1st Edition and Rules Companion

[klhaviation]

Hey 1st ed Fans, just a few questions. I have no intention of starting a flame war here, just some honest feedback desired.

So I am currently running a few one-offs with my group in 1st ed. I never used the rules companion... some of the stuff looks good, but creeps closer and closer to the more complex game that was 2nd Ed, which not the purpose of playing 1st Ed.

What are your opinions on the Rules Companion... whats the good, bad, and ugly.

Also what do you think is the best scaling system? For me it seems that the R&E system is the best... thoughts?

[Whill]

The variable scale rules occasionally allow wacky things like hand blasters destroying starships and such. I like personally like the premise of die caps best, but the charts could use some tweaking (as well as the number of scales and particular scales too) so its a major undertaking which I haven't gotten to but plan to do for my game.

I like The Rules Companion, but its not something I'm likely going to use. If I've ever ran the adventure in it, I'm sure it was only once.

Something TRC has that WEG never went back to is a fairly simple capital ship battle system. I never used it much in the game because I don't normally have PCs commanding capital ships, and capital ship battles tend to just be a "battle field setting" for PCs in starfighter-scale ships. After TRC came out, sometimes a player and I would use it as its own game just for fun outside of an RPG adventure. One of us would be Rebels, the other would be Imps, and would make some battle groups and pit them against each other. But I can't remember ever going back and using that system once 2E came out.

As far as the rest of the stuff, TRC is an important footnote in the evolution of the game from 1E to 2E, but combat and everything is better at the destination. If you are going to play 1E and want to keep it simple, then TCR wouldn't really be needed.

What I recommend instead of 1E is the SW Introductory Adventure Game. The system is a simplified version of R&E (it takes a few queues from 1E for sure.). It's shiny.
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Star Wars D6 Damage

[Whill]

This probably won't help anyone, but in my mind I tend to give edition number designations to each version of the game.

Star Wars 1E (1987) = 1.0
Star Wars 1E + Rules Upgrade insert (1988) = 1.2
Star Wars 1E + Rules Companion (1989) 1.5
Star Wars 2E (1992) = 2.0
Star Wars 2E R&E (1996)= 2.5
Introductory Adventure Game (1997) = 1.9
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[klhaviation]

I have always liked the Introductory adventures. A very tight system, a trebute to its (alet hough it does have the wild die which always irked me). After reading the rules companion it really does push the simple rules of 1 toward 2e. Intro Adventures actually seems to throttle back a bit from TRC. And Peter Finilly eliminated the parry skills.

[Whill]

Maybe my "1.9" doesn't accurately describe IAG from an edition comparison perspective, but I think I wanted to reference the fact that is was going back towards some of the simpler aspects of 1E but still had some innovations from 2E. And it came out not long after R&E.

The wild die is easily eliminated from any version if you really don't want it for your one-offs. No big deal there.

In my game I've combined and recombined several skills (including the parry skills). Schweig is the man!
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[atgxtg]

I like the rules companion as well. One of the nice things about it is that is is rather modular -you can add bits and pieces of it you your campaign, instead of getting stuck with all of it.

IMO most of the rules in there work as good or better than what we got in the various incarnations of 2E. And I don't think I'd want to play 1E without the haste rules.