The New Jedi Order Sourcebook (Star Wars Roleplaying Game)

Rating:
Summary: The invasion begins...
Review: Here it is, the companion to the first half of the New Jedi Order storyline. Let me start by saying this is not the cover artwork! The front cover has a great piece of art showing Luke tangling with a Vong warrior and his amphistaff.

Each chapter is devoted to one of the novels and outlines the important people, places, things and events of that book as well as adventure hooks for getting your own characters into the action. Great for a quick refresher of everything that's happened upto Star by Star.

My only major complaint with this book is the lack of artwork. There's tons of new places, characters and things mentioned but very few pictures of them. There are several small diagrams of ships/places but they're more on the technical side than artistic.

Basically, if you enjoy NJO story you'll want this book. Hopefully, WotC will continue to turn out books like this instead of planet guides.

Rating:
Summary: A must-have for any NJO campaign.
Review: If you are planning on running a SWRPG campaign set in the New Jedi Order era, this sourcebook is the one accessory you must have. Chapter One starts off with a broad overview of the galactic situation just prior to the Yuuzhan Vong invasion, and then goes right into a detailed description of the YV and their culture, along with a new-and-improved list of YV equipment. Chapters Two through Seven each detail a specific novel, starting with Vector Prime and ending with Star By Star. Chapter Eight contains an epilogue and hints at some possible future events. At appropriate points throughout the books there are character profiles, new ships, new vehicles and animals, and even a handful of new weapons. I found the character profiles to be especially useful, particularly those of famous people like Corran Horn and Kyp Durron. In addition, the characters from the core rulebook have "leveled up" to show their increased experience. Very helpful. And no, the majority of the NPCs *do not* die.

Like all of Wizard's Star Wars products, the book itself is full color throughout. The artwork is high-quality and has a dark and stylistic touch. Some people won't like that, claiming that it isn't "Star Wars," but I say that it is appropriate for the NJO universe.

I stopped reading the Star Wars novels a long time ago because there are too darn many to keep track of. As a GM myself, and as a NJO newbie, the main thing I liked about the NJO sourcebook is that it neatly compressed all the major events from these six novels into one book. The writing is clear, concise, and most importantly I found it fun to read. I immediately felt that I had enough information to begin building a NJO campaign. The book has a lot of adventure ideas and even a few rough adventure outlines which any GM worth his salt can integrate into his campaign.

Is the book perfect? Certainly not. My biggest gripe is the lack of an alphabetical index. This would nearly cripple the book if its other qualities hadn't been so good. Fortunately, there is a chapter summary at the beginning of the book, which partially alleviates the lack of an index. Chances are you're still going to have to go searching for those obscure entries though. The other issue is that since this book was released just prior to the release of the Revised Core Rulebook, you may need to do some tinkering to integrate the two. However, that is ultimately a minor issue in my opinion.

Overall, I give this book a very strong 4 out of 5 because of the lack of an index.

As a side note, the prior claim that a GM would be better served by spending 10 minutes reading the backs of the novels seems to be quite ill-advised, if not impossible. If you are a GM wanting to run a NJO campaign, GET THIS BOOK. And may it help you as much as it helped me.

EDIT: My gaming group, which meets twice a month, is now 8 sessions into our NJO campaign. As GM, I can honestly say that in that time, the NJO sourcebook has continued to be an invaluable resource. After much consideration, I have decided to raise the book's rating to a 5. This is both for the book's continuing usefulness and because I feel that the previous poster's rating of 1 flies in the face of reason.

Rating:
Summary: Too small of a book to cover too large of a series- 3½ stars
Review: The New Jedi Order has had, like it or hate it, a staggering effect on Star Wars and the Expanded Universe as a whole. Much loved characters have died while the galaxy far, far away has been turned upside down by the extra-galactic invaders known as the Yuuzhan Vong. Much as the Star Wars novel line has been passed from Bantam to Del Rey, so has the role playing game transferred from the now-deceased West End Games to Wizards of the Coast, (No surprise, really. Hasbro Toys owns Wizards and Lucas owns a big chunk of Hasbro). I never liked WEG's D6 take on Star Wars- I always found the 'Bucket-O-Dice' game system pretty unheroic and inflexible. On the other hand, I much prefer D20- it works quite well in the Star Wars milieu largely because it was developed for Dungeons & Dragons, which is super heroic adventuring and that suits Star Wars to a T.

