Star Wars: Edge of the Empire

Has anyone played or run this yet? I saw it at GenCon and again at my FLGS. I was tempted to pick it up but didnt really want to plunk the cash down for a beta test. However, I see that 2 more volumes are dtill to come out for the beta - Age of Rebellionin 2014 and Force & Destiny in 2015.

If anyones played/run this yet, how is it? How does it compare to the West End Games and/or WotC SW games?

Anyone know if they are going to keep these all in beta form until all 3 are out, then a final set will be released, or are they finalizing each one at a time, then moving onto the next volume?

Wow, that seems like a really long time for the beta. I was hoping they would have a finished product sooner than that because I too have no interest in paying for a beta test.

From what I've heard at Gen Con, each one will be released in final form before the next one is released in Beta.

Feeroper said:

Has anyone played or run this yet? I saw it at GenCon and again at my FLGS. I was tempted to pick it up but didn't really want to plunk the cash down for a beta test. However, I see that 2 more volumes are still to come out for the beta - Age of Rebellion in 2014 and Force & Destiny in 2015.

If anyones played/run this yet, how is it? How does it compare to the West End Games and/or WotC SW games?

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I've both run and played EotE, and I'd have to say it compares quite favorably to WEG, and combat-wise is an improvement over the WotC versions There's more to characters than just their skills like you had in WEG, but neither is EotE a level-based game, permitting you to advance your character as you see fit, be it focusing on skills, talents, or Force powers. It does have a class system in the form of careers, but it's not quite as restrictive as the d20 versions as the careers are kind of more of a "general theme" with each one having three specializations to further distinguish them. For instance, a Smuggler with the Pilot specialization is going to a rather different character than a Smuggler with the Scoundrel specialization, as would a Gadgeteer Bounty Hunter compared to an Assassin Bounty Hunter.

The most common complaint I've seen over on the FFG boards is the lack of fully playable Jedi Knights. There are Force Powers and a Force-based specialization, but what is available is fairly limited, and reflects mostly what we see in the OT. That said, if you do opt to pick up the Beta, be sure to download the Weekly updates from FFG (they're compilations, with each new week including the previous week's updates, so you just need the latest one), as they make some pretty radical changes to what's printed in the book (the Week 2 update especially, which gives the Force Powers a major revamp). Also, lightsabers are definitely not wimpy in this edition, being able to bypass character-scale armor with ease, but are also horrifically hard to procure and difficult to properly use.

Combat is very quick and remains dangerous from starting level to highly advanced. I ran some test combats using 300+ XP characters, and even a squad of stormtroopers proved to be a viable threat (if a short-lived one) for most of them (the Wookiee character simply had too high soak value and wound threshold for the 1 or 2 points the stormies were doing to really matter). Though it's not dangerous in a case of PC lethality (it's a bit tough to one-shot anything but a minion), but more in the "a couple good hits will knock most anyone unconscious." Healing works a bit differently, as there's a bit of a video game element in being able to get a quick recovery boost, though it does have a diminishing return the more you use it in the course of the game.

The initial stumbling block of the dice is a fairly short-lived one, although it does take a bit longer if you're converting the rolls of regular dice to the symbols using the conversion chart that FFG provided in the first chapter. In all honesty, the FFG dice roller app is worth the 5 bucks, as I found when I put it on my iPad to let my players roll their dice during the demo session I ran.

I do kind of hope that FFG sticks with the "release the Beta before the Final" plan, as being able to beta-test EotE helped reveal a number of issues, both in terms of gameplay and editing.

Lordy lord. Sometimes I wish I didn't come here
So many amazing games out not. This looks awesome.

A friend picked it up at Gen Con. I spent an hour reading it and was bored.

"Hey, look at our weird dice. Aren't these cool dice? Y'know, you can roll these nifty dice! Why? Oh, who cares about adventures or characters or setting or flavor. There's dice! Aren't they cool?!"

Likewise, I'm not a fan of the board game Descent, which also has wonky dice. It forefronts the mechanics too much at the expense of gameplay.

What little time I spent looking at Edge of the Empire's character creation, I was reminded of D&D 4e. Instead of explaining, "Hey, here's the rules of how everyone acts in the world, and here's your character's ways to be better at some things and maybe even have a few tricks," it was "Here's a giant chunk of pages that are full of squares with different 'powers.' Did you know that when you slice a computer you can add an extra challenge dice to your nifty super cool dice pool? Remember, the dice are your masters."

