Star Wars is Not Dead

One side says, "Star Wars is dead, stick a fork in it."

This is the media, be forewarned, this is the same media that shilled every Star Wars project, good to terrible, for the last ten years. Keep that in mind.

The other side says, "Look at the media saying Star Wars is dead! Affirmation!"

No, you got it wrong: the media is throwing in the towel on being the ones burdened with selling terrible Star Wars for the last 10 years. If terrible Star Wars was somehow a success, they would be cheering for this. The media is basically going "sour grapes" on all of Star Wars and giving up trying to shill for the latest pet project, and they collectively know what is coming.

We are going to get what is in their eyes, populist Star Wars, consumerist, "please the audience", simple, back-to-basics entertainment. There will be no message in the next Star Wars, since the company can't afford it, and the people with other agendas trying to sell "using Star Wars" will be told to find another franchise to ruin.

The media is not on your side.

In fact, I can see the same sort of thing coming for D&D. The moment D&D goes "old school" with a revamped AD&D 2nd Edition, the media will pile on it, saying it's a "tone deaf" release, meant for "grognards and old men." It "doesn't speak to an audience who wants narrative storytelling." They will tell people to pile onto Daggerheart and other similar narrative games. 

If the media doesn't get what they want, they will tell people to "stick a fork in it."

This is the consequence of letting the media and social media sell your product. You live by them, and you will die by them. The moment they feel they will lose their "power" over the brand, they will turn on you with a vengeance.

And just like D&D, the company will come crawling back to the old-school crowd, asking for forgiveness and asking us to get hyped once again for "a product made for true fans." And we will always be the first ones shown the door when it gets popular, since the media and message crowd will flood in again, if the new version takes off. We are always too "toxic" and "not the younger audience they need."

Yet the true fans are the "hype engine" the brand needs to take that first step toward legitimacy.

It is a cycle as old as the tides at this point, and if you can't see this, go stand next to the ocean for a while and touch sand.

Well, I have my Star Wars games right here. I have decades of solid lore to draw on when writing stories, and Disney did me the favor of invalidating it all by branding it "Legends" content, which means it is set in stone and can never change. Remarkably, there are no warning labels on these books and games, unlike the history of D&D, which the parent company has deemed toxic.

Star Wars Legends lore will not change, is rock solid, and a consistent storyline for me to use to base my own stories on. What a gift to gamers this is. Thank you, Disney!

DIY Star Wars will be the best Star Wars for the next few years.

I arguably have a greater and more stable source of lore and canon to draw upon than anything in D&D, as the Forgotten Realms has always been a world of shifting geopolitics where the map and gods change at the whims of the next edition. Demons and devils come and go, and eventually become character options. New races are dropped into the world without history or lore to support them. The lore changes with every edition of D&D to "sell the product." It is a multiversal planar mess right now that needs to be brought back to basics and untangled.

BX does that perfectly, by the way.

And I am happy to say Disney CAN make a good Star Wars movie or series. Andor, Mando 1 & 2, and Rogue One are proof. They haven't been able to make the magic work recently, but I have faith. They will return to the true fans one day. We just have to have more of a backbone than the media, who give up on a franchise because they don't get what they want.

Did Disney have many huge misses? Oh, for certain, I did not enjoy much of what I watched over the last few years. But I need to have faith that "the audience has spoken" and that they will course-correct. This is what the media is trying to prevent by calling Star Wars "dead." "Sticking a fork in it" is the metaphorical equivalent of throwing down the gauntlet, and the media saying, "prove us wrong." The media wants more and more "bad Star Wars" to continue. And they are throwing a tantrum unless they get it, and they all probably know what is coming down the pipeline.

If anything, their saying "Star Wars is dead" is probably the best sign of hope we have ever had. Something wonderful is coming. If it doesn't, well, I can wait a little longer. If Disney wants me as a fan, they know who to call and what types of stories to tell. I will be there for them should they make magic happen.