However, regardless of what I thought of the WEG game mechanics, their source material was always first rate (kinda like Shadowrun- lousy game system, great source books), especially the source books released for the various novels and comics, such as the Thrawn Trilogy, Dark Empire, or the Tales of the Jedi Companion. Conversely, Wizards of the Coast seems to have a different philosophy regarding their Star Wars source books. On the one hand, Truce at Bakura was a single book that got its own hard cover from WEG, meanwhile Wizard's gives us one hard cover that encompasses nine books of the New Jedi Order. While it may not have been feasible to do nine books, it does seem a lot of information to distill down into one 160 page book. Plus the West End Games material the had the benefit of being written, in many cases, by authors who wrote the initial novels, often adding more detail and background. A huge bonus considering that many of these books were also bought by people who didn't play the game at all.

Basically, the New Jedi Order Source Book breaks down the nine books, (Vector Prime, Onslaught, Ruin, Hero's Trial, Jedi Eclipse, Balance Point, Conquest, Rebirth and Star by Star) in chapters that includes new characters, planets, vehicles and equipment. The first part of the book details the Yuuzhan Vong, their religion, and the vast majority of their personal gear. Each chapter also includes a small star map to show the current progress of the Vong's invasion route. Also included are some adventure hooks to get a player group into the action. Plus a few minor (and very poor quality) maps- something I have already had a talk with Dan Wallace about. The book does give an excellent overview of the series, but lacks any real meat and could have benefitted from input from the authors to flesh out places, events, and characters.

I also want to spend some time talking about the art that appears through out the book. It goes beyond just being bad or even terrible- it's putrid. It certainly doesn't feel like it belongs in a Star Wars book- of any kind. It seems better suited to a Vampire: the Masquerade or just about anything else by White Wolf. The only good images are by RK Post (Essential Guide to Alien Species), and even his picture of the voxyn Jedi Hunter is messed up, because when he first drew it, he thought it only had four legs instead of six so he had to go back and touch up the image. For the most part, though, the graphics and picture are on the lousy-side of awful.

On the whole, though, I like the source book- the stats for the Yuuzhan Vong are great and I suppose if I had worked at it I could have done it all myself, but with this it means I don't have to. It appears though that Wizards will continue the trend of publishing one book that covers large amounts of information like the Rebellion Era source book, Coruscant and the Core Worlds- Coruscant deserves it's own book, not 16 or so pages in a book with other worlds. I'll be interested to see if WotC will release a second NJO book that covers the last half of the series or simply double the size of the existing book and simply add new information.

Rating:
Summary: Recycled Novels without the talent of the original authors..
Review: This book represents the worst thing I have seen WoTC ever put out, and JD Wiker should be ashamed of himself.

This "sheep in wolf's clothing" sourcebook is a 159 pg. dustcover summary of 9 novels by excellent authors, punctuated by anemic and careless adventurettes and RPG stats for NPCs, 80% of which are introduced shortly before their death.

Other Wizards products have shown brilliance in the rich tapestry of their provided surroundings, providing GMs with a host of wonderful information from which to enchant their players, entertain readers and delight the curious.

In this unfortunate case, all of the wealth of possible information in this book is lost behind the stilted attention to the storyline of the novels, which ends up, in this abbreviated format, coming across like a poorly intellectualized soap opera script. An interested party would be better served by taking 10 minutes in a bookstore and reading the backs of the novels ostensibly plagiarized in this poor offering.

I hope that the abhorrent failings of this book can be directly tied to some legal requirement of Lucasfilm restricting creative freedoms surrounding its intellectual property, if not, WoTC should take a serious look at what disservice they are doing to long-time players and GMs with this sort of tripe.

Rating:
Summary: Gotta like the NJO to like this book
Review: This sourcebook has TONS of info on the New Jedi Order, as expected. It's good too if you don't want to read every book to find out what's going on. Not much new in the way of classes or skills, other than the Jedi Ace and Nogri Bodygaurd, but a few other tidbits here and there.

If you like the NJO series, and/or playing an adventure in this era, get this book. But it's not a must