Hey there,

My friends and I have started getting into tabletop gaming during the past year and have played multiple campaigns of Descent, are just about to finish up our first Imperial Assault campaign, and a number of other games, some more complex than others (anywhere from Munchkin to X-Wing to Eldritch Horror). Typically, during games like Descent and Imperial Assault (along with Eldritch Horror) I am the "overlord" player, or the evil GM. I keep up with the rules, explain the missions, etc. etc. Recently I have been wanting to start with a tabletop RPG and my group loves

Star Wars.

Basically, do you think the beginner box would adequately help us learn how to play an RPG with our experience from our current types of games?

Yep! If anything most experienced guys get a little frustrated with how step by step hand holdy it can be sometimes as it carefully ramps up from simple mechanics to the larger system.

Judging from all the successful new GMs so far on these boards, I'd say you're in good hands. The Edge of the Empire board has a GM sub-board, it's a good place to ask GMing questions.

If your group is already familiar with Imperial Assault, they'll take to the beginner box just fine. It's hand-holdy for a reason. It takes both GM and players through the process of playing an RPG. Though, you'll still want to read the adventure ahead of time, of course.

As the others have already said, you should have no problem.

In fact, the primary purpose of the Beginner Game is to introduce people to playing the game in a sort of step by step approach. It slowly introduces more complex rules as you go and lets both GM and players become more comfortable with the system and gaming in general in a rather fun way. At least that has been my experience with it.

Be advised, they both feature a vehicle encounter at the end that tend to be a little flat and dull. They teach the core mechanic just fine though. Just give your players a heads up and push through it just to make sure everyone's got it down. If you need help developing your own vehicle encounters after that, come back here, we'll be happy to help.

I think the beginners box is great, although I definetly recomend you download the continuation and read through it aswell before starting. The free adventure that follows really holds most of the meat for a good campaign set on Onderon. The box also contains alot of other useful stuff like poster maps, high quality tokens and some reference tables that we still constantly use in my group. Add in the dice set and its a bargain.
If your the kind of people who enjoy using miniatures with your roleplaying games (Which granted can be hard to know if your just starting out) you can also use your Imperial Assault mini´s and tiles and Xwing minis quite well with the game.

The beginner boxes are a great way to jump into the game and learn the system for both players and GMs. The adventure in the box (and the follow up available online) take some of the pressure off the GM since you don't have to create a compelling story while getting the hang of a new game. Also I looked at the cost of the dice set vs. the cost of the beginner box and decided it was worth the extra money to get an adventure or two, some pre-gen characters and a few maps as well as dice.