Fantasy Flight are publishing a Star Wars RPG

[Korgan0]

And they're looking for beta testers.

Link is here.

There's a catch, however. It's thirty fucking dollars for the privilege of beta-testing their game. I assume that also gets you a copy of the full game, but I don't think they explicitly say it. Judging from the FAQ, it's using a version of the WHFRPG 3e rules or something, given that they mention having multiple dice types that you get based on your charcteristics, and so on. Also, apparently, every character has an Obligation, which means that Bad Stuff can happens to your character. However, at the start of every session, one obligation gets triggered, chosen by a dice roll, and you can take more obligations to get fancier stuff.

This isn't really important news, but I'm curious if anyone knows someone who's ponied up the money, or who is able to tell us what the playtest is like.

[Voss]

This should be good for a laugh. Attempts at SW RPGs are inherently laughable, and the FFG version of Warhammer Fantasy is a clusterfuck molded around novelty dice. From what I understand, inserting the dice rectally is somewhat less painful than actually playing the game (if you want an RPG experience, anyway).

Coupled with the horrid editing standard in a lot of the FFG WH products, it should be rather fun to watch

Talk of a retailer kit for selling a beta is just downright bizarre, but it is interesting to note the complete lack of anything mentioning the jedi or the force. Sounds like it is exclusively Outer Rim criminal shenanigans during the Empire. With a hint that it might be sort of like the attempt at the 40K Rogue Trader rpg, where you have a ship and crew and so much crap is handwaved into being completely dull or horrendously overpowered.

[Wesley Street]

A friend of mine got a copy for free at GenCon and gave it to me. It's narrative and combat is way more abstracted than the d6 and d20 versions. It also uses career skill trees. Dice pools are used to determine ability, proficiency, difficulty, challenge, setback and Force successes. The book comes with decals to place over d4, d6, and d12 dice. Minor Force talents are presented but no career paths for Jedi.

"Edge of Empire" is the first of three core rule books. The second rule book, slated for 2014, focuses on capital ship combat, and the third rule book (2015) is all things Jedi.

EoE is 200+ pages but those pages are information dense and illustrations and photographs are limited to chapter headers and a few spot illios of races. No drawings of ships or guns. The setup seems to allow for play as Rebel, Empire or independents.

All that said I don't give two shits about Star Wars so I'll probably give my copy away.

[OgreBattle]

Attempts at SW RPGs are inherently laughable

Because of the focus on Jedi in the story or what?

reflavored Shadowrun is more or less what I'd want out of Star Wars setting... well except the boats are in space.

[Voss]

Attempts at SW RPGs are inherently laughable

Because of the focus on Jedi in the story or what?

It really depends on the iteration. Some had Jedi engaging in what amounted to self-multilation to do anything worthwhile, most had a 'if you go dark side, the DM must take away your character' clause, some had terrible, terrible shenanigans where jedi could do the equivalent of scry and die from half the galaxy away.

But mostly the rules presented just don't do very well with the setting as given. This is particularly true of all the d20 versions (including SAGA), simply because a leveled system is a complete fuckup from day one when 99% of the people in the galaxy are mooks, and even the heroes get hurt by weapons (and will demonstrably give up or run away when outnumbered or put in a bad situation), which is terribly counter-intuitive to how d20 works as a system. Getting ambushed by a dozen stormtroopers is a no-win situation. But in most star wars rpgs to date, the system presents 'just kill them' as the most reasonable option. They're either true-to-movies stormtroopers and die in one hit, or they are absurdly leveled stormtroopers (of an appropriate CR) which means you can win, but you'll have to blast them each a dozen times or so. Either way, you're putting the setting to the torch no matter what.

Also, yes, Jedi are stupid and lame. Fucking Space Wizards.


But shadowrun style could work. Magic is suitably not over the top, and astral shit can be reflavored to second sight style crap easily enough. The 'you got dropped' levels are pretty reasonable too, once you put a reasonable cap on most near human stuff (ie, not have body or reaction pools out into the teens).

[MGuy]

Attempts at SW RPGs are inherently laughable

Because of the focus on Jedi in the story or what?

It really depends on the iteration. Some had Jedi engaging in what amounted to self-multilation to do anything worthwhile, most had a 'if you go dark side, the DM must take away your character' clause, some had terrible, terrible shenanigans where jedi could do the equivalent of scry and die from half the galaxy away.

But mostly the rules presented just don't do very well with the setting as given. This is particularly true of all the d20 versions (including SAGA), simply because a leveled system is a complete fuckup from day one when 99% of the people in the galaxy are mooks, and even the heroes get hurt by weapons (and will demonstrably give up or run away when outnumbered or put in a bad situation), which is terribly counter-intuitive to how d20 works as a system. Getting ambushed by a dozen stormtroopers is a no-win situation. But in most star wars rpgs to date, the system presents 'just kill them' as the most reasonable option. They're either true-to-movies stormtroopers and die in one hit, or they are absurdly leveled stormtroopers (of an appropriate CR) which means you can win, but you'll have to blast them each a dozen times or so. Either way, you're putting the setting to the torch no matter what.

