FFG Star Wars over my head :\

[Couvs]

Years ago (can't believe it's already been so long) I got super interested in the d20 Star Wars RPG that Wizards published, had every core rulebook & update up to Saga Edition and a few of the sourcebooks, but sadly never got into actually playing it.

Now, seeing that there's yet another new system for Star Wars, I'm looking at what info I can find online and find myself completely baffled by how FFG's system works. I'm further confused as to why they have three separate "Core Rulebooks" (EotE, AotR & F&D) for the exact same system rather than a single core rulebook and restrict other material to additional variants and story settings. Dropping $60 on each core book seems excessive (the additional D&D books at least have completely separate info from the PHB, and players who don't also DM don't really need the DMG or MM beyond their own curiosity). So I'm left with not even knowing which core book would be best to refer to if I were to try and get into the new system.

Anyone got any clarification on this or advice?

[Honken]

About the 3 rulebooks... I would guess, money? I can see how they would have 2 at least. One mundane, and one force.

The system in it self is fairly. What can look complicated is the dice mechanics, but about 4-5 rolls in, you will understand it.

If you are interested in it, I would suggest buying one of the beginner games. That includes enough dice to play the game, and some fancy maps and enough rules to play the included pre-gens through the adventure. And each of the Beginner games has an adventure you can download from FFG's homepage.

Edge of the Empire is geared towards the underbelly of the galaxy (Smugglers, and gamblers). Age of Rebellion is about the War against the Empire, and finally Force and Destiny is about force users. All books have TOP notch layout and art. They are beautiful books.

/H

[Couvs]

I had another look at the (rather small) wiki and I think I get how the rolls work for combat (at least the basic example made some sense). Still unsure of how they work on skill checks though.

I can sort of see there being some difference between EotE/AotR and the Force based stuff. I guess the main thing I'm wondering is how much of the 3 core books is base mechanics and how much is story/campaign related and what exactly warrants them all being priced that high. They're each something like 400 or more pages and I'd think there must be some overlap in their coverage.

[OTG_Wraith]

It comes out to be about thirds...

A third of each book is replicated material about how to play the game.
A third is descriptions, story or rules specifically for that book's setting.
A third of each book is dedicated to new 'stuff' (from classes to weapons to vehicles) that are useful in any of the three settings.

[Couvs]

suspected as much. double then triple charging the consumers on a third of the content :\

[ianmward]

They claim that the idea is to give you the ability to choose the setting you want and be able to play with just the one book. Giving you more choice - If you want to play rebels, just buy AoR, Jedis? Just buy F&D.

Of course, real fans end up buying all three...

[Trenloe]

The free "Under a Black Sun" scenario includes quickstart rules and is a good place to get an idea of the mechanics: Get it here: https://images-cdn.fantasyflightgames.com/filer_public/18/ff/18ff8afe-bf19-47a3-97e5-a313ded3d6b3/under_a_black_sun_lores.pdf

There is a lot of crossover between the three main rulebooks, some sections are 100% the same (basically the game mechanics - dice rolling, skills, combat, etc.). There are minor differences between the three flavours (obligation, duty and morality mechanics), and each flavour has different character careers, new species (some duplication here too - like Human, droid and humans in EotE & AoR, for example), scenarios and campaign information. There is also quite a bit of cross-over between careers - especially in EotE and AoR.

You can play a Star Wars game with just one of the rulebooks. There's Force careers/abilities in all three, so you don't necessarily need F&D if you want to use the force. Although you probably will need F&D if you're concentrating on a force centric game. You can easily get away with one EotE or AoR rulebook, as a lot of the careers are similar - just talents will be more fringer/scoundrel based or more duty/armed forces based.

[Couvs]

yeah the problem arises when you want to put together a party that mixes the careers across the three books and develop a campaign that could conceivably span the themes in all 3 books. Then you're paying for a third of the book three times. This was either a deliberate cash grab on FFG's part or else they weren't keeping this in mind.

in any case I read through the abridged rules in that free adventure and I think I'd need to sit down with someone who knows the system and have them explain it better, b/c my eyes glazed over..

[OTG_Wraith]

in any case I read through the abridged rules in that free adventure and I think I'd need to sit down with someone who knows the system and have them explain it better, b/c my eyes glazed over..

