Star Wars Edge of the Empire Beginnger's Guide

[Scoop20906]

Star Wars Edge of the Empire Beginner's Guide

Who's got it or is going to get it and what do you think? I've got mine ordered and should get it this week.

[hentzau]

I picked it up on Saturday. The skill resolution system is really interesting. I'd like to try it out, but I'm not sure when I would be able to do it...one of my gaming group is not a fan of the Star Wars setting, and another is not a fan of role playing games in general.

[TiLT]

I think I'll wait until the full rules are released, probably closer to summer. I've looked at the beta rules and have some idea of what to expect, and I like what I see. To most people who have played the earlier RPGs in the Star Wars universe, West End Games' D6 edition is the best one, but Edge of the Empire looks like it might be better. In any case it's better than the (in my opinion) craptastic D20 game.

[hentzau]

I never played with the Star Wars Saga rules set, but I did have an open mind. If I could find a copy for cheap I'd pick it up just to read through it. (I really need to keep checking out HPB for second hand copies.) I loved the D6 version, but only got to play with that ruleset a few times...I could just never get a sustained campaign going. I finished reading through the rules and I really like what I'm seeing. If I get a chance to try it out, I'll report back.

[YellowKing]

Back in high school I had a D6 version campaign going for quite awhile. Had a lot of fun with it. Our standout party member was a Wookiee with a bionic arm (it got blown off in a particularly fierce firefight - the price he had to pay to avoid being killed outright).

The campaign came to an end when the party's ship got blown out of the sky. We played pretty hardcore with no fudging of dice rolls so that pretty much meant insta-death to everyone.

[hentzau]

Tommy, Stuart and I played through the intro adventure last night. I gotta admit, it was a lot of fun.

The adventure is nothing to write home about...pretty much what you would expect from an intro adventure, not veering too far off of general Star Wars canon...set on Tatooine, bad Hutt, stock YT-1000 freighter, so on and so on. The adventure does do a good job of introducing the system mechanics, which we all really enjoyed. It was abstracted to the point where it was a much more cinematic game than tactical...a nice change from my most recent forays into RPGs (4E, which, I still love.) Combat can be DEADLY. Stormtroopers are not the minions being mowed down by the dozens that you see in the movies...they hit, and they hit hard when they do. Some creative thinking by the Wookiee saved the PC's bacon in that game. And I like how easy it is to reward some creative thinking...just throw another positive die into the dice pool if you like what the players are doing. If you don't, throw a negative die in there.

We all enjoyed ourselves last night, even the guy that doesn't like Star Wars that much. It's got me convinced to pick up the full RPG when it is released.

[Chaz]

If I played RPGs, I think I'd like the system. I'm not convinced I have enough creativity to actually use it, but I like it in theory.

[IceBear]

It uses it's own special dice? Hopefully, normal dice can be substituted easily so there's no issue with everyone having their own dice.

[hentzau]

It uses it's own special dice? Hopefully, normal dice can be substituted easily so there's no issue with everyone having their own dice.

The dice are all D6, D8, and D12's, but they have success, fail, advantage, threat, triumph and despair symbols on them in different combinations. So your options would be to have a table that you refer to using standard polyhedral dice (which would be slow) or apply stickers to standard polyhedrals (which would throw off rolls) or get the dice rolling app that they sell for smartphones. Or, just as everyone to pony up $10 (or whatever they charge) and get a set of the dice for themselves. We ran fairly well with the set included in the base game. There were a couple of occasions where we didn't have enough of one type of die or the other, and had to re-roll a die, but there was never really any issue sharing the dice (beyond the whole "don't touch my dice!" issues that some folks have. )

[Scoop20906]

And there's an app for that too:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/star-wa ... 73398?mt=8

[IceBear]

It uses it's own special dice? Hopefully, normal dice can be substituted easily so there's no issue with everyone having their own dice.

The dice are all D6, D8, and D12's, but they have success, fail, advantage, threat, triumph and despair symbols on them in different combinations. So your options would be to have a table that you refer to using standard polyhedral dice (which would be slow) or apply stickers to standard polyhedrals (which would throw off rolls) or get the dice rolling app that they sell for smartphones. Or, just as everyone to pony up $10 (or whatever they charge) and get a set of the dice for themselves. We ran fairly well with the set included in the base game. There were a couple of occasions where we didn't have enough of one type of die or the other, and had to re-roll a die, but there was never really any issue sharing the dice (beyond the whole "don't touch my dice!" issues that some folks have. )

Ok, I guess that rules out getting a PDF copy of the rules; that's my normal way of collecting now (out of shelf space and need to avoid the wife's eye ). I know I could get the rules PDF and buy the dice separately, but have not had much luck getting Fantasy Flight stuff cheaply here in Canada so my best bet would be get my local store to order me a hard copy that includes the dice

[El Guapo]

If I were still in high school I'd be all over this.