This in no way interests me.

RangerWickett said:

A friend picked it up at Gen Con. I spent an hour reading it and was bored.

"Hey, look at our weird dice. Aren't these cool dice? Y'know, you can roll these nifty dice! Why? Oh, who cares about adventures or characters or setting or flavor. There's dice! Aren't they cool?!"

Likewise, I'm not a fan of the board game Descent, which also has wonky dice. It forefronts the mechanics too much at the expense of gameplay.

What little time I spent looking at Edge of the Empire's character creation, I was reminded of D&D 4e. Instead of explaining, "Hey, here's the rules of how everyone acts in the world, and here's your character's ways to be better at some things and maybe even have a few tricks," it was "Here's a giant chunk of pages that are full of squares with different 'powers.' Did you know that when you slice a computer you can add an extra challenge dice to your nifty super cool dice pool? Remember, the dice are your masters."

This in no way interests me.

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Honestly, it plays a lot better than it reads. But then, so do quite a few RPGs, D&D included (and not just 4e)

Also, it's a Beta book and really only intended to get the critical information across to players and GMs with as little page count as possible. Also, a lot of the mechanical stuff you cite is covered in the first chapter with a basic rundown of how the dice work.

If your friend ever does run EotE, I'd suggest at least giving it a try. I was fairly skeptical myself until I got a chance to both run and play the game. But if it is indeed not the game for you, at least you can tell folks "Hey, I gave it a fair shake and didn't like it."

Edge of the Empire Updates

Pretty sure this isn't exactly news, but Fantasy Flight Games has been publishing a weekly update for Edge of Empire, with Update Number 5 probably due to be published tomorrow.

I did an overview of Updates 1 thru 4 over at the GSA website, providing the main features of each update as well as some other tidbits.

You can view it here, with links to each of the Updates provided at the end of the article.

Star Wars: Edge of the Empire – The Game Has Changed | The GSA

RangerWickett said:

A friend picked it up at Gen Con. I spent an hour reading it and was bored.

"Hey, look at our weird dice. Aren't these cool dice? Y'know, you can roll these nifty dice! Why? Oh, who cares about adventures or characters or setting or flavor. There's dice! Aren't they cool?!"

Likewise, I'm not a fan of the board game Descent, which also has wonky dice. It forefronts the mechanics too much at the expense of gameplay.

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As someone who's played WFRP 3E and Descent, I see what you mean w.r.t. Descent. But that's not how it works with WFRP. The combination of a luck axis and a success axis if you're a good and creative narrator really adds to the outcomes of the game. The vast difference against descent is that in descent you're ultimately interested in whether you kill the monster - the only outcome that matters is "I do X damage". In WFRP you're interested in how successful you are - and how lucky you are. Also there's normally tiered successes so one success is a success, but three is normally outstanding. Much more to go on than just a simple pass/fail.

That said, WFRP 3E needs cutting down a lot.

What little time I spent looking at Edge of the Empire's character creation, I was reminded of D&D 4e. Instead of explaining, "Hey, here's the rules of how everyone acts in the world, and here's your character's ways to be better at some things and maybe even have a few tricks," it was "Here's a giant chunk of pages that are full of squares with different 'powers.' Did you know that when you slice a computer you can add an extra challenge dice to your nifty super cool dice pool? Remember, the dice are your masters."

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Urgh. They did that a lot in WFRP 3e. The game's pretty good. But whoever was in charge of the presentation needs to have his keyboard taken away - and FFG need to hire someone who's worked a lot on a modern Cortex system.

@OP, I've generally had fun with the game thus far. It's fairly painless to learn once the participants have made their peace with kooky dice. I have run portions of a couple of old d6 SW adventures using the system. It is intuitive and simple enough that I've pretty much just pulled "close enough" stats from the NPC lists in the back of the Beta to function as any d6 NPC. I haven't really hit the Force rules as hard as Donovan has, so I won't comment there.

The portions of the rules that still need some TLC in my opinion are weapon/equipment special qualities, Vehicle Scale vs Player Scale interactions, droids, starship combat (it's not bad it's just not kickarse), and some tinkering with character advancement. All that being said, it's been working just fine (imo) for what it is (a Beta). And at the end of it, I'm really excited about roleplaying with Star Wars again.