I keep hearing that the best Star Wars RPG is the original one from West End Games.  The 1st Edition. 

I'll agree that the D20 and D20 Saga rules are not my thing, and I really am not crazy about the current custom dice pool system from Fantasy Flight. 

I'm asking just about the 3 versions from West End Games.  1E with the Han, Luke, and Leia shooting their blasters on the cover, 2E blue book with Darth Vader's helmet on the cover, or 2.5E Revised & Updated with the Millennium Falcon cover. 

The combat rules in 1E seem a bit off to me.  Or was it just something the GM had to adjust for?  Clearly I've never played it.  My only exposure to D6 rules is Mini-6 Bare Bones, which I played solo. 

i have the third one with falcon cover. I use D6 fantasy adventure space for everything i run, i consider space to be the updated star wars with ip filed off.

Once you divest yourself of dnd'isms and the bad habits and expectations it can create by seemingly defining the rpg experience (we start in tavern talk to npcs for clues crawl over every square etc) it comes quick and easy.

For example, note attack and parry and dodge totals and use them the whole round, rolling everytime for each action by each participant is a dnd'ism. the mooks combine actions and attack as one instead. the idea of character class i would call a dnd'ism. Your play structure could be fast loose abstract and seasonal like the pendragon winter phase, but it is a dnd'ism that makes you go "no we must roleplay the shopping noooooo!" rather than downtime montaging anything that is not seriously pertinent or relevant.

shield rules need some love if you want to sim the games and movies portrayal of shields, needs a mass battle system but i made one, obviously the original force rules were shortsighted but easily fixed by any number of methods not the least of which is making force powers into perception skills and removing the force dice bonues to lightsaber combat instead letting the power simply allow the parry of blaster bolts.

the bullet proof wookie is sort of fixed by the str damage rules of the no-ip having d6 books.

1e SW with the Rules Companion errata is the GOAT, yes.
Though I do love Mini-Six.

1E is definitely the most evocative version of the rules.

2E loses some of the magic, but does cover things that 1E skipped over.

The generic books that came out at the end of WEG's run are IMHO bland and incomplete. They feel like they were rushed out the door and not as well playtested as they should have been. The magic system in D6 Fantasy is particularly bad, having been cut and pasted in from another WEG property (Masterbook, I think?), and not made to fit D6 in either tone or gameplay.

In general, I favor 1E, but 2E is by no means a bad game.

For what its worth, the D6 Ghostbusters game follows a similar progression.

Even I admit that the magic system in all of the games needed work.  To be honest, the one I liked the best was from D6 Adventure.  Well, the psychic system is what I looked at the most. 

The litmus test for me was how they all handle blaster bolt deflection. 

1.  Star Wars 1E.  You just add your Sense Force skill to the target number to hit you.
2.  Star Wars 2E.  You have a Force Power called Lightsaber Combat that you concentrate to maintain.  Otherwise it's the same as 1E, but now everything is -1D6 because you need to concentrate.  Also, failing to activate this power cannot be attempted again until is a different battle.
3.  Star Wars 2.5E.  Same as 2E.  It's a power you activate.
4.  D6 Adventure.  You have a Psychic (and separate magic) attribute, and each power (or magic spell) is treated as an skill.  Here the Psychic can turn his power into body armor for yourself or others.  It doesn't require concentration.  Instead it's an instant cast with a duration in combat rounds.  You may need to periodically refresh the effect after it runs out. 
5.  D6 Fantasy. The default game has spell builder rules, and a limited number of pre generated spells, and only one kind of defensive spell to create a magic dome to protect you.
6.  D6 Space.  It's almost identical to Star Wars for mystic skills, but different powers.  Again the list of powers are limited, but there is a power to give yourself armor for a couple of turns. 
7.  Mini-6 Bare Bones.  There is a special Sense Danger magic spell that requires concentration to keep up (-1D6 to any skill rolls) to raise your defenses by 2D6.  In play testing I found this power too hard to activate, and rendered two Star Paladins unable to hit each other if they did.  I changed my game to a power that just turns your sword into 75% cover vs ranged attacks.  Sword fighting is just sword fighting. 

I find that after house ruling the mystic system that I like Mini-6 the best.  I can also see the advantage to 1E as it was the least complex psychic system of the lot.  The lightsaber combat powers from 2E and 2.5 E seemed annoying to me. 

However, I like the static combat from Mini-6 the best as it has the fewest variables.  You just defend yourself for free, even pre-calculating your four defenses average roll to speed up play by getting rid of half of all dice rolls in combat.

