SW: Edge of the Empire

Stories about games that you run and/or have played in.

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Longes
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SW: Edge of the Empire

Post by Longes »

Now Edge of the Empire campaign I'm in is three sessions in, so I'll try to sum up what happened and the my opinion on the game.

Our first session was "Escape from Mos Shutta" from the Beginner's Box, with pregenerated characters. The pregens are not compatible with the core book in any way, shape or form. The plot is that three of us (Pash the Smuggler, Sasha the Explorer and Vex the (droid) Colonist) pissed of the local Hutt in various ways, and are now trying to leave Tatooine. The game started with a barfight, and continued as we walked through Mos Shutta and did various things to steal the not-Millenium Falcon. It's an okay short adventure to introduce the players to the game, although the GM has quite a few ways to screw over the players by not giving important information. For example, before you can fly away on the ship, you need to disable magnetic locks that hold it in place. But the only way to know that is to be told by GM, or try to fly away.

For the second session we generated our own characters (Vex remade himself to fit with the real rules), so now our cast is:
-Apep, the twi'lek Colonist-Politico. Ex-slave, currently unemployed aspiring Sith modeled after Kreia.
-Vex, the droid Colonist-Doctor. Ex-surgeon, currently unemployed. Hadn't fired a single shot in three sessions, spends most fights pumping drugs into our Wookie.
-Gaaruura, the wookie Hired Gun-Marauder. Ex-bodyguard, currently unemployed. Roars and hits things with a Force Pike. Currently drug addicted, thanks to Vex's combat drugs. Ever since we acquired a few crates of space cocaine seems to aspire to be Tony Montana.
-Nav, the human Hired Gun-Mercenary Soldier. Ex-rebel, ex-bounty hunter, currently unemployed. Ever since he was betrayed by his girlfriend stopped being a rebel. So dark, much brooding, wow. Pilots speeders and shoots things.

After escaping the Tatooine we fought a few TIE-fighters and found a captured twi'lek in one of the rooms (the ship belonged to a slaver). The twi'lek turned out to be Bura'Ban, a resistance leader on the Rylot, a homeworld of the twi'leks. Not anti-empire resistance though, anti-twi'lek government resistance. He promised a reward if we get him back to Rylot, and, since we were low on fuel, we went to Rylot. As a reward we got our ship fixed. While the ship is being repaired, the resistance asked us to escort Bura'Ban to his homevillage, in exchange for what they'll repaint the ship and make fake documents for us. We got in an ambush on our way, which ended very badly for the ambushers. They got pressed into a cave, and eaten by local wildlife. I got nice Lamelar (stormtrooper) armor out of the deal. When we finaly got to the village, we learned that they are being oppressed by human and aqualish thugs, living in a construction site nearby. The construction is a cover-up for ryll (drug) mining. While the rest of the group was ready to go and fight them just out of the goodness of their hearts, I put my sith foot in the ground, and said that I'm not doing shit for those people, if they are not willing to do anything themselves. So one passionate speech later, we got ten meat-shields. Our attempt at scouting didn't go all that well. The wookie failed his stealth roll, which alerted all the enemies. Still, we managed to kill everyone and save the day.

So, things I don't like about the system:
-Combat is either extremely deadly (if you have Brawn 2) or harmless (if you have Brawn 4+). Your Soak is Brawn+Armor. Published armor has top Soak of 2. Blaster pistols have base damage of 5, blaster rifles have base damage of 9-10. Also, Hutts have ridiculous Soak of 10.
-Talents are extremely boring. Most talents either give a blue die to something, or remove a black die from something. Politico has one of the few interesting talents - "Scathing Tirade". It allows me to spend action in combat ranting at enemies and giving them sanity damage (Strain). Oddly enough, this is one of the best ways for killing our wookie.
-Obligation system is pointless. Its only purpose is to fuck up the players.

The Force:
It's not obvious, but Sense is the best power to have. Its basic use is sensing life forms in the Short range. Its upgrades allow you to commit a force die in exchange for upgrading two difficulty dies for attacks against you, or upgrading two skill dies for your own attacks. So even without a lightsaber skill, a Force 2 jedi can have four yellow dice for attacking.

Additionaly, for a jedi it's a very good idea to invest in armor that provides Defense instead of Soak. Two of the last talents in the Force Sensitive Exile tree give +1 ranged/melee defense. With Armored Clothing you can have defense 2, which translates into 2 black dice for the attacker. With the Sense difficulty upgrade you become very hard to hit.
So far, jedi combat routine looks like this:
1. Force Jump (Enhance power, from Age of Rebellion) as a maneuver somewhere close to the enemy. Spend your action on committing your force dice to attack and defense.
2. Run to the enemy and cut him to pieces with your 2 yellow, x green dice (probably 2 green dice), while enjoying your night invulnerability.
Last edited by Longes on Sat Jun 14, 2014 10:19 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Longes
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Post by Longes »

One other thing I'd like to talk about, is a troubling tendency of FFG to shovelware their books. Age of Rebellion is currently in beta, and having seen the book, I'm very concerned. The book costs 60$, isn't available in PDF format, and contains bare minimum of differences from Edge of the Empire. As far as I can see, the only differences are:
-Class trees are have their talents reshuffled, making new boring classes out of old boring classes. Because talents are incredibly boring.
-New Force class and two new Force powers. Enhance is incredibly good because you can get stat increases and force leap. Foresee is incredibly shitty, because you get to fuck around with initiative (pointless) or get vague hints about the future up to five days ahead. Wooo.
-Instead of getting a choice of three ships you get a choice of two ships and a batcave.
-Four new races replacing four old races.
-A different starting adventure.

I'm sorry, this isn't enough content for a 60$ book, and I don't really see a lot of people who are not EoE fans buying this.
I can look at WH40k books, and see big changes between them, even though core mechanics are the same. This just isn't present here.
TheFlatline
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Post by TheFlatline »

I think I predicted a lot of your complaints about the game. It just felt... flat to me.
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