There is a video series (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpAnb8EAz4Y&list=PLBW-SmHnjnPE7sCNsK6UGMDxOFMM4dky4) of Trenloe's introductory FFG Star Wars game on my Youtube channel that might be helpful to you.

[Couvs]

I'll have a look at it. as luck would have it the comic & game store where I play D&D ADL is doing a showcase of the star wars RPG and miniature games on the 19th, so that should be a decent tutorial :)

[Miekael]

You can easily get by playing this game with a single core book. The community over on FFGs forums (https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/forum/306-star-wars-edge-of-the-empire-rpg/) keeps a very good Compiled Resource List pinned at the top to help fill in the gaps to get a pretty good gaming experience from it. I would recommend Age of Rebellion myself, it has everything to recreate the epic fight depicted between the Empire and Rebellion in the Original Trilogy. While all the books themselves are set in that era, Force and Destiny can easily be used as a stand alone book for running Clone Wars/Old Republic era games as well. With that said, as a GM I cannot stress the value you have when creating campaigns with all three books. If you want to purchase all three I recommend buying online, you can usually find the book for about $40, and there are several sites that offer free shipping for purchases over $100.

A lot of people seem to get intimidated by the three theme mechanics and will usually recommend that you pick the one you like and use it, but I find all three can be combined quite well into a rich campaign. Edge uses Obligation, this being a mechanic that represents something the character has to worry about. It is up to the character to decide, or randomly roll, and the GM is encouraged to find ways to hook it into the adventure/campaign should it come up. Now as characters progress they can work off their obligation causing it to decrease, they also can take on more obligation for something they want, say a loan for a ship. The GM can also present it to keep players on their toes and check their actions, something like "are you sure you want to upset the Hutt? He might put a bounty on you giving you 10 (Bounty) Obligation," and if the player does indeed take on the obligation, you got your next adventure when it gets triggered. I think this the most popular of the theme mechanics themselves, the only house rule I use is I allow players to decrease their obligation to 0, something you wouldn't normally do if you weren't mixing the mechanics.

Duty, from Age of Rebellion, is more of a secondary award system. As presented in the book, the more you achieve for the Rebellion the higher it goes. As it climbs the party is awarded at contribution levels giving them new gear to use to fight against the Empire. However, the mechanic is easily adaptable to any organization the characters may work for, and can essentially be adapted to any era/theme. Last is Morality from Force and Destiny. All this mechanic does is track a force users relation to the force itself. Some people have used it as sort of an alignment system, but I don't see the usefulness of it.

As for combining them, the real trick is each mechanic is tied to character creation. It's really up to the GM on how to do it, there is no right/wrong way, but typically what I do is pick one that suites the start of the campaign. Are the players employed/part of the military? Then they make their characters with Duty. If not Obligation, and I only tack on Morality to force users starting them at the recommended 50. Then throughout the campaign I use Obligation as a way to keep track of things like character's criminal/wanted status, I also allow characters to use it as a get out of jail free guy. Say the party, through luck of dice or poor decisions, have found themselves in a unsolvable situation. All of a sudden, one character knows somebody who can help, gets them to the next point in the campaign and the character now owes that someone down the line. Then I got something to work with later, they pull off a good heist? Eh, time to tax them with that favor. Duty really only comes into play when the character is working towards the goal of a greater organization, and typically in a campaign I will present a way for characters to work for something greater then them, and climb the ranks of that organization. As for Morality, it really just becomes the Jedi naughty list, when they are bad at the end of the session they can loose Morality and fall to the darkside, when they behave they climb it easily, but it's really up to the GM to enforce it.

Hope this helps your choice, as someone who has GM'd D6, WotC, and FFG Star Wars RPGs I can say, the current system is by far my absolute favorite, I have a duty to it, but it sure brings on the obligation to my wallet. It is in my opinion the best, most balanced system for playing in the Star Wars setting.