Quote from: Lurkndog on October 18, 2022, 01:58:31 PM
1E is definitely the most evocative version of the rules.

2E loses some of the magic, but does cover things that 1E skipped over.

The generic books that came out at the end of WEG's run are IMHO bland and incomplete. They feel like they were rushed out the door and not as well playtested as they should have been. The magic system in D6 Fantasy is particularly bad, having been cut and pasted in from another WEG property (Masterbook, I think?), and not made to fit D6 in either tone or gameplay.

In general, I favor 1E, but 2E is by no means a bad game.

For what its worth, the D6 Ghostbusters game follows a similar progression.

Bland and incomplete are the glaring flaws yes, authors tried to be too generic which makes it unwieldly if used in a deep way w/o a lot of prep, or bland if used right out of the can. I would disagree, just my personal taste, on the magic system, it's for me perfect as it quantifies and then thus scales everything...but in practice it can be daunting to a player to understand it and then manipulate it to it's full potential.

I use a sort of overlay from faserip's color coding logic and apply the system in the marvel way rather than require meticulous spell crafting, itself a dnd'ism as when looking at that old marvel game we see magic done so much more smoothly and loosely with all limits inherently asserted by the color/rank system....ie, rank excellent 20 (5D by way of conversion) answers all questions of how much how many how far how long etc...the number or power of summoned creatures would be rank dependent.

So it's the perfect magic system for me to adjust to the sweet spot, closest for me to the mark out of the box, while obviously not be quite so perfect. But then again I can never leave anything alone.

Quote from: Lurkndog on October 18, 2022, 01:58:31 PM
1E is definitely the most evocative version of the rules.

2E loses some of the magic, but does cover things that 1E skipped over.

My approach is to use 1E and pull in some of 2E's rules as I need them. I've only had a chance to GM 1E once, but I hope to get to run it again.

1E Star Wars combat looks like it could be annoying to run.  Each "segment" of combat had to have its own roll of defenses, but they always add to the difficulty number.  I would think it results in people being unable to hit each other a lot unless you group up and focus on one enemy.   The bell curve of D6 rolls tend to only work if you're within 1D6 of the other roll, at most 2D6.  Without exploding dice there is no hope of success in some cases. 

I'm actually happy that Mini-6 just throws that out.  It even gets rid of all the defensive skills but one, dodging vs gunfire.  It clears up a lot of confusion that way.  They're always in effect all the time, and other than dodging you use the same skill to attack and defend. 

This might sound weird, but as teenagers we started with Palladium Books, known for being a bit wonky.  When we tried playing Star Wars my players couldn't adapt to the combat rules.  We were never certain it was working right, so we went back to Rifts, the game we knew inside and out.

Mini-6 rules really do work best, though I'll restate what I said before that the magic system in Mini-6 is bad.   It's fixable, though.  I'm now happy with how I run it. 

WEG Star Wars is still the best RPG for gaming in the Star Wars universe. It has a large and active fan community. 1E was great. I think 2E Revised (Falcon cover) was a bit much for a SW game in terms of crunch, but people tend to sleep on 2E (blue/Darth cover). It incorporated some decent fixes without getting quite as complex as Revised.

Then, there's REUP, a fan-made update/compilation/streamlining that is about as good as you're going to get (plus it's free).
http://d6holocron.com/downloads/books/REUP.pdf

WEG D6 was the perfect cinematic, swashbuckling experience for SW. Shame they didn't use it for Lucas' other serial-inspired IP (well, they kind of did, but too little, too late).

I thought the mini six magic system worked great when I ran Mini Six Primeval Thule most of 2020. The DCs didn't seem too high especially as PCs can spend action points.

Quote from: S'mon on October 18, 2022, 01:26:58 PM
1e SW with the Rules Companion errata is the GOAT, yes.
Though I do love Mini-Six.

1e is the best.

The 'revised' versions stepped just this side of adding in too much additional crunch.

1e got a lot right straight out of the gate.

- Templates for PC generation. Quick, fast, and evocative. I'm floored that this isn't copied more in skill based systems.
- Starships use essentially the same system as PC's - It's fast and evocative will little cruch to drag down play. But if you want you can use the star
   warriors wargame, so you could transition seamlessly between a wargame to RPG for space battles if you wanted to. The integration was tight.
- Equipment & weapon lists are just the right size, you add in the sourcebook and you literally have years of gaming with nothing else needed.

