So, has anyone here also played the 40k lines (Only War, Deathwatch, Rogue Trader, and Dark Heresy)? Occasionally, those systems try to convince one that they work well TOGETHER, which most people agree is a bald-faced lie; Inquisitors CAN accompany Deathwatch Space Marines on missions, but they will be immensely weaker, and have so much more skill mojo as to make the Astartes look like neophytes at life, while Acolytes serving the limitless power, but paranoid and tight-fisted Inquisition will have their gear and resources put to shame by Rogue Traders, who buy one-of-a-kind prototypes from the AdMech, or plumb tommbs and ruins for ancient xenos wonders to beggar even a whole world's economy.

***HERE STARTS MORE RAMBLING AND EXPOSITION--SEE BELOW FOR QUESTION***

The point of that is, in the EotE, AoR, and F&D lines, how well do they actually mesh together? I can see that the mechanics are, for the most part, the same, but each uses its own mechanic (Edge has Obligation, Age uses Duty, if I remember right, and possibly some bit of "are you more Rebel still, or falling to the Empire?", and Destiny hits us with Morality, and also some "in the scale of your soul, where falls the Light and the Dark?"), and then the next system, being stand-alone, never mentions the last. If I wanted to play more a crew from the movie, so we have the Han Solo type, who owes some people, has some enemies, and isn't always a shining beacon of right, a Leia-analogue plucky young Rebel, who longs to see an end of tyranny, and will fight to the last to see her people free and happy, but must make sure not to become the Empire, in the process, and a Luke-facsimile starry-eyed young boy who just learned that he has inherited magic powers, and must both avoid death for merely having them, and also not let them consume his soul, while trying to make sure they don't die out with him, how well can we run it?

Could you, would you, import Obligation and/or Duty into your testing for F&D? If you were the typical player group, and all had a FR from one of this book's jobs, that's already almost three times as many Force-sensitives as makes sense; Yoda's wrong, no matter what he tells Luke, even if the EU is gone, but a group of 6-8 seems just something that would attract Vader (I mean HIM, not some Inquisitors who serve the Emperor). I can see liking to get the rules set, especially now that they are not dancing around Force powers and Jedi, even if the characters in this book aren't REAL Jedi (Luke wasn't either, most of the time, so that's not a complaint from me), and I can also understand wanting to keep the party on an even keel, so everyone has Force ability, and no one feels like the Fighter in a room of Wizards, who ALSO have a weapon better than his, and might be as competent with them, but a party more of each would seem more organic. As makes sense, I think every job in F&D has a FR 1 bonus, and many of the trees have the expected Force-related talents, but while I love KOTOR II, and especially like that most of the characters can be awakened to Force-sensitivity, I ALSO like the feeling that some don't have it, at first, and at least one organic doesn't at all.

In your game, would you just skip around those Force-talents, as you were able, and ignore the Rating score? Would you build Atton or Bao-Dur in Edge or Age, and then just play them that way? It seems it would work, as the systems, are close, but do they have to keep track of Obligation, or Duty? Would you build Bastilla as a F&D character, but then attach Obligation or Duty to her, while she dwells aboard the Ebon Hawk? It's something other characters must monitor, and would seem a bit weird for her not to contribute to, or be a part of either.

***QUESTION***

So, to sum it all up, how well do these lines intermingle? How much work goes into making a cross-lines game, and make it fun? Anyone have any experiences they wish to share? This might very well just be food for future thought, but thoughts would be cool. Thanks for reading the block, and have a good one.

The systems work together quite well in my opinion thus far. I'm running a game right now with 2 F&D, 1 AoR, and 2 EotE careers in it. No character is more powerful than any other at the moment, but they only have about 150XP so it could change later. The Force-users tend to have a few more options than the muggles just because they have Force powers, but on the other hand they are often better than the Force-users at what they do because they don't divide XP among a bunch of Force powers.

