Initial impressions of Edge of The Empire from FFG

[TheFlatline]

So FFG has released their first Star Wars RPG. They're basing the entire line off of the same format/structure that they used in their Warhammer 40k line: each core book increases the power level of starting characters and puts them in different settings. The first core book focuses on Han Solo and his ilk: smugglers, explorers, bounty hunters, all the myriad of common folk. This roughly feels like the same power level as Dark Heresy. Next up will focus on the Empire/Rebellion as a military core book, and finally they'll release a force-centric core book.

Setting is strictly Episodes 4-6, with a smattering of the beginning of the Galactic Civil War. As far as I know, no prequel stuff is in the pipeline.

I was a big fan of WEG's Star Wars, less so of WOTC D20 Star Wars, and I picked up the original Beta. Not much has changed if you kept up with the beta errata. Eventually I'll add more comprehensive review of the chapters here and try to give you a good idea of the book.

Edge, as I will call it, uses a similar system to the Warhammer 3rd edition RPG, in that it uses "narrative dice". The dice are not compatible with WH3 sadly, so you'll be plunking down 12 bucks for a set of dice, or 5 bucks for the app (which also includes x-wing miniatures dice, which again are not compatible).

However, unlike WH3, Edge is... vastly streamlined and refined from the clunky metagame that makes up WH3. I kind of enjoyed that metagame, where players gamed their characters in something almost like a board game during combat, but the dice pools were ginormous, the rules weren't very clear, and you needed eleventy billion cards, tokens, markers, notes, and did I mention deck upon deck of cards?

The dice pool system is easier to understand now. You have skills and characteristics. Characteristics are harder to come by once play starts but are far more expensive in char gen. When you want to do something, Mister Cavern assigns a difficulty, which adds difficulty (purple) D8's to your pool. You examine your characteristic and skill- the higher of the two is your base and adds that many base (green) D8's to the pool. Then those green D8's are upgraded to yellow expertise D12's by the other stat. So if you have Int 3 computers 2, and you want to hack, you have 1 green D8 (okay) and 2 yellow D12's (awesome). D12's have more successes and boon on them, and has the desirable triumph which counts as a boon and success. Note that if you had Int 2 computers 3, your dice pool would be the same. It's a balance between innate ability and your training. Cooperating with someone lets you use one of their stats instead. So if you were int 2 computers 3 and someone was int 3 computers 1, you'd take their INT and your computers and roll 3 yellow dice. There are also blue situational advantage dice and black situational disadvantage dice. If you're under fire you get a black die to hack, if you are super familiar with the system you get a blue die, etc...

Finally there are destiny points. At the beginning of each session, each PC rolls a D12 force die and totals up the light side and dark side points that are generated. Dark side points go to the MC to upgrade difficutly purple dice to red threat dice that can be especially painful, and a few other things. PCs can upgrade their own dice as well and do a few other things and are fueled by light side destiny. When the MC spends a destiny, it becomes a light side point, and vice versa, creating a destiny economy. Sometimes it blows- there can be only one or two destiny points per session for a large party, and sometimes luck makes it rain and everyone rolls 2 destiny and there's huge shifts in luck during the game.

Finally, there's obligation. Everyone gets obligations at chargen, How much obligation depending on how many people are in the party (which leads to issues I'll discuss later). You can pick or roll on which kind of obligation you have, and there's the gambit of stuff like debt or honor-bound or bounty. Players can, and often will, take additional obligation at the beginning of chargen to acquire either more xp to pointbuild or more credits to kit out (you receive almost no credits so most PCs choose this). The MC creates a chart for the game where at the start of each session he rolls percentile against the chart to see if an obligation comes into play. At the very least, the whole party's stress threshold is lowered by one, the troubled PC's by two, to reflect the issues distracting the party. On doubles these penalties double to 2/4, which blows since most stress thresholds will be in the 10-15 range. Whether or not the obligation pops up as a plot element in the session is up to the GM.

