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HBMC, let's both of us just walk away this time.

My group has played 2 sessions of this so far (2 of us got free copies of the Beta Rules at GenCon last year). So far, we like it. Resolving the dice are a bit wonky at times, but the book does a good job of guidelines for when you roll 2 successes, but 3 misfortunes, as an example.

As a departure from our "roll playing" Pathfinder campaigns, which is certainly rules heavy, I feel that we've been doing more actual role playing. That is a good thing.

Doctors are incredibly important!

 IdentifyZero wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 IdentifyZero wrote:
I am saying FFG makes garbage RPGs.

Why do you think this?

I do not think this, I know this. I own a copy of Edge of the Empire, or rather I did. I gave it away. I'll be sticking my SAGAS books. Hell, WEG D6 is better then this piece of gak.

funny, I felt saga was a complete piece of gak and stuck with my D6. even found all the saga equipment and npc stats converted nicely online. (you still can)

I test ran the system with a couple of vets and my kids. the kids loved it, and the vets were pretty happy with the system. As a GM I felt constricted by the out of book adventure (but I always do.) The game advertises itself to opening the box and playing as you learn, but really as a GM your stuck flipping pages trying to find answers you don't quite understand (and the beginner book doesn't completely clarify) Especially with advantages and threats. First game we stored them, but found that was too useful, second we spent them within the round, but that was a bit weak.

Not satisfied, I hunted down a copy of the beta version to try and expand my knowledge of the system. I will most likely be buying it, but I'm dissappointed at the direction the game is going in design. Instead of sourcebooks that can easily be bought and added to the game, it looks like we will be getting multiple game systems instead that may/may not be compatible with the others. Right now I will have to tell the player who wants to be an x-wing pilot that he has to wait till that game system arrives. Plus equipment is pretty dismal compared to other editions so Its going to be a lot of confusing conversions for me (they dont quite carry over easily. in d6 a stormtrooper rifle does 5D in damage, but in EotE its 9 base damage plus successes, theres no math conversion I know of to make this work across the board.)

The advantage/threat/triumph/etc. Dice are a bit cumbersome for a vet GM. not because they are unhelpful, but they are TOO helpful as players are ALWAYS rolling them EVERY SINGLE TIME. In the old D6 a lucky roll on the wild die could easily be interpreted as it resulted in the overall score total this means you could narrate the awesome one in a million blaster shot, but also the epic fail trip that jammed the blaster pack further into the gun jamming it permanately. But this happened a lot LOT less than it does in EotE. The result is now is more benny hill than cinematic play, so you resort to tables that dry things out into a rather bland narrative. Most of the time my players rolled far more advantages/threats than they did any successes. Often that was all they rolled on the die.

The basic success/fail part of the dice work beautifully. no problems there!

The boost/setback die do pretty much little. mostly there to cancel out each other. Since you can aim in the same turn you shoot, you can cancel out the setback die made from opponents in cover.

Combat is fast. if a bit too fast. Minion rules seem pretty great, but wait till you get a bounty hunter that crits and does massive wounds to the enemy. oh, and my vets were smart enough to go looting stormtrooper rifles to get that bigger 9 damage ( wouldn't let them have the armor), so everything is getting pumped full o blaster. The poor opposing bounty hunter nearly died in one round of combat because his initiative was too low and the players went gun ho on his butt and shot without so much as a dialogue exchange. On the flip side, when a player got hit they got hit hard. Lot of weapons do good damage and soak values remain pretty low. Healing is a big factor to keep track of for players. I do like this in a way. D6 it wasn't hard to soak butloads of firepower. Now players aren't frail, but in no way can soak all the wounds delt (unless its of weaker damage) Note: reading the beta book reveals a single crit can kill and a D100 roll of 151 or higher. Crits are somewhat hard to pull off however. (as long as your not a twi'lek bounty hunter)

