had a fairly wide collection of Star Wars D6 books, many of which have been there for a very long time. Among them was a copy of Star Wars The Roleplaying Game, First Edition.
Seeing as how it was a mere $8, and I happened to have more than as much in my bank account, and that I currently had no hard copy of any version of D6, I acquired it immediately.
So far I've just been skimming through things. Some interesting stuff that I liked:
1) A quote from the first chapter, describing a chargen session in which two players work out their character's histories and their interrelation:
QuoteKid: You sure this isn't too melodramatic?
GM: No, sounds good to me. Besides, melodrama is easy to roleplay.
That's just awesome. The absolute cheek of it, the attitude, it's just so refreshing. "Nah, who cares, that just makes it more fun." FUCK. YEAH. That's the kind of attitude I'd like to see more of.
2) On a more mundane mechanical level, I think I might like the 1e wounding rule better. Basing it off margin of success in a direct mathematical progression, instead of an arbitrary chart, seems like it would be much easier to eyeball on the fly. Though I could also see it adding up to making lethal shots that much harder.
SR 1E 2E
_2 _6 18
_3 _9 19
_5 15 21
_7 21 23
_8 24 24
_9 27 25
10 30 26
11 33 27
12 36 28
1E makes armor REALLY useful, and makes it much harder to kill STR 3D or higher characters (PC or non)... but the inability to kill stormtroopers with a blaster carbine (expected roll of 15-20 vs expected STR+Armor of 10-12) meant a lot of stunned or lightly wounded stormtroopers, where a +4 to +8 means a light wound as well in 2E... but it also means than an exceptional roll in both cases (30+ on 5D, vs 18 on 3D) mortally wounds or kills, instead of light wounds.
Still, I have my original edition... and my 2E and 2ERev rulebooks. 2E really produces better (IE, more like the Ep4-6 movies) results.
Edit:
and the chart from memory:
0-3
4-8
9-12
13-15
16+
just have to remember 3/8/12/15... 5/4/3 width...
1E WAS faster to run.
Kudos on the find; last nifty bit of stuff I found anywhere was the Darkstryder boxed set, the Lords of the Expanse boxed set and the LUG Way of D'era boxed set (all at the same place too).
What I find amusing in some ways is to haul out the old WEG sourcebooks and compare their imagined Clone Wars history and the like with the stuff as its turned out.
Congratulations!
I always thought those were some of the most fun rules to read and play. The examples of play are priceless, especially "Players will be Players", where the PCs dress up the ewok in an R2 unit to slip past the stormtroopers. "I take flute, make whistle, tootle toot!" Priceless.
Best advice ever: make funny noises.
"Waaaah-OWWW!" TIE fighter.
"Pyew-pyew-pyew!" Blaster.
"BYUMM! Whoom-whoom!" Lightsaber.
and...
(Hold hand or cup over mouth for echo effect)
"P_Chik! It's them! Blast them!" Stormtroopers.
Great fun.
ah, star wars gaming, before the dark times....before the prequels...before d20 :D
this oil bath is going to feel so good.
Heh. Don't forget the ads that they had in the books:
"Join the Imperial Navy!" and that bit about R2 units with their whopping 250 meg of computing power (or thereabouts). Great stuff.
Great writing, which given it's Costikyan is no surprise, and light and fast rules that fit the genre.
Later iterations of d6 IMO missed much of what made it a good system, for example introducing ads and disads I think is a compromise to what gamers expect rather than what was good for the game itself.
Quote from: J Arcane;314338That's just awesome. The absolute cheek of it, the attitude, it's just so refreshing. "Nah, who cares, that just makes it more fun." FUCK. YEAH. That's the kind of attitude I'd like to see more of.
Right on. That's one reason I enjoy 4E D&D.
(Ducks and covers)
I join the chore praising the virtues of Star Wars d6. A long time ago I played the Spanish version, which was a translation of 1st edition (in fact I don't even know which the changes were in 2nd edition), and it was a blast. Great buy.
You have just picked up a gold mine of Star Wars gaming awesomeness.
Enjoy.
Quote from: Claudius;314412I join the chore praising the virtues of Star Wars d6. A long time ago I played the Spanish version, which was a translation of 1st edition (in fact I don't even know which the changes were in 2nd edition), and it was a blast. Great buy.
2E changes:
- 1 extra damage level (Stunned, Wounded, seriously wounded, mortally wounded)
- Damage and non-combat effects moved from multiplier tables to difference tables using 0-3/4-8/9-12/13-15/16+ instead of
- Scaling rules changed in each revision. (1E Core book alone: personal and ships only, w/any personal weapon doing only 1d to ships, and ships doing double to characters; 1E+RC die capping, if die > cap, read as 0; 2E die capping, if die > cap, read as cap; 2ER, bonus dice for scale difference)
- Force Sensitive added: if force sensitive, start w/2 Force Points, but subject to stricter interpretation of good/evil behavior in use of them; if not, start w/1 but less rigid use restrictions.
- Alien races given stat ranges, rather than fixed stats.
- changes to dodge/parry rules (and again w/2ER).
So I've been working through it, slowly, reading bits of it on the can mainly, and Im' slowly coming to a conclusion.
You old guard RPGsite types would fucking hate this game. The nerdrage over the various bits of advice would explode all over the interwebs if this game were released as is today. It's worse than the RC advice.
The space travel chapter is chock full of bits like advising GMs that every journey should take as long as they need it to take for story purposes, or using hyperspace mishaps as an excuse to drive the players towards specific places, even if they happened to succeed in their astrogation roll.
The bugaboos leap from the page like womp rats from a burning sandcrawler. It's not exactly "story now" or anything, but that's what makes it extra amusing to think about in the context of internet flamewars, because there's shit in here to piss off extremists of all stripes. It's absolute hilarity.
It so gleefully absent any of the latter strictures demanded by various internet groups, be they Forge, RPGnet, or RPGsite. I bet even ENWorld would hate it, not enough combat balance and special powers.
By any so-called "modern standards", this is without a doubt one of the worst games ever made.
Which is exactly why it's goddamn brilliant.
I love SW 1E.
:D
Quote from: J Arcane;316763Which is exactly why it's goddamn brilliant.
Errr. Sure?
Stars Wars D6 is a brilliant game indeed. It is very elegant, fast-playing and flexible. The rules have a couple of bugs, but all in all, 22 years latter it still feels to me as a very modern and relevant roleplaying game in a way that, say, 4th edition Gamma World, which is a few years it's junior, does not (I use Gamma World as an example because it is a game I love dearly and have played to death).
The GM advice contained in the 1st edition is all focused on capturing in a game the style and pace of a (good) Star Wars movie. I don't see it as "hillarious" or heretical or even particularly dated. I would personally disagree with empahsis it puts on fudging dic but overall the advice it gives is sound for a Star Wars like game.
SW 1E is excellent. I prefer 2E, but 1E was brilliant. (2e fits my playstyle a bit better... but not bloody much.)
I recommend the Tales of the Jedi Companion book if you can find it, also Fantastic Technology and the Star Wars Companion. Combined, you can really expand the SW universe. I enjoy TotJ era because 5000 years before the movie canon gives you the freedom to do whatever.
Quote from: Leo Knight;314351Best advice ever: make funny noises.
So true! When the players get into it, it really gets cool.
Quote from: Fifth Element;314372Right on. That's one reason I enjoy 4E D&D.
Hell yeah!