I'll cut the descriptions here and get onto the more detailed review because really these things deserve their own discussions. If you checked out the beta, nothing new is here. If you haven't, but are familiar with WH3, this will seem like an easier version of the system, closer to a roleplaying game than a series of metagames strung together by a story. If you're looking for a decent lower-level star wars game, this isn't bad. However, it's got FFG issues all over it. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

[TheFlatline]

Episode I: The Introduction Strikes Back

It's a dark time for RPGs. It's been two years since the behemoth D&D thrashed it's last vestage of it's 4th incarnation, and gamers everywhere express secret doubt that D&DNext can possibly succeed. Pathfinder stalks these dire times seemingly undaunted in it's temporary rise to the top of the industry.

But in the shadows boardgame maker FFG has obtained the Original Trilogy Star Wars license, and has decided to release their own RPG games...

Introduction

So a guy opens a book and the introduction falls in his lap. I'm not shitting you- a booklet fell out of the cover and into my lap. I know that FFG have binding issues with their bigger books but WTF?

Turns out it's "intentional". It is a booklet, same print quality as the rest of the game, that says READ THIS FIRST. So you open it up and you see the Introduction. I guess they forgot to... you know... put it in the book. Or maybe it was too big to fit in- The core book is 440+ pages.

The intro text is okay, and blissfully short- 1.5 pages. It's enough to give you grim gritty feeling, and fuck it's Star Wars, we know this shit or we wouldn't be playing. It's sort of grimdark, which is the point of this corebook- this is the grimdark side of Star Wars.

Next page is a generic Welcome to the Game article, directing players and MCs to their respective starting pens and gives them a brief idea of what to expect. This is normal shit that we all gloss over and goes on for another page and a half. After that, we have a "welcome to the galaxy" section, where we set the tone. Again, "Episodes 4-6" *probably* would have been enough, but in case you live under a rock and never have seen Star Wars, they talk about the Emperor, Vader, the Civil War, and the underworld. Specific mention is given to the most over-used macguffin villain of Star Wars: The Hutts. The Black Sun, black markets, and the outer rim are all mentioned too. These only get a paragraph or two to sum up.

There's also a 3/4 page where there's an example of play- brief though it is. Each section seems to get a page and a half of text to it's subject, so each idea gets a paragraph or three. Not too bad, and is a giant, macro view of the setting.

Total damage? 8 pages. Not too shabby, but it's a fucking booklet that fell out into my lap. Inexcusable.


Chapter 1: Playing the game

I'm sure that booklet is an afterthought, because the first chapter is a bizzare, more lengthy retread of what we just did. It goes through the classic "what is a roleplaying game?" question (which I think is superfluous at this point, that's like asking what a board game or a strategy game is) but goes into mild detail about the custom dice creating a narrative.

The core mechanic of the game is described in it's own section, and this is kind of cool: You build a pool up of good dice and bad dice, and it gives a chart showing which dice come from where. That's pretty cool. It then tells you that it's successes vs failures, and that extra advantages and disadvantages can arise from the roll independent of the success of the act. The entire game is built around this core mechanic, and I applaud the authors for actually stopping and saying "look at this motherfuckers!" instead of just kind of insinuating it in the text of the game, or reiterating it 90 times throughout the book in the case of D20.

We then spend 2 pages dealing with the different kinds of dice. Which is kind of ass. Each die gets a paragraph describing the vague notion of the origin of the dice, but nothing actually about them other than their symbols. The force die is the most different of all the dice but doesn't get much of a descriptor, only links to other pages. Oh, and there's 2 paragraphs dedicated to D10's and percentile. *rolls eyes*.

If you're not willing to buy an app or plunk down 12 bucks on a set of dice, there's also a conversion table that converts each die type to a standard D6, D8, or D12. Nifty for spendthrifts, but moreso because it actually gives you the layout of each die, and makes it easier to judge probability (not that it tells you this).

Then we spend two pages going through the possible dice results: There are six not counting percentile and force dice: Success, advantage, triumph are positive, failure, threat, and despair are negative. Successes and failures cancel each other out, advantages and threats cancel each other out, and triumphs and despairs are special and can be partially canceled out. The symbols are all abstractions of the universe, and aren't immediately obvious unfortunately, especially advantages and threats. I still call advantages and threats boons and banes from my time in WH3, and really the situational modifiers should have been called advantages and threats instead of the dice results. Players will take about a session to get used to them, but it's needless complication.

