Star Wars beginners box?

For those of you interested in the beginners box and it's contents from a gamer's perspective: http://gsa.thegamernation.org/2012/12/15/rpg-review-star-wars-edge-of-the-empire-beginners-box/

For those of you seeking to understand the dice mechanic, you can hear about it straight from the designer's, Jay Little, mouth on the most recent episode of The Order 66 Podcast: http://ia600206.us.archive.org/2/items/TheOrder66PodcastEpisode1-TheEdgeOfTheEmpire/episode1.mp3

Tried it out last weekend, thought it was quite fun. It is clearly an evolution of WRFP3E, they seems to have virtually eliminated dead spots on the dice (Warhammer has a lot of blanks, Star wars very few), they made a number of mechanical changes, generally elimination of needless complexity, which from the perspecitve of a single game session, seemed positive. The game has it's own flavor, you would never know it shared similar elements from WFRP if you weren't told.

I understand hating the strange dice (and WFRP3E did a terrible job presenting itself as something anyone would want to play, it is much better than any of their ad copy would indicate). But they read very fast, it took my wife who hates mechanics two dice rolls to have a full grasp of how they worked, and other than cost there isn't much downside. It took me a few times to get the terminology down (simple is no challenge dice, easy is one etc.), but it came within half a session as well. The intro module has a few weird parts, makes a few strange assumptions and one section seems like it could have benefited from some serious guidance (if you don't have the combat monkeys 2 squads of storm troopers is probably a very bad idea).

Overall I would recommend it highly (though it's fantasy flight, if you are gonna be turned off by price, expect to be turned off).

Does this system use minis? And, are they the same scale as normal (28mm)?

d2OKC said:

Does this system use minis? And, are they the same scale as normal (28mm)?

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You can if you want to but the system itself designed without minis in mind and, early reports are, that it works VERY well without them.

That's good to hear. I'm actually fine either way - and I'd hate my Star Wars minis to go to waste if I don't have to, but it's nice to know it also works well without them!

d2OKC said:

That's good to hear. I'm actually fine either way - and I'd hate my Star Wars minis to go to waste if I don't have to, but it's nice to know it also works well without them!

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I'm in much the same boat, and while the minis definitely aren't required for EotE, I've found them useful in making sure everyone's on roughly the same page about who's where in a particular scene, especially for combat.

jrowland said:

Its a bit weird coming from tradtional dice, but once you get used to the system you come to appreciate why. In many ways it makes the RPG less about "the numbers" and more about the story, which is a good thing IMO. If you haven't ever used them, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss it.

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Agreed! I found that not only did actions move faster than more number-based rules, but that the players actually spent more time trying to tell the story of what they were doing as their character. We had some great story-telling moments from the players and what was most amazing to me, as a veteran RPG player, is that many of these moments came from the people in our group who had never played a RPG game before. The dice are different, but they encourage cooperative story-telling and facilitate faster game play (one round of battle takes less than half the time of a numbers-based system).