18 years ago today, the game Knights of the Old Republic left the screens

By 2008, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic had already taken over the Xbox, PC, comic book store shelves, and a suspiciously large portion of the discussion about whether Revan could surpass absolutely every other Star Wars character.

Eighteen years ago, just today, it conquered the dining table.

On August 19, 2008, Wizards of the Coast released two major Knights of the Old Republic titles on the same day: the Knights of the Old Republic Campaign Guide for Star Wars Roleplaying Game Saga Edition and the Knights of the Old Republic 60-Miniature Expansion Pack for Star Wars Miniatures. Together they transformed the Old Republic from the setting of several beloved role-playing games into a world around which players could build their own campaigns and battles.

This was a pretty strong sign that KOTOR had become much more popular than just one BioWare game.

The entire era of the Old Republic in one book

The

224-page campaign manual was written by Rodney Thompson, Sterling Hershey, Abel G. Peña, and John Jackson Miller, who was writing the Knights of the Old Republic comic for Dark Horse at the time. Miller later explained that the book was intended to cover the vast historical period from approximately4000 BC to 3951 BClinking"Tales of the Jedi", the KOTOR comics and both video games, rather than treating them as separate little islands.

This made it much more than just a compilation of statistics for role-playing games.

The book contained information about playable races, prestige classes, Force abilities, equipment, droids, ships, factions, and a galactic gazetteer, but also attempted to make sense of the history of the Republic, the Jedi, the Sith, and the Mandalorians throughout the decades of Old Republic storytelling.TheForce.net's state-of-the-art analysis includes content detailing 18 planets, timelines, major battles, corporations, and characters, from Calo Nord and HK-47 to Jarael.

For KOTOR fans this was quite dangerous.

Give someone a video game and they can spend forty hours pretending to be Revan.

Give them a rulebook for an RPG and suddenly they'll start inventing a Mandalorian logistics officer from 3962 before the Battle of Yavin and expecting their five friends to be interested in his tax problems.

Since then, we've spent a lot of time reimagining characters like Darth Malak, Bastila Shan and Jedi Exile. The campaign guide helped place these characters into a much broader historical context, where they existed alongside comic books, older Tales of the Jedi history, and entire factions that players could use to create their own stories.

Then Wizards offered KOTOR.

The release of miniatures was no less ambitious.

The Knights of the Old Republic set included 60 collectible figures, including such characters as Atton Rand, Bao-Dur, Carth Onasi, Mira, Visas Marr, Darth Malak and Darth Sion, as well as Sith troopers, Old Republic troops and Mandalorians.It also included characters from John Jackson Miller's comics, such as Master Lucien Dry and Squint.

It is this combination that makes this set interesting eighteen years later.

It wasn't just "here are some characters from KOTOR."

It looked at the Old Republic as an entire era.

A tabletop battle could pit video game characters against comic book characters, regular Mandalorian units, and forces from completely different time periods. Collectors could finally put Onasi's Card on the table, instead of just listening to him explain that he doesn't want to talk about it.

And comic book fans could do the same with Zane Carrick's corner of the Old Republic - a piece of KOTOR history that has increasingly expanded beyond the original games.

KOTOR has become a whole world, not just a game.

Here's why August 19, 2008 really matters.

Knights of the Old Republic came out only five years ago, and The Sith Lordsin 2004. However, by 2008, the universe had accumulated enough characters, planets, factions, history, and Mandalorian controversy to release a 224-page role-playing game sourcebook and a 60-miniatures expansion pack on the same day.

The KOTOR era is no longer just a place you can visit by loading a save file.

This place became a place where people could create their own stories.

It's easy to underestimate this legacy now, especially as the Old Republic expanded through comics, novels, and the Star Wars: The Old Republic game.Our complete timeline of Star Wars gaming shows just how big this line of Star Wars gaming eventually became.

But on August 19, 2008, Wizards of the Coast handed fans a rule book and sixty little plastic pieces, essentially declaring:

Do you know this galaxy you are exploring?

Excellent.

Create your own.