Player’s Handout
(from Star Wars: Second Edition – Revised and Expanded)

If you’re new to the Star Wars role-playing game, this handout will get you ready to play in a couple of minutes.  
You’ll be playing a character – a person who lives in the Star Wars universe.  While playing, you pretend to be that character.
	There is no board to move tokens around on.  Instead, one of your friends will be the gamemaster.  The gamemaster acts as storyteller and referee, describing each scene to you and the other players.  Now, imagine how your character would react to the situation.  Then, tell the gamemaster what your character is going to do.
	When you describe what your character does, the gamemaster will tell you when to roll the dice, and tell you what happens as a result of how well (or poorly) you roll.
	In a way, you, the other players, and the gamemaster are creating your own Star Wars movie with your characters as the stars!

	Winning.  There are no winners and losers.  Having fun is what counts.

	Cooperate.  If the characters are to stand a chance of succeeding in their adventures, you and the other players have to work together.

	Be True to the Movies.  Remember, you’re playing Star Wars!  Be heroes.  Use snappy one-liners.  And above all else, have fun!

	Become Your Character.  Don’t be afraid to ham it up a little!  Speak like your character and adopt his mannerisms in your movements and actions.  You can act out the scenes – for example, if you’re playing a gambler, you could have fun trying to con the other characters.  However, never act out scenes that could be considered threatening or dangerous.

	Use Your Imagination.  Your character can do whatever you imagine someone in that situation doing.  If you can imagine it in the real world (or the Star Wars universe), it can happen in the game!

	Keep Things Moving.  Don’t worry about the rules.  Simply tell the gamemaster what you want your character to do, and he’ll tell you what to roll and when.

Getting Started

	Select a character template that looks like it would be fun to play.  Grab a pencil and a few six-sided (“normal”) dice.
	The right side of the character sheet describes your character’s personality and background.  You can change some of these elements, but make sure those changes are approved by the gamemaster.
	Each character has a set of six attributes:

	Dexterity – Your character’s eye-hand coordination and agility.

	Knowledge – Your character’s knowledge of the galaxy.

	Mechanical – Your character’s “mechanical aptitude,” or ability to pilot vehicles, starships and the like.

	Perception – Your character’s powers of observation, and ability to convince others to do things for him.

	Strength – Your character’s physical strength, health, and ability to resist damage.

	Technical – Your character’s “technical aptitude,” or ability to fix, repair, and modify all kinds of technology, including starships, droids and vehicles.

	Each attribute has a die code.  A typical die code could be 3D (pronounced “three dee”).  That means roll three six-sided dice whenever this attribute is used.

	Example:  George is playing a kid, who he names Cev Rees.  Cev has a Mechanical skill of 3D.  When he jumps behind the controls of a landspeeder and tries to drive it on a busy highway, the gamemaster tells George to make a Mechanical roll.  George rolls three dice and gets a 2, 3 and a 5 – Cev’s Mechanical total is 10.
	
If there is a +1 or a +2 or after the “D,” add that number to your total.

	Example:  Cev’s Dexterity is 3D+2.  (Pronounced “three dee plus two.”)  When Cev throws a grenade, the gamemaster tells George to make a Dexterity roll.  George rolls a 3, 4, and a 5 (for the 3D), but he also adds +2 to the total (for the +2) to get a total of 14.

	A die code of 2D is about average; a die code of 4D is pretty good.

Skills

	Skills are things your character learns and they can get better over time.  Skills include things like blaster, dodge, starfighter piloting and brawling.  
	A skill is listed under its attribute; each skill begins with the same die code as its attribute.

	Example: Cev’s Dexterity is 3D+2.  Since blaster is a Dexterity skill, Cev’s blaster skill starts at 3D+2.

	You can add more dice to skills to get better at certain things.  If you add one die to a skill, the number in front of the “D” increases by one.

	Example:  George decides to add one die to Cev’s blaster skill (a Dexterity skill).  Cev’s blaster skill is now 4D+2.

	You can add one or two dice to a skill, but you only have seven dice to spend on all your skills.  (You can’t improve every skill – you can only pick the ones you think will be important!)