I dont agree with the fluff text at all. Its like they just made crap up. An Ion gun shoots a restraining bolts halt command? Then WTF does an Ion cannon do to a starship? They also say that armor is effectively useless, but just in case you should have some. Armor in this game is Incredibly weak (I know I said I like players getting wounded and having to fear dying, but they may as well stand naked to blaster fire sometimes) The best soak value you can get from armor is 2. A player can be naked with a soak of 4. a blaster rifle does 7-9 damage. No more heroic rushing the enemy boys and girls, your dead before you get there (or at least incapacitated with your 12 wounds) Taking cover is the new mandalorian battle armor. The fluff is so pulled out of someones butt, they could have just used wookieepedia FFS. It seems in an effort to explain why there system has a bit of a balance to it, they forget canon altogether. We've known stormtroopers die like flies. They do so in the movies. Doesn't mean their armor is crap, just means they are minion fodder. (they aren't too bad in game, though not all that tough when focused down on either)

Talent trees are fun. Experience gains are what you would expect. Mostly the game works pretty well mechanically. Career choices IMO are pretty bogus, One of the main reasons I loathed D20. SW characters are never any one thing to an exclusion. But careers here reflect that notion pretty well. just because you are a pilot, doesnt mean you are bad at something else, just that you had to work on it. But I enjoyed the D6 freedom of skills much better. There were no In class/career skills. just skills with the option to specialize further.

While I currently lean more to bad than good about the game, I still want to keep trying it out. I can ignore the crappy fluff text and stick with the stats if they work well. People have been begging me to run another SWRPG for over a year now, but I felt run aground with D6 as players eventually creep into godhood too easily with the right focus. And D20 is for DnD IMO, I couldn't stand any application it made elsewhere as I felt it simply didn't belong. (I hate class systems outside DnD TBH) So hopefully the beta book will provide me with enough insight into the system to run a small adventure on my own.

 Manchu wrote:
HBMC, let's both of us just walk away this time.

I was actually trying to get a constructive response from Zero, but apparently he was unable to muster that.

Paitryn: I think the first thing everyone needs to remember about EotE is it is not the new SWRPG. It is a new game set in the Star Wars universe about life on the fringe. So I don't think it's trying to just emulate the movies. The beta release was a cool first step but if you're not the kind of GM who is comfortable with house rules, or maybe your group isn't, you might want to just wait for the core book release -- which I believe is coming up.

Meanwhile:

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=3965

Set just after the destruction of the first Death Star, the Edge of the Empire Roleplaying Game focuses on the grim and gritty portions of the Star Wars universe. Characters exist in places where morality is gray and nothing is certain, and the game’s focus is on those that live on the fringes of both the galaxy and its society.

In thousands of locations across the galaxy, the Core Worlds’ laws and regulations are barely enforced. Such shady locations attract shady characters, but they also lure those independent thinkers and insurgents who seek to break free of Imperial law. In an Edge of the Empire campaign, bounty hunters, smugglers, mercenaries, and explorers may find themselves working alongside doctors, politicians, and scholars. Ply your trade as a smuggler in the Outer Rim, collect bounties on the scum that live in the shadows of Coruscant, or try to establish a new colony on a planet beneath the Empire’s notice!

Edit: holy crap somehow I missed an entire page of posts. Disregard.

Great article on the dice here:

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=3976

The Setback and Boost dice are six-sided dice that thematically mirror each other. They are generally added to a dice pool to represent minor situational modifiers or influences. For example, if a character was attempting to slice a security terminal, the GM could grant him an advantage and a Boost die for having the right tools for a task. Likewise, the task may be made more complicated by disadvantages – like trying to slice the computer under a hail of blaster fire – and the GM would add a Setback die to the dice pool.

The Ability and Difficulty dice are eight-sided dice that are paired off against each other. These represent the innate qualities of a challenge. The Ability dice are a reflection of a character’s attributes and characteristics, such as how strong, smart, or willful the hero is. The Difficulty dice set the inherent difficulty of a task – slicing an outdated security terminal would likely feature fewer Difficulty dice than slicing a high-end security terminal.

