Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game
Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game is a role-playing game set in the "Star Wars" universe, written and published by West End Games (WEG) between 1987 and 1999. The game system was slightly modified and rereleased in 2004 as "D6 Space", which used a generic space opera setting. An unrelated "Star Wars" RPG was published by Wizards of the Coast from 2000 to 2010. Since 2012 the official "Star Wars" role-playing game is another unrelated game, published by Fantasy Flight Games. 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 appeared, 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 had been 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 with 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 acquired by Wizards of the Coast, who held it until 2010. In 2018, Fantasy Flight Games published the 30th Anniversary Edition  comprising the original core rulebook, and The Star Wars Sourcebook. Game system. "Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game" uses the "D6 System", originally developed for the "Ghostbusters" roleplaying game. Reception. "Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game" won the Origins Award for "Best Roleplaying Rules of 1987". "Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game" was ranked 9th in the 1996 reader poll of "Arcane" magazine to determine the 50 most popular roleplaying games of all time. The UK magazine's editor Paul Pettengale commented: Spinoffs. Four board games were published to coincide 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 mailing lists such as the SW-RPG Mailing List. Fantasy Flight Games reprint. In 2018, Fantasy Flight Games, the current holders of the "Star Wars" RPG licence, released a re-print of the original core book , in a deluxe slipcase format, along with the Sourcebook supplement.