Customer Reviews

Threats of the Galaxy (Star Wars Roleplaying Game)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is basically a Monster Manual for Saga, split into NPCs, creatures, and droids. As a miscellany of opponents, it does a good job: you'll find plenty of people and beasties to throw against your PCs. There's some neat new rules and PC alien and droid options, too.

The organization could have been better. For instance, instead of slipping in the option to play Miralukas under Jerec the fallen Jedi's entry or playing a Bith under the Black Sun Vigo entries, why not put the new race options in one place at the end? The same goes for new equipment, skills, and feats.

But the entries themselves are quite good. In addition to stat blocks, you get commentary on what role the character, beast, or droid can play in an adventure. A number of entries are statted out at different Challenge Levels, too, and in the case of NPCs, include advice on what sort of lower CL minions such an NPC would tend to have.

Overall, this is a useful book; perhaps not a must-have at $35, but for Amazon's much lower price, I'm satisfied.

More a collection of average NPCs to place within your adventures than a guideline to how a GM might create interesting and exciting NPCs. As such I can only give it a two-star rating. Advertised as "everything you need to populate you Star Wars games" it falls a bit short.

While it does include stats for NPCs, beasts, and droids, there are sparse (if any) guidelines as to how a GM might create original material for his or her game.

At the standard (for Saga Edition) 9"x9" format, this 160 page book is a bit slim for its intended purpose. At 35 dollars, its not a great deal for what you get.

I'll start with the positives. The book is nicely put together for the most part, and of good quality. It has a nice selection of characters from the various books, games and movies--except for the ones that will be included in other books coming out in the next few months, such as a KOTOR guide and a New Jedi Order supplement.

The thing that I don't like about this book--it should have been included elsewhere. They "slimmed down" the rules in this iteration of the game, but they overslimmed. So instead of having all of these characters in the core book like they did in the past, they pulled them out and charged me for yet another book. And what is this desire to continue printing the books in this odd size? 160 pages really means about 120 when you factor in the smaller size of the pages.

Many of the characters don't have any pictures or drawings at all, and as I said, they really rob you by leaving out a bunch of the major players, only to put them into other books and charge you AGAIN over the next few months. They really could have and should have done a better job with this, but the material that you get is reasonably good, but it is certainly priced to high.

I saw this book and had to have it. For I am GM who constantly does things on the fly, and doesnt preplan adventures. Face it, you have no idea where the group is going to go, and I hate "railroading" them. This book is perfect if you need some quick stats or just some random encounters. A lot of Useful info in this book. Only bad thing is that it is very small in pages, and I do not think its worth its full price, even at the discounted prepaid price I got. This book is maybe a 14.99 - 19.99 type book.

EDIT: (Dec 2008)
Now that I have used this book more since I first purchased it, I am quite happy I did, this is a great tool for GM's. Its full of great ideas for mini-adventures as well as enough to pre-plan a full blown out campaign. If I could re-rate this, I would give it 4 stars. Still, I wish it was bigger as in more pages, thus I can't give it 5 stars.

I'm a fan of both the Star Wars Saga Edition, and the new 4th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons. I picked up the new 4th Ed material including the Monster Manual (MM) before picking up Threats of the Galaxy (TotG, a Star Wars "Monster Manual"). Unfortunately, the quality of the two could not be further apart. While I understand the intent of the authors of TotG, I certainly feel that they could've borrowed much more heavily from the style and layout that the MM offers to the GM. The layout isn't nearly as tight, and the lack of pictures for the NPCs is glaring when put side by side. The way the MM displays each race, giving you information and tactics for every iteration of that monster really helps the GM in crafting tactical, intelligent, believable enemy NPCs. TotG does none of this.