Obligation, Duty, and Morality all work just fine together also. None of them are mutually exclusive concepts, and they can provide interesting ways to pull characters in different directions. Like in my current game, they have Duty and Morality (they'll gain Obligation later but not right now). I often present choices where the best/easiest way to complete their Duty comes with Conflict (e.g., killing a bunch of surrendered military officers vs taking them prisoner to make sure they can't report back). The same could be said with Obligation vs either Duty or Morality (especially when dealing with criminal aspects). I'd say that the game is best when utilizing all 3 mechanics to various degrees throughout the campaign.

Yeah, ffg has worked pretty hard to make all the star wars cores compatible and usable together without the problems of the 40k line.

Obligation, duty, and conflict/morality can play just fine together.

... and then the next system, being stand-alone, never mentions the last.

This is actually just wrong. Age of Rebellion had an entire section devoted to how you could integrate it with Edge of the Empire . The developers have said outright that Force and Destiny will talk about how to do the same with the other games. Even the EotE CRB mentioned the other products that were yet to come out, and I think future printings might include a section like the others.

We already use Obligation in our current FaD beta game, and it works quite well. Furthermore, we have one non-Force user in our midst who, because he's not splitting his XP between skills, talents, and Force powers, could take any one of us apart in a straight fight. It would take all four Force users a coordinated effort to bring him down.

As for the Bastilla example, sure, if she didn't use the Duty mechanic then she wouldn't be contributing, but then she wouldn't be benefiting from it either. Obligation likewise, though the benefits of that are more narrative and less mechanical.

They learned their lessons from the 40K debacle.

The core dice system is the same across all the versions, and things like species, ships, etc seem consistent across the all the games. They really, really don't feel like different games like the 40K ones do, they are just flavours of the same unified system.

Force users seem more powerful at higher levels, but they have to split their XP across skills, talents, AND Force powers, so in practice, the muggles don't actually fall behind in the power curve.

I'm actually impressed at how well they have balanced and unified things, to be honest. I'm delighted that non-Force users can actually be viable heroes in this system - the Hans and Wedges can still be cool in this game.

With regard to the Obligation/Duty/Morality thing, these are all additional mini-systems that are bolted-on to the main one and don't use the special dice. I found them fiddly and a hindrance to the narrative game I wanted to run, so threw them out. I find the game works well without them, but plenty of people who use them say that they can work fine together.

With regard to the Obligation/Duty/Morality thing, these are all additional mini-systems that are bolted-on to the main one and don't use the special dice. I found them fiddly and a hindrance to the narrative game I wanted to run, so threw them out. I find the game works well without them, but plenty of people who use them say that they can work fine together.

This is also very true. ODM is more like a bonus subsystem to give the GM a little more firepower for story development, and to give the players something beyond basic motivations to provide their character with color and behavioral options.

If ODM isn't a big deal for the campaign you are running, you can dump it without fear of some kind of system breakdown.

The systems play together really well. They seem to have worked pretty hard to balance all of the character archetypes. For me, this is really all just one big system. I know that FFG markets them as three separate games, but really they're all just the Star Wars RPG to me.

I would just pick which of the obligation/duty/morality mechanics fit your game and use that. I personally don't care for duty, so our game uses obligation, and if you are a force user you add morality.

They work seamlessly, even without the yet-to-come "rules" for combining Force and Destiny with Edge of the Empire and/or Age of Rebellion.

What it would come down to is whether, at your table, players are allowed to choose freely from the Obligation, Duty, and Morality mechanics during Step 2 of character creation; or whether they are locked into one or the other (or they must choose only one or two of the three). Obviously the player that has all three options will be the most versatile, but he would also be the most split-focused, having to constantly choose between developing his Force sensitivity and sense of Morality, staying true to his Duty to the Alliance, and fulfilling his Obligations to his debtors.

Talk about Conflict

Good, that makes me very happy. I have the beta and core for Edge, and only picked up the betas for the other two, due to money constraints, so far, but I really like Star Wars, and unlike something like 40k, where the bulk of my friends know next to nothing about it, and would feel unhappily restrained by its universe, most of them do know about Star Wars, so it's a good option for gaming. One thing that turned everyone away, back at the start, was the new dice, but I've picked up enough of those, by now, to roll probably any pool, so no real worries, but if they DIDN'T combine well together, if Age never mentioned Obligation again, because the Rebels don't owe money to Jabba the Hutt, or some such, and the Jedi weren't Duty-bound, because they have much bigger things to do, and worry a Rebellion might use them as much as the Empire might kill them.

