Though the firing mechanism itself (with the obvious sticky-out moment arms and whatnot) is crossbow-like, the action is usually described as more like that of a pump-action shotgun or repeating rifle - it has to be worked for each shot, but there's an ammunition feed, so bolts don't have to be fitted individually as in a traditional crossbow. Mind you, on screen I've never noticed Chewbacca doing anything other than point and shoot, like anybody else with a blaster. I suspect in 1977 nobody cared enough to design stage directions and whatnot to justify it - it was just a cool-looking prop that made Chewie still more distinctive from the other characters.

>Are they more accurate than a standard blaster? Better able to pierce
>certain kinds of armor? Less likely to cause a fire that, among the
>wookies' ancestral trees, could prove disastrous? Just plain
>cool-looking, and thus more a matter of personal style than of
>utility?
>
>...I'm leaning towards that last one, personally.

Out-of-band, I think that's almost certainly the case (see above). In-story, there's probably an explanation in one of the 152 million licensed storyline expansions, but I've spent the last 20-odd years staying away from those, for the most part.

One exception that comes to mind is Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II, in which one of the player-acquirable weapons is a Tusken bowcaster. ISTR this was described in either the manual or somewhere in the game itself as a knockoff of the Wookiee weapon scaled for use by humans and beings like them, and particularly popular with the non-"Sand Person" Tusken Raiders who are inexplicably to be found on the moons of Sullust. You can score one off the first Tusken you kill, and it's actually quite a handy weapon - much more accurate than the infamous stormtrooper carbine, considerably more powerful than the game's most accurate weapon (your pistol), and with an interesting secondary-fire mode where the rounds ricochet off inanimate objects but kill people. (I think there was also a charge-fire mode that released a short-range cone of shots, however that can be justified in terms of a plasma-jacketed solid projectile. :)

Mind you, I am not for a moment suggesting that Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II should be viewed as in any way definitive in Star Wars terms - but most of what turns up in it is in UF somewhere, and I suspect the Un-Wookiee Bowcaster is on that list.

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
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