TotG also intersperses actual game mechanics throughout the NPC entries, instead of compiling this into a "New Game Mechanics" section at the end. This requires the reader to hunt and peck throughout the whole book to find that game mechanic that now wants to be used. Bad layout! What makes this most frustrating is that since the book was released in May of '08, the authors must have had access to what was being produced for 4th Edition, and could've seen the improved layout and incorporated it into their product. Either this is a horrible lack of communication, or a horrible oversight of WotC's product management. I'm obviously not suggesting that they should've updated Saga Edition to 4th Edition, but layout and tactics is not a 4th Edition game mechanic. It's just good sense.

While I plan on using TotG as a reference, I am certainly going to have the MM right next to it, trying to cross-reference Star Wars NPCs with similar monster tactics and powers in the MM. It's a pain for the GM that the TotG authors could have alleviated by taking a look around at the new direction RPGs at WotC are taking.

I held off on buying this book. I wasn't sure I needed it. After all, the core rulebook has rules for generating NPCs and there are plenty of generic characters described in the other books. But after creating a spreadsheet that automatically calculated attribute values and their related statistics, skills, feats, talents, etc., I came to one conclusion: this is a lot of work. Especially without the spreadsheet, I'd be spending hours getting an NPC just right and looking up values, calculating other ones. So I thought, "why not just buy a book loaded with NPCs other people have spent the time fleshing out and assigning CL values to?" Great idea! That's what the book is: a bunch of generic characters (and a few unique ones), creatures, and droids that you can easily drop into an adventure and throw at players. Plus, their CL values are already calculated, which is not as easy as it sounds. There's a little extra information on designing encounters, but it's nothing crucial. Anyway, if you already have the core rulebook, Starships of the Galaxy, and Scum and Villainy, you should just pay for this book and have the four core books on the shelf - it's worth it.

Like Starships of the Galaxy, I consider this book to be indispensable to any Star Wars GM. Tons and tons of generic characters, and a lot of creatures and droids, this book will populate your game for you, leaving you more time for other GM duties.

Also, if you read the entries under each stat block (the fluff), you will find a bounty of adventure ideas. The fluff entries are not dry reading - they were meant to ignite the imagination and help the GM understand how certain people and professions fit into the Star Wars universe.

Also, by-and-large, the art is incredible. Some of the best art in any of the Star Wars Saga line.

Of course, the book has one main flaw (and really only one): stat block errors. Nearly every single stat block in the book contains errors, some more than others (and of course, some are perfect, but they are few and far between). The good news is you can use these stat blocks direct from the book, and your players will never know that they contain errors. But if you're like me, that's not really good enough.

I believe this book can be used as-is with little-to-no problem. If you want all the corrections to the errors, download this pdf (http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?nzn03gmhulq) which contains all (or nearly all) the mistakes in the book. Between the book and this document, there is no reason to not give the book 5 stars. As it is, I have to give the book 4 stars.

What "Threats of the Galaxy" provides is tons of character types and a few creatures and droids for your characters to beat up and dispose of. You could think of this as the Monster Manual for the Star Wars universe. GMs will find this to be very useful for their campaigns. However, there isn't much help for scaling the levels of NPCs or creatures, so you'll still have to bit of work. Also, there isn't much support for creating your own characters or creatures. You'll have to hunt and peck for types of characters that will be able to match the levels of the characters in your campaign. It's a bit of inconvenience, but the characters that are in this book are very solid.

Got this for Christmas and I really like it. Good descriptions of beasts and allies. I have used it in my campaign - all entries are ready to drop into play. It can be used in any era of Star Wars, as the creatures - especially the droids - can be re-skinned for new races or creatures.

The art is good, and so is the organization. The book is a bit thin, though. More entries would be nice, especially for low-level encounters.

Threats to the Galaxy is more of a Game Masters reference than a players book. I've found that most of the Saga edition supplements (so far) are geared more towards the GM but with some interesting player options thrown in as well. I think this will change once Wizards of the Coast release books for all of the different Star Wars time periods. Threats gives you stats on some of the baddest characters, both specific and general, in the Star Wars galaxy. If you are a player of the Saga edition of the Star Wars RPG game then you should pick this up!