It's Still on the Shelf: Star Wars RPG (Fantasy Flight)

So I was talking with a buddy of mine who was considering playing in a one-shot I'm planning. I had originally pitched White Hack at him, but it wasn't heavy enough for his tastes. So he asked me what games I had. And if I could list them. And describe them. I looked over at my bookshelves and groaned inwardly.  This is something of an answer.

What is it: The Star Wars RPG line from Fantasy Flight Games is actually a "trio" of books, each of which handle the three implied settings of Star Wars: criminals, war, and the Force. It's expensive. It's over the top. It probably couldn't have been handled in one book? I don't know? Point is, they're divvied up. You pick the setting you want and move on. Or, if you're like me, you sigh from the depths of your soul and 180 bucks later???

The Star Wars games rely upon using unique dice, which help add some granularity to the action going on. It's not quite as simple as you succeed or fail, but you are instead consulting the dice kinda like a seer who consults the bones from some pagan culture or whatnot. It usually takes a minute, which is fine by me. I don't mind heavier dice mechanics, but your mileage may vary. As you decipher the symbols and realize what just happened, the players and the GM begin to talk it over. The players get to decide what any advantage gained from the roll does, while the GM gets to decide the disadvantage. Both sides have veto power. There's also a Destiny Point economy, where you can fudge in differing things into the game, as well as influence dice rolls. It's intended to be very subtle, one point at a time, but I always took that limit off and players seemed to have a much better time with ti. There's not a lot of guidelines to any of this, per se, but there are plenty of examples that one can measure against in the books.

It's this lack of advice that ultimately make the game a pain to run. You're supposed to award people XP, but it took a long time of me searching the book and going onto a forum to find out exactly how much and for what the players were supposed to get XP for... which as it turned out was whatever the heck I wanted to award them for. Which is fine, but it took far too long for me to get to the intent of the system for such an important thing.  So, if you're going to use the book, make sure to take this paragraph in mind and have a pretty clear list of things players can get XP for!

Why I haven't played it lately: Honestly? I don't find it scratches the Star Wars itch. For me Star Wars is about the interactions of tradition and the collective with the individual in their particular place in history. It's about the characters' search to fit within that framework. Yeah, there's lots of fun action and fiddly bits and whatnot, but those things serve the narrative, they are not the narrative itself.

That and Burning Wheel exists. You have to be able to compete with that level of janky, complex, unique gaming before  I really take notice anymore. FFG Star Wars just doesn't. It runs fine, once you figure out that you're just supposed to make everything up as you go along. Heck, I'd probably use the Career hooks to incentivize the players if I ever ran it again. But it's just not enough. Not for now.

Why's it still on my shelf?? I still like looking through the books, and I still have Star Wars games in mind, and some day I'll probably want to go back to it. We'll see. For the moment I'm at where I am with Burning Wheel. That is enough for the moment.