Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game

Development

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 saw the light of day, 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 were 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 of 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 picked up by Wizards of the Coast, who held the license until 2010.

Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game won the Origins Award for Best Roleplaying Rules of 1987.

Game system

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

List of core rulebooks

All covers from all core rulebooks published during the game's run:

List of supplements

Spinoffs

Four board games were published and coincided along with the role-playing game, all of them by West End Games:

A miniature wargame was also written in 1989:

Five gamebooks were published by West End Games in the 1990s:

In the early 1990s, before the advent of the modern Internet, the FidoNet Star Wars Echo ran a message forum for playing the West End Games Star Wars Roleplaying Game on-line on computer bulletin board systems. The game also gathered a large internet following via such mailing lists such as the SW-RPG Mailing List.