7. Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game (1987)
Star Wars tends to be a thorny topic these days, for a variety of reasons, but there was a simpler time. In the late 80s, Star Wars was basically dead. There were three good movies, a decent comic book series, two made-for-TV Ewok movies, an Ewok cartoon, a droids cartoon, six novels about Han Solo and Lando Calrissian (three apiece) and, if the local flea market had the bootleg VHS, the notorious Holiday Special. And that’s basically it. What a wonderful time! When the RPG came out, it wasn’t bound to the endless lore of the ‘official’ Star Wars universe. In fact, it was the only place making new Star Wars stuff – all the explanations and gap-filling necessary to turn three movies into a playable galaxy.
It’s a light, flexible and fast-paced game that embraces a sense of cinematic action that continues to influence RPG design decades later. It encourages seat-of-your-pants improvisation, both from the players and the game master (probably the clearest example of what it feels like to play is the scene from the first film, when Han Solo bluffs a squad of stormtroopers into fleeing by running at them screaming, which works out until they all hit a dead end). When my friends and I started playing, it was exciting not just for the chance to return to our beloved galaxy far, far away, but also because it was, at least for me, one of the first times we played in a way that was emphatically different from the explore/fight/loot loop of Dungeons & Dragons. I’m pretty worn out by the greater Star Wars economy these days (something weirdly made worse by how unequivocally good Andor season one was), but I still drift back to this strange, malleable, half-forgotten version of Star Wars with a sense of fondness that will probably never entirely fade away.