I will be telling my Star Wars stories over here on my game table, and I will be patient, waiting, and in the long run, I will be right.

I will remain a true fan.

I'm not giving up.

I shall build upon the rock, while others build upon sand.

I got four decades of the best storytelling and universe creation backing me up. Yes, the new stuff is hit-or-miss, but we have decades more good than bad here, and I am not letting a few tone-deaf mistakes tarnish my childhood memories and love for these stories.

The media, at this point, is an AI-written website that will be gone in a few years.

Mine is the better bet. DIY Star Wars "is the way."

Trust the Force.

The D&D Community Advisory Group

So, D&D put together a "D&D Community Advisory Group" for what I guess is work on the next edition of the game. They did this to "discuss early product concepts and D&D Beyond tools" and likely as a sounding board for the work on the next edition.

https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/2180-introducing-the-d-d-community-advisory-group

They are about who I expect, with a few too many who seem to be "tone police" on the group, and not enough "old schoolers." It really doesn't mean much, except as a hype machine, which is why the D&D YouTubers were chosen. D&D YouTube needs a lot of help, ever since Google told a lot of them to stop making D&D content and move on to new content.

The algorithm no longer wants D&D, and I don't know how they can fight it.

I doubt forking money over to Google would help.

Still, the group is likely handling both D&D and D&D Beyond feedback, so even if there is a new edition, don't expect it to magically eliminate the complicated characters that require a live-service support model. I do not have much hope that the complexity issue that drove me from D&D 5E will ever be fixed, if they ever will, and my hopes for D&D 6E are nearly nonexistent.

BX is my game.

5E blew up for me in a live-service support model, a mess of digital DLC, and books I could not own the PDFs of. Even the games that let me do that blew up under live-service conditions due to character-sheet complexity issues. I doubt I am keeping many of the books. The game is too bloated and obese to survive.

And BX is now open-licensed and free of interference and threats. The future is bright for BX, and that is where my support is these days. BX will never need a live service model, nor will it ever disappoint me.

Still, I wish them well, and I hope they are listened to. They are not really a group I would pick for the job, but they are going to pick people they feel will help them with whatever direction they go in. Based on the group, it is not really a direction I am interested in. I am more neutral toward them than negative, but I am not seeing too many in that group that I follow regularly. Of the few YouTubers they have on there, I never watch more than the first few minutes of any, and I avoid a few.

I am over D&D YouTube, mainly because of the constant negativity there, and it no longer gets suggested to me. The algorithm has seen my choices, and it no longer delivers D&D to me much, and I do not mind. Also, bringing in a constant source of terrible D&D advice from the YouTube crowd seems like a huge mistake of committee-based design, and many terrible ideas will be added to the game.

There is a difference between a masterful, crafted, unified, and elegant design and a game-by-committee.

Still, the 5.5E playtest packets were more hype than they were for gathering feedback, so the track record of D&D and community feedback is pretty sad. 5.5E was an in-house game, and the playtest packets (I felt) were just used to bait-and-switch D&D YouTubers into giving it coverage. I do not have too much faith in the community feedback process.

In a way, D&D is too big to be cool, too big to survive, and too big to ever be compelling and a must-play game ever again. We are in the maintenance phase of D&D, where the MMO still has a huge player base to milk, but it will never be as big as it once was. Like World of Warcraft, we are post-prime and looking for new ways to monetize a shrinking crowd.

The committee will generate YouTube buzz, but YMMV, especially with YouTube being uninterested in the game. They have an uphill battle just to sustain interest in D&D Beyond, to keep the player base from slipping away further as people move on to games like BX, Daggerheart, Nimble, Pathfinder, Dragonbane, Shadowdark, Draw Steel, DC 20, and others.

While it is tough to be positive, I will give them the benefit of the doubt.

I hope they do a good job there.

But I don't have much hope.