The force die either generates one or two points of light or dark side force points. It's also used to generate destiny for players each session as I mentioned above. Force users are super rare and don't have a lot of control over the force, so the rules are basic.

Next up is a section called The Basic Dice Pool, which is weird because it delves straight into characteristics. You have agility, brawn, cunning, intellect, presence, and willpower. Brawn seems to be big, as it's your wound threshold modifier and is your ability to soak damage. Willpower derives into strain (stress) threshold. This is modified by skills and training, which is vaguely mentioned and then moved on.

Difficulty is pretty straightforward, but gets a chart, 2 pages, and a side bar on determining difficulty levels. Average is 2 purple dice.

I guess this section is on the elements of a basic dice pool. I know where they're going with this, but it's still kind of vague your first time through.

Next up we build a dice pool, and this is where the big "trick" comes in. You look at your relevant skill and it's linked characteristic. Int and computers is a good example. The higher of the two is your base attribute pool of green basic positive dice. The lower of the two upgrades those dice to yellow proficiency dice. Therefore, most skills are approachable untrained unless otherwise noted. You get three examples of how this system works, showing that int 3 comp 2 is the same as comp 3 int 2, and how someone with 2 int and no comp would roll.

Next up is modifying the pool, either using situational modifiers (blue and black dice, blue are boosts, black are setbacks) and are cumulative, so if you want 15 different modifiers going you can have that massive pool. You can also upgrade and downgrade your difficulty dice and ability dice using destiny points- PCs can do this to the MC and vice versa.

All of the permutations are kind of confusing and take up several pages. This is probably my biggest complaint about the game: 20 pages in and we're still talking about dice mechanics. And we're not done yet.

Next up is interpreting the pool. Total up the successes, subtract the failures, and if you have at least one success afterwards, you succeed. Do the same with Advantages & threats even if you don't succeed: this is the "narrative" part of the dice, that can be spent by either side on a wide selection of bonuses or penalties. Triumphs and despairs count as both symbols, and can also activate certain abilities, like critical hits, without spending the necessary advantages.

Next up are the other types of checks: Namely opposed, competitive, and assisted.

Opposed checks are handled by building a single dice pool. Say you're sneaking, and you have Agi 4 stealth 2, and the guard has Cunning 2 Perception 1. Your total dice pool would be 2 green attribute dice, 2 yellow proficiency dice, 1 difficulty die, and one red challenge die. Plus modifiers. roll the lot and see what happens. I kind of dig this- both sides are using their dice pools in one big fat roll. In WH3 there was this weird tiered thing where you compared stats to determine how many difficulty dice to add in and it sucked.

Competitive checks each side rolls off and the biggest successes wins. On ties whoever rolled the most triumphs wins. On that being a tie, the most advantages wins, and on *that*, it's a straight up tie.

Assistance we already covered. If you're not skilled you can always add a blue boost die by going and boiling a pot of hot water.

And with that, we're done with basic dice mechanics. It only took 26 pages! I hope you were paying attention, because there will be a quiz after this- it's called playing the game, and you *will* feel utterly lost unless someone is there to walk you through that first session.

Next up are "other key elements", as if you haven't absorbed enough information.

First are talents- special abilities you can buy based on your career/specialization. More on those later.

Next is destiny, which I went through in the overview. The idea is for no one side to lock down destiny points, though it can happen. Destiny can be used to upgrade ability dice to proficiency dice, difficulty dice to challenge dice, to fuel some special talents, and to perform a Deus Ex Machina, producing something minor yet valuable, impromptu cover where there was none, etc... Nothing over the top, but useful enough to encourage spending. As a GM, I spent pretty liberally, and so did the players.

Next is an overview of obligation: Aka how random luck fucks over the party on a routine basis. We went through the mechanics of it in the original post. There's talk about how it's a connection to the underworld, so some politicians won't talk to you if you have a score of X (pulled out of MC's ass of course), or some Hutt will need a score of Y before he trusts you. It's all fucking arbitrary and while it's supposed to be a big selling point of the game, it ends up being kind of a letdown.

