Starships of the Galaxy (Star Wars Roleplaying Game)

List Price: $34.95 Discount Price: $18.00

Customer Reviews:

More options to spice up vehicular combat [Posted on 2008-02-24]
After picking up the Star Wars SAGA roleplaying game from Amazon, I went to the Wizards of the Coast website to look up any potential printing errors in the book. While I was looking around, I read about an up and coming supplement dealing with starship options. It piqued my interest, so I pre-ordered a copy of it on Amazon.

A month later, the book arrived and after spending about a week using it, I can say it was very much worth the money.

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"Starships of the Galaxy" is at heart a gathering of ship statistics, paragraphs of ship descriptions within the Star Wars timeline and pieces of art sprinkled throughout.

There's good variety here: most if not all of the movie ships were covered, including the medical frigates (seen at the end of The Empire Strikes Back and during Return of the Jedi), Cloud Cars (seen in The Empire Strikes Back), Super Star Destroyers (around the middle to end of Return of the Jedi) and more. In addition to what was seen in the six films, there are also entries that come from the Expanded Universe novels, like Xizor's Virago (from Shadows of the Empire). These were a nice touch that managed to cater to both casual and hardcore fans.

In some cases, the descriptions were a little skimpy - you'd either read about who used the ship, or when and where it was conceived, but rarely both. Mostly though, they did get the basics of the vehicle across.

The art is a mixed bag in terms of style - some were very straight, bright and blocky, giving the ship a technical drawing feel (like the X-Wing, and it appears the artists did work for the d20 Modern supplement "d20 Future"). Others were a bit blurry, colorful and seemed to make the ship look like it was engaged that moment in the heat of battle (such as the Virago). Both were done well, however. So, consistency aside, I was very pleased.

Though smaller than the rest of the book, there is a section on starship maneuvers and tactics. While these are reserved for campaigns set primarily with vehicle combat as the main conflict, there are some good single options that work for a mixed theme campaign.

To top it off, the covering is solidly build and the pages aren't thin and easily bent. The low page count (160) might turn some away (and I was skeptical myself after Wizards lowered the average from 192 to 160) but as long as the content stays at this level of quality or rises, the cost will be justifiable.

Shipyard Listings  [Posted on 2008-06-29]
This newest version of the Star Wars Starship guide is great for those Smigglers, Bounty Hunters and Ace pilots that want to buy,steal or build their own custom made ship.

Interesting, but specific [Posted on 2008-07-24]
I like the book, and I love how extensive it is and how well it explains just about everything you need to know about a starship. It really embellishes the starship battles and makes it much more immersive into the Star Wars Universe everyone knows and loves.

The only drawback is that much of it goes so in-depth that the typical group will not take the feats necessary to use most of the book. Unless you have a campaign centered around a group of pilots, much of the book will be largely unused.

But, it is a necessity should you choose to make a campaign of snub-fighter jocks or members of the Imperial Navy or a party who just wants to design and build their own ship.

Starships of the Galaxy for the Star Wars RPG [Posted on 2008-08-05]
The Starships of the Galaxy sourcebook for the Star Wars RPG is a nice addition to the series of sourcebooks that are coming out this year. Along with Threats of the Galaxy that came out a couple weeks before it, Starships of the Galaxy puts more depth and definition into your sessions with chases, dogfights, and all the great things that makes a Starship in Star Wars a Starship. Having great Starships, Freighters, and Capital Ships from the Star Wars universe. From Starships like Luke Skywalker's X-Wing and Darth Vader's Tie Fighter, then Freighters like Han Solo's Millenium Falcon and Knights of the Old Republic's Ebon Hawk, to Capital Ships like the Corellian Corvette and the Victory Class Star Destroyer, it's all here. For fans of the Star Wars RPG and fans of Star Wars period this is a great book to add to your collection. With nice stats for all the Starships for Star Wars. If you enjoy the game and enjoy the Star Wars universe this is a definite must buy!

Borderline worth it [Posted on 2008-09-18]
I think my biggest beef with this book is the way the ships are organized. Instead of alphabetically ordered (even the four new templates like junker and prototype are in with the ships in alphabetical order instead of a little section of their own)I think it would have made more sense to have the ships catagorized by size, function, or the best prolly would have been by who used or made them. Like... all the old republic ships in one section, then new empire, then the independants... I dunno, it just get's very dissorganized when they do it alphabetically. My other beef being I guess even though it is labeled "Starships" I was hoping to see some land speeders or bikes, a few walkers... land craft I guess, I wonder if that means they'll come out with a land craft book or just put them chunk by chunk in the other supplements which seems to be what they're doing. Seems the KotR book has speeders and bikes and the Unleashed book has some too so.... In order to play the game you have to buy all the books anyways right? One last beef... The templates in my opinion are pretty useless, nice attempt, but really... if a gm wants to make a ship a junker... you don't really need a template, just make some of the stats lower...
On to the pluss' of this book. There is enough selection of ships (barely) to put together a battle. There are maybe a couple of fighters, freighters, transports, capital ships, etc from each era of play from each faction. There are pictures for 99% of the ships which is allways good and the art is exceptional. I guess I do have another beef with this book which was actually the first thing that annoyed me, there are only about 4 schematic layouts for ships... so there are all these ships but only about four of them have blueprint layouts (dynamic a.k.a. ebon hawk, sith infiltrator a.k.a. Darth Maul's personal transport, and of course han solo's ride.. I'm pretty sure there's one more... oh yea, one other space transport) which bummed me out because I was looking to throw some space pirates into the campaign and would have liked to work with some actual ship layouts instead of making them myself and I guess it would have gotten pretty rediculous with the sheer size of some of these ships but they could have done a few more of them. The ships have brief descriptions of who made them and why which is good for tying them in to your campaign as well as a capabilities section which is good for basically letting you know how that ship was used. One of the best parts of this book was the modification part which was laid out and explained very well. There are new talents and feats which were interesting but seriously I think unless the GM let's it be known that it is going to be a campaign heavy in space most of them are pretty useless to a standard campaign, more for building specialized characters. There is one cool feat enabling someone to literally make a ship from the ground up and I think that's cool. I reccomend this book for two people and two people only... The GM who wants to throw an occasional small scale starship battle into the campaign (although get ready for a headache cuz the rules and specs on how to do this are complicated) and the player who wants to be a specialized character, the player who really wants to be an ace pilot and have a personalized ship that is capable of more than just getting the party from point a to point b. Hey, no group is complete without a han solo right? beats calling a taxi all the time and really helps flesh out a character. Sooo... I'd say this book is more for the player looking to flesh their character than for the GM

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