I'll flip though my books, and see if Obligation and Duty get rementioned. I wasn't declaring that they don't, but I didn't remember seeing them, as each system is more part of its book. Your EotE characters MIGHT be more jerk, as they care more about money, and work with unsavories, while dodging the authorities, who might actually have a legal reason to punish them, and the Rebels are more akin to "good guys" trying to win the war, though I suppose some of them might use underhanded means, and could become as evil as the Empire, if not careful. Some argue that, without the Force, the pall of the Dark Side has less influence on muggles, and so doesn't matter, but I'm not a member of that camp; a feared, global terrorist doesn't need old magic to be a monster.

Thanks everyone for your thoughts. Much appreciated.

Well one minor note. Morality doesn't go as well with a character that isn't force sensitive. You can do it, and it'll be OK, but compared to Duty and Obligation it's the weakest of the three if you don't have a Force die to go with it. Typically though if you're playing a commando or a criminal Morality will just be a thematically questionable annoyance.

Of course if you are Force Sensitive it's totally fine (actually a smidge better then what we saw in previous system IMHO) and it goes just fine with Duty or Obligation if the player wants to pile on the mechanics...

We might be talking about mixing Obligation, Duty, and Morality (pairs or each and even all three on one character) in our next episode of the Order 66 Podcast.

Might be worth a listen.

Just sayin'...

Phhht. I don't know why you bother mentioning it. Nobody ever listens to the O66 podcast.

Of course if you are Force Sensitive it's totally fine (actually a smidge better then what we saw in previous system IMHO) and it goes just fine with Duty or Obligation if the player wants to pile on the mechanics...

Re. Piling On: Bear in mind that these are narrative hooks -- reasons to talk about what a character is doing, what they're about, or just plain roleplaying. They consume "screen time" at the table, a finite resource shared by the group. A character with all three is going to spend a LOT of time talking about himself -- that's cool for a small party, but if you have a large table, you're probably not going to want a lot of characters with all three. In a group of 4+, I would structure the campaign such that each PC only had 2 of those hooks at most to avoid getting bogged-down or giving some players short shrift on their hooks. This is, after all, an action game.

As a loyal citizen of the Empire, I would never dream of listening to the Order 66 Podcast.

I'll flip though my books, and see if Obligation and Duty get rementioned. I wasn't declaring that they don't, but I didn't remember seeing them, as each system is more part of its book.

You're not going to find it mentioned in the AoR Beta. It'll be in the Beta Updates for that book.

Your EotE characters MIGHT be more jerk, as they care more about money, and work with unsavories, while dodging the authorities, who might actually have a legal reason to punish them, and the Rebels are more akin to "good guys" trying to win the war, though I suppose some of them might use underhanded means, and could become as evil as the Empire, if not careful.

Yeah, it's a VERY odd, and popular, misconception that PCs in Edge of the Empire equate to "scum & villainy" while PCs Age of Rebellion represent "shining examples of virtue and benevolence."

1) In all three lines, it's assumed by the RAW that players are playing the good guys (whatever that means is up to the table, I suppose, but still...you're not obligated to roleplay a murdering pirate in EotE).
2) Motivations, not the game setting, are what makes a person tick.

3) A Mercenary can be tempted by love or conscience to betray his materialistic motivations, just like another character with more altruistic motivations could be tempted to betray them for personal gain. So, like you imply there, it can be complicated.

Some argue that, without the Force, the pall of the Dark Side has less influence on muggles, and so doesn't matter, but I'm not a member of that camp; a feared, global terrorist doesn't need old magic to be a monster.

The problem is that "old magic" and "muggles" aren't clean analogies to the Force and non-Force-users.

The dark side is a perversion of the natural order of things, and thus can speed up & intensify one's own fall. So yes, a person can be evil without being a Force-user, but an evil Force-user is all the more evil because of it.

That's just kinda how the lore is and how the Force works.

I like to think of my group as being bad guys doing good deeds and they seem to try and make the moral choices.

I've only seen a few problems come up, but otherwise the three mechanics do not really get in each other's way.

