Star Wars WEG d6

Posted 31 May 2025 to Sci-Fi

The original Star Wars game system.

XP Card

Sessions GM'd: 0
Sessions as Player: 7

I Used

I joined a campaign to try out this system. We played a crew of characters with various backgrounds who took missions from a shady character. Our game was set during the Old Republic era, which I'm not familiar with. My character was a Cathar (cat person) shepherd with Force sensitivity. We made friends when our space bus was hijacked. I also thoroughly investigated this system when considering running my own Star Wars campaign - I elected not to use the WEG d6 system.

Overview

WEG d6 is the West End Game original Star Wars RPG system from 1987. We used the core book, plus a number of freely available fan-written PDFs with vehicles and weapons. We played simply using Owlbear Rodeo and character sheets kept by each player.

The Good

Simple mechanic. Find your stat, find the skill, add together the dice, roll the dice and sum the result. I like its simplicity and ease to GM for.

The rule book includes tons of pregen characters. There are 28 of them! They are all built using the correct rules and they cover every trope and classic character concept in Star Wars. I love this because it is very helpful when creating a character because I can look up to see what skills they chose for their Smuggler. This type of content also really helps GMs get the game into play quickly, as newcomers to the game can get into a session without wasting an evening creating characters first. More games should do this.

Nostalgia value. I was a teen when I first played this game. It was brief. The game was widespread and many grognards will have fond memories of fighting AT-ST walkers and zooming in speeders around alien planets.

A wealth of content. A game that has existed for 35 years has accumulated a wealth of content. There are 3 editions of the game, with each edition adding more details as new Star Wars novels and comics and movies have come out. Fans have created hundreds of NPCs and adventures to expand the game over the years.

The Not-So-Good

Content bloat. Star Wars is a vast setting. There are innumerable comics and novels and TV shows and movies. You can use this game to run campaigns set in the Empire Era, in the Old Republic Era, in the New Republic Era. This is a game that has a loving fan community who create everything for it. The 3e core book is large but manageable at 500 pages, but there are loads of splat books. Every alien, every weapon, every piece of gear that has ever been mentioned in a novel or seen for a split second in the background of a movie, has been statted and presented. There are 120 pages of weapons! 185 pages of playable alien species, including such bizarre life forms as the Rakririan (worm insect people). Vehicles, ships, planets and more are all detailed. It is incredible and frightening at the same time.

Core game does not explain character creation well. The rulebook does not really explain how to create a custom character very well. It mainly expects a player to pick one of the templates provided, such as "Young Jedi" and "Wookie" and "Outlaw". These are pregens with the stats and skills already determined for you. You are invited to tweak the pregen afterwards. I was not satisfied with this. When I dug into how to actually create a character, from scratch, it was like doing taxes. You have 54 points, each point buys a +1 to a stat, each +3 converts to a +1D. Species makes no difference whatsoever.

Space Combat is not clearly explained. And I'm not even sure it makes sense. I get the sense that the GM is supposed to just narratively describe stuff happening and then occasionally ask for dice rolls. This seems to be the advice of the sidebar on page 133. The space combat of Stars Without Number is far superior, as there are some clear gaps in how to handle common situations in WEG - for example, no explanation is given on how to flee from a space battle or outrun an enemy. A flowchart would help explain how to attack, dodge, soak and shield space combat.

Too many dice rolls in combat. (1) Roll to hit. (2) Roll to try Dodge. (3). Roll to do damage. (4) Roll to reduce damage. That feels a bit too much.

Too many skills. There are 93 skills. This is insane. For example, Star Wars has a lot of vehicles! They are one of the most important props in the setting. Every class of vehicle has a different skill. Starship pilot, starfighter pilot, capital ship pilot, repulsorlift pilot, submersible pilot, boat pilot, walker pilot, hover vehicle pilot. This is needless bloat, and frustrating because your ace pilot character might be great at flying an X-Wing, but inept in a hover vehicle. This doesn't gel with the setting, to my mind, where we see pulpy chase scenes with characters using all kinds of vehicles competently. But it's not just vehicles. Technical characters who want to be able to repair stuff will be bewildered at the number of repair skills. Your gunfighter might be skilled with a blaster, but will bumble when firing the ship cannons.

Verdict

Choose this game if you have nostalgia for the old 1980's rpg, or if you want to take advantage of the wealth of content that is available for it. Personally, I found the thousands of pages of content overwhelming and the large number of skills too complex. I elected to use Savage Worlds instead when I ran Star Wars in 2025.