I was a Star Wars fan long before I saw any of the movies. I got the special edition of the Original Trilogy on VHS at a library summer reading program in about 4th grade. But for years before that, my friends and I were playing Jedi, droids, rebels, and stormtroopers on the playground and in the woods behind my house. I watched LEGO Star Wars stop motion videos on YouTube before I even really knew what YouTube was, and I think I might have seen Spaceballs at a sleepover before I ever saw all of the Original Trilogy. For me, as I think it is for a lot of people, Star Wars has always been about more than just Star Wars. Which is why I get so excited about things like going rogue 2e.
going rogue 2e by Jess Levine is “A GM-less anti-fascist RPG about war, rebellion, and making the ultimate sacrifice.” It is a stand-alone expansion for galactic 2e by Riley Rethal. Where the base game aims for stories of dashing rebels in a righteous fight against evil, going rogue is more focused on the nitty gritty of what rebellion looks like. Taking cues directly from Rogue One and the new Andor series, it explores “the tensions between cynicism and hope, democracy and decisiveness, survival and sacrifice.”
Right off the bat, going rogue 2e is packed to the brim with Star Wars trappings. I always love reading the Look and Wardrobe sections of a Belonging Outside Belonging playbook, and going rogue delivers. An excess of belts, weathered hands, fingerless gloves, a sentimental pendant, hopeful eyes, and a hat pulled low all await you in these playbooks. Many of the moves and prompts are reminiscent of character and plot beats from Star Wars, but with enough flexibility that you can take the reins and push the story to its full potential. Star Wars so often walks right up to something really interesting or unique, then shies away at the last minute. going rogue gives you all the tools to follow through. It’s an invitation to take the Star Wars movie off-script, to go rogue even, and have the characters finally do and say what you always wish that they had.
Most of the content in going rogue will be familiar to anyone who has played Belonging Outside Belonging games before, but its major new mechanic is the fate. This is a new kind of pillar that dictates how the characters’ story will unfold and ultimately end. The one fate included in going rogue 2e, appropriately titled Sacrifice, has its characters taking on a mission they know will cost them their lives. The fate is essentially a series of four moves, which must be performed in order, that will guide the characters to the destined conclusion. Belonging Outside Belonging games naturally lend themselves to open-ended, freeform stories without a clear goal in mind. But the structure provided by the group fate helps bring going rogue 2e more in line with its film inspiration. Eventually, the characters will find themselves on a slowly unfolding path, and everything will revolve around that one, ultimate goal. It’s a really elegant and unobtrusive way of giving the story some direction, while also maintaining the joy of “idle dreaming” that makes these games special.
going rogue includes a ton of information for players new to GM-less games, which I really appreciate. There’s a section at the beginning and advice sprinkled throughout to help players navigate the relatively light framework of a Belonging Outside Belonging game. I think this is really helpful, especially for a game that might appeal to Star Wars fans just as much as TTRPG fans. Even as someone who has played a ton of GM-less games, I always find this kind of advice helpful when playing with folks who aren’t as used to collaborative storytelling.
A critique I often see leveraged at modern Star Wars is that it has no inspirations outside of Star Wars itself. While the original trilogy, and even to a lesser extent the prequels, were pastiches and homages to World War II films, westerns, samurai movies, and sci-fi serials, a lot of recent Star Wars projects seem mostly concerned with recapturing the “magic” of Star Wars without really knowing what made it work in the first place. And that’s where something like going rogue comes in. It takes everything we love about Star Wars, the charming characters, the all-consuming cause, the ever-present glimmer of hope, and pushes them to new places. going rogue, like galactic before it, uses Star Wars as a jumping off point to help tell new and exciting stories.
going rogue 2e is out now, and can be found at Jess’s itch.io page. For a limited time, you can get going rogue 2e and galactic 2e (which I also highly recommend) in an exclusive bundle, also on itch.io.