1) While normals don't have any problem taking Morality, it doesn't really do anything for them either. Since they aren't aligned to the Force and aren't concerns with Force die results, their placement on the Morality scale is largely irrelevant. Sure, you have the destiny pool results, but this is a lot of accounting for very little effect.

2) I wouldn't combine all three on a character at once. There is just too much going on and too many driving forces pulling the character in too many directions. In my AoR game, I'm taunting my players with Obligation, but would allow them to later reduce it to zero instead of the normal rule of keeping it around five. I'm also going to keep these numbers fairly low and allow those Obligations to be resolves fairly quickly.

3) I would declare a base game and revolve everything around that. My AoR game is, well, based around AoR. Everyone has Duty, with only the Force users also having Morality. If someone wanted to be a nerf herder, they also have Obligation. If I were running an EoE-centric game with Rebel elements in it, everyone would have Obilgations while only the AoR characters would have Duty (unless a character joined the Rebellion and wanted to get Duty).

4) As an extension of #3, I would decide on how group resources are handled. While this largely isn't a big deal, contributing rank or a Force user's resources can muddy up the works. See, if one or two characters are able to just get a bunch of stuff or favors by upping their rank, that might seem unfair to the rest of the group. Or if a Force user nabs a holocron, that's a pretty big deal that they and they alone gets to benefit from. Obviously, everyone is going to benefit from a ship or a base of operations (unless you're really creative), but you'll need to sort out how everything else meshes.

If you search the forum you'll find numerous threads asking the same question with extensive responses.

I like to think of my group as being bad guys doing good deeds and they seem to try and make the moral choices.

I do know that Malcolm Reynolds would unarguably have shot first.

I suspect would be many similarities between his crew and those of the average EotE PC's.

Back on topic I am keen to see more of firstly combining starting characters from all three books with one or more of Obligation/Duty/Morality.

But just as important I secondly want to see more guidelines of adding AoR and F&D careers to existing EotE characters. For example my local group is going to start with purely EotE because that is what GM has. Thushave chosen to start with Force Sensitive Exile but I would eventually like to add some of the skills and talents of a Force Sensitive Emergent, and eventually progress to Ataru Striker.

That would mean starting with Obligation and then later adding Duty and Morality afterwards if I progress as I hope.

You don't have to add Duty or Morality unless it fits the concept of the game and the characters.

You don't have to add Duty or Morality unless it fits the concept of the game and the characters.

Though if you have a force user morality is a good idea to include for that character. It helps balance and curb excesses by those characters.

I loathe the idea of people ignoring morality on Non force users, but that is just me it seems.

With my group I use all 3 and I only have 1 force user.

Obligations pile up/drop off based on the story. Duty is their "yes I want to help the rebellion" mechanic and when they do they go up in that. Morality tempers their actions.

With Obligation I can hardly see how you can play the game without it. It is easy to gain debt/bounties/owed favors/etc.

With Duty, I can see omitting this for people that could care less about the rebellion, but it is still beneficial for the wound threshold boost chance.

Morality has many mechanical benefits/things for non force users. Aside from the tiny part that is the force pips thing. There is the destiny pool change for paragons (light gaining a light and dark turning a light to dark) as well as strain/wound thresholds.

Morality is also a method to show actions have consequences "in the now" that aren't always reflected in obligation.

But aside from the basic mechanics the 3 systems together offer even more than that, especially if you get all the GM kits/adventures/career books.

With Mass Combat / Squadron Combat rules, Base of Operations explanations/upgrades/etc and different GM prompts/story ideas.

With Edge you are prepared for a ragtag bunch to traverse the galaxy. With Age you are adding epic battle/story situations, and with Force you are getting to the spirituality of Star Wars.

Say what you want about the main mechanic of the books, the system really benefits from all 3 parts and feels like a huge chunk is missing if you only do one of the lines.

You don't have to add Duty or Morality unless it fits the concept of the game and the characters.

Though if you have a force user morality is a good idea to include for that character. It helps balance and curb excesses by those characters.

I would go as so far to require Morality on a character the moment they gain Force Rating 1. From any book. The Force chapters in EotE and AoR do say "balance for using Dark Side points will be coming soon in future products" or some such.

