The success and artistic vision of the original Star Wars movie trilogy triggered a boom in works of space opera fiction - not just derivative movies and video games, but tabletop roleplaying games as well. The following tabletop RPGs are particularly useful resources for gamers who want to tell stories inspired by Star Wars (or similar works like Firefly or Guardians Of The Galaxy), with rules and detailed settings that capture all the visually spectacular tropes of the space opera genre - outer space dogfights, galactic empires, psychic powers, sinister super-weapons, and scoundrels with the fastest ships in the galaxy.
There are three official Star Wars roleplaying games out there, perfect for tabletop gamers who want to tell stories explicitly set in the Star Wars universe. There's the 1987 edition of Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game, which has cinematic roleplaying rules and sourcebooks with intricate lore. There's The Star Wars Roleplaying Game published by Wizards of the Coast, which was adapted into BioWare's Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic computer RPG. Finally, there are the three Star Wars RPGs published by Fantasy Flight Games, which use custom dice and three separate core books to tell stories of scoundrels, rebels, and fugitive Force-sensitives.
The main advantage of using spin-off "Star Wars-esque" RPG systems is the relative freedom they grant players to engage in original world-building and become the heroes of their own stories. The existence of the Star Wars movies, after all, renders certain story events inevitable - the fall of the Old Republic and Jedi Order, the rise of the Galactic Empire, the heroism/villainy of the Skywalker family, etc. With these original roleplaying games, though, players are free to shape the fate of their galaxies in new directions and become the heroes/villains who save/doom it.
Tabletop Games Like Star Wars: Traveller
The 1st edition of Traveller, one of the earliest science fiction roleplaying games, was published in 1977 by Game Designers' Workshop, thrilling players with rules and scenarios for space opera adventure, spaceship management, psionic powers, and alien cultures that earned the praise of Dungeons & Dragons creator Gary Gygax himself. Much like George Lucas, the creators of Traveller were inspired by their favorite works of science fiction – movies like Star Wars, TV shows like Star Trek, books by authors such as Isaac Asimov, Poul Anderson, Larry Niven, C.J. Cherryh, and so on.
Even in its latest edition, the main setting of Traveller is full of classic 1970s sci-fi tropes, with a nascent Third Imperium asserting control over lawless parts of the galaxy while spaceship crews of smugglers, mercenaries, psychics, and free traders eke out a living on the frontier. The biggest innovation of 1st edition Traveller was arguably its character creation process, in which players traced out the life path and past careers of their PC to determine their present-day proficiencies (an odd quirk of these character generation rules made it easy for Traveller PCs to get killed before the game even started).
Tabletop Games Like Star Wars: Scum And Villainy
Named after the infamous Obi-Wan Kenobi quote from Star Wars, Scum And Villainy is a narrative RPG built around the "Forged In The Dark" system created by John Harper for his RPG Blades In The Dark. True to its name, Scum And Villainy is a "Space Western" game focused around the smugglers, fugitives, and scoundrels of a starship crew trying to make ends meet in the Procyon Sector while tangling with operatives of the Galactic Hegemony and the mercantile Guilds.
Different character playbooks such as "Mechanic," "Muscle," "Mystic," "Pilot," and "Scoundrel" give players abilities and background details inspired by the protagonist of spaceship-centered dramas like Firefly or Guardians Of the Galaxy. Scum and Villainy also has playbooks for the dented but reliable spaceships players steer through space, from the nimbler blockade-running "Stardancer" freighter to the refurbished "Firedrake" Corvette.
Tabletop Games Like Star Wars: Starfinder
The science fantasy RPG Starfinder isn't just a sci-fi adaptation of Pathfinder fantasy RPG's rules, but a sequel set in the distant future of the Pathfinder universe. Players predominantly take on the role of star-hopping adventurers from the Starfinder Society in a galaxy where fantasy species like elves and dwarves rub shoulders with sentient hive insects, androids, and space whales.
Character classes like "Envoy," "Solarion," "Operative," and "Technomancer" blends Star Wars archetypes like Ambassador, Smuggler, and Jedi with classic D&D-style classes such as "Bard," "Paladin," "Rogue," and "Wizard," while fantasy-style pantheons of deities co-exist with artificial intelligences so powerful and advanced that they're functionally identical to gods.
Tabletop Games Like Star Wars: Stars Without Number
Of all the space-opera RPGs listed in this article, Stars Without Number is the most sandbox-friendly game, containing rules inspired by the "Old-School Revival" philosophy of RPG design (randomly-rolled attributes, lethal combat, dungeon crawling, etc.) that encourage players to explore the mysterious galaxy around them. The universe of Stars Without Number is in the process of recovering from a cataclysm called the Scream, and numerous stellar kingdoms are expanding from their once-isolated homeworlds to claim territory, resources, and lost technology from the fallen Terran Mandate.
Such a setting, of course, is a perfect place for mercenaries, explorers, and adventuring heroes to carve out their own slice of glory and legend, or die gruesomely in the process. The free-to-download rules for Stars Without Numbers are perfectly suited for players who want to play Star Wars or Star Trek-inspired games, with intricate rules for using Psionics, Vehicles, Drones, Cyberware, and Starships. The full game also includes additional rules for implementing transhumans, godlike AIs, post-scarcity societies, combat mechs, and magic in a campaign.