Some suspected it, but now it's official: Wizards of the Coast is dropping the Star Wars license, and with it, the Star Wars: Saga Edition role-playing game and its counterpart, the Star Wars Miniatures Game.

It seemed likely that this would happen sooner or later once D&D 4E was released; I'm sure it's difficult for Wizards of the Coast to justify continued research and development on two rule sets (namely Star Wars and Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition). Saga Edition was a useful testbed for Wizards when they were trying out new ideas for 4E, but its clear that they've decided to go in a very different direction with D&D and future RPGs.

Star Wars just wasn't part of the picture. As a result, Galaxy of Intrigue and The Unknown Regions will be the last two books in the series.

My review of the Galaxy at War source book for Star Wars Saga Edition is up at GameCryer.com.

As I mentioned in the review, this book's timing couldn't be better for my campaign. After a year of operating on the fringe, with half the group training to become Jedi, and the other forming a transportation company, our heroes are about to get caught up in the Mandalorian Wars. This phase of the campaign could easily last 6-12 months, and having a source book dedicated to war -- be it martial species, new war-time feats, a rank and privileges system, myriad one-shot mini adventures and an entire space/battle station chapter -- is a great help. Read the review.

My review of the Rebellion Era Campaign Guide for Star Wars: Saga Edition is live at GameCryer.com. The book deviates from the standard content of recent campaign guides -- there are no new Force powers or techniques and no new species -- but it makes up for those with a new Background system and dozens of species feats.

It was a hard book to review: on the one hand, it has a lot of nitty gritty detail about the era, but as I said in the review, a lot of this the Rebellion Era information was already covered in the core rule book and other releases. So if you're really into the Star Wars Expanded Universe, then you'll probably love this book. If the EU makes your head hurt, then you can easily get by without picking up this book.

The WotC's preview for Galaxy at War leads off this week's Star Wars RPG round up. After that, I've got the blog round-up which includes posts about dealing with Star Wars canon issues, how to write a crawl, and the challenges of switching from a fantasy to science fiction mindset.

I also found a number of cool new tools, including an initiative tracker, character summary cards and a crawl generator. Finally, the Order 66 podcast's Episode 78 features a 2+ hour Q&A session with Star Wars designer Rodney Thompson about the Rebellion Era Campaign Guide.