	Example:  Cev has the following attributes:  Dexterity 3D+2, Knowledge 2D+2, Mechanical 3D, Perception 3D+2, Strength 2D+1, and Technical 2D+2.
	George has 7D for skills.  He decides to place 1D in blaster (a Dexterity skill), so it’s now 4D+2.  He adds 1D to another Dexterity skill: pick pocket, which becomes 4D+2.
	George thinks Cev has spent a lot of time on the streets and adds 1D to his streetwise skill (a Knowledge skill) to make it 3D+2.
	George adds 2D to Cev’s repulsorlift operation skill: Cev’s Mechanical is 3D, so his repulsorlift operation skill is now 5D.  Cev’s a really good driver – it’s too bad no one will give him a chance to prove it!
	George then spends 1D on con, a Perception skill.  His con is 4D+2.
	George spends his last 1D of skill dice on Cev’s sneak; since it’s also a Perception skill, it goes to 4D+2.

Important Skills

	Here are some of the more important skills for the characters in the Star Wars game.  They cover your character’s knowledge of a field or ability to do the following:

Dexterity skills:
	blaster: Fire blasters
	brawling parry: Block someone else’s unarmed (brawling) attack.
	dodge: Get out of the way when people shoot at you.
	melee combat: Fight with weapons in hand-to-hand combat.
	melee parry: Block hand weapon attacks (only if your holding a weapon).

Knowledge skills:
	alien species: Knowledge of strange aliens – anyone not of your species.  (For example, if you’re playing an Ewok, your alien species skill covers your knowledge of humans.)
	languages: Speak and understand strange languages.
	planetary systems: Knowledge of different planets and star systems.
	streetwise: Knowledge of criminal groups and people in the Fringe and how to deal with them.
	survival: Survive in harsh environments, like arctic wastes and deserts.

Mechanical skills:
	astrogation: Plot hyperspace jumps.
	repulsorlift operation: Fly vehicles like snowspeeders, airspeeders, landspeeders and cloud cars.
	space transports: Fly freighters (like the Millennium Falcon) and any other ship that isn’t a fighter and isn’t a capital-scale (large) combat ship.
	starfighter piloting: Fly space fighters like X-wings and Y-wings.
	starship gunnery: Fire starship weapons.

Perception skills:
	bargain: Make deals.
	con: Fast-talk your way out of situations or talk people into doing things for you.
	gambling: Gamble
	search: looks for things.
	sneak: Sneak around without being seen.

Strength skills:
	brawling: Fight with your bare hands.
	climbing / jumping: Climb and jump.
	stamina: Push your physical limits and resist disease.

Technical skills: 
	computer programming / repair: Use, repair and program computers.
	droid programming: Program droids.
	droid repair: Repair droids.
	first aid: Knowledge of first aid techniques.
	space transport repair: Repair freighters.
	starfighter repair: Repair starfighters.

If you have any questions about skills and how they work, just ask the gamemaster.

How the Game Works

	The gamemaster assigns a difficulty number when a character tries to do something and there’s a chance of failure, such as shooting a blaster at stormtroopers, flying a starship, or fixing a busted droid.
	Roll the skill’s die code; if you don’t have the skill, roll the attribute’s die code.  If your roll is equal to or greater than the difficulty number, your character succeeds.  If it’s lower, your character fails.

	Example:  Cev is at the controls of an airspeeder – kind of like the snowspeeders in The Empire Strikes Back – racing through a canyon.  Up ahead, the canyon narrows into a tight passage.
	Cev’s repulsorlift operation skill is 5D.  The gamemaster decides that the difficulty number is 18.  George rolls a 22; Cev races through the opening without a scratch!
	If George had rolled a 17 or less, Cev would have failed.  Maybe he only would have scraped the rocks, rocking the speeder for a second or two.  If the roll was bad enough, maybe Cev would have crashed his speeder!

	Example:  Cev is going to ride a tauntaun for the first time.  The gamemaster tells George t make a beast riding roll – beast riding is a Mechanical skill.  Since Cev doesn’t have any extra skill dice in beast riding, George just rolls his Mechanical attribute of 3D … and Cev hangs on for dear life.

Opposed Roll

	If your character is acting against another character, you are making an opposed roll: you roll your skill dice, while the other character rolls his skill dice.  Whoever rolls higher succeeds.