BX Makes You Immune to Bad 5E Advice

If you follow the dungeon turn, everything will work, the universe shall keep its logical order, resources will tick down naturally, wandering monster rolls shall be made, and you will not need to endlessly listen to bad YouTube advice for 5E. The more of these 5E "advice" videos from YouTube creators that I watch, the less I want to play:

• How to Roleplay
• How to Write a Backstory
• Speeding Up Combat
• Don't Use Alignment to Roleplay
• Quick Dungeon Prep in Under 4 Hours

Just looking at the titles makes me want to poke D&D with a 10-foot pole and set the trap off from a distance. Some of them mention mechanics removed from 5.5E and present themselves as current topics. All of them are a terrible waste of time that makes me dislike 5E more than I should. They make 5E sound like the worst game ever written, since it seems like so much help is needed to play it correctly.

Terrible advice videos spread negativity and confusion for the game.

I now block, unsub, or steer far away from these videos in my suggestions.

D&D YouTube is infamous for spreading negativity and confusion for views. The vast majority of people hate-watch the negative coverage of the Wizards, just like the majority of Star Wars viewers hate-watch to see the franchise crash and burn. I stay away from most of the negativity since it is addictive like booze; you can get drunk on hate, and you need to abstain from it just to have a clear head and enjoy life again.

All of it hurts D&D, even the older editions. And the confusion and horrible advice drive people from the hobby.

How do you play the game?

By playing the game.

Back in the day, roleplaying was optional! You were not forced to, nor did you have to, come up with a backstory, declare a character goal and motivation, or layer a weak narrative inspiration-dicing system on top of the game. Due to the inspiration system, you are now forced to roleplay to gain a mechanical advantage in combat.

In BX, you do not need to engage with roleplaying to play the game, and many did not even start gaming with backstories or psychological profiles. The game gives you no benefit from roleplaying.

If you just wanted to play "dwarf," you picked "dwarf" and played "dwarf."

That was your "playing piece," like the shoe or dog in Monopoly.

If "dwarf" survived, maybe you gave him a name. Maybe you gave him some background. It was not required, nor did it give you a mechanical benefit. We usually figured it out by level 3, sometimes 5. Until then, it was just "dwarf."

In fact, that "feature" let us get new people into the game more easily, since it reduced the pain of losing a character and the number of decisions needed before play began.

Want to play with us? Want to play an "elf"? Sure!

You did not need to think about roleplay to play BX D&D.

You just "played."

And prep? The modules were typically 16 pages long, shorter than a single high-level character sheet, and you could read them during lunch break. This 6-hour fallacy for session prep is alien and not D&D. Most games needed no prep. Flub a room description or miss something? Most of the time, it didn't matter, and we put whatever was missed in the next room. The dungeons were meant to be expanded, so you could always make a new room and put it in there.

I get the feeling mixing D&D with a narrative game was a mistake. Writing "roleplay rules" into the game complicates play, creates a barrier for new players, and makes the game less accessible. Giving mechanical advantage to an out-of-game roleplaying reward cheapens storytelling and investment. Are you really playing your paladin as chivalrous, or are you just trying to gain inspiration for a combat benefit?

BX was a clean, simple, and straightforward game.

Let the narrative games be narrative games.

Mixing the game with a storytelling system was a misstep, and it ended up hurting our ability to tell stories with the game, since it linked mechanical benefits to something done naturally and for no benefit.

OSR Buyer's Guide Page Updated

https://sbrpg20.blogspot.com/p/osr-buyers-guide.html

I updated the OSR Buyers Guide page to cover BX, and here are my best suggestions for getting started with various editions in the hobby. Today, information, links, and discussions of BX are laid out, with my picks for the best in the genre, both in inspirational material and rock-solid books for play.

Gone are the discussions of alternate editions and versions (Labyrinth Lord, Dragonslayer, etc.), and a page will likely be added later to discuss them. Times change, and those need to be updated.

Can White Star do ...Star Wars?