I loathe the idea of people ignoring morality on Non force users, but that is just me it seems.

With my group I use all 3 and I only have 1 force user.

Obligations pile up/drop off based on the story. Duty is their "yes I want to help the rebellion" mechanic and when they do they go up in that. Morality tempers their actions.

With Obligation I can hardly see how you can play the game without it. It is easy to gain debt/bounties/owed favors/etc.

With Duty, I can see omitting this for people that could care less about the rebellion, but it is still beneficial for the wound threshold boost chance.

Morality has many mechanical benefits/things for non force users. Aside from the tiny part that is the force pips thing. There is the destiny pool change for paragons (light gaining a light and dark turning a light to dark) as well as strain/wound thresholds.

Morality is also a method to show actions have consequences "in the now" that aren't always reflected in obligation.

But aside from the basic mechanics the 3 systems together offer even more than that, especially if you get all the GM kits/adventures/career books.

With Mass Combat / Squadron Combat rules, Base of Operations explanations/upgrades/etc and different GM prompts/story ideas.

With Edge you are prepared for a ragtag bunch to traverse the galaxy. With Age you are adding epic battle/story situations, and with Force you are getting to the spirituality of Star Wars.

Say what you want about the main mechanic of the books, the system really benefits from all 3 parts and feels like a huge chunk is missing if you only do one of the lines.

This pretty much jives with what we talked about on the last Podcast Episode. I'm of the camp that "Morality is for Force Users", at least as far as a mechanical benefit goes. If someone wants to use it to track and help guide the RP of their character, so be it. Chris is in the camp of "Morality for Everyone!", or at least is willing to let the Mechanical benefits of being a Light Side Paragon and Dark Side Devotee for those Moralities in non-Force Sensitives.

To each their own, really.

...The Force-users tend to have a few more options than the muggles just because they have Force powers, but on the other hand they are often better than the Force-users at what they do because they don't divide XP among a bunch of Force powers.

So much this. One group, where I am co-GMing, has about 225 earned XP. While my Consular/Healer-Niman is a great physician with some secondary skills/abilities, and while another player's Infiltrator/FSE with Enhance has a lot of flexibility, they are overall no match for non-Force characters' focused specializations. Having some Force abilities and powers is balanced by the XP investment required for such. This is not a bad thing and prevents or delays the "Space Marine" syndrome that has plagued Jedi for many years. By the time the Jedi/FSE become movie-level Jedi heroes, the non-Jedi will be on par with Han, Chewie, Boba, etc.

Obligation, Duty, and Morality all work just fine together also. None of them are mutually exclusive concepts, and they can provide interesting ways to pull characters in different directions.

I also agree with this. Again using my group as example, we are playing privateers in service to the Rebel Alliance. Everyone has Obligation of some sort. The Force users have Morality. We don't use Duty as written in AoR, but it is a part of their Letter of Marque with the Alliance. They get a cut of every haul taken from the Empire, plus extra goodies should they perform remarkably. (Example: last session, they not only prevented the Empire from wiping out a colony with a bio-weapon, they stormed the lab, got research notes and samples, and then blew up the lab. As such, they got some extra goodies from the Alliance's armory.)

Overall, I believe there is enough balance and interchangeability with EotE/AoR/FaD.

Regarding the Original Question: After about four months of playing in a fully realized game that use aspects of all three of the currently available rulebooks (EotE, AoR, F&D Beta). This is with both a GM & Group new to the system, we've had not serious problems and outside of one disconnected PC who's missed a number of sessions due to RL concerns the game has been quite successful.

My instincts and experience tell me that assuming that everyone's keeping track of their own stuff, then two of the three is the best combination. At this time in my game the group has basically eliminated their obligation and it's sources and are contemplating taking on duty. The morality mechanic was easy and fun to introduce as far as I was concerned as I like that kind of Morality Tracking system. Now as GM I've been keeping track of the various numbers myself as well as my players keeping track, so some of the issues with accounting may accrue.

Kudos to FFG and the Playtesters for making such a wonderful game that even a group of D&D hounds can dig on a Star Wars game.