Star Wars: The Essential Atlas
Star Wars: The Essential Atlas is a softcover, coffee-table-style book that covers every Star Wars era from the pre-Republic days of the alien and powerful Celestials (who constructed the Corellia system) through the Sith Empire depicted in Dark Horse’s Legacy Era comic books. It offers maps of every major sector of the galaxy, historical and political write-ups on them, and occasional “closer look” sidebars on topics like astrogation and galactic mysteries.
Star Wars: The Essential Atlas is the best sourcebook never released for any edition of the Star Wars RPG. Cynics might argue there’s nothing here that can’t be found in fan resources like Wookipedia, but they’d be wrong – few resources I’ve seen can compare to the beautifully crafted maps featured in this book, and its bound form makes it far more browseable than the web based alternatives. While Del Rey is publishing the Atlas as a general interest reference book, its beautiful maps, graphical timelines, and planetary write-ups make the book an excellent resource for gamers, regardless of whether they’re playing d6, Saga Edition, or a homebrew of their own design.
I first saw the book when one of my friends showed up for our weekly Star Wars game and placed the atlas in front of me, flipping it open to a timeline map of The Great Sith War. A flip of the page revealed one for the Mandalorian Wars. A third flip brought up the Jedi Civil War.
It was all there – arrows showing major fleet movements for each military campaign, demarcations showing the extent of the Krath, Sith, Mandalorian and Republic political spheres, notes about major offenses and counter-offenses. In short, it was everything I’d wanted for my game’s upcoming switch to a military-oriented campaign.
The maps themselves were beautifully done, always showing enough information to grasp the basics of a particular era or region, while at the same time offering nitty-gritty details about particular worlds or mini-campaigns. A good example of this is the inset map detailing the Mandalorian invasion of Taris and the agricultural systems that support it.
But it isn’t just the Knights of the Old Republic era – the book offers the same level of loving attention to detail for all of Star Wars’ major time periods. There are maps depicting the timelines of each of the six motion pictures, the exploits of Han Solo, the atrocities of Palpatine’s Empire, and even one identifying the famous shadowports of the galaxy. This last is the sort of thing that game masters will see and instantly bookmark.
The solar system write-ups offer short encyclopedia-style entries on Star Wars most famous worlds, including Duro, Ithor, the forest moon of Endor and Dantooine. Each has details such as diameter, length of day and year, terrain of each system’s namesake world, as well as a sidebar listing other planets and moons. The Atlas isn’t nearly as comprehensive in its maps for planets as it is for the galaxy at large; each world has nice looking – but unlabeled – fractal map of one side of the sphere. I would loved to have seen some more detailed maps, perhaps listing major cities, but if nothing else they provide a nice quick visual reference for players (as well as a source of flavor text for GMs).
As a gaming aid, I’ve found the Atlas most useful when I want to paint a dramatic backdrop of the galaxy at large. I don’t like inserting my players into the signature events in the Star Wars movies, but when running a war campaign (or even a rebellion one) I like being able to call out specific events. During non-movie time periods – like Knights of the Old Republic – it’s great to be able to show my players the full sweep of the war, noting when particular worlds fall or are liberated. I also found some one-off maps, like the aforementioned shadowports, as well as a map that shows the population density of the galaxy, to be great idea fodder. Any time I can pick up a book and it spawns three story ideas in as many pages, I know I have a winner.
I have some quibbles with the book. For example, the index is based on Galactic coordinates rather than page numbers; I’d rather it listed both. While most of the maps are clear and concise, there are a few where the color differences (such as the arrows depicting the Mandalorian False War and the invasion proper) are too subtle to easily differentiate. But these are just quibbles; the vast majority of Star Wars: The Essential Atlas is solid, and it’s a worthwhile edition to your gaming (and Star Wars) library.
February 6th, 2010 at 18:13
Thanks for the kind words about the Essential Atlas! When writing, my co-writer Jason and I intentionally tried to emulate the things we liked most about old-school Star Wars Roleplaying Game sourcebooks like Platt’s Starport Guide from West End Games.
If you’re interested, I’ve posted a bunch of extras and behind-the-scenes info on the Atlas here:
http://geekosity.blogspot.com/search/label/star%20wars%20atlas
Dan
February 12th, 2010 at 13:48
You’re welcome — the book’s been a great addition to my game; just the other week were grabbed the book to illustrate some point of Outer Rim navigation. Ah, nerd fights.
Anyway, thanks for the post and I’ll be sure to follow-up with a visit to your blog; there looks to be a lot of good stuff there as well.