In this post I discuss a Star Wars D&D Home Rule based on the mysterious phenomenon introduced relatively recently in the Star Wars universe, called the World Between Worlds.

Background

The World Between Worlds was introduced in the animated series “Rebels”, and then revisited in the live action Ahsoka series. In the Ahsoka series, Ahsoka is pulled into the World Between Worlds by the Force Ghost of Anakin Skywalker, to receive a final lesson from her former Master. She was his padawan before he became Darth Vader, and now she is able to train with her Master Anakin Skywalker again (albeit as an older woman) long after the death of Darth Vader. Luke of course “saved” his father, allowing Anakin to cross over into the Light of the Force, making Ahsoka’s reconnection with Anakin possible.

In my adventures, I implement the home rule as follows: Luke (from the end of The Last Jedi timeline) occupies the World Between Worlds as a Force Ghost, with the ability to pull multiple characters out of any point in the established cannon timeline, and move them to another point in the timeline, to have an adventure only possible in such a multiverse. The kids love this mechanism because it allows them to pick any characters in the Star Wars Universe to adventure together, even if the characters they select are from different eras in the Star Wars timeline. For instance, Senator Padme Amidala can go on an adventure with Princess Leia, the Mandalorian can go on an adventure with Rey Skywalker; and they can all battle together Jabba the Hutt and his henchmen on the Sail Barge above the Sarlacc Pit to save Han!

Implementation

In my pre-game setup, I first have the players (kids) pick their characters from anywhere in the Star Wars timeline. I have a rather extensive Star Wars figure collection, so we look through the collection and find the action figure that most closely matches the character they have in mind. I then create a back story for each of their characters, describing a moment the kids are familiar with from the movies or tv series, such that each character has an individual story of when and where they are pulled out of the cannon timeline and into the World Between Worlds by Force Ghost Luke. For instance:

“Senator Padme Amidala picks the lock of her handcuffs and climbs to the top of the pillar that formerly restrained her, attempting to evade a Nexu cat creature in the arena on Geonosis. The cat creature swings its claws digging into Padme’s back! But just as Padme screams in pain, a portal of swirling blue and white light appears in the space beside her, and two hands reach out and pull her through to a strange platform which appears to be floating in space!”.

A similar story is told for each of the player characters, until they all are assembled. “On the platform with Padme, sit Ezra Bridger, the Mandalorian, Boba Fett, Ahsoka, and Rey Skywalker, who have all been similarly abducted. Though some of the characters are familiar with one another, there is something off about them– they appear either younger or older than expected, and others don’t know each other at all, having been taken from entirely different generations in the timeline. So there is much confusion about what is going on, and some weapons are drawn. An elderly man who identifies himself as Luke approaches the group, and tells them to not be afraid. He explains that he has gathered them together here because each possess talents uniquely necessary for an important mission.” The mission parameters are then explained in typical D&D 5e style.

The mission may take place at a location in the Star Wars timeline familiar to some– but the outcome, given the characters’ presence together will create a new branch in the timeline (multiverse), with a different outcome, hopefully in alignment with the mission objectives that Luke presents to the characters. Of course, any perceived problems with the timeline that result from the adventure can be remedied through the use of the World Between Worlds, just use your imagination, as normally required in D&D. I hope this post has been helpful!

This post is meant to inspire new possibilities within your own Star Wars D&D adventures. Please feel free to modify, limit or extend, the rule if desired for use within your own campaign.

May the Force be with you!

From Left to Right, Norma, Grace, and Josephine. Twenty-one of the 24 action figures in our Vintage Leia Collection are shown in this picture.

My three youngest daughters (Josephine, Grace, and Norma) have reviewed my Princess Leia action figure collection and have selected their favorites. Photos of my interviews with them and a couple videos follow.

Our Princess Leia collection can be subdivided by the outfits that Leia wears. So we have our collection of Leia in her White Dress, also known as “Death Star Leia” (we have 4 variants of this one). We have our “Leia in her Hoth outfit” collection (we have 4 variants of this one as well). We have 2 variants in our collection of Leia in her “Ewok Village outfit”, and 2 variants in our collection of Leia in her “Jabba Slave outfit”. We have 4 variants in our collection of Leia in her Endor Camo outfit, 3 variants in our collection of Leia in her Bespin Dinner outfit, and 2 variants in our collection of Leia in her General Leia Organa outfit from the sequel trilogy. We also have 3 variants of Leia in her Yavin Medal Ceremony outfit, which I forgot to include in the competition, but will include a photo of these additional ones below.

Some of the variants in the Vintage Leia Collection have “real cloth elements”, which is particularly exciting to Josephine and I. Across my entire Star Wars Action Figure Collection, the inclusion of real cloth elements automatically ranks them higher in my opinion.

Several of the variants are also still carded. We didn’t open any of these today, and none of them frankly are the best variants– or they would have already been opened to play with– but I included them for the consideration anyway, as we reviewed the best Leia’s in my collection.

Josephine picks Slave Leia (with real cloth element), Death Star Leia (with real cloth element), and Bespin Leia (with real cloth element).

Norma and Grace pose with their favorite picks from my Vintage Leia Collection.

Norma picks her three favorites from the Leia Vintage Collection, then ranks them. Hoth Leia comes in as #3, Ewok Village Leia (with real cloth element) as #2, and General Leia Organa is #1.

Grace picks her three favorites from the Leia Vintage Collection, then ranks them. Grace picks Bespin Leia as #3, Ewok Village Leia as #2, and Death Star Leia (with real cloth element) as #1.