	Example:  Cev is shooting at a stormtrooper.  Cev rolls his blaster skill (4D+2) to hit; the stormtrooper dodges (skill 4D) to get out of the way.
	Cev rolls a 15.  The stormtrooper rolls a 17 – the stormtrooper dodges out of the way of the incoming laser blast.  If Cev had rolled a 17 or higher, the sot would have blasted the stormtrooper.

Actions in a Round

	The game is broken down into rounds; each round is about five seconds of game time.
	Your character can perform one action in a round.  Roll the skill or attribute die code for that action.
	Characters can try to do more than one action in a round, but it’s harder to do more than one thing at once.
	If a character tries two things, lose one dice (-1D) from every skill roll.
	If a character tries three things, lose two dice (-2D) from every skill roll.
	If a character tries four things, they lose three dice (-3D) from every skill roll, and so forth.

	Example:  Cev is racing through the streets while several thugs are shooting at him.  George decides that Cev will fire his blaster twice – once at each thug – and dodge to try to get out of the way.
	That’s three actions in a round, so Cev loses –2D for all of his skill rolls.  Cev’s blaster skill is 4D+2, so he only rolls 2D+2 for each blaster shot.  For his dodge he uses his Dexterity, which is 3D+2.  After subtracting the –2D, Cev only gets to roll 1D+2 for his dodge.

The Wild Die

	One of the dice you roll should be of a different color than the others.  This is called your “Wild Die.”  Anytime you roll skill or attribute dice, pay special attention to what you roll on the Wild Die.
	If the Wild Die comes up as a 2, 3, 4 or 5, just add it to the total normally.
	If the Wild Die comes up as a 6, you add the six to your score, but also tell the gamemaster.  He will have you roll that die again – add the new roll to your score, too.  If it comes up as a 6 again, add the six and roll the die again – and keep doing so as long as you get sixes.
	If the Wild Die comes up as a 1, tell the gamemaster.  He will have you do one of three things:
•	Just add it to the total normally
•	Subtract that die and you other highest die from the total
•	Add it to the total normally, but the gamemaster will warn you that a complication happened – something unusual (and probably bad) has happened that livens things up for you character.

Special Statistics

	Each character has some equipment, at least one Force Point (some characters start with two!) and five Character Points.  You can spend these points in particularly difficult situations.

•	Character Points:  When you spend a Character Point, you get to roll one extra die when your character tries to do something.  You can spend Character Points after you try a skill roll but you must do so before the gamemaster says whether your character succeeded at the task.

Character Points are also used to improve character skills between adventures, so don’t spend all of them during an adventure.

•	Force Points:  When you spend a Force Point, that means your character is using all of his concentration to succeed – and whether he knows it or not, he is drawing upon the Force!

When you spend a Force Point, you get to roll double the number of dice you would normally roll in a round.  You can only spend one Force Point per round and you have to say so before you roll any dice.  You can’t spend any Character Points in the same round you spend a Force Point.
Using a Force Point in anger or fear calls upon the dark side – characters who use the Force for evil or for selfish goals risk going over to the dark side of the Force!

•	Dark Side Points:  Characters get Dark Side Points for doing evil.  If a character gets enough Dark Side Points, he or she turns to the dark side of the Force and is now a gamemaster character; the player must create a new character.

•	Move:  This is how fast (in meters) your character moves in a round.

Slang
	
	Here’s some Star Wars slang you can use:

	Bantha fodder: Worthless or waste.  As in, “You won’t be worth bantha fodder!”

	Big L:  The lightspeed barrier, as in, “Once we jump the Big L …”

	Blast!:  A curse.

	Boys in white:  Imperial stormtroopers.

	Clear skies!:  “Good flying!” or “Safe journey!”

	Final Jump:  To die.

	Grease the servos:  To offer somebody a bribe.

	Haul jets!:  “Let’s get out of here!”

	Jabba:  As in “to Jabba someone”; to trick or fool someone and leave him in a very dangerous situation.

	Scratch gravel!:  “Get lost!”

	The Show:  Starfighter combat

	Vape or vap:  “Vaporize,” kill