FFG Star Wars over my head :\

[Miekael]

You can easily get by playing this game with a single core book. The community over on FFGs forums 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/forum...iny-v2-ruleset which is undergoing constant development, and excellent library modules available here: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...l=1#post241032 and some here: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...ibrary-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