[hepcat]

If I were still in high school I'd be all over this.

Oooh...burn.

[Scoop20906]

If I were still in high school I'd be all over this.

Oooh...burn.

Lol

[Scoop20906]

I'm playing the beginners campaign tomorrow with friends. Can't wait to try it out!

[coopasonic]

If you guys are going to continue posting to this thread I'm going to need you to fix the subject.

[hepcat]

Is it beginnging to bugg you?

[El Guapo]

If I were still in high school I'd be all over this.

Oooh...burn.

Lol

Not so much a burn as - I had a lot more time to role play in high school. I wish I could send this and a lot of my board games back in time to then.

[hepcat]

My high school RPG days were filled almost exclusively with Champions, Shadowrun, some Vampire TM and GURPS. I doubt I could've torn myself away from those no matter what. My search for the perfectly configured superhero alone kept me up until the wee hours on the weekends.

[The Rocketman]

If I played RPGs, I think I'd like the system. I'm not convinced I have enough creativity to actually use it, but I like it in theory.

Same here. I've never played an RPG, and I think my group wouldn't like them. In any game with text or a story (mansions of madness, of the Doom scenario guide or whatever) they often want me to skip to the most important parts... So, would this make for a fun game? Or do you really need to roleplay to get most out of it?

Off course I know the answer, but still, I clinge to a small hope that someone out there will come out and say "oh yes, it's a very fun game, even if you're not into the whole roleplay thing!"...

[silvaril]

Heya

The Long Arm of the Hutt is a freebie follow up adventure to the beginner module included in the core ruleset:
http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_ ... ?eidn=3809" target="_blank

Free to download PDF:
http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_c ... utt_LR.pdf" target="_blank

[Scoop20906]

Hey my new gaming group and I played the beginners game this weekend. We got through the beginners adventure and now we've already created new characters using the beta rulez so we can start a new Mercenary group called the Kath Hounds Corp. So far my favorite part of the game are how the dice are used. It's much more fun than just rolling numbers. The icons really give it some wiggle room that allows the DM to put the story first.

[hentzau]

Agreed. I was really fond of the cinematic feel that the action dice brought to the game. Once the full rules are released, I plan on picking them up and seeing if I can get a once a month game going.

One thing that I will be doing in hindsight is trying to get the players more involved in what they get from their advantage dice. I was kind of running the whole show and telling them their effects from the advantage and fail dice, but I think it would be more fun for the players to dream up the effects from the dice.

[Scoop20906]

Yeah, our DM letting us kind of negotiate with him what would a cool effect of the advantage or spectacular fail effects are.

For example, I played the medical droid in the beginners scenario. The group sent me into the ship to trick the bounty hunter captain into leaving his ship. The DM thought it was a good plan so he gave me some extra good dice to roll. Of course I spectacular failed causing his associates to rush me.

I through up my hands and surrendered and said I was just a droid and the fiends responsible were outside. The DM laughed and allowed me to roll for that since I was being creative and I succeed in tricking them out of the ship where I promptly closed the hatch and figured out how to fire off a volley of the landing thrusters disorienting them during the blaster. It felt very Star Warsie!

"Got a commendation for original thinking! I do t believe in the no way scenario". Lol

[Scoop20906]

Yeah, our DM was letting us kind of negotiate with him what would a cool effect of the advantage or spectacular fail effects.

For example, I played the medical droid in the beginners scenario. The group sent me into the ship to trick the bounty hunter captain into leaving his ship. The DM thought it was a good plan so he gave me some extra good dice to roll. Of course I spectacularly failed causing his associates to rush me.

I threw up my hands and surrendered and said I was just a droid and the fiends responsible were outside. The DM laughed and allowed me to roll for that since I was being creative and I succeed in tricking them out of the ship where I promptly closed the hatch and figured out how to fire off a volley of the landing thrusters disorienting them during the blaster fight. It felt very Star Warsie!

"Got a commendation for original thinking! I do t believe in the no way scenario". Lol

[hentzau]

Continuing this thread since I just picked up the full book and GM kit today. Haven't had a chance to read it yet, but damn, this is a massive book, and it really looks great.

I highly recommend watching this video to hear about both this first foray from FFG into the Star Wars RPG universe, talking about their next books Age of Rebellion and Force and Destiny. Heading to Madison this weekend, I'm hoping I'll get some quality reading time in.

[Boudreaux]

I highly recommend watching this video to hear about both this first foray from FFG into the Star Wars RPG universe, talking about their next books Age of Rebellion and Force and Destiny. Heading to Madison this weekend, I'm hoping I'll get some quality reading time in.

The first designer in that video, Jay Little, is a former St. Louis gamer and founder of Geekway to the West. He's a great guy and is also responsible for designing Blood Bowl Team Manager and the X-Wing Miniatures game. I'm not normally an RPG player, but I'm sorely tempted to pick this up and try it with my kids this winter solely because of Jay's involvement in the design.

