Donovan Morningfire
First Post
One thing to bear in mind for EotE is that the players can't really just sit back and let the GM alone interpret the dice results. In fact, it honestly seems that Jay Little and the EotE design team are expecting players and GMs to work together to turn the results on the dice into part of an interesting story. It's the same pitfall that you'll find in other RPGs, where the player simply rolls a die and relies upon the GM to describe what happens.
As for EotE, I love it. While it hasn't totally displaced Saga Edition as my favorite Star Wars RPG of all time, it's coming very close to doing so. I haven't gotten to play as much EotE as I might have liked, but when I have it's been a blast. I was skeptical about the "special narrative dice" at first, until I actually got a chance to sit down and play the game, which was the point that everything clicked for me. The fact that something interesting is going to happen on almost every roll and that combat moves very quickly goes a long way towards keeping players interested, as you don't have the long stretches between turns that occur with most d20 systems, even with larger groups. And most folks that I've played or run this system for have picked up on the dice pools and the meanings of the symbols rather quickly; usually by the 5th roll, most players can assemble their dice pools and figure out the net results without prompting (the only exception I've encountered was due to the player being very apathetic, to the tune of "I've got all the D6 books, why do I care about anything else?").
Character creation is fairly simple, and players have a lot of control over how their characters evolve, much like the D6 system, though the usage of careers/specializations and talents keeps it from being totally free-form. Said talents to provide a lot of neat ways for a character to differentiate themselves from the rest of the party even apart from ability scores and skill ranks.
That's not to say EotE isn't without its problems. Aside from the player buy-in regarding helping to interpret the dice results, there is the simple fact that it's not a "complete" system. From all indications, the rules for Force-users we saw in the Beta are what we're going to get in the final version, which means no actual Jedi; makes perfect sense for the default era of play (Rebellion Era), but it's troublesome for a GM that wants to run a Star Wars campaign in an era where Jedi aren't in exile or hiding, such as New Jedi Order, Prequel/Clone Wars, and KOTOR eras. There's at least a couple fan-attempts to create a Jedi career (the most recent offering by DarthGM is the best I've seen to date) and flesh such things out, but they carry with them the issues that come with any fan-created material. FFG does plan to cover Jedi and other dedicated Force-users in a later book, but said book is slated for 2015, so it's going to be a couple years.
Another "missing" element is that starship combats in EotE are fairly limited, the rules being built more upon the idea that the party will be clustered into a single freighter rather than flying their own snubfighters or commanding capital ships. Combat in general is more on the "skirmish" side of thing than big tactical combats, such as the Battle of Hoth or the Battle of Theed (namely, the Gungans vs. Trade Federation army portion). There's a lot of hope amidst the FFG forumites that "Age of Rebellion" in 2014 will address these aspects of Star Wars.
For some, not having an "all-in-one" RPG book (especially given the $60 price tag) is a deal-breaker. For others, that FFG is doing a "return to basics" that draws parallels to the early days of WEG's Star Wars system (the players are a group of rag-tag spacers trying to survive in the Empire) only sweetens the deal, particularly if one has gotten tired of the over-emphasis on Jedi and their ilk in the recent EU and Clone Wars series.
Some folks have complained that the focus of Edge of the Empire is that the players are criminals and scoundrels, and while that's true, you as the GM aren't forced to run your games that way. It'd be very easy to have a party of EotE PCs being a 'mission ops' group working for the fledgling Rebel Alliance, taking on a variety of risky missions in the name of toppling the Empire.
As for EotE, I love it. While it hasn't totally displaced Saga Edition as my favorite Star Wars RPG of all time, it's coming very close to doing so. I haven't gotten to play as much EotE as I might have liked, but when I have it's been a blast. I was skeptical about the "special narrative dice" at first, until I actually got a chance to sit down and play the game, which was the point that everything clicked for me. The fact that something interesting is going to happen on almost every roll and that combat moves very quickly goes a long way towards keeping players interested, as you don't have the long stretches between turns that occur with most d20 systems, even with larger groups. And most folks that I've played or run this system for have picked up on the dice pools and the meanings of the symbols rather quickly; usually by the 5th roll, most players can assemble their dice pools and figure out the net results without prompting (the only exception I've encountered was due to the player being very apathetic, to the tune of "I've got all the D6 books, why do I care about anything else?").
Character creation is fairly simple, and players have a lot of control over how their characters evolve, much like the D6 system, though the usage of careers/specializations and talents keeps it from being totally free-form. Said talents to provide a lot of neat ways for a character to differentiate themselves from the rest of the party even apart from ability scores and skill ranks.
That's not to say EotE isn't without its problems. Aside from the player buy-in regarding helping to interpret the dice results, there is the simple fact that it's not a "complete" system. From all indications, the rules for Force-users we saw in the Beta are what we're going to get in the final version, which means no actual Jedi; makes perfect sense for the default era of play (Rebellion Era), but it's troublesome for a GM that wants to run a Star Wars campaign in an era where Jedi aren't in exile or hiding, such as New Jedi Order, Prequel/Clone Wars, and KOTOR eras. There's at least a couple fan-attempts to create a Jedi career (the most recent offering by DarthGM is the best I've seen to date) and flesh such things out, but they carry with them the issues that come with any fan-created material. FFG does plan to cover Jedi and other dedicated Force-users in a later book, but said book is slated for 2015, so it's going to be a couple years.
Another "missing" element is that starship combats in EotE are fairly limited, the rules being built more upon the idea that the party will be clustered into a single freighter rather than flying their own snubfighters or commanding capital ships. Combat in general is more on the "skirmish" side of thing than big tactical combats, such as the Battle of Hoth or the Battle of Theed (namely, the Gungans vs. Trade Federation army portion). There's a lot of hope amidst the FFG forumites that "Age of Rebellion" in 2014 will address these aspects of Star Wars.
For some, not having an "all-in-one" RPG book (especially given the $60 price tag) is a deal-breaker. For others, that FFG is doing a "return to basics" that draws parallels to the early days of WEG's Star Wars system (the players are a group of rag-tag spacers trying to survive in the Empire) only sweetens the deal, particularly if one has gotten tired of the over-emphasis on Jedi and their ilk in the recent EU and Clone Wars series.
Some folks have complained that the focus of Edge of the Empire is that the players are criminals and scoundrels, and while that's true, you as the GM aren't forced to run your games that way. It'd be very easy to have a party of EotE PCs being a 'mission ops' group working for the fledgling Rebel Alliance, taking on a variety of risky missions in the name of toppling the Empire.
