Starblazer Adventures and Star Wars: A match made in heaven?


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The Exchange

I recently purchased Starblazer Adventures with the intent to read through it and consider it as an alternative to the various editions of the Star Wars RPG.

I'm still not done with the book but it really strikes me how well these mechanics fit the nature of Star Wars. In particular, reading through the Skills chapter and the Stunts chapter, I was amazed how many scenes in the original trilogy work perfectly using these mechanics.

A perfect example is the "declaration action" mechanic. This lets a player use an appropriate skill to propose a piece of knowledge to the Storyteller (AKA GM), who (assuming he approves it) then sets a difficulty based on how likely it is and lets the player make a roll with that skill. The players proposed idea then becomes fact.

This reminds me of the Battle of Yavin, where Rebellion engineers and scientists analyze the schematics of the Death Star and find it's one weakness. In Starblazer, the characters used either their Starship Mechanic or their Engineering skill to make a declaration action, that they think the Death Star's one weakness would be a duct that leads straight to the core. The 'GM' thought this was a cool idea, and let them roll against a relatively low DC. They succeed and it works out!

Another mechanic that seemed built for movies is one particular aspect of the Deception skill. With the proper Stunt (think feats) a character can go 'off screen' and their player stops playing while their character goes under cover. You don't have to declare where you actually go, just that you aren't with the other characters. From then out, at any point you want, you may pick any unnamed NPC and declare that he is actually you, in disguise.

This invoked the beginning of Return of the Jedi for me. Luke shows up, defeats the rancor, but then is capture. But lo! he's in luck, because Leia and Lando both went under cover and are, in fact, already there to save his skin not long thereafter.

The book has me really excited to start using this system for Star Wars. Anybody else have a chance to use this system? I'm also going to be developing skills to introduce The Force into the mechanics, but I think that should be really easy to do. I'll post specific ideas I have on that idea later on.


You are not alone in this thinking.

In this Review of Starblazers, the author shows how he has used Starblazers to do Star Wars.

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/14/14393.phtml

The skill rules for Mysticism and the Chapter 14 section on Alien Races and Mutations have most of what people would want in their standard set of 'Force' abilities.

You might want to look at developing a Block action for usage with Lightsabers like the Stunt Flawless Parry [Weapon] to apply to blocking energy bolts (give a +3 on a Full Defence action).

I agree that every time that I look at the rules (just picked up a copy on Friday) that I keep seeing connections.

The Droids of R2D2 and C3P0 are easily represented with Companion Characters (Stunt) with the Independant Advantage.

Personally, I am thinking more of how the Fate3 system would be a great vehicle for Legend of the Five Rings.


I found this list of sample aspects to help develop characters

http://evilhat.wikidot.com/aspect-examples

and here is an interactive character sheet

http://cubicle-7.com/acrobat/sbcharactersheet_interactive.pdf

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