Status of Edge of the Empire?

[Staffan]

Not the Star Wars ones. That's contractual, unfortunately. Tho' FFG did get permission to release PDF's of the additional specialties, but none of the rest of the sourcebooks. And those had to be bought direct from FFG, so I'm hardly surprised they're not on DTRPG. And even then, when I asked about it during playtesting of Stay On Target, apparently even the splats weren't allowed to carry a code for the specializations extract PDFs. Disney at their full greed mode.

I could be misinformed about this, but my understanding is that it's because PDFs are considered software which is not only not covered by Asmodee's/FFG's license, but specifically covered under some other license. So in other words it's not just a matter of renegotiating the one deal between Disney and Asmodee, but also renegotiating the deal between Disney and whatever third party holds that right. And given that RPG PDFs would bring in a pittance compared to the size of the deals themselves, no-one can be hedgehogged to do that.

It does make me wonder how they can do apps for Imperial Assault and such, but perhaps that falls under some other exception clause.

 

[Jacob Lewis]

It's been years since I picked up the last of these books. I was fortunate to find most of them at a Half-Price Books, usually in batches where someone (sadly) dumped their collections. I was even able to grab extra copies during the holidays and gift them to my players. Still my best/favorite group/RPG experience of my life!

All I can say is, once you have them, never let them go.

 

[Belen]

It's been years since I picked up the last of these books. I was fortunate to find most of them at a Half-Price Books, usually in batches where someone (sadly) dumped their collections. I was even able to grab extra copies during the holidays and gift them to my players. Still my best/favorite group/RPG experience of my life!

All I can say is, once you have them, never let them go.

Interesting. I ignored them because I always loved Saga edition.

 

[Jacob Lewis]

Interesting. I ignored them because I always loved Saga edition.

Saga was great as an evolved D&D-style RPG, where combats and levels and equipment are the primary goals. This is a very different game, and it took me some time to wrap my head around that. When I first tried it with my regular D&D group (at the time), we approached it the same way. Not surprising, it didn't click for the group. And I had to change my way of thinking about RPGs to figure out a different approach. Honestly, it has changed the way I approach all RPGs in general by learning to embrace the narrative over the dice rolls, by allowing the dice to inform the potential circumstances rather than dictating the absolute results, and to share the creativity of storytelling and world building with everyone at the table as opposed to placing the entire burden on one person.

 

[GreyLord]

It's been years since I picked up the last of these books. I was fortunate to find most of them at a Half-Price Books, usually in batches where someone (sadly) dumped their collections. I was even able to grab extra copies during the holidays and gift them to my players. Still my best/favorite group/RPG experience of my life!

All I can say is, once you have them, never let them go.

You have a bigger collection of them than I do. I have the three core (Edge/Rebellion/Force) and then only two extra books to addendum to them, Starships and Speeders and Allies and Adversaries. That's all I feel I really need for what I run....However, I think I have some books you might not (hard to tell, the pictures aren't clear enough for me to see).

I have all the beta tests for the systems as they came out (they are paperback and not the final rules).

I used to use them occasionally...don't recall why now...but have used them occasionally. Haven't a long while though.

 

[Staffan]

Saga was great as an evolved D&D-style RPG, where combats and levels and equipment are the primary goals.

Saga is a neat version of D&D 3e, or perhaps more accurately d20 Modern (the class structure is basically identical, with base classes alternating getting class features chosen from a list (Talents) and bonus feats chosen from a different list). They also had some really neat sourcebooks for all sorts of EU eras (both Old Republic and Legacies were really interesting). However, the one time it actually got to hit the table, it very much did not feel like Star Wars – this could be because we were playing 1st level characters and in the D&D tradition, 1st level characters are effing incompetent.

There was also some math wonkiness, such as using skills (which would usually have a bonus of level/2+stat+5, with possibly an additional +5 for skill focus) against defense DCs (which would usually be 10+level/2+stat+0 to 2). This was particularly egregious with force powers, which used the Use the Force skill for their attack rolls.

 

[aramis erak]

I could be misinformed about this, but my understanding is that it's because PDFs are considered software which is not only not covered by Asmodee's/FFG's license, but specifically covered under some other license. So in other words it's not just a matter of renegotiating the one deal between Disney and Asmodee, but also renegotiating the deal between Disney and whatever third party holds that right. And given that RPG PDFs would bring in a pittance compared to the size of the deals themselves, no-one can be hedgehogged to do that.

It does make me wonder how they can do apps for Imperial Assault and such, but perhaps that falls under some other exception clause.

I've "heard" it directly from staff during playtest that it's the PDF as software issue...

(for those who don't know, PDF format is a superset of PostScript (.ps), and while most think of .ps as a printer language, it's a turing complete programming language with excellent output controls... plus, many pdfs include JavaScript/ECMAScript, also turing complete programming languages. Your PDF viewer? It's a virtual machine running .ps code.)