"Star Wars: Edge of the Empire Beginners game " Topic

This is a pretty big step for me gaming wise, since I have never played or GM'd a pen & paper RPG before. I've played plenty of RPG's on my PC though so I'm not completely unfamiliar with RPG concepts. However, when I heard about Fantasy Flight Game developing an RPG set in the Star Wars universe, and more specifically having a game themed around smugglers and rouges my interest peaked.

Reading up a little on the game concepts and dice mechanics I understood a couple of key things about this game. It is more about plot and interpreting the dice than rolling "67 on a D100 to pass a skill test for sitting down" type of game. This approach suits me quite well, it is both more casual and accessible while allowing both the GM and players to improvize and adapt the gameplay at a higher and more flexible pace.

I will talk about the rules in a post in just a couple of days as I have already familiarized myself with the core mechanics and will have played my first game with my friends when this review is posted on my blog. In the meantime I thought it would be good to show what you get in the various packages that FFG has in their current Edge of the Empire catalogue – starting with the "Beginners Game".

Full review on my blog:

link

We've played this a couple of times at the local club and I do have to say that although the different dice is a good idea it can slow down and complicate the game when you have four characters (or more) vs a group of npc's…

The NPC groups are often "Minions" so even if they are 3 soldiers/pirates they share a single profile and a single roll which is reduced in efficiency when someone in their group is killed. I think it works very well.

Rivals and Nemesis characters on the other hand roll their own dice and are treated as regular Player Characters in most or all regards.

I had a chance to play this one last weekend, I had fun with it. I had no idea I disliked bounty hunters and the Empire so much.

Wow. It good to see that someone like this game.

My club really loathed this game.
We ended up giving it away along with the beta core book.
Yup. GAVE it away.

The dice mechanic really did bog a lot down with larger groups. And when I say larger groups, I mean 4 players. It was more of a lesson in patience than role playing.

We played it for about 3 months and just could not get into it.

It was not for us.

Is this any better than the Warhammer 3rd Edition Roleplay they released? The core idea is interesting, and I think making an rpg that pushes much more player interaction is good, but I found the rules so fiddly and overcomplicated (something I see in many of their board games as well) that I gave up and went back to older rules editions.

Is Star Wars better than Warhammer 3rd Edition, or similar?

The dice mechanics allow for a lot of "fixed" results which both the players and the GM can pick from during combat, space combat and several interactions – but you can also use the results to interpret and come up with your own benefits/drawbacks in any situation. We really liked it (group of 3 players + GM) but I think one should keep trigger happy players calm and combat situations to a minimum as just going from one fight to another becomes boring and a bit of a "miniature wargame".

I look forward to running my own custom continuation of the beginner scenario in our next session, the Beginner scenario was a bit too much on the rails for our taste but did teach the guys who had not read the rulebook the basics quite well.

@richarDisney
The core rulebook is 442 pages long so it does include improvements of the beta rulebook and a bunch of new stuff that wasn't in the beta from what I'v read. Never played the beta myself either so I can't comment on the difference between that and the core rules released a few weeks ago.

If you are looking for a Star Wars RPG experience set during the Empire/Rebellion era, without any of the trappings delivered unto us by the prequels, you should check out "Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game" by West End Games. Long OOP, but easily acquired on ebay for $10 USD-$20. Fantastic ruleset, no funky dice, just good clean fun.

I'm with PatrickWR. The West End Games version was excellent, and all character types in 1 book.

Edge of the Empire takes place after the destruction of the first Death Star – so it's completely "prequel free" :-)

Except that there's probably a Trade Federation NPC running around in that book, or a reference to Naboo, or somebody makes a quip about Jedi "younglings" and then it all comes crashing down. All of that stuff is now canon. The prequels have really poisoned the well as far as future SW products are concerned.

EotE has plunged our club back into RPG big time.

IMHO the dice mechanic does not bog down at all – we have skype games with 6 pcs which run smoothly and fast. What the dice mechanic does is make the session more of a group session with lots of narrative keeping everyone involved. Those people used to making their attack and then wandering off for 15 minutes until its initiative again are in for a big shock.

It's the only RPG which has perked my interest for many many a decade.