Expanding the Star Wars Universe With Tabletop RPGs

The Star Wars universe is large and ever-expanding. It’s comprised of stories which span platforms from movies to TV shows to cartoons to novels to video games and much, much more, but one aspect of the Star Wars universe which is often overlooked are the Star Wars tabletop roleplaying games.

There are a number of officially licensed Star Wars tabletop RPGs currently on the market, a few of the best known ones are published by Fantasy Flight Games, a games company based out in Minnesota. They license a number of Star Wars tabletop RPGs which gamers can purchase based on the kind of stories they want to tell. These are comprised of:

– Star Wars: Edge of the Empire (best suited for playing smugglers, bounty hunters, pirates, general scallywags etc.)

-Star Wars: Age of Rebellion (best suited for playing rebels and other freedom fighters who are plotting against the Empire)

-Star Wars: Force and Destiny (best suited for playing the last Jedi Knights under the Empire’s rule)

As well as these officially licensed titles, many Star Wars fans have created “homebrew” versions of tabletop RPGs where they create their own characters, classes, locations and more, all based on stories they want to tell within the Star Wars universe.

One of the things that I think makes the Star Wars RPGs so appealing is that Star Wars lends itself very well to being used as a giant space sandbox: there’s so much to play around with, and so many characters and locations that the official titles barely touch on. Tabletop RPGs let you become a kid with a lightsaber and a curtain-cape again: you can tell your own stories in a world that’s already been created for you. You can meet your childhood heroes and defeat your childhood foes, all whilst playing a character of your own creation.

These characters can also display traits that you don’t always see on screen or page. I know many people take the opportunity to make their characters disabled, LGBT+ or otherwise marginalised, and they can even create characters who are influenced by real-world cultures. Whilst Star Wars as a whole is getting a lot better at representing a wider range of people, some people still feel like their own stories aren’t being told, and tabletop games are a perfect way to change that. It gives people the opportunity to create their own stories in the world they love so much.

I would recommend picking up a Star Wars tabletop RPG and giving it a go if you’ve never done so before: all you really need is a handful of friends and a pinch of imagination. It’s a good way to jump into tabletop gaming as a whole if you’re new to it–it’s less scary starting out in a world you already know, especially one where there’s so much media already out there for you to use as inspiration. So go on, give it a go, and start Googling some rulebooks! It’s Star Wars Day, after all.

Let us know any fun tabletop characters/stories you’ve created in your own games in the comments below!