I have in the past mentioned that I dislike the Star Wars d20 rules. I have even developed an extensive set of house rules for the game that fix all the issues I have with it and bring the game more into line what I consider to be the Star Wars feel. (Found at http://www.geocities.com/delericho/Miscellany/ )
Recently, I thought of a couple of refinements to those rules that would bring the game closer to the rules as written (generally a benefit, since players are likely to have read the rulebook, but rather less likely to have read my house rules), and improve the feel of the starship combat system. One of these changes was to declare three 'tiers' of characters. First tier characters would be the PCs and the most major of NPCs (Darth Vader and the Emperor being the only two in Eps IV - VI). Second tier NPCs are all other named NPCs (from Lando, through Boba Fett, and even Greedo). Third tier NPCs are any character who doesn't even get a name.
The ruleset would restore the use of the VP/WP system, with one or two exceptions: First tier characters would be immune to critical hits. Second tier characters have the usual VP/WP array, and can suffer criticals. Third tier characters don't get VP at all - only WP. Force users do get VP, but only for the use of their force powers.
At a stroke, this eliminates a third of the house rules apart from the starship combat system. It's simple to explain, and it works. Unfortunately, it runs in to a big problem as soon as you consider armour. One of the problems with Star Wars as currently written is that armour is totally and utterly useless. The house rules fix that (since characters have HP, and armour always applies). This change elminates that, and makes armour even more useless than before. And you can't just say that armour applies to normal hits as well as criticals - a VP 'hit' actually represents a near-miss, which armour really shouldn't help against. (Although, that might be the best solution anyway, and hang the logic of it.)
All that is just waffle that exists so I can make my point, which is about unintended consequences. RPG rulesets are complex beasts, especially d20 rulesets. No-one has ever published the perfect game - every system has its flaws. Over time, a diligent publisher will produce errata or supplements to try to correct the flaws. So, we get the Mystic Theurge to patch a problem with multiclass spellcasters. Polymorph was changed about 4 times between 3.0 and 3.5.
The problem is that not all changes work, and many of them have unintended consequences, that are themselves even greater problems than existed before. A case in point is the change of armour from Defence bonus to DR between the two versions of Star Wars. This made characters very easy to hit, which means that in high-level combat virtually no critical confirmation rolls ever miss. This has the net effect that Mace Windu can be punked by Anakin on something like 15% of all attacks (with the primary attack bonus).
Now, I'm not suggesting that companies should not issue errata for their games, and neither am I suggesting that supplements are a bad thing. However, it is the case that the weight of 'fixes' can cause just as many, if not more, problems than existed in the game in the first place.
And once you get to that point, what really needs done is for someone to go back to the beginning, take the game (and its supplements) apart, and rebuild a new, clean engine to drive the game forward.
In short, we need a new edition.
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