For my second dip into the Star Wars RPG pool, I’m using the Star Wars The Roleplaying Game 2nd Edition from West End Games. This is for Day 12 of the 2026 #Character Creation Challenge. Now I have played the 1st edition Star Wars RPG a lot back in the 80’s and 90’s. I even used the 1st edition in the 2021 Character Creation Challenge. Since I had a physical copy of 2nd edition, but never played it, I decided to use it here.
The Beginning Characters setup starts on page 7 of the hardbound book. The first item they recommend is talking with the GM and other players to make sure that you are creating a character fit for the campaign and party. They also recommend coming up with a character concept. I made a pilot for the 1st edition character, let’s make a bounty hunter in 2nd edition.
Next the book goes over the template (character sheet) starting with the name. Arcus Junn is a kewl name I plucked out of the air. The Template Type is next, but the book states that this is a couple of words that accurately describes who the character is. I’m not certain where this goes on the sheet. So I’ll come back to it. Player is where my name goes. I decided to go with Human on Junn’s species and he’s a male that is 28 years old. I randomly selected 6’0″ for his height and 200 lbs for his weight. I gave him blonde hair and brown eyes and decided that he would have a scar after a fight got him into the business. He is loyal to his friends, but obviously in this for the money.
There was also a spot for the objective of the character, I decided that his brother was killed by some bounty hunters, so he became a bounty hunter himself to see if he could track them down. The Quote is something that I really liked from the 1st edition and I’m glad to see that they continued it in this version. I selected “I get paid and I do the job.” Connection with other characters? I tried to ask them but the voices in my head didn’t respond. Usually they are much more talkative and I can’t get them to shut up. So I don’t know what the connection is.
Ah, we are finally to the Attributes. They are Dexterity, Knowledge, Mechanical, Perception, Strength and Technical. Now I’ve run into the first problem that I can see. I’m not told what to use here. In 1st edition I was instructed to find a template for the character type and use that. There are some in the back, but it’s an alien bounty hunter. Has the racial stats already been included in them? Searching the book I didn’t find anything else so I’m going to write down the info on the template I found on page 168. This also included the equipment listed.
I kept going through the details listed in the Basic Character and came up next to Skills. I’m instructed to spend 7D on the skills that I’d like Junn to have. I selected several skills that I thought a Bounty Hunter might find useful.
Next came information for Force-Sensitive characters, of which Junn is not. After that was Advanced Characters, which comes into play once we’ve earned some Character Points in play. So, I think I’m done? I recall the 1st edition being pretty simple. This was simple, but still confusing as it wasn’t spelled out very well. Here is the character sheet.
Afterthoughts:
This was really my first deep dive into this edition. I’m really wondering if the writers thought “Yea, everyone will know the game from 1st edition and we’ll just give updates.”? It was a little frustrating not having actual steps and better guidelines. Come to think about it, I don’t recall anyone playing 2nd edition. When I participated in a one-shot last year, I believe it was just 1st edition.
While I have homebrewed and played 1st edition, I don’t really see myself doing any of that for 2nd edition. I’ll still pick SWRPG by WEG for my first choice to play in a galaxy far, far away. But it will probably be more of 1st edition with some cherry picking of 2nd if I see something that I like.
Additional Notes:
I had one participant in the 2026 Challenge tell me they were bowing out. Not because they couldn’t make 31 characters in 31 days. It was due to their RPG writing schedule. They had committed to writing several publications and the Character Creation Challenge and Dungeon 26 was taking up too much time. I applaud this because creating a product (that is for sale) should come first. If you would like to support this small-publisher, I’d recommend checking out her DriveThruRPG site here.
Coming Up Next:
The Well
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