d6, d20, wacky EotE

 

If there is one thing the Star Wars franchise has going for it, it's staying power. Six movies, hundreds of animated TV episodes (from various time periods), probably thousands of combined short stories, comics and novels thanks to the "expanded universe" and a ton of video games ranging from terrible (I'm looking at you Masters of Teräs Käsi for PlayStation 1) to incredible (Shadows of the Empire, Knights of the Old Republic and Pod Racer, ok ok, not Pod Racer, and I can admit that I liked Star Wars - ToR online even though I didn't play it for very long).

Oh yeah, I guess there were also 3 or 4 complete role-playing games developed for the property also, let's see here...

WEG/d6 - I actually really liked this game when it came out. It was a dice pool mechanic game, at a time when I was most familiar with swinging a sword with a d20. At the time, I was pissed off that this game really didn't focus on the force enough. In retrospect, it was actually part of this games charm - it was really great for telling stories of the characters who weren't Jedi (and Sith? nobody really knew much detail about the Sith around this time, so it's mentioned exactly zero times).
CONCLUSION - really fun for running games that take place during the rebellion era, from a few years before Episode IV through to past Episode VI. I would actually love an opportunity to run a campaign using this system again, knowing what I know now.

d20 Star Wars/SAGA - Ok, this is actually two completely different games that are like 18% compatible. I barely played the first release of Star Wars that used the d20 system, but I've run a pretty long term campaign using the Saga edition, which was great from levels 1 to 6. As soon as the two force using characters hit level 7 the game began to break down. The Jedi were throwing speeders around and jumping off of thousand foot tall buildings while the rest of the characters were still pretty mortal and not super-powerful agents of the impossible. Still a ton of fun though, at least with the group of mostly hardcore Star Wars nerds that I was playing with at the time.
CONCLUSION - actually a great game for Jedi/force based campaigns, so if you're playing Old Republic or Episode II and III era, this is pretty great. Make sure non-force based characters have something to level the playing field with however is my best advice.

Edge of the Empire - A friend of mine picked up the starter kit for this and we decided to give it a thorough play through and I've gotta tell you I was really impressed with the way the game was developed. The strange dice return to the idea of success and failure pools that off-set, but it is done in such a way that it feels very fun. This game relies a little too much on counters and physical maps, but the way it uses distance and range is cleverly written.
CONCLUSION -I don't know what this system is either good or bad for, I just know that it was pretty fun and cinematic in a way that maybe only the d6/WEG system came close to capturing. Have to keep my eye on this one.