Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game

Tabletop space opera role playing game
other types of Star Wars role playing game

Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game is a role playing game set in the Star Wars universe, written and published by West End Games (WEG) between 1987 and 1999. The game system was slightly modified and rereleased in 2004 as D6 Space, which used a generic space opera setting. An unrelated Star Wars RPG was published by Wizards of the Coast from 2000 to 2010. Since 2012 the official Star Wars role playing game is another unrelated game, published by Fantasy Flight Games.

The game, based on WEG's earlier Ghostbusters RPG, established much of the groundwork of what later became the Star Wars expanded universe, and its sourcebooks are still frequently cited by Star Wars fans as reference material. Lucasfilm considered the West End Games' Star Wars sourcebooks so authoritative that when Timothy Zahn was hired to write what became the Thrawn trilogy, he was sent a box of West End Games Star Wars books and directed to base his novel on the background material presented within. Many of the first uses of Star Wars alien names (such as the Twi'lek, Rodian, and Quarren) appeared for the first time in WEG's Star Wars books. Even after Disney's reboot of the Star Wars Expanded Universe in 2014, much of this nomenclature still exists in new canon works. In 1992 West End Games published the second edition of the game, in which the title remained unchanged. In 1996 a revision of the second edition appeared, but its title was slightly changed from Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game Second Edition to The Star Wars Roleplaying Game: Second Edition Revised and Expanded. By the end of the game's run around 140 sourcebook and adventure supplements had been published for the game during its run through three editions. In addition fifteen issues of a magazine series, the Star Wars Adventure Journal, were published between 1994 and 1998. The Adventure Journal was published in novel format with around 280 pages, and consisted of adventures and articles for the game, plus short stories intended to provide inspiration for gamemasters and news relating to Star Wars. WEG's license to produce Star Wars material was lost after the company declared bankruptcy in 1998, and the license was later acquired by Wizards of the Coast, who held it until 2010. In 2018, Fantasy Flight Games published the 30th Anniversary Edition comprising the original core rulebook, and The Star Wars Sourcebook.

Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game uses the D6 System, originally developed for the Ghostbusters roleplaying game.

In a 1996 reader poll conducted by the UK magazine Arcane to determine the fifty most popular roleplaying games of all time, Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game was ranked 9th in the 1996 reader poll of magazine The magazine's editor Paul Pettengale commented, "The rich and varied background already created by the movies helps a great deal, but there have been many games based on great fiction, and few of them work nearly as well as Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game. Everything about the system has been designed to complement the setting's unique blend of fantasy, science fiction and myth, and to recreate the same feel and atmosphere as the movies. [ ] The rules system is beautiful in its simplicity, yet ably copes with everything from vicious space battles to speedy chases through narrow canyons. A clever set of guidelines covers the use of the Force, complete with details of both its Light and Dark sides, enabling characters to make heroic efforts and pull off the kind of stunts that are vital to what Star Wars is all about. [ ] Perhaps the perfect system for introducing new players to roleplaying, and yet offering more than enough to keep even the most jaded gamers happy.

At the 1988 Origins Awards, Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game won in the category Best Roleplaying Rules of 1987.

In 2018, Fantasy Flight Games, the current holders of the Star Wars RPG licence, released a re print of the original core book, in a deluxe slipcase format, along with the Sourcebook supplement.