Introduction

The Star Wars 5th Edition roleplaying game is about vast worlds populated by myriad sites and species. It shares elements with childhood games of make-believe. Like those games, SW5e is driven by imagination. It's about picturing the expansive marketplace and seeing the different people's living their lives, and seeing how they might interact with the player's characters.

This book is designed to add another significant layer to your SW5e experience. The rules are designed to work alongside the traditional SW5e ruleset, and so an experienced player should have no trouble jumping right into the book. For the less experienced-or more curious-player, this Introduction discusses the basics.

Game Master (GM): As you enter the teeming marketplace in a disreputable sector of Nar Shaddaa, you see merchants of all types peddling wares, trying to entice the flowing traffic. As you move further into the crowd, one of the vendors catches your attention as they hail you.

Rickey (playing Vinto): I'm going to check out what they have for sale.

Drew (playing Dash): I'm going to keep an eye on the crowd to make sure our things aren't stolen.

Erik (playing Kodo): ...

Unlike a game of make-believe, SW5e gives structure to the stories, a way of determining the consequences of the adventurers' actions. Players roll dice to determine whether or not they can haggle for a better price, or to try to entice a merchant to accept work instead of credits for their goods. Anything is possible, but the dice make some outcomes more probable than others.

Game Master (GM): OK, one at a time. Rickey, you're checking the vendor's goods?

Rickey: Yeah. Do I see anything cool?

GM: Make an Intelligence check.

Rickey: Does my Investigation skill apply?

GM: Sure!

Rickey (rolling a d20): Eight. I hate this die!

GM: You see many trinkets and baubles but nothing catches your eye. And Drew, Dash is watching the crowd?

Drew: Yup!

GM: Okay. Eric, what's Kodo doing?

Eric: ...

In the Star Wars Dungeons and Dragons game, each player creates an adventurer (also called a character) and teams up with other adventurers (played by friends). Working together, the group might join a faction, earning renown to increase their standing. They might become benevolent Jedi, malevolent Sith, ruthless bounty hunters, or scurrying scoundrels. If no faction catches their attention, they might instead create their own.

One player, however, takes on the role of the Game Master (GM), the game's lead storyteller and referee. The GM creates adventures for the characters, who navigate its hazards and decide which paths to explore. The GM might describe a populous city, and the players decide what they want their adventurers to do. Will they spend time buying and selling wares? Or will they look for work and entertainment in the city to make—or spend—their coin?

Then the GM determines the results of the adventurers' actions and narrates what they experience. Because the GM can improvise to react to anything the players attempt, SW5e is infinitely flexible, and each adventure can be exciting and unexpected.

The game has no real end; when one story or quest wraps up, another one can begin, creating an ongoing story called a campaign. Many people who play the game keep their campaigns going for months or years, meeting with their friends every week or so to pick up the story where they left off. The adventurers grow in might as the campaign continues. Each force defeated, each adventure completed, and each relic recovered not only adds to the continuing story, but also earns the adventurers new capabilities. This increase in power is reflected by an adventurer's rank in a faction, and the tier of the faction itself.

There's no winning and losing in the Star Wars Dungeons and Dragons game—at least, not the way those terms are usually understood. Together, the GM and the players create an exciting story of bold adventurers who confront deadly perils. Sometimes an adventurer might come to a grisly end, dispatched by a Sith lord. The party itself might meet its demise if it antagonizes a powerful and malicious faction. Even so, the other adventurers can beseech a powerful Jedi to revive their fallen comrade, or the players might choose (or be forced) to create new characters to carry on. The group might fail to complete an adventure successfully, but if everyone had a good time and created a memorable story, they all win.