Augury: Black Star

100% Recommended!

Recently my daughter discovered Clone Wars and to my total delight she devoured all the series like there was no tomorrow. Then she jumped to Rebels with equal enthusiasm and we both watched Ahsoka together – with made the experience something that I will treasure for the rest of my life., She then asked (no… demanded!) that I run a Star Wars RPG for her and my boy. Being a “old school” Star Wars gamemaster, I immediately recovered my Star Wars d6 (2^nd Edition, Revised & Expanded) and used Bill Slavicsek’s house rules to de-crunch it a bit (you can find his excellent advice at the end of Defining a Galaxy: 30 Years in a Galaxy Far, Far Away, a must read for fans!).

Our first Star Wars d6 session was (of course) a mission for my daughter’s padawan and my son’s clone soldier. They enjoyed the narrative but complained that they felt limited by the rules. While I deeply love and still run Star Wars d6 I do admit that it is better suited for a level power close to Rogue One and Andor than Clone Wars (I mean, you can run it for Clone Wars with Jedi and Clone Commandos, but it requires character that are a lot stronger than traditional initial PCs… which also means rolling lot of dice all the time).

So, I started searching for another option. I am running a Dragon Ball Z FKR campaign for my kids, so I didn’t want to use the same approach for Star Wars. I briefly considered the awesome Star Wars Saga (d20) or using my old Star Wars FATE hack. I was tempted to dust off my Star Wars books that used Genesys (I love those dice), but I didn’t have the time to read the rules again. While I felt that my daughter might enjoy any of those options, my younger boy would get bored quickly. So I went looking for something not overly minimalist but also avoided traditional systems – and this is where I found Black Star.

LakeSide Games' Black Star is a not-Star Wars rules light player-faced game. All checks are made with 2d6 against a difficulty of 9, but the game also incorporates a lovely success with cost rule based on a limited resource: Resolve. Resolve is literally “dramatic hit points”. As long as you have 1 Resolve you still can do stuff, but if it hits 0 you are at the mercy of the opposition. Mixing traditional hit points with metagame currency is never a safe bet, but for the pulpy feel of Star Wars (especially the Clone Wars series)… damn, it works like a charm. Of course, it is a fine balancing act. I saw myself in situations where my kids faced the choice of either burning Resolve and trying something cool or not burning Resolve but suffering Resolve as damage. However, that kind of situation is a natural consequence of such systems and I never felt that it “broke” the game (more importantly, it never shattered the narrative reality). But it remains perhaps the weakest point of Black Star if you don’t like that kind of mechanic.

The rest of system use positive and negative die do adjudicate difficulty (kind like D&D 5E’s advantage and disadvantage, but cumulative). Gear, ships, and NPCs use a clever tag system that builds upon that system. Characters are defined by a set of universal skills, their archetypes, and their talents. Gear is part of the narrative but when it really matters mechanically then it is a talent, and that is a design decision that I totally approve (and which screams Star Wars!).

The book provides a cool set of not-Force powers, adventure samples, and everything you need to start kicking your campaign in a far, far away galaxy. I have already run 4 sessions for my kids and we are having a total blast. I cannot recommend enough this game for people that are looking for a rules light Star Wars option but who find things closer to FKR (like the awesome Galaxy Far Away) too light.

A typical Black Star player character.