Star Wars - Sagas or Savage Worlds?

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Star Wars - Sagas or Savage Worlds?

Postby Zabasaz » 03 May 2012, 23:39

When I finish moving, I'm going to run a Star Wars game with my new collection of minis and my friends who I've not seen since October. My original intent was to run Star Wars Sagas Edition due to familiarity though I'm considering trying Savage Worlds (or possibly something else?) instead, set in the Star Wars universe. Anyone have any recommendations or opinion they could share?
Zabasaz
 
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Re: Star Wars - Sagas or Savage Worlds?

Postby gamedave » 04 May 2012, 20:46

This is all IMHO:

Saga is better than the other iterations of Star Wars d20 by many parsecs, but it still has serious problems. On the downside, like 3.x in general, it has serious issues with balance and power gaming (Power Attack, I'm looking at you). Not to mention, any game where a Wookie is the best choice for making a lightsaber duelist has some problems. The d20 system in general is just not a very good fit for the SWU. On the plus side, Saga has a lot of material, and is pretty up-to-date as far as the Expanded Universe goes, since it only went out of print a couple of years ago. On the other other hand, that material is scattered through a ton of books without indices, often located in random sections (a piece of equipment might be in the Equipment chapter - or listed with a species that uses it - or a class - or an organization - or a planet where it's made - etc.). If you don't already have all the books, they can be hard to get, as they are out-of-print, and some of them are hard to find, and sell at fancy prices. You can find pirated pdfs of them, though, if you want to go that route.

I just finished running a SW campaign using my own homebrew rules based on Savage Worlds Deluxe, and it was quite successful. Overall, the system is a pretty good fit for the tone and feel of Star Wars. You can find a number of other homebrew conversions at http://www.savageheroes.com. The big downside is all of the conversion work you'd have to do - there's just not much material in even the most complete conversion I've seen. On the other hand, SWD is designed to make conversions quick and easy, and it has enough similarity to d20 that you could probably convert quite a bit of Saga material without too much work. I actually enjoy doing that kind of thing, but if you're looking for a "campaign-in-a-box", it's not a good choice.

I actually still have a lot of fondness for the old West End Games Star Wars RPG, but that is LONG out of print, hard to find, and now badly out of date (I think the newest material is now nearly 20 years old). While the 1st Edition had some problems, it is still for my money perhaps the best licensed RPG product ever. The game mechanics and style of presentation just meshed almost perfectly with the feel and tone of the game world. And the "ads" (for INCOM's new T-65, Imperial Navy recruiting posters, and more) were, for me, much more evocative and immersive than the White Wolf-style bad short fiction and vocab lists that became so popular in RPG design a few years later.

If you're willing to do a homebrew conversion, I'd also recommend taking a look at the Cortex system from Margaret Weis Productions. It always struck me as being a good fit for the SWU. If you can find the now-sadly-out-of-print Serenity RPG books (which use a modified version of the Cortex core system), they have a lot of material that you could use for a SW campaign (particularly if your players are interested in playing fringers and scoundrels, dodging Imperial entanglements while scraping by on the Outer Rim, with a crew of outcasts and misfits and perhaps a fugitive being hunted because of her otherworldly powers...).
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Re: Star Wars - Sagas or Savage Worlds?

Postby Zabasaz » 08 May 2012, 17:35

Opinions are what I'm looking for.

Yeah, someone recently told me to look into Savage Worlds but I was similarly compelled to think that Sagas would be the best choice mainly due to, yes, the volume of material and the fact that all things considered, the advancement system is quite entertaining for players (at least the kind I'd be catering to.) I'm still in the decision phase mainly because I don't know what kind of game we're even interested in doing - a fringer/spacer gang on the run, some Old Republic Jedi politics, or whatever it's going to be. As far as conversion work goes, it depends on the adaptability of what I'm working with, I've heard mention of Serenity so I'll have a look. Someone had even suggested that if my players are insistent on some cinematic lightsaber combat rather than a game that focuses more on other elements like you mentioned, I should look into either the FATE system or more intriguingly Riddle of Steel. The latter would require a lot of conversion, though - the combat system for it is supposedly incredibly compelling and realistic and even gritty, but its sort of entrenched in its own setting so to speak so in order to utilize it in a space fantasy setting I'd have a lot of thinking to do. People seem to suggest using the SW Chase rules for cinematic lightsaber encounters and supposedly Saga does have chase rules, though I don't think that I should except to need to. I appreciate the input, though, it's given me some food for thought to look into as time frees up.

As far as I know, the original Star Wars RPG that you mentioned is actually more or less Star Wars -source material,- having been more or less 'commissioned' in order to put together Star Wars lore that they expected would need to one day be referenced as the Star Wars franchise advanced. Supposedly when the Thrawn trilogy was being planned and the author requested some source material, they just sent him a box of the RPG books.
Zabasaz
 
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Re: Star Wars - Sagas or Savage Worlds?

Postby Zabasaz » 12 Jun 2012, 11:15

Went with Saga Edition just because the system was easily approachable for my players and had a lot of options to entertain them. I've run this system before, anyway.

So far so good, running ~2 BBY, just prior to Alderaan going kapoot. I keep insisting that they visit so they can enjoy it while it lasts (though not in a meta-gaming sense) and they refuse to go anywhere near it, fearing it's a GM trap to get them TPK'd. Silly players.

Anyways, Galen Marek is about to kill the Jedi player's master a few sessions down the line. Or Darth Vader. Haven't decided yet. He's a Quarren named Tessik Vuleg. Another player convinced me to let him play a Ssi-ruuk, which isn't normally something that'd fit the era but more outlandish things have happened in canon so I permitted it only because I have some cool ideas about how to twist his background and his race into a pretty good story arc. It's going to be pretty good.
Zabasaz
 
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