One area where Star
Wars: Saga Edition could use some help are its
creatures. There are certainly a number of them out there, particularly the
iconic ones from the movies, but the system tends to come up a little short
with more mundane critters.
After my third session of
Star Wars, I thought back our summer playing D&D 4th Edition,
and got to wondering about converting monsters from that book with use in Star
Wars. Now I should note that I
think that at a fundemental level, Star Wars plays differently than D&D. It's less about
dungeon crawls and more about relationships - relationships between characters,
between master and apprentice, between organizations. Those were always the
main drivers in the movies, and in almost every case the heroes only came up
against monsters/creatures as a consequence of the story.
For example, the encounter
with the trash compactor beast in A New Hope came into play because Han and Luke were rescuing
the princess. Luke's random encounter with a wampa ice beast on Hoth led
directly to his vision of Obi-Wan, and his training on Dagaboh with Yoda. Han
and Luke were going to be fed to the sarlac because the crossed Jabba the Hutt.
Because of this, Star Wars needs
fewer monsters (and more NPCs) than D&D, but it's still nice to have
choices.