There's also a brief paragraph on experience and improving yourself in the game.

It explains that every character is a point build (yay!) based on starting XP determined by your species (Dafuq?), and that only talents improve characteristics after chargen. Otherwise you can buy skills, talents, and specializations, which are essentially talent trees inside careers. You only ever get one career (Han is a smuggler. Period), but you can buy any number of talent trees, even outside your career, they just cost more. Characteristics max at chargen at 5, and can never go beyond six. Which is odd that the maximum strength for a human and a wookie is the same. But what the fuck do I know right? Skills are capped to 2 at chargen as well.

Mechanics are given but you don't know how much XP is worth because chargen rules are a chapter away still.

Finally you get derived attributes: Wound threshold (hit points), Strain threshold (mental hit points that also power some talents), defense, and soak value.

As I said before, brawn impacts wound threshold at chargen, and always reflects soak value. So a higher brawn results in longer-lived characters, who get both more soak and more hit points to keep going. Will influences strain as well, and those are the only two characteristics you derive anything from. Combat monkeys take note.

And that wraps chapter 1. 31 pages of a new dice system and all the metagame stats. It's dense, and at times poorly worded, and throws a massive amount of information at you, but it's also all in one place, which is a big help. Playing the game is sort of misleading too. I would have called the chapter Game Mechanics personally, that's what this chapter is devoted to. You don't actually know *how* to play the game at this point, but you do know how to process it mechanically. MCs could skip quite a ways ahead into the book at this point if they wanted to.

Art is also scattered throughout the chapter. It varies throughout the chapter, as with the rest of the book, from pretty bad to pretty gorgeous. A lot of the characters from the movies get good art treatment in their "hero" splashes. It's instantly obvious who they are. The ship art tends to be above average as well consistently. Some of it looks like production art from Lucasfilm, which is entirely possible.

Certain art is just cringe-worthy. Han losing at dice is a quarter page of pain, and Han meeting in a bar with a contact is one of the worst Harrison Ford illustrations I've ever seen.

Next Episode: Character Creation.

[Dean]

Fun fact; I also reviewed this game rather acerbically when it was in its beta state here if you wanted to check it out. I'll ask you some questions later about changes

[TheFlatline]

Just perused the thread. Good stuff. I'm still reading chargen right now, but Droids got a serious overhaul from the printed beta but still are wonky. The beta game I ran someone played droid and that was the errata I made sure to use. They got fucking metric assloads of skills at generation, all at level 1, and some other stuff. But droids were generally assumed to be the weakest of all the character species. I myself would have left them out frankly- Playing a sentient droid is something not for the core book but for a splat book. I seriously wouldn't have missed it. It's one of the more puzzling choices in the core book.

I don't hate the dice resolution mechanic as bad as you do (they hadn't printed the dice at that point, hence the stickers), as I kind of like the "good stuff/bad stuff in addition to do succeed" concept. I do hate spending 12 bucks on a set of dice though. Using the reference chart isn't good enough for real play. It's a kludge. I also find it silly that you have to denote 30 pages to the fucking dice system, and people *still* have questions after that.

However, from what I'm seeing there's a lot of MTP. The basic careers are essentially unchanged, so mercenary and bounty hunter and smuggler are all the sexy careers, and colonist and explorer, while having some very very useful sub-classes that you no-doubt will eventually take so you can heal like a motherfucker, still aren't as sexy as being a bounty hunter.

The talent trees however feel utterly uninteresting to me compared to the myriad of hundreds and hundreds of combat and social abilities that were in WH3, and even the list of nifty shit in Dark Heresy.

I also agree with you that not putting Jedi in is fine by me. In fact, if I actually play this game, I might mix in the rebellion military book and *that's it*. I never was someone who wanked off to Jedi. I appreciated the plot arc and the idea that a few people scattered around the galaxy could use the force, but the prequels illustrated everything I hate about Jedi.