The Proficiency and Challenge dice are twelve-sided dice that oppose each other. These represent significant improvements to Ability and Difficulty dice. The Proficiency dice are “upgraded” versions of Ability dice, reflecting a character’s level of skill or specialized training applied to a task. The Challenge dice are “upgraded” versions of Difficulty dice, indicating that a task has greater risks involved or is being actively opposed by another character.

Examples:

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/StarWarsRPG/edge-of-the-empire/core-book/dice-system/SWE01-dicepool.jpg

*rolls 2d10*

Wow. That took me all of 2 seconds to figure out how successful or unsuccessful I was.

Whoops! Someone forgot to read the source (and the thread apparently) -- but don't worry, I'll give you the tl;dr: the narrative mechanic determines more than success or failure.

Of course, I would recommend actually knowing about a thing before you criticize it ...

It arrived, had a brief read through before trying a game, not a big fan of the premade characters, but that's always been a bugbear, but I think I have enough info to make up an alternative if need be.

Reading the dice rules, I can see why Mel compared it to WoD on one hand. Its not quite that simple, there is more to it as a system, but there at the very heart is a similar mechanic with the adding and reduction of successes.

Overall from my initial read, I think I will actually like the system, even more so if the Core system, or add on books add other ideas variations on what the Triumph results might bring during a combat/results.

In general it is a nice idea, it certainly has potential and makes things interesting without removing any control. Which was my initial fear of the system, or that it would be overly 'newbie' in feel and not appealing to veteran roleplayers.
I'm glad that feeling was misplaced, as 'depending' on how the test game goes down, it will mean Warhammer 3rd might become an option in the future. Where before this arrived it was not even a consideration.

The "core mechanic" is pretty tidy. Whatever you want to do corresponds to a certain skill and that skill is based on a characteristic. The higher of the characteristic or skill values determines how many ability dice (d8s) you add to the pool and the lower value determines how many of those ability dice are upgraded to skill dice (d12s).

Difficulty is added to the pool by the GM, who basically rates the difficulty on a scale of 1-5. The GM then adds Boosts to account for PC advantages and Setbacks to account for PC disadvantages. As a result, you know the usual success/failure + magnitude outcome but you also get incidental outcomes.

 Manchu wrote:
Whoops! Someone forgot to read the source (and the thread apparently) -- but don't worry, I'll give you the tl;dr: the narrative mechanic determines more than success or failure.

Of course, I would recommend actually knowing about a thing before you criticize it ...

I do know about it and it's not as simplistic as I made it out to be, I know that. I've read about how they work from multiple sources, watched videos about and seen it in action. End result? I still don't like it.

It's still busywork to be all to achieve an end result that I can do with a standard dice roll and with my own narrative aspects (and that of the group and GM). I don't feel I need the dice to tell me more than success or failure, I'll let the game and the interaction between the players, GM and their respective characters and NPC's do that.

I'd actually take it as a good way to keep the GM on his toes, brings things into the game slightly unexpectedly which could make things exciting for the GM. It also seems a great system for when you want to take a break and just roll the game without doing overly detailed combats, letting the dice do some of the work for you, and might help on the odd 'off' day all GMs suffer now and then.

Okay on saying that I would not implement the system on my own setting, but its great as a pick and play title.

I think you missed my point. The game has you dealing with Threat and advantages WAAAYYY more often than you deal with success or failure right now. In short, the dice suck in a way. As a GM you either have to deal with these things narratively, or with the charts. You fall back on the charts often as the threat and advantages roll ALL THE TIME. but success or fail not neccessarily so. TBH, We found ourselves going dead even on successes but every player rolled a threat or advantage every single round makes cinematic narrative very drug out when the players simply just want to finish killing that mob and moving on.

It would be a very cool tool if the threat/advantage rolls came along a bit fewer (like by half as much as they do) But my tabletop group felt like the game went the way of Benny Hill way easily and thats even looking for a balance between charts and narratives.