Also, yes, Jedi are stupid and lame. Fucking Space Wizards.


But shadowrun style could work. Magic is suitably not over the top, and astral shit can be reflavored to second sight style crap easily enough. The 'you got dropped' levels are pretty reasonable too, once you put a reasonable cap on most near human stuff (ie, not have body or reaction pools out into the teens).

Much hate, pain, and suffering I sense. Wronged have you been by Star Wars fanboys perhaps?

[OgreBattle]

But shadowrun style could work.

Human= Human
Alien that is taller than a human= Troll
Alien that is thicker but not taller than a human= Orc
Alien you would let touch your penis= Elf
Short alien= Dwarf

Jedi=Adept

so, what am I missing to play Star Wars.

[Korgan0]

Some rules for spaceship combat, new gear, fluff, and probably a few unique alien races. Since Street Samurai don't have to be balanced against stunbolt-spamming, invisible, flying, spirit-summoning mages you could remove most augmentations without worrying too much.

[OgreBattle]

Some rules for spaceship combat, new gear, fluff, and probably a few unique alien races. Since Street Samurai don't have to be balanced against stunbolt-spamming, invisible, flying, spirit-summoning mages you could remove most augmentations without worrying too much.

I scratch off 'augumentation' and write in "create an alien with these great customization rules!" and remove the bits involving web surfing.

Some rules for spaceship combat

I use the rules for car chases. capital ships are very big cars.

[Fuchs]

We use Shadowrun 4 rules when we play in a campaign loosely set in the Outlaw Star Universe (Which has cyborgs, and magic, and magic guns).

Star War's problem is jedi. Either play an all-jedi campaign, or an all-mundane campaign, or you balance jedi and mundanes, and find a way to deal with the fanboys who think jedi are gods and should be treated as such.

[Voss]

Mguy what are you gibbering about? Have you seen a decent ruleset for a SW rpg?

[Surgo]

Honestly, I see no reason to leave the augmentation stuff out. Star Wars has crazy tech and actual augmented people in it (like one of the main villains, for example), and even has hacking that is mostly done off-screen because the movie wasn't about hacking.

[hogarth]

They expect me to perform decalcomania on my dice? Poppycock!

[echoVanguard]

I dunno, I think the WEG d6 Star Wars game is pretty great.

echo

[Aryxbez]

I dunno, I think the WEG d6 Star Wars game is pretty great.

echo

Well, going on more than just your word, what does it do to make it "great"? How well, and in what ways, does it fulfill Star Wars fiction using this d6 system's rules? Is there an encounter system, how about for creating/playing alien the large gallery of alien races?

As hell yeah, I've always wanted to play a Wookie Jedi, though sounds like Shadowrun is a pretty good idea for this...(kinda works for Warhammer 40K I think as well)

Though as I understand, aren't the vehicle rules also rather terrible, don't work as intended, and thus be better off with trying to mine something like spycrafts minigame for it?

[Surgo]

That is ultimately the problem with just taking the SR4 rules wholesale. A big selling point of Star Wars is that dudes will get into ships and shoot at each other, so you need something that models that well.

[MGuy]

Mguy what are you gibbering about? Have you seen a decent ruleset for a SW rpg?

My bad I should of highlighted this part:

Also, yes, Jedi are stupid and lame. Fucking Space Wizards.

Don't know why you have so much beef with jeedai,

[erik]

Star War's problem is jedi. Either play an all-jedi campaign, or an all-mundane campaign, or you balance jedi and mundanes, and find a way to deal with the fanboys who think jedi are gods and should be treated as such.

Buuuut, what Surgo sez below.

Honestly, I see no reason to leave the augmentation stuff out. Star Wars has crazy tech and actual augmented people in it (like one of the main villains, for example), and even has hacking that is mostly done off-screen because the movie wasn't about hacking.

Exactly.

You don't have to be a wizard to be super powered. Sufficiently advanced technology serves the same purpose. You can make jedi powers run off of an Fate pool or something so there is a limited supply and if you use it up you can't use it to do other nice things like open blast doors by shooting the controls with a pistol, quickly hack a space station, still get the drop on an expert bounty-hunter who already has his gun trained on you.

There's plenty of non-Jedi options that I would be willing to play in a Star Wars universe with Jedi in my party.

Here's a few:
A Leader with a sidekick and minions.
A sentient battle droid.
A cyborg.
James Bond with even better tech.
An alien with alien juju.

