Sometimes you just want a book with a lot of different stuff in it, and Hero's Guide (JD Wiker and Rodney Thompson) is certainly that. Just one topic after another, united by no theme more pertinent than "things that would be of interest to a Star Wars d20 player."
Not that there's anything wrong with that. If Hero's Guide is not shocking us out of our complacency, neither is it skimping on the value - new classes, new equipment, new character widgets, new Force Traditions, new uses for skills, and most thrilling of all: a new description of the flanking rules, to improve clarity when using a grid and minis.
If it seems like I'm damning with faint praise, rest assured that I am also praising with faint damns. The worst thing I can say about this book is that it did Boba Fett dirty by making him a scab, undercutting the negotiating power of the Bounty Hunter's Guild, but even that was probably already canon from some Boba Fett-focused novel or comic book.
Also, in fairness to Mr Fett, I'm not sure Bounty Hunters should have a union. Seems like it would quickly devolve into a reactionary protection racket, used to shelter agents of state violence from public accountability. . . although that just gets me wondering about the labor politics of the late Republic. Perhaps the rhetoric of labor had been coopted by voices friendly to the regime, locking the working class out of true representation in the halls of power. But then, everything we learn about the origins and motives of the Separatists suggests that it was a Bourgeoisie rebellion, aimed at reducing the power of the regulatory state. Hell, this very book says that the Republic cordoned off 30,000 star systems to create the Corporate Sector, where businesses could go to be free of "concern for the environment" and "compensation for workers' rights abuses." (Quotes are because I'm quoting the book, but there were originally scare quotes around those self-same phrases.) Which seems pretty friendly, sure, until you learn that the Empire freed them from even nominal oversight, in exchange for providing resources and materiel for the Imperial Navy.
Unfortunately, I am not corporate-brained enough to know whether taxes-in-kind are really less onerous than a simple income tax. I have a feeling that "9% of its industrial materials and 20% of certain militarily strategic materials" is probably more than enough to offset any potential gains from the lack of environmental and labor laws, particularly when the corporations must also assume full responsibility for governing and defending the Corporate Sector, but if real world oligarchs are anything to go by, perhaps they'd view the lawlessness as an end-in-itself and be willing to spend a certain amount of money to obtain (locally) absolute power.
In any event, the Corporate Sector is potentially an exciting new location for Star Wars adventures, even if it was presented as a "faction" and not an adventure pitch.
And while we're talking about incidental setting revelations coming out of character options, I have to point out an aspect of Jedi culture I'd not really considered so far - people might actually resent their practice of snatching up Force sensitive children for "training." Two of the three featured Force Traditions mention this as a source of friction with the Jedi and the third only escapes because "the Matukai generally drew from a pool of Force-users that would not qualify for Jedi training in the first place." That's why "the Jedi Council was content to let the Matukai exist as an autonomous organization."
Damn. Maybe vilifying the Jedi in the eyes of the public over the course of a single generation was not as much of a reach as I'd always assumed.
Overall, I'd say Hero's Guide continues Star Wars d20's streak of perfectly average books. Being player-focused, it is less inclined to get lost in the EU weeds than some of the others in this series, and while it never got in-depth about any particular subject, it had an admirable variety and no part of the book ever wore out its welcome (even the flanking rules were blessedly brief.) Pure utility from start to finish.
Ukss Contribution: The more I think about it, the more interesting I find the tension between "benevolent peacekeeper organization" and "aggressively recruits children (probably, but not unambiguously consensually)." There will be an organization in Ukss with a similar dynamic (though I expect whatever I choose to be a lot more villain-coded, due to the lack of decades' worth of positive depictions).
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