I did get a copy of the beta rules and its not much better. Character creation looks good, new and inventive, but overall looking at this upcoming release and the fact that the only other releases are just more core rulebooks, it wont have the same kind of setting, ships, and equipment supplements to really kick off a star wars setting like the WEG edition ended up being supported. For now I'm holding my purchase of the book release until I see some supplements published to help further the setting. If not, oh well. Got tons of SW books from ages past and Kraps.fr Has any other supplements I would need to run any era.

Oh yeah, and ST armor is currently the best armor in the game with a +2. A bit sad....(no the corebook does not improve this)

Killing mobs? I don't think this game is set up for that. My experience is, combat is very dangerous at all levels. That's kind of the point of threat/advantage dice in the first place -- the little stuff matters because you are anything but invincible. If you want to just mow down minions on the table top, I think you should try Deathwatch. EotE and Deathwatch are both "cinematic" experiences but you have to remember there are different genres of movies. EotE is noir-esque. You get something closer to 80s action flicks with Deathwatch.

 Manchu wrote:
Killing mobs? I don't think this game is set up for that. My experience is, combat is very dangerous at all levels. That's kind of the point of threat/advantage dice in the first place -- the little stuff matters because you are anything but invincible. If you want to just mow down minions on the table top, I think you should try Deathwatch. EotE and Deathwatch are both "cinematic" experiences but you have to remember there are different genres of movies. EotE is noir-esque. You get something closer to 80s action flicks with Deathwatch.

well going from the only mob rule units in EotE, it doesn't feel cinematic so much as...clumsiness. I just think the D6 luck die felt a little better as I just interpreted this myself and it sometimes let the crits just speak for themselves. The really good ones I gave descriptions to and everything else just fell into fun gaming. I think I'll stick to a wait and see approach to how this system will be supported with sourcebooks (if any at all) if not I still have my library of d6 to entertain with.

WEG's system is great, IMO. When it comes to playing a game, the most important thing is having fun. That said, you can't pretend games are interchangeable and try to force Y to work like X.

As for sourcebooks, two thoughts on that: (1) the EotE core book is not even out yet and (2) EotE is a first in a trilogy of SW RPGs from FFG. The second installment will be about Galactic Civil War and the third installment will be about the Force. So you shouldn't expect EotE sourcebooks on those topics.

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4053

The core book has been delayed until July ...

Hope Disney has nothing to do with this.

First Adventure Module Announced:





http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4180

Pregen Characters for Free RPG Day:

CH-1, Droid Bounty Hunter (Gadgeteer)

Grabow, Wookie Colonist (Hunter)

Jovel, Bothan Technician (Splicer)

Matwe, Human Smuggler (Scoundrel)

Sinoca, Rodian Explorer (Trader)

Trey'essek, Trandoshan Hired Gun (Marauder)

Hey guys,
I would like to hear any feedback on the Free RPG Day adventure from those who picked it up. I wrote the adventure and I am curious what you guys thought of it!
Jeff

I'd love to give you some feedback but have no Free RPG Day retail support near me. So I'll have to wait until FFG releases it digitally.

 JHall wrote:
Hey guys,
I would like to hear any feedback on the Free RPG Day adventure from those who picked it up. I wrote the adventure and I am curious what you guys thought of it!
Jeff

From what I read, and going back to look at it later? I like the feel of the story, but the game is going to take some getting used to.

Excellent new article on adversaries in EotE:

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4210

Minions:

Minions are the most common adversaries encountered in the Star Wars universe. These are nameless individuals who provide muscle to flesh out encounters. Their only real threat is in numbers, and a minion is not expected to stand toe-to-toe with a Player Character.

Example = Pirate Crew

Rival:

Rivals are more dangerous than minions but still inferior to most Player Characters. Rivals are very similar to Player Characters in many respects, being generally more innately gifted and well trained than minions. They operate individually rather than in groups, but they are generally less skilled than the PCs, seldom possessing more than two ranks in any one skill.