[hentzau]

So I'm continuing to delve into this book, and am now a big fan of the Obligation system they have in the game.

The concept is, every character will start off owing somebody something.They have a table that you can roll against, or choose if you have a character concept in mind and want the obligation to match that concept. The Obligation has a certain value assigned to it, based on the size of the party. Smaller party, larger individual Obligation value. The goal is to have the Obligation pool be somewher between 40 and 60 points for the whole party. Characters can take on additional Obligation at the start to give them bonuses of starting XP or credits during character creation.

Before the session starts, the GM will assemble the Obligation pool. This is a list of the total Obligation each character owes. He then rolls a die against it, and if the die roll matches up with one of the sets of numbers, that Obligation will have an effect on the adventure. For example: We have three characters in the party, so each one started with an Obligation of 15. Character 1 decided he needed a little bit more money at the start of the game, so he actually added 5 onto his Obligation to bring his Obligation total up to 20. So we have something like this:

1-20: Character 1 - Favor Obligation
21-35: Character 2 - Family Obligation
36-50: Character 3 - Debt Obligation

At the start of the adventure, the GM would roll percentile dice, and see if the roll falls in this pool. If he rolls higher than 50, nothing happens. If he rolls a number in the range, say a 24, then the Obligation for Character 2 is triggered, and each character will suffer some effects from the Obligation being triggered, specifically, their Strain thresholds drop by 1, and the character who's Obligation was triggered is dropped by 2. If you roll doubles, say a 22, the effect is magnified: The party suffers a general -2 Strain threshold, and the triggering Characters Strain drops by 4. All the GM has to do is to describe up front, or somewhere in the course of the adventure why this happened. In this case, it could be that Character 2 received word that his younger sibling has disappeared and hasn't been heard from for a week. More extreme could be that the Character receives word that a family member has become extremely ill, and that a large amount of credits are needed to get to them quickly so they can be treated.

Obligation can be added onto through the course of adventures as well. Characters are in a bind, and an information broker offers to give them the info they need to get out of the spaceport - but they're going to owe him a favor at some point in the future. This level of Obligation can be used as a view as to how infamous the group is becoming as well. Obligation can be paid off too...once they return the Favor to the Bothan info broker, they're off the hook and that Obligation is removed.

I really like this concept because it helps to add some hooks for the GM to customize the adventures to the characters, without being tremendously burdensome. It's kind of like a lighter version of the DNPC and Nemesis mechanic of Champions, which I always liked, but it got tiresome trying to figure out how to work Doctor Chaos into the adventure again.

[Arkon]

Agreed on obligation, and I also found it as a player to be a great hook for coming up with a background. Here is the one I came up with for a play by forum game over on GamingTrend where my character has an obligation of a bounty. Based upon that bounty I was able to weave together a story that explained how he became the profession and why he is now out adventuring.

Josiah was born and raised on Balmorra where his father and mother worked in an imperial factory building AT-STs. Being around the factories, Josiah took special interest in tinkering with any mechanical device he could get his hands on, be it spare protocol droids, blasters, shock gloves or broken down computer terminals in the city dump. When Josiah was old enough he took a job at the local factory working as an after hours security guard, during which he picked up some useful skills with a blaster, wasting time with target practice on most uneventful evenings. Unfortunately one fateful day while tinkering with a discarded holo-messenger Josiah unlocked a message that detailed plans of a the Tenloss crime syndicate to intercept a shipment of AT-STs that were heading off-world in order to reverse engineer them to develop a superior rival vehicle. Unknown at the time, unlocking the hidden message triggered a homing beacon signal to be sent back the leaders of the Tenloss Syndicate. Josiah took the holo-messenger with him, none the wiser.

4 nights later while working his typically uneventful night shift Josiah was set upon by 3 vicious looking trandoshan. No match for the three mercenaries, Josiah was quickly incapacitated and bound with a fairly rudimentary set of binders for transport. As Josiah came too, he overheard the trandoshan talking, picking up bits and pieces about the Tenloss crime syndicate, a missing holo-messenger and a bounty that the trandoshan were planning on cashing in. Thankfully for Josiah, part of his standard gear as an after hours security guard was a set of binders very similar to the set he found himself currently bound with, and he was able to quickly pick the lock to free himself. With a little quick thinking, Josiah was able to sabotage a nearby protocol droid to provide a distraction for his escape...Knowing that he couldn't go back home and put his parents in danger, Josiah secured transport off-world by offering his services as a mechanic and hired gun to a spice trader who he encountered at the space port. Josiah has been on the run from the bounty and the Tenloss syndicate ever since.

To make ends meet and to try and stay one step ahead of the Tenloss syndicate, Josiah himself has entered the world of bounty hunting as an independent, specializing in using his gadgets to always take his targets alive.