West End Games

West End Games (WEG) was the publisher of Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game starting in 1987. Their headquarters was in Honesdale, Pennsylvania. In July 1998 the company declared bankruptancy despite the popularity of Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game, leaving the Star Wars tabeltop game license in limbo, which caused fans to be unsure of the future of Star Wars tabletop games.

While all the supplements West End Games produced are out of print, some of the information included in their sourcebooks and adventures was used as background material for the Expanded Universe novels and comics, and some of the writers for West End Games supplements went on to write for the Star Wars Roleplaying Game produced by Wizards of the Coast. Much as with Marvel Comics' original Star Wars series, relatively obscure characters and settings from WEG supplements were frequently referenced in later Expanded Universe material by such authors as Abel G. Peña and Pablo Hidalgo (himself a former West End Games freelancer).

Lucasfilm's 2014 continuity policy change placed West End Games material under the Legends banner of Star Wars canon. Character and item statistics had always been considered non-canonical game mechanics.

Associated supplements, of varying canonicity, were also published in publications such as Dragon Magazine, Challenge magazine, Polyhedron, and, later, Dungeon/Polyhedron. Three West End Games sourcebooks—the Jedi Sourcebook, Tion Hegemony Sourcebook and The X-Wing: Rogue Squadron Sourcebook—were canceled before their release. The solitaire adventure Gambler's Luck was likewise never released.