Star Wars Roleplaying Game: Four Ways to Play Today
If you want a Star Wars roleplaying game, you have four real choices today. You can run the tabletop Star Wars RPG, the dice-and-rulebook game a group plays around a table with one person as game master. You can log into Star Wars: The Old Republic, the online game where you pick a class and follow its story. You can play one of the Star Wars card games when you want the galaxy for an evening without a campaign. Or you can play inside a Star Wars novel you own, as your own character, with a narrator that has read the book and answers whatever you type. Which one fits depends on whether you have a group, a gaming PC, one free evening, or simply a book you finished and did not want to end.
This guide walks through all four, says plainly who each one suits, and ends with how to try the last one tonight for free.
What people mean by a Star Wars roleplaying game
The phrase covers several different wishes, and it helps to know which is yours.
- You want to be a Jedi, a smuggler or a bounty hunter with your own name and history. You care about the character most.
- You want a crew. A ship, a few friends, a job that goes wrong on the way to Tatooine. This is a group wish, and a table of friends does it best.
- You want the galaxy as a book described it. A particular novel’s planets, people and politics, with room to make choices the story never offered. This is the reader’s wish.
The table below shows where each option lands.
The four options side by side
| Tabletop Star Wars RPG | The Old Republic | Star Wars card games | Play inside a novel | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | Rulebooks and dice | Online game on PC | Boxed card games | Written game in a browser |
| Players | A group, one runs it | You, plus other players online | Two players, head to head | Just you |
| Rules | Its own dice system | Learn the controls | Deck and card rules | None to learn; you type |
| Story | Made up by your group | Written class stories | Printed on the cards | Grows from your choices, grounded in the book |
| Best for | Groups who want their own crew | Players who want to see it and fight | A quick game night | Readers who want one book’s world |
The claims about the other games below were read from their publishers’ own pages in September 2026.
The tabletop Star Wars RPG: your own crew
The tabletop game is the classic answer. One player is the game master, everyone else makes a character, and the story is whatever the table makes of it. Many groups know it through the three core books Fantasy Flight Games released: Edge of the Empire for smugglers and scoundrels, Age of Rebellion for the war, and Force and Destiny for Force users. The books share one system, so a crew can mix all three.
One thing to check before you buy. As of September 2026, Fantasy Flight Games’ own product lines page lists Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game and Star Wars: Unlimited, and no longer lists the roleplaying game. Edge Studio, a sister studio in the same Asmodee group, keeps a Star Wars page on its site. So look up which books are in print at your game store before you plan a first session around one.
Pick it if you have a regular group and somebody willing to run it. Nothing else on this list gives you a crew and a ship that belong to your table alone.
It is weaker for anyone without that group. A game master has to learn the rules and prepare each session, and scheduling five people is its own campaign.
Star Wars: The Old Republic: the galaxy on screen
The Old Republic is an online game set in its own era of the galaxy. As of September 2026 its home page offers both “Play Free” and “Subscribe Now”, and EA’s support site carries a guide titled “How to play Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ for free”. So you can try it without paying, and decide later whether a subscription is worth it to you.
You pick a class, each with its own written story, and you meet other players in the same world. The site lists class stories, companions, group missions and space combat among its features.
Pick it if you want to see the galaxy, fight in it with a lightsaber in your hand, and play alongside other people.
It is weaker for the reader’s wish. The stories are written for its own era and classes, so you cannot carry a favourite novel’s characters or events into it, and it needs a PC and an install.
The card games: the galaxy in an evening
Fantasy Flight Games lists two Star Wars card lines as of September 2026. Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game is described on its page as “The Rebels and Empire go head-to-head to eliminate one another’s bases”, with a Clone Wars Edition and expansions that add missions and a campaign. Star Wars: Unlimited is its other Star Wars card line on that page.
Pick it if you want the galaxy on the kitchen table for an hour with one friend, and nobody has to prepare anything.
It is weaker for roleplaying. You play a side and a deck, not a character with a history, and there is no conversation with anyone.
Playing inside a Star Wars novel
The fourth way is the newest. You give a narrator the novel itself, and it reads the book before you begin: the planets, the people, how they speak, what they know and what they hide. You are shown what the reading costs before anything is spent. Then you make your own character, step into that galaxy, and type what you do. There is no list of choices. You can sign on with a smuggler, hide from an Imperial patrol, or talk your way onto a senator’s staff, and the narrator keeps the world consistent with what the author wrote.
This is what LLM RPG does. You upload a copy of a book you own, as a
.txt or .epub file, and it builds an atlas of that book’s world before your
first scene. Because it works from the text rather than from a preset, the
galaxy you play in is the one that novel describes, in that novel’s era, whether
that is a story set in the High Republic or one set long after the films.
Pick it if what you miss after the last page is the book’s own world, and you would rather be a new face in that story tonight than learn a rulebook first.
It is weaker for players who want a group or action on screen. It is a written story, read and typed, like a patient game master who never tires. It also needs the book file, so you use your own copy.
For the wider field, see AI roleplaying and AI game master. If you want the same guide for other worlds, our Lord of the Rings roleplaying game, Harry Potter role playing game and Mistborn RPG articles do it for Middle-earth, Hogwarts and the Final Empire.
What it takes to start each one
| Option | How to start | What you need |
|---|---|---|
| Tabletop Star Wars RPG | Find the books at a game store | A group and a game master |
| The Old Republic | Download it and make an account | A PC and an install |
| Star Wars card games | Buy a box | Two players |
| LLM RPG | Open the site in a browser | Nothing for the first five turns |
With LLM RPG you can play a ready-made world for five turns with no account at all, and signing up adds free credits. The current plans are on the pricing page.
How to start a Star Wars roleplaying game tonight
If playing inside a book sounds like your kind of game, this is the whole path from nothing to your first scene.
- Try it with no account. Open a ready-made world and play five turns. A few minutes tells you whether typing your own actions suits you.
- Sign up with your email if it does. You get a one-time code, no password.
- Upload the book. Choose the Star Wars novel you want to live in, as a
.txtor.epubfile from your own copy. The narrator reads it and builds the world before you play. - Make your character. A dock mechanic who has never left her moon, a junior officer with doubts about her orders, a pilot who owes the wrong people money. You are a new person in the book’s galaxy, so you can be anyone.
- Type what you do. “I take the job, but I ask who else was offered it.” “I hide the datachip in the ship’s spare parts crate.” The narrator answers in the book’s voice and remembers what you did, including the lies you told.
When a table or a screen is the better choice
Be honest about the evening you want. If you have friends who want a ship and a crew of their own, a tabletop game gives you a story nobody else will ever have. If you want to swing a lightsaber and see the galaxy move, The Old Republic does that, and you can start it free. If you want one quick game with a friend, a card game needs no preparation at all.
A written game fits a different moment: you have just finished a Star Wars novel, the next one is not in your hands yet, and you want to stay in that galaxy as yourself. That is the moment it was built for.