This is for all you new people. Do you know what role-playing is? If you have a passing knowledge then you’ll probably think it’s a pastime for a bunch of nerds who have far too much time on their hands. If you don’t know much about it, then listen up.

Role-playing is this: A bunch of 4 friends get together. 3 of the friends have created characters, the same way a playwright would create a character. They give the characters identities and personalities. The 4th friend is the storyteller. He describes with words what the characters can see and hear. He describes the surroundings, the place and the people. And then the other 3 friends tell the 4th what they want to do, and they interact with the scenery that has been presented to them The 4th friend controls the situation and plays the characters the 3 friends meet. To resolve difficult actions the players roll dice to ascertain outcomes. It’s ‘lets pretend’ with rules. Everyone has a good time.

Complicated, huh? What I’ve presented to you there is a very brief (and slightly convoluted) version on how a role-playing game basically works. To be honest, it has to be one of the worst hobbies to explain to someone who doesn’t know about it.

Ah, well. Just look at other role-playing sites and I’m sure you’ll figure it out. Anyway, I’m here to review the Star Wars game, not be a verbal advertisement for an entire hobby.

One of the first things West End Games had to do with the role-playing game was capture the style and feel of the Star Wars movies - action, adventure and melodrama. To do this it had to be printed in kind of Star Wars ‘lingo’, with rules that would be easy to learn and flow with the speed of the game.

It does this quite admirably. The rules, based on a very simple ‘beat the difficulty number’ basis are easy to learn and easier to use. Also, this premise has been used to cover all aspects of the genre, from personal interaction to starship combat, making it a very easy game to get into. Basically, when a player has to roll to carry out an action, they are given a number to beat and they roll their dice - if they get higher than the number, they succeed in the action. If they don’t, they fail. If you want simpler than that, you’ll have to just toss a coin.

The role-playing game was followed by two more reprints - the second edition and the revised and expanded edition. The second edition was just the same rules but with more additions, making the system complicated and unnecessarily burdened. The revised and expanded edition and corrected this problem - they took the easy-to-use of the first print and mixed it with the best bits of the second edition. Basically the one I would advise buying is the third print, the revised and expanded one.

Support material for the game comes in the guise of sourcebooks (explaining in detail certain aspects of the Star Wars galaxy) and scenarios (adventures to throw the players into). These are a mixture of good, bad and downright awful. There is way too much support stuff to cover here - if I wrote a review for each and every product, I will need every gigabit of this site just to pop down my introductions. A slight exaggeration, but you get my point.

Basically, you should be very careful about what you buy. If you’re going to buy, make sure you can get access to a review or ask the in-store attendants. There’s a lot of material, and the general sourcebooks are handy (The Star Wars sourcebook, the Rebel Alliance sourcebook and the Imperial sourcebook). More often than not, however, there is material with ideas and elements which are pretty uninspiring. The last few products are quite diluted, and the original flavour of the Star Wars game appears to have been lost.

There’s a lot of scope to the Star Wars galaxy, and lets face, I’ve been playing the damn game for years and still manage to come up with new and interesting ideas (at least, I think I do). Mainly, the role-playing game has helped me with my story writing - the Skeet Jonus story I am working on will be (or already is) serialised on this web site. This story is mostly based on a role-playing scenario I ran a couple of years back. Role-playing in general has helped me with my writing and creating.

Anyway, if your sick of reading about Star Wars and want to get into the thick of the action, buy this game in the Revised and Expanded format. You can’t get any closer to the magic than this.

Well, you could actually get a part in one of the films, I suppose. This game will do until then.

One last thing, a rather sad piece of information:

In 1998, West End Games (the role-playing game house that released the game) filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy to ‘re-structure’ their business. As far as I know, they have saved the company, but do not intend to continue the Star Wars line. The games are still available, so snap them up before some other creep does.