If you’d like to view each Leia figure close up in more detail, here’s a gallery showing each figure in the Leia Collection from front, back and side views.

That’s a lot of Lea’s! Which one is the best? Check out “Selecting the Best Lea” to find out!

Comparisons and Contrasts

So there are a number of differences between the ships released in 1981 and 2023, and we took a look at some of these, comparing and contrasting what we like about both. I was 13 years old when I received my the Original 1981 Slave One ship. I remember the feature I liked most about it was the Carbonite block containing the imprisoned Han Solo. The Book of Boba Fett Ship has no Carbonite blocks in it, which while a let down, makes sense given that there weren’t any we saw in his later story line. Arguably we got enough carbonite blocks with the Mandalorian Razorcrest.

Anyway, back to the comparisons. The 2023 Book of Boba Fett Ship is much larger than the 1981 Empire Strikes Back Slave One. The size difference affords a larger cockpit, seating 3 figures rather than one, and some play space in the cargo hold which the original one sorely lacked. As far as looks go, well a lot has changed in the technology since since 1981, allowing for more details to be added to Star Wars toys in general, much more so than back in the ’70s and ’80s. So for example, there are a lot more ship details on the 2023 version. And while there aren’t as many decals on the newer ship– the 2023 ship consists of different colored plastics, so even with less decals, the ship itself is much more colorful.

The loading ramps are different. The loading ramp on the older ship was always bothersome to me, as its poor design makes it hard to pull out and retract. It doesn’t really stay on its rails well. The new version handles this feature better. The 2023 ship also has two bombs you can drop, where the 1981 version has none. Additionally there is an escape ship that comes with the new one– but it looks to me more like Fett’s bacta bed, in Book of Boba Fett; so that’s how I’ll be using it.

The older ship has has a handle on the bottom for holding it during play. The Book of Boba Fett ship has a stand for displaying during play or otherwise. This is probably the feature that stands out most to me, though I’ve found that this, as well as a number of features I’ve mentioned here were also present in the 2020 Vintage version remake of the Slave One. Currently, some 40 years later, a few of the decals are falling off, so I’ve been gluing them back on to the older ship using modeling glue. As I’ve lost track of where some of them go, I’ll need to do some research to find the original guide to placing them.

The 1981 ship did not come with any figures, so we pulled out my original Boba Fett to line up with the “old man Boba” that comes with the 2023 version of the ship.

Just for fun, here’s the 1981 TV advertisement for the original Slave 1:

Stay tuned for our analysis of “The Best Boba Fett”, coming soon!

The first appearance of Ahsoka Tano as a Star Wars figure (as well as my first Ahsoka toy figure) was this Clone Wars era Ahsoka. She has the shortest lekku of any of the 3.75 Ahsoka figures ever made, AND has a real cloth element — a cloth skirt! Of all the Star Wars figures in my collection, those with real cloth elements are among my favorite.

This Ahsoka figure is modeled off the Clone Wars Movie, in which Ahsoka was first introduced to the public. A lot of fans didn’t like how winey she was as a character when she was introduced– that character makes a lot more sense when you have a preteen in your house, like we do. The original Clone Wars cartoon series started with very elongated characters– more of a japanese style pulpish look, which in some ways seems representative in this first Ahsoka figure.

Time line wise (for the tv series, but not for toy production), the next Ahsoka figure available is the Mandalore Ahsoka. She is the young Ahsoka we flash back to in the Ahsoka series. She is perhaps our favorite Ahsoka figure because of the episodes she represents, not just in the Ahsoka series flashback, but even more significantly in the final episodes of the Clone Wars series, which are very powerful emotional episodes for Ahsoka and us as an audience.

I’ll eventually return to this post and add more photos of the other Ahsoka Tano figures we review. The full video review is below. I’d like to screen capture some images from the video and transcribe more of the commentary we made. The following text is just place holders for that:

Next is our Rebels series Ahsoka…

And then our Mandalorian series Ahsoka..

up to the 7th Ahsoka. (when doing the mandalore ahsoka, we introduce her clone trooper)

Edit video into stages: into, closing, favorite topics– topic1 (clones by name), topic2 (retro vs vintage), topic3 (ties to shows).

So the Arena Padme (with monster claw scratch on back), Naboo Visit Padme (light blue dress with black cloak), and N-1 Fighter Pilot Padme (disguise), are favorites of mine too. But I’ve got a thing for real cloth elements, which the Pregnant Padme has (her skirt is real cloth), so got to include that one as well.

Upon arrival of the Republic Army, Saesee Tinn joins the battle offensive.

“Making of” Saesee Tinn on Geonosis:

I was doing some inventory of my collection and came across Saesee Tinn’s Jedi Starfighter. I felt I had to get a picture of him with the Starfighter, then one thing led to another.

As you can see in all the above images, the character image on the card is the same for both the regular Vintage Collection figure and the RETRO Vintage Collection figure. The two exceptions are… drum roll please… Kuill and The Child (see below).

As you can see in the above pictures, the character image on the card of the Kuill figure is different for the Retro figure than the regular Vintage figure– and the same for The Child figures. There are more Mandalorian Vintage Collection Figures than the ones I have displayed here, but I believe I’ve included here all the ones that have “twins”.

I didn’t set out to collect Star Wars games and puzzles, or any of the items in my collection, really– but I have ended up owning quite a few. Some of these games I’ve played more than others, and some –while I haven’t played them yet– I’m looking forward to playing with my kids and/or finding other people interested in playing together.