Example = Storm Trooper

Nemesis:

The nemesis is the opposite of the Player Character. They are identical to them in virtually every respect and frequently possess a number of talents, high characteristics, and skills. Additionally, their equipment can often rival that of even the most well supplied parties.

Example = Forsaken Jedi

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2013/07/05/video-at-the-edge-of-the-empire-with-a-new-star-wars-tabletop-rpg/

You see, I want to avoid getting sucked in to this after spending too much on 3 different SW RPGs down the years, but then they go and make it look all cool....

I think I'll hold out for the military book though, that's always been my favourite part.

I don't know, I'm still using all my stuff. I'm getting ready to run a SW D6 game over skype and it's handy to have a few different takes on certain elements of the SW universe. That said, I didn't go in for SW d20; just D6, Saga Edition, and now EotE.

Enter The Unknown

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4243

The galaxy is rife with opportunity for those who are willing to seek it out. From the hostile wilderness of uninhabited worlds to the dangerous shadows of unexplored hyperspace lanes, chances for adventure and profit can be found everywhere.

Enter the Unknown is the first rules supplement for Edge of the Empire, featuring new content for the Explorer career, as well as hosts of new options for any player or game master. It provides tools for making stronger, deeper, and more diversified characters. New gear, droids, and vehicle options will enhance play for any group. Meanwhile, GMs can find advice on incorporating the themes of exploration, trade, and hunting into their campaigns.

Enter the Unknown covers the Explorer career, and gives it some exciting new options. Because of Edge of the Empire’s flexible character advancement system, these options are useful for nearly any character. First and foremost, the career gains three new specializations: the Archeologist, Big Game Hunter, and Driver. Each of these specializations gives new or existing Explorer characters additional choices including several brand-new talents. On top of that, this book adds new options for backgrounds, Obligations, and Motivations, all based on the themes of exploration, hunting, and trade.

Additionally, Enter the Unknown introduces new, powerful advancement opportunities for characters in the form of signature abilities. Signature abilities are career-specific, elite talents only available to experienced characters. They permit tremendous feats that are only made possible with the skill and ability gained over a long and successful career. Signature abilities add new talents to the bottom of one of the character’s existing talent trees, granting further advancement deeper into that character’s area of expertise.

In addition to these character options, this book contains new equipment and vehicles necessary for any character braving the wilder parts of the galaxy. Vehicles such as the the KV swoop help characters journey into the unexplored, while weapons such as the E-11s sniper rifle and the huntsman vibrospear help them survive it. Along with this, a whole suite of gear for any situation makes Enter the Unknown an extremely useful part of any adventurer's collection.

Lastly, Enter the Unknown gives Game Masters a powerful tool to craft exciting and engaging adventures for their players. Whether they are looking to work with themes of exploration in their adventures, better involve Explorer characters in their narrative, or run an entire campaign around the themes of exploration, this book gives them to the tools to do so.

 Manchu wrote:
I don't know, I'm still using all my stuff. I'm getting ready to run a SW D6 game over skype and it's handy to have a few different takes on certain elements of the SW universe. That said, I didn't go in for SW d20; just D6, Saga Edition, and now EotE.

Hmm, where do we sign up for this? I still have all my WEG books that I loved so much (Rebel SpecForce Handbook, Imperial Sourcebook, Black Sands of Socorro...etc). I WANNA SIGN UP!

Just to put in my two cents...

I played through both the open beta phase and two campaigns with the beginner box and the Long Arm of the Hutt adventure. I really enjoy the narrative dice mechanic. I would invite anyone who is against it without trying it to play a full session on the system. I had two skeptics really enjoy their time.

The only difficult thing about the system as a DM early on was trying to interpret large levels of advantage into the narrative beyond 2x success.

The system is really solid, plays well, diminishes player passivity, and it just a damn lotta fun.