White Star feels like a White Box Star Wars game, but it pulls in so many other inspirations that it feels like an "anything" White Box game. That unfocused feeling, where star squirrels are running around with space-pirate halflings, makes the game capable of handling Star Wars, since it has many of the iconic elements, but is very all over the place in terms of genre support.

There is Star Trek, Guardians of the Galaxy, and a bunch of other stuff going on here.

I wish the game were less random and more focused, with the special genre support in expansion modules. The base game should be as generic as possible, and things like Star Knights and other "war-of-the-stars-like" elements should be added in the "science fantasy" module.

The Trek-like elements could be added to a space federation module, with xenomorph-style content in that module, and so on. There is room in BX for a "star opera"- style game, and White Star tries to be an everything game, but it feels like it is trying to do too much.

I love the idea of BX sci-fi, and I miss the old Space Opera game, which did generic science fiction that could be Wars, Trek, Alien, Galactica, Rogers, Apes, or anything else. A BX version of that would be a dream game.

White Star sort of floats in generic sci-fi, not really Star Wars-inspired, and just generic, yet with oddly specific classes and race choices. With a lot of work, it could do Star Wars, but it would need a lot of houseruling, custom classes, gear, vehicles, and starships. A lot would need to be cut out, but it is possible.

For others to play with me? Easier to play the official game and let them experience that. I have had "let's play X with Y" games fall apart on me before, as it is too hard a sell for people to buy into, and even more so if "X" is available as its own game. There are times when it is easier to buy something they can buy and agree to play that together.

If we are playing Star Wars, and the game is available and in print, we will play that. It is far easier to sell and get people interested in the official game than in a homebrew or a modded system.

But, White Star does an okay Star Wars with some modding and tweaking. It needs the iconic aliens, or facsimiles, as classes. Some of the goofy classes should be pared back. We need more gear and a bunch of starships to replace the official ones (most work fine, but I want to see more). It works; it could be better if it were more focused, and some assembly is required.

If you are looking for a game that is in the OSR that could serve as a Star Wars game, White Star is as close as you can get at the moment.

Community: What We Lost Along the Way

I went to a Society for Creative Anachronism event the other day, and it hit me.

This is what we had in role-playing games, online games, MMOs, and other social spaces where we come together as a community and share that sense of community and companionship. Us as many, we as one.

These days, any online space I go to feels like something meant to hustle people through an 'experience' as fast as possible, queue people up for a bunch of story events, and get as much money from you while keeping the line moving.

Even D&D adventures feel like "tourist experiences" that simulate the actual thing, a best-of experience, meant to let you say "I played Tomb of Horrors" without actually playing Tomb of Horrors. Not like it was intended. This is the "you can't die" version, without 14 levels of campaign build-up and having months of play on the line if your character does not make it out. Every one of these classic dungeons is presented on some "infinite staircase," which is just a level-select tool for playing something, saying you experienced it, and ultimately meaning nothing to you or your character.

None of those level-select dungeons mean anything.

No community in most online games that I log into means anything.

In the SCA, you are at the event, you talk with people, you contribute, and what you put in is what you get out - even if it is just to dress up and enjoy the day, it is a real experience with real people. It isn't D&D or even a place to play D&D; you are actually "doing the thing" as close as you can to back then, and trying to understand and live the life of someone from that time.

The crafts, music, simulated combat, archery, fencing, foods, and ambiance of the era bring back that camaraderie and community that I sorely missed in today's online games.

And there is no "group finder" or "paid progression" in real life. Cosmetics? Find them yourself, or learn how to make period-appropriate garb. Learn a craft. Learn music, for real, not a "skill" that D&D says you have. Learn how to fight or fire a bow. Learn calligraphy or period art.

Meet actual people.

Become a part of a group.

Get an actual skill instead of a game telling you that you have one.

Do something real.

BX and Star Wars

The original Edge of the Empire game was released in 2012, and it is still an amazing experience. This is one of the most lore-dense games I have encountered in this universe, and it continues the tradition of the roleplaying community carrying the Star Wars fandom and keeping the torch lit when hope seems lost and the light is dimming.