That being said, the force rules are an interesting take, and the lightsaber is sufficiently motherfucking lethal as all hell. They toned it down in errata I think, but basically the fucker has a critical hit almost every successful attack, and burns through armor like it's not there. It's also almost the cost of a small starship on the black market, which I'm again totally fine with. Kudos as well for intentionally *not* putting lightsaber combat skills in this book.

I always found Han Solo and to a far, far lesser extent Boba Fett to be the most interesting characters, so a game that ignores the jedi shit appeals to me. I'm okay with this.

I'll be running a game in a few weeks to test out this game among 3 players. We'll see how it holds up.

I'll leave you with two things:

Everything has a base price now. Yay!

THEY FUCKING FORGOT TO PUT THE INTRODUCTION INTO THE BOOK

[Username17]

I myself would have left them out frankly- Playing a sentient droid is something not for the core book but for a splat book. I seriously wouldn't have missed it. It's one of the more puzzling choices in the core book

There are supposedly twenty million sentient species in the Star Wars Galaxy. Of those, the vast majority are completely unnamed, and what few exist in any form are just there for a dumb one-off joke that Lucas thought was hilarious enough to shit out an entire species for: like the Troig. However, there are seven protagonist characters in Episode 4, and they come from just three species: Human, Droid, and Wookie.

There are four Humans, two Droids, and a Wookie as the protagonist team in New Hope. If you write up rules for playing characters in Star Wars and you have rules for any of the twenty million sentient species that aren't Humans, Droids, or Wookies, and you still don't have Humans, Droids, or Wookies, then you have fucked up. Full stop.

-Username17

[TheFlatline]

I myself would have left them out frankly- Playing a sentient droid is something not for the core book but for a splat book. I seriously wouldn't have missed it. It's one of the more puzzling choices in the core book

There are supposedly twenty million sentient species in the Star Wars Galaxy. Of those, the vast majority are completely unnamed, and what few exist in any form are just there for a dumb one-off joke that Lucas thought was hilarious enough to shit out an entire species for: like the Troig. However, there are seven protagonist characters in Episode 4, and they come from just three species: Human, Droid, and Wookie.

There are four Humans, two Droids, and a Wookie as the protagonist team in New Hope. If you write up rules for playing characters in Star Wars and you have rules for any of the twenty million sentient species that aren't Humans, Droids, or Wookies, and you still don't have Humans, Droids, or Wookies, then you have fucked up. Full stop.

-Username17

Normally I'd agree with you but there's 2 things that so far are overlooked in this RPG that are actually even major plot points in the movies for Why Droids Suck as PCs.

Scenario one:

"I want to play a droid!"

"Awesome I put a restraining bolt on you. You're now my bitch. Literally. If I want you to stand in front of me in a firefight as cover, you're going to do just that. In fact, I need you to open this door and see if it's booby trapped."

"Sigh" *reaches for the dice & blank character sheet*

In fact, the *only* reason R2 goes off like he does in Episode 4 is because Luke is fucking dumb enough to take the restraining bolt off him. If he had left it on, he would have taken the droids and had their memory wiped like his uncle ordered, including the death star plans, and then had been fried with his Aunt & Uncle in one of the few examples of stormtrooper efficiency, thus securing the Empire's victory over the entire universe.

Scenario two:

"I want to play a droid!"

"I memory wipe you. I might reprogram you for shits & giggles. You're no longer a PC."

"Sigh" *reaches for dice and a new character sheet*

Scenario two-B:

(Continued from Scenario Two)

"Fuck that I won't go with you"

"I put a restraining bolt on you. You're going to get memory wiped"

"Sigh. Yes master." *reaches for dice and sheet*

Neither of those are particularly uncommon in Star Wars. In fact, droid memory wipes and restraining bolts are the defacto standard of what you do with droids. Anakin letting R2 run for 20 years without a memory wipe is an anomaly, not the status quo. Fuck 3PO *did* get a memory wipe to shut his big fucking mouth up at the end of episode 3. He'd been running unwiped for 20 years like R2, and had essentially the same level of "sentience" as R2, and when he's told he's going to get a memory wipe, he doesn't say "fuck that" and run away, he says "oh dear" and gets his memory wiped.