S'mon has unknowingly convinced me that mini-six is the best alternate rules supplement for 1eSW.

Fixed defenses are a must. The game will flow so much faster with one less roll per round for everyone. you can even prune the skill list - there are some really overlapping skills in there. The addition of the wild die keeps PC from having immunity to certain attacks. And the hero points are an improvement over 1e's implementation. Body points may be easier for some groups to grok than the wound system. Same with the dice limits mod. Suffice it to say there is lots of stuff to tweak the system to taste and still keep the fast playing feel.

My advice to everyone is to start with 1e and alter/add from there. 1e Star wars is the B/X of the d6 system.

Quote from: S'mon on October 19, 2022, 12:36:05 PM
I thought the mini six magic system worked great when I ran Mini Six Primeval Thule most of 2020. The DCs didn't seem too high especially as PCs can spend action points.

It mostly does.  There are three changes I use.

1.  Penalty for failing a magic skill roll is -1D6.  That's a bit too much.  I either use -1 pip, or -1D6 to just that one spell/power.  Personally, -1pip is my preference.

2.  More GM control of power effect and target number.  Using Telekinesis and bending a spoon in your hand sounds very easy.  Forcing open armored blast doors from a mile away while in your starfighter sounds hard or very hard. 

3.  I changed Imperium in Revolt custom spell "Sense Danger" as I feel it doesn't work.  I changed it to only affect ranged combat in the simplest way possible.  If you succeed, then your saber becomes 75% cover (+10 dodge).  Difficulty is 5 per enemy.  Example: you roll a 13, you are in cover vs the first two baddies who shoot at you.  If their shooter misses and rolls a 1 on the wild die, then the shot reflects back and hits the one who shot at you automatically. 

Why is it automatic?  To keep it simple.  No rolling is simple, and needs no explanation on how much to roll and if it can be dodged.  It also automatic to make using this spell worthwhile.  Otherwise actually taking cover behind something would be better.  You stand out there in the open and deal with the -1D6 penalty for concentrating in hopes of the 1 in 6 chance you deflect a shot back at the guy.

Quote from: weirdguy564 on October 19, 2022, 01:33:44 PM
1.  Penalty for failing a magic skill roll is -1D6.  That's a bit too much.  I either use -1 pip, or -1D6 to just that one spell/power.  Personally, -1pip is my preference.

I didn't find this to be an issue - PCs rarely failed checks, and when they did (usually excessive Healing attempts) they'd just wait an hour to recharge.

Quote from: S'mon on October 19, 2022, 03:49:44 PM
I didn't find this to be an issue - PCs rarely failed checks, and when they did (usually excessive Healing attempts) they'd just wait an hour to recharge.

I ran a test scenario when I came up with that change.  It was a pair of Failed Apprentices from the Imperium in Revolt.  They have a magic skill of 4D+2, and then find out one is actually an Inquisitor, not a Paladin.  They fight.  Well, after they take care of the gangsters shooting at them.  Out come the illegal plasma swords.

Their first action is to activate the Sense Danger power with a Target Number of 19.   Well, the odds for that happening are 23.9%.  Under a quarter of the time they can successfully get that spell up and running so they can defend themselves from being shot.  If they fail and drop go 3D+2, and they probably will, then the chance to activate the power falls to a mere 1.85%.  That's a bit much.

So I changed it a bit.  Perhaps reducing the power loss and changing the most common power activation to just be a 5 or better was a bit over correcting the gameplay, so I might rethink this.

Either way, I do still think changing Sense Danger was a good idea, as well as giving spells more leeway to be used with a smaller effect to get a easier Target Number is a good idea.

I've said it so often I forget to say it when applicable any more but I always felt the force point/fate point was poorly executed and should not double die codes, have it add a flat bonus or render max roll or something. That later idea I actually apply when converting d&d magic weapons to d6 fantasy, for example, a +1 sword adds it's damage dice to the attack roll as the first half of the benefit of being a magical weapon, and then the damage roll counts any 1's as 2's instead, and just increase this with each +1 of the weapon until a +5 weapon doesn't roll anything for damage dice but str damage and wild die, counting the weapons damage dice as if they had all roll 6. In general I make a FP cost anytime a player wishes to bend or break or augment a rule in play, such as combining two actions into one or negating the MAP for multiple actions. As written I felt the original FP rules were too powerful, too open to abuse. I felt the same about lightsaber combat, to me it should simply allow the parry and reflection of bolts, adding dice was too much without a cap of some kind, like up to your perception dice could be added or whatever.