Han Solo could just as easily have been the main hero of the Star Wars trilogy. The only reasons Jedi were important is because plot said so.

[Chamomile]

It's mostly in the prequels that Jedi become clearly superior to all opposition, and most everyone agrees the prequels were terrible anyway. So yes, if you want to play a game like the prequels (which would be fine, because the prequels mostly suffered from poor direction and didn't actually do a whole lot of damage to the actual setting) then levels are your best friend and d20 is workable. They let you go from Jedi Padawan to Jedi Master. Also, you're playing a Jedi.

Otherwise, you could have basically some sort of E6 or E4 rules or whatever that let you play mundanes or the original trilogy.

[FatR]

It's mostly in the prequels that Jedi become clearly superior to all opposition, and most everyone agrees the prequels were terrible anyway.

Observing how people on intranets atribute all real and imagined bad things in SW to PT is intensely funny. Considering that, you know, the only reason the Rebellion ever had any chance at all in OT was the fact that they managed to obtain services of the last Jedi and that by Ep.6 you had the classic sympthom of massive power divergencies in the party, when a character with mojo goes on an entirely different subquest, than everyone else.

That said, the gap in terms of asskicking between Jedi and everyone else as depicted in the movies, discarding EU wankery, is not big enough to be impossible to bridge in the game, with enough advantages thrown to the normals. Exceptionally hardcore non-Forceusers can take on an average Jedi with success, and spamming mooks is a valid method of overwhelming or chasing away even the powerful ones.

[Chamomile]

I actually don't have a problem with the insane power creep in the prequel films. Some people (most notably Plinkett, who is now the go-to repository for things to repeat about why the prequels where bad) like to talk about how Jedi carve their way through a half-dozen or more battledroids like they're nothing and say it's a bad thing, but I think it looks cool, so why not? But it is a marked difference from the original trilogy where, as mentioned, a dozen stormtroopers show up and that is actually a problem that people care about.

I also think it's debatable whether or not the Rebellion critically benefited from having a Jedi on hand at any point except when Luke blew up the first Death Star. And even then, if Luke hadn't brought Princess Leia to their doorstep, the Rebellion would've lost Leia but would never have had the Death Star on their doorstep in the first place.

[Surgo]

In purely a narrative sense, if they hadn't had a Jedi around they would have been crushed because the Emperor wouldn't have had a reason to hold off on crushing them immediately, or even have the battle at Endor in the first place.

On the power disparity though -- that's all the more reason to have augmented characters. While surely nothing will come close to some of the wankery levels that appear in certain sources, there's no reason dudes can't just be badass as Jedi because of equipment, augmentations, or both. Hell, there are even people like that in each movie trilogy. They just get comparatively less ink because, you know, the story isn't about them.

[OgreBattle]

A big selling point of Star Wars is that dudes will get into ships and shoot at each other, so you need something that models that well.

Is there something lacking with the Shadowrun carchase rules in this regard?

Han Solo could just as easily have been the main hero of the Star Wars trilogy. The only reasons Jedi were important is because plot said so.

He has no motivation, he only gets dragged in because of the Jedi. If Luke wasn't around, Han would've stayed a drug smuggler and Chewbacca would be trapped as his ethnic sidekick forever.

It's mostly in the prequels that Jedi become clearly superior to all opposition

Luke used the force to destroy an entire mega-spacestation. No other Jedi has killed that many people at once.

The prequels showed that with enough dudes with lasers, you can laser all the jedi to death.

Sure, Mace Windu (the best close combat Jedi in the galaxy) cuts off Jango's head... but Boba (the guy with a jetpack and super special armor and stuff) got kicked in a hole by a dude who put most of his skill points in "driving: cargo ship"

If you want "Jedi superior to all opposition" watch the Tartovsky Clone Wars shorts... but people like those because it shows jedi being unmatched super space wizards.

[Chamomile]

It's certainly possible in a game without levels to have "Obi-Wan Kenobi, respected Jedi Knight who is not yet awesome enough to have a seat on the council" and "Jango Fett, galaxy's most awesome bounty hunter in the history of forever" in the same party. The problem is that in a game with levels, your level 1 soldier is a storm trooper and your level 1 Jedi is, comparatively, going to be like twelve years old. You know that scene from Revenge of the Sith where Princess Leia's adoptive father sees the Jedi trying to escape and he hacks through like four clone troopers before being gunned down? You know how that kid is like fifteen? That fifteen year old kid is on par with Han Solo in terms of stormtrooper murdering potential. That's kind of a problem.

Of course, you'd expect warriors trained from birth to be super awesome at it, so the main problem is that the Jedi get trained so young.

[Koumei]

I'm assuming it's going to be as shit as Rogue Trader et al.

1. The base setting they're using is just as retarded (SW/40k)
2. It's FFG, they love forcing everything to adhere to their shitty system.