I get that this seems like a modern game, but it really feels like something from the late 1980s that carries into the 1990s. Technically, the West End Games' Star Wars system is the 1980's version of the game, but this is what we have today, and it works well enough to take me back.

If we can have Classic Pizza Hut back in 2026, we can have Classic Star Wars, too.

The same thing applies to Old School Essentials; this is my 1980s throwback game. While yes, we have the original BX books in PoD these days, there is no guarantee those will be around forever, and OSE is the path forward. The original BX books are the better game for learning to play, but Basic Fantasy also does a wonderful job teaching the game. For me, OSE is a fast-playing, more-optioned, easier-to-use, streamlined set of rules that disappears into the background and lets me focus on the dungeon turn, the story, and being the referee.

Keep your BX books close for inspiration and for that positive karma. For me, OSE is BX D&D, the game that brought it back to the mainstream and became the de facto standard for creators and adventure writers. There is no way you can publish for BX anymore except through the OSE license, and that is getting free of the OGL next year. The BX books are teaching games only until the rules are released under a Creative Commons license. If Wizards could put out as much as possible under the CC, for every edition, that would be a huge gift to gaming and go a long way to winning me back.

Given the sad state of both 5E and Star Wars, I am ready to go back to the 1980s and forget today, and relive those times. Yes, that is not possible without d6 Star Wars (you can still get the d6 Space system in PoD), but the Edge Studio games are fine and in print rotation. I am supporting this game while it is still out there, and I hope it continues.

Do I hope Disney can turn it around? Yes! Wishing for failure is just evil. I want good Star Wars again. Until I can get it, I will go back to the last, best Star Wars we had. There is an argument for Rogue One, Andor, Mando Seasons 1 & 2, and The Force Awakens being glimmers of light in the darkness - so the current state of things is not a total loss. We have fallen off, post-Pandemic, and we need a turnaround.

TFA had potential. It could have gone so many places. Even that seems like something that could have started off rough but gotten better over time. If I ever play in the sequel universe, it will be with TFA as the starting point, and nothing that comes afterward will count.

Poe would be a hero, assembling a team of Resistance fighters under Leia's guidance.

Finn would be a Jedi and lead the new Jedi Order through Luke.

Ben Solo would need to find redemption through sacrifice, just like Vader, through Han.

And Rey would fall to the dark side, betraying them all, and becoming the new Emperor.

Look at that poster, that is the story it tells me. Where the characters are, the lightsabers they are holding, Rey crossing the red saber towards the darkness, and Finn holding the blue. Subliminally, this is the story we were promised but never given.

The game lets me tell that story, fulfill the dreams I had of that place in my universe, and finish the trilogy in my head the right way. Yes, it is fan fiction, but it is better than what we got. One of the most beautiful things about gaming is being able to finish one story and begin another. And to take the huge box of action figures and vehicles, this big box of toys, and play pretend.

TFA, as a starting point, could be salvaged.

The Edge of the Empire and sister games are GOOD Star Wars games, full of nostalgia and memories, written by people who love the EU and the source material. I hope these continue and are even expanded upon. I want PDFs and VTT support!

But I know this may not happen, so I will hold onto my library tight.

It is really all I have, unless someone makes a "clone game" of BX Star Wars in a like universe. There is White Star, and that is getting a new edition from those who brought us OSRIC 3.0, which is great news. I need more drop-in replacements for some of the "SW-like" items and to make parallel, BX-based play in this universe easier.

There is room in the BX and OSR communities to make a parallel science-fantasy game that delivers a Star Wars-type experience well while leaving the door open for us to write our own stories. This is likely one of the next steps to take in the hobby, just to keep the stories alive if the licensed game were ever to fall.

Until then, I will be back here in the 1980s, enjoying myself, with classic BX and the EU books and games. I will keep an eye on the new stuff and hope it shows promise, but I know where I will be happy.

Here.