A setting where by default if you show too much independence as a droid you're probably going to be scrapped or wiped or at least made a slave is a shit "species" to have as a core book PC species.

Hell I'll throw in Scenario three that supposedly is common enough during the Empire:

"No droids! We don't allow their kind in here. The droid barrier prevents them from entering"

"I'll guess I'll go have a smoke. Let me know what happened."

[Username17]

All that is just "as a Droid, you can be captured, mind controlled, or killed". But all of that can happen to a Human or a Wookie. The only difference between a Restraining Bolt and a Brain Worm is that one works on Droids and the other works on non-Droids.

Yes, a Droid can be chopped up for parts and "killed". But that can happen to any PC, whether they have blood or circuitry. The only thing that is at all interesting about a Droid from the "can be captured/killed" standpoint is that Droids can specifically be repaired back from "lethal" damage without having to go through Dark Side Prophets.

-Username17

[Omegonthesane]

All that is just "as a Droid, you can be captured, mind controlled, or killed with total impunity, because you are legally and morally counted as property and have no rights, and Droid Rights aren't really a thing"".

FTFY.

But all of that can happen to a Human or a Wookie. The only difference between a Restraining Bolt and a Brain Worm is that one works on Droids and the other works on non-Droids.

And that restraining bolts are ubiquitous SOP throughout the galaxy while Brain Worms are an obscure bioweapon from Geonosis.

If it's that you want rules for a Droid cohort, I'm right there with you, but the two canon droids were strictly servants and extensions of other characters. They're not PC material, even if C-3PO was hilarious.

[OgreBattle]

Let's talk about how Droids were treated in the movies.

Darth Vader personally addresses a group of bounty hunters, among them is a droid standing alongside flesh and blood dudes. If that droid was the one that accomplished Vader's task, then he'd get paid and have the freedom to go spend that money.

Now compare that to say, a wookie. C3P0 talked to him like he was a piece of shit, Han talked to him like he's a pet, and Leia just orders Chewbacca around. Just going by the movies, we could argue that a wookie is only a pet for real PC's to own.

Droids are cool, bounty hunter droids are cool. This is a book about smugglers and bounty hunters in Star Wars, and there is a bounty hunter droid in the movies. That is all you need to know about why Droids are a PC 'race'.

[Darth Rabbitt]

Let's talk about how Droids were treated in the movies.

Darth Vader personally addresses a group of bounty hunters, among them is a droid standing alongside flesh and blood dudes. If that droid was the one that accomplished Vader's task, then he'd get paid and have the freedom to go spend that money.

Now compare that to say, a wookie. C3P0 talked to him like he was a piece of shit, Han talked to him like he's a pet, and Leia just orders Chewbacca around. Just going by the movies, we could argue that a wookie is only a pet for real PC's to own.

Droids are cool, bounty hunter droids are cool. This is a book about smugglers and bounty hunters in Star Wars, and there is a bounty hunter droid in the movies. That is all you need to know about why Droids are a PC 'race'.

Nitpick: there were two droid bounty hunters in that scene.

Not that it hurts your argument.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Look, everyone knows that sci-fi androids/robots/AIs are totally fucking sweet and need to appear in more things.

If they reboot Star Trek or Wars and don't have at least three AIs among the primary cast, then I've lost all hope for everything. Let's make it real simple -- the ship's computer is an AI that has a maximum intelligence quotient and competence for reasons, there should be a sexy android (wo)man as XO, and finally a comic relief robot like Bender or C3P0 or Tachikoma.

[ishy]

Reboot? I thought disney was making a 7th movie?

[Lago PARANOIA]

Reboot, resumption, refried beans, whatever.

The point is that any future adaptations of either franchise better have some fucking robots or holograms or artificial intelligence in them.

[fbmf]

If your own party is trying to memory wipe or put a restraining bolt on your character, you play with a bunch of cocksuckers.

If the world in general is trying to do it, they need to roll initiative and pin you down or disable you first. Flatline, you make it sound as if when this happens to droids success is automatic. As if the droid can't defend itself.