[Couvs]

One of the big things that I take out of the info I've found about this system is it seems to be oriented primarily towards good/neutral characters and not so much on the option to play darker characters (criminal element from EotE seems most flexible so far). Sure, most groups would probably prefer playing the "good guys" / light side, but I'm still curious as to how, say, Dark Side Force users can be incorporated. WotC's system had the Dark Side sourcebook, which had a good amount of information both for building dark side NPC's as well as taking a player character down the dark path

[Trenloe]

Dark side is pretty much covered in Force and Destiny. It's quite easy for someone to go down the dark side path (primarily based off the morality mechanic) and the force powers can be used to harm/control.

[Miekael]

Yeah, what Trenloe said, once that book got released, I had no problem writing a campaign that focuses on working for Imperial Military Intelligence that had the option for the force sensitive characters who fell to the dark side to become inquisitors. With the mechanics as presented, it can take as little as the character killing three helpless targets to fall to the dark side and the mechanics itself don't need to be changed in any ways to represent characters using the dark side of the force.

[qLu]

I just saw this thread, I'm the new mod over at the FantasyFlightGames subreddit. The division into 3 is actually a really great thing in my opinion.

You can pick any one you want - and they are all compatible with each other.
Do you like gritty, seedy, dark, underworld smuggling and bounty hunter plots? - Choose EoE.
Do you like the fight of the rebellion vs. the empire? Doing missions to further the cause of the alliance? - Choose AoR.
Do you like jedi, force users, and the mystery of what happened to force sensitive people during the dark times? - Choose FaD.

I have all 3 main books and I am glad that they had books focused on each aspect/setting rather than trying to make it all one big manual. There is actually very little overlap outside of game mechanics discussions. I made an account on this site because I was actually looking to see if FG supports the FFG StarWars RPG.

[Trenloe]

I made an account on this site because I was actually looking to see if FG supports the FFG StarWars RPG.
Welcome qLu. FG does support the FFG Star Wars RPGs with a community ruleset, available here: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?24151-Star-Wars-Edge-of-the-Empire-Age-of-Rebellion-Force-and-Destiny-v2-ruleset which is undergoing constant development, and excellent library modules available here: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?24150-Star-Wars-Edge-of-the-Empire-Library-modules&p=241032&viewfull=1#post241032 and some here: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?24150-Star-Wars-Edge-of-the-Empire-Library-modules

There are a couple of intro videos in the first post of the ruleset thread.

[Couvs]

I have all 3 main books and I am glad that they had books focused on each aspect/setting rather than trying to make it all one big manual. There is actually very little overlap outside of game mechanics discussions. I made an account on this site because I was actually looking to see if FG supports the FFG StarWars RPG.

From what I've seen, the ruleset has been created by one or more of the FG users as there is no current license for FG to include the official materials. Any of the player-made libraries omit any copyright material out of the books. I might be wrong about some (or even all) of this, it's just what I understand from the different threads on the forum here.

I see the point about splitting the themes like this, I just think it gets overly expensive if a GM wants to allow a mix of character types from across the 3 books or a player gets interested in playing different characters across the 3 themes.
Either way, I"m looking forward to the showcase that's happening at the comic & game store where I play in D&D Adventurers' League on the 19th. I'm hoping to get a better understanding of the mechanics there.

[qLu]

From what I've seen, the ruleset has been created by one or more of the FG users as there is no current license for FG to include the official materials. Any of the player-made libraries omit any copyright material out of the books. I might be wrong about some (or even all) of this, it's just what I understand from the different threads on the forum here.

I see the point about splitting the themes like this, I just think it gets overly expensive if a GM wants to allow a mix of character types from across the 3 books or a player gets interested in playing different characters across the 3 themes.
Either way, I"m looking forward to the showcase that's happening at the comic & game store where I play in D&D Adventurers' League on the 19th. I'm hoping to get a better understanding of the mechanics there.

You can very easily support all 3 "types" of characters in a single session without the necessity to own all of the books. I'm getting ready to do the new Adventure released with FaD and then after that we are going to conquer some of the other adventures from EotE with the same characters. If you want to go beyond just supporting a character type in the game you are hosting or playing in and want to do a completely different adventure altogether, then that would be the only reason to buy another "main" book.

[Couvs]

Got to play through the Shadows of a Black Sun module today at the event downtown and I have a much better understanding of the game now! It was a load of fun and now I'm wanting to play that one more too