Star Wars RPG: Spinning Up 100 Characters

DarkgarX and I are spending a couple nights and just spinning up an entire group of characters, around 100 of them in fact. I know you are not supposed to use the PC generation system for NPCs, but it is a fun way to learn the classes and system, and go through all three of the books in order and have fun with different designs and classes.

We are designing from all three books, so our groups are an interesting mix of rebels, criminals, and jedi students. It is a motley crew of a strange mix of personalities and character types, and we love just spinning up characters and playing with character options.

There is a min-maxing thing you can do here, especially in regards to combat skills and your starting scores. However, we play a more balanced game where more skills than just combat are important, and we try to stay true to the character and not worship the combat system. With these dice, it is difficult at times, because the allure of spinning up a character who can toss a fist-full of dice at enemies is so strong.

Resist the urge of the dark-side of min-maxing...

Some of the rules regarding the book-specific stats (obligation, duty, and morality) are weak, and in some cases not explained (how duty changes). We had to hit the forums for answers, and even then it wasn't entirely clear.

Mixed groups with obligation and duty? Sounds fun, and we have some very strange groups that could be hit at all angles for missions and bounty hunters looking for group members. I wish they would have added information on mixed parties, but we managed to figure out a system that works for us with these sorts of groups.

We almost wish jedi had a "external" stat like this, but instead, they have an inwardly-focused morality trait that rates how they act in the world. It is admittedly very jedi, but I like the external book-specific stats and their potential for trouble and complications so much I wish the jedi had something like this as well to force them to get out into the world and put things at risk, be a part of something bigger, or have trouble lurk around every corner. Yes, they are jedi in the Empire and it is not the safest place to be, but I like the mechanics of the other book-specific stats.

The skill system took some getting used to, and we wished there were some character design tutorials to go through. It took us a while to figure out that class skills began at level zero and you had a number of rank-ups to raise 3 or 4 of them to a +1. So there is a difference between an "untrained class skill" and a normal "untrained skill" that threw us. We had to redesign our first couple characters once we grasped this, but having a sample design in the book would have smoothed this out for us greatly.

Once you get a hang of it, character design is fast. I wish the game shipped with "character design sheets" with one side being the class description and skills, and the other having the talent tree. I wish I could print out just these sections to work with, and staple them into a handy booklet. PDF please, I'd buy the game in PDF form a second time just to have this ability. Or I could photocopy. Yes, I could photocopy for personal use, but bleh on the time and mashing the book to get it looking good.

All in all, this is a fun character creation system, and one we will be playing as we run a small campaign this fall with the game. More update on this soon as things get rolling, but until we begin, more character design fun awaits us.