True, most types of droids can't harm sentients, but all of the droid PCs I've played or GMed for were assumed to have those protocols disabled.

Game On,
fbmf

[unnamednpc]

Also, HK47.
Enough people know him, and fans love that guy, so if you want to make your fans happy (i.e. buy all your stuffs), you better make sure they can play their own, completely original sociopathic droid character.
(And, yes, I know that as you meet him forthe first time, HK47 does have a restraining bolt on. But that's more Bioware peppering KOTOR I with yet another hilarious wink to A New Hope than any sort of statement about the viability of a droid PC.)

[name_here]

Obviously a droid with command overrides available to whoever the fuck is not a valid player character. But most of the major character droids don't. R2-D2 didn't start A New Hope with a restraining bolt, he got disabled with an ion rifle and had one forcibly installed. The HK droids were pretty murder-happy, and IG-88 had some bizarre plan to hijack the Death Star II and murdered his original creators. Actually, he murdered everyone on the planet (which was largely automated, so not really that many people), and then pretended everything was fine for a while.

[fbmf]

Obviously a droid with command overrides available to whoever the fuck is not a valid player charcter.

Either I don't understand what "command overrides available to whoever the fuck are", or I need to ask:

Why aren't drods that can defend themselves viable PCs?

Game On,
fbmf

[name_here]

I was talking about droids who have to obey orders from anyone who gives them.

[fbmf]

I was talking about droids who have to obey orders from anyone who gives them.

Got it.

Game On,
fbmf

[Surgo]

So FFG has released their first Star Wars RPG. They're basing the entire line off of the same format/structure that they used in their Warhammer 40k line: each core book increases the power level of starting characters and puts them in different settings. The first core book focuses on Han Solo and his ilk: smugglers, explorers, bounty hunters, all the myriad of common folk. This roughly feels like the same power level as Dark Heresy. Next up will focus on the Empire/Rebellion as a military core book, and finally they'll release a force-centric core book.

Just for clarification -- this means that the subsequent books are intentional power creep, with better / higher powered options? Or does it just mean that the core example characters in the latter book have more points?

[Koumei]

The different games aren't really supposed to be played together. Smugglers are not in the same team as X-Wing Pilots are not in the same team as Jedi. Yes I know the very source material did just that, but we can't assume it'll play out as well as a game with rules.

When FFG did the 40k series, they did "Hive scum and the butt-monkies of the Inquisition". Then they released "Rogue traders and other guys who are somewhat more skilled, but loaded with cash and bling". Then they released "SPESS MEHRIN!" They also released "The forces of chaos - both cult leaders and Chaos Spazz Meringues." I'm not saying which of the two is the correct choice, but one of them starts with eighty tonnes of armour, regeneration and a rapid-fire rocket launcher, the other one... can climb stairs without them collapsing.

At no point did they suggest the various games cross over. I hope.

---

Anyway, as fiddly and gimmicky as the dice seem, that could be kind of interesting, and just by dint of not using their Derp Heresy system I award them five points.

[Surgo]

So are they basically completely different games, with completely different rules? Sorry, it's just an unusual format for someone used to level-based games like D&D and point-based games like Shadowrun or even HERO, so I'm trying to figure this shit out. Slowly.

[Koumei]

Basically the same rules, but with such discrepencies in the amount+quality of gear, starting attributes, talents, skills etc. that they're really different games. Imagine if you will that there are three separate D&D games that all use the d20 rules, however one of them goes from levels 1-5 with Fighting Man classes, another one goes from levels 8-13 with casters, and then the last one goes from 16-20 with casters and prestige classes.

[Username17]

It's more like Mage and nWoD Werewolf. As a Lupine, you are considerably less powerful than a Mage, and it isn't even at all obvious how you would "level up" into a Mage.

-Username17

[OgreBattle]

Nitpick: there were two droid bounty hunters in that scene.

Not that it hurts your argument.

Thanks for informing me! I thought he was a fly-head alien, hahah.


So about the FFG system, what is it good at? Where does it fall flat?