D&D’s Star Wars Line Gets Two Books: Core Rules and a Rebel Crew Adventure

A small crew, a patched-up ship, and an Empire that outguns them. That’s the pitch for the first Star Wars adventure Dungeons & Dragons has shown us.

At the Disney and Lucasfilm publishing panel at New York Comic Con on October 9, Wizards of the Coast put names on the two books that make up its Star Wars line. According to ICv2, the first is D&D: Star Wars Core Rules, the main rules set for playing in the Star Wars universe, slated for 2027. The second is Tyro Squadron: Adventures, set between A New Hope and Return of the Jedi, with a range of missions across the galaxy. The crossover itself was announced back in July, and Bell of Lost Souls also covered the new reveal.

Nerdist’s write-up of the panel puts the Core Rules in plain terms: basically the Player’s Handbook, but for this flavor of the game. It describes Tyro Squadron as a guide for running adventures in the original trilogy era, with players taking on the Empire as a secret Rebel crew. The official art shows a copper-colored ship over a blue planet, and four rebels, a Rodian and a droid among them, firing at Stormtroopers.

Here’s what we think is worth noticing. The first adventure isn’t about Jedi. It’s about a crew nobody has heard of, hiding from the people who run the galaxy. That is a table-friendly premise. Level one characters in D&D are fragile, and a rebel cell with a bad ship fits that better than a party of lightsaber wielders on day one. We read it as a sign Wizards wants new groups starting small, but that is our read, not something the company has said.

Now the part that matters before anyone clears a shelf. Neither source gives a price, a page count, a format, or a release date for Tyro Squadron. The Core Rules only have a year. Nobody has confirmed which version of the D&D rules the Star Wars book builds on, and Nerdist says outright that a 2024 ruleset is a guess. Character options like backgrounds, feats, and subclasses haven’t been shown either. If you’re planning a campaign around this, you have a year of waiting and a lot of unknowns.

If you want a feel for the rules the line will most likely sit beside, the 2024 Player’s Handbook is the current core book. Just remember that Wizards hasn’t said the Star Wars game is built on it.

Catching up on Wizards of the Coast

One update from earlier coverage. When we wrote about Wizards running without a president, the story was about who is steering the company. We haven’t found an announcement naming a permanent president since. What has changed is the staff side. On October 6, workers on D&D, D&D Beyond, and Magic’s Studio X told leadership they intend to unionize, joining United Wizards of the Coast, as reported by Graphic Policy and God is a Geek. The effort began in April with Magic: The Gathering Arena developers, who voted 79 to 16 in June.

The new groups asked management to voluntarily recognize the union by 5 p.m. Pacific on October 13. An NLRB election petition has been filed, and the D&D team’s letter says it will be withdrawn if Wizards agrees to recognition in principle by the deadline. Their demands include layoff protections, a say in how AI is used, and remote work protections. Neither outlet reports a company response, and neither gives a headcount for the new groups. For players, the reason to care is simple: the people writing a Star Wars book and everything else on the shelf are the ones asking for a voice in how it gets made.

Featured image: “3/52 – Dice Tower” by Skakerman (Archive), licensed BY (via Openverse). Source.