It looks "interesting" but other than a few stats for ships I'm wondering if it will bring more than just fluff? Some modular encounters? Some species?

Edit: and our ever faithful test dummy pirate already answered my question... sort of.

1 hour ago, 2P51 said:

Finally, been waiting on this one.

As always, patience, this announcement leaves out a lot of stuff. Can't say what stuff, just lots. Take that for what it's worth.

Whether it will meet every squeaky wheel's expectation, I'll leave that to the squeaky wheels to decide for themselves....

Pirate.... you are lovably infuriating with your tantalising hints of insider knowledge.

I'd like to see some more generic Spec trees at some point, to accompany the two Forcey ones and Recruit.

So, Absol...I know this would be complete conjecture at this point, but just because I like your wild speculations...what do you think happened behind the scenes to move things so far afield from the "Core Book, 3 Adventures, 3 Regions, and 6 Career Splats" per game line trend? Do you think we'll ever go back and fill in those unused Product Code spots?

Imperial Defector? That would be a cool Universal. What about Inquisitor? Less likely but still cool.

Honestly? I think there are two potential answers to that question.

The first answer, and the most obvious one, given today's surprise announcement, is: Disney. The Age and Force books started breaking pattern around the time that TFA was coming out, and we've seen more and more Disney-Star-Wars products coming out ever since then. It's entirely possible that they simply took a look at what FFG had been planning and said, "Umm...yeah, sure, but what if we did THIS instead? And by that we mean, do this instead."

The second possible answer is: They had the idea for Edge, and then realized a two things: first, that it was much harder to stick to the alternating pattern they'd established than they thought it was, and second, the non-career books didn't sell as well as they'd hoped, so they designed the subsequent lines to focus more on careers and less on the others.

As for whether they'll go back and fill in the gaps? I think they definitely will. At the moment we have the following gaps:

Edge 15 (almost certainly the final Region book);

Edge 17, 18, and 19 (no ideas);

Age 52 (with Cyphers and Masks announced, we can see a new Mystery Book, probably also a Region book based on my "palindromic" ordering theory);

Force 4 (A spec deck for a new Universal Spec? Some other, non-book product?)

I can't think why they wouldn't fill these in. Unless Option 1 above is the real answer and the Mouse has said "no."

My personal speculation is that Edge 17, 18, 19 are/were going to be full line, all-in-one Career references. Like, put all 6 trees from all 6 careers plus the signature ability into one volume. As to why they're all in the the Edge line instead of spread out...well, those numbers were "assigned" really early when everything when in the SWE product code (look at the dice being there, instead of a universal).

Who knows if I'm anywhere near accurate though, haha

It's quite probably a mix of both your suggestions Absol. Some product didn't sell as well as others and the demand has been high for Career books so FFG wanted to get them out. But they can likely see the writing on the wall that lots of new possibilities are arising from this new Disney Canon era. They are possibly saving the adventure and location/era books for after more details are available of the new republic.

Disney has clearly made decisions that FFG should include as much new Cannon material as possible and there is probably a higher demand for books that cover topics never before seen in a previous RPG. Why cover stuff WEG and Wizards did all over again when you can be far more creative with this new era and timeline.

Disney let FFG develop a species in one of the splat books, they could be planning on letting them develop more. But the chicken has to lay the egg first.

Yeah, i was assuming it was probably a mix. Did that not come through? Sorry, bad syntax on my part !

I can tell you from talking too Sam Stewart the reason the pattern fell to the wayside because of the reality printing books said no. All it takes is one delay anywhere in the process to screw it up.

5 hours ago, Absol197 said:

Honestly? I think there are two potential answers to that question.

The first answer, and the most obvious one, given today's surprise announcement, is: Disney.

Okay, my OCD tendencies have activated - it's not Disney making decisions, it's Lucasfilm. Look at the credits of Forged in Battle - Hidalgo, Chee, Parisi, Siglain, etc. are all Lucasfilm. Lucasfilm may be a division of Disney, but it's still the same people that were there before the Mouse bought the house. Compare EotE Core with later books - at first, it was Lucas Licensing, with a "Director of Publishing", a Senior Editor or two, and a Community Database Administrator. Now it's Lucasfilm, "Creative Director", the senior editor(s), and a person or two from the Lucasfilm Story Group. But most of the names are the same.

They're keeping a tighter wrap on canon, too. I imagine after Episode IX, we might get a First Order/New Republic era sourcebook. Once whatever plans they have for the ESB to RotJ to Aftermath time period kick in (which I suspect may involve Bothans in some capacity), they'll do a "Fall of the Empire" era book. Plus the ever popular Clone Wars era, which might be interesting, in that they'd presumably have to account for full-on Jedi Knight PCs.

So is Fantasy Flight definitely sticking to the new line of canon for the rest of their books? If so, I gotta admit that it's a shame. I like how the books we've got don't really go one way or the other in regards to Legends or Canon. I guess you can always pick anyway, but it was still nice.

8 hours ago, Daeglan said:

I can tell you from talking too Sam Stewart the reason the pattern fell to the wayside because of the reality printing books said no. All it takes is one delay anywhere in the process to screw it up.

I more meant the pattern of "Here are the books per line" rather than the specific adventure-career-location-career release cycle. But yeah...one Ghosts of Dathomir-type printing or shipping delay and there goes the pattern.

6 hours ago, Galakk Fyyar said:

So is Fantasy Flight definitely sticking to the new line of canon for the rest of their books? If so, I gotta admit that it's a shame. I like how the books we've got don't really go one way or the other in regards to Legends or Canon. I guess you can always pick anyway, but it was still nice.

FFG's books have had a decent blend of Legends and Canon material. When referring to galactic events, they defer to canonical sources of course...but they've been bringing in gear, species, and planets from Legends sources.

So Dread Pirate can you tell us whether Warrior or Mystic will be announced first?

18 hours ago, 2P51 said:

As always, patience, this announcement leaves out a lot of stuff. Can't say what stuff, just lots. Take that for what it's worth.

Phooey on your so-called "insider knowledge"! This is the internet! It's PANIC TIME!

It totally makes sense for FFG to start tying RPG books to the new movies coming out. That's where the young excitement is going to be. Hopefully they'll do a tick-tock kind of thing releasing stuff for the original books and complimenting it with new stuff.

the fact that a new line has been started is great news for the longevity of this RPG IMO.

BREAKING NEWS, just in on where Ghosts of Dathomir is:

Hey, lookit! We finally got our missing Soldier and Technician Specialization Decks! Now the only released career that's missing any is the Consular, and that's not unexpected (seeing as the book was only released a month ago).

This might be a good time to finally update the OP with the new products and current predictions. Although, I'm gonna be honest, I'm not going to give a prediction for either Ghosts of Dathomir or Fully Operational, because I have no way to determine when they'll start moving. My guess is that they wouldn't have announced Cyphers and Masks or Dawn of Rebellion if their printing issues (or whatever it was) weren't already sorted out, but we'll see. I'll give predictions for the two new books, but not the ones we've already been waiting for.

EDIT: First Post updated!

After thinking about some of the past delays in other FFG Star Wars products (X-Wing and the LCG especially), the talk about changes to the AoR core book in foreign languages, and the current two movies in production, I don't think the delay in Ghosts of Dathomir (and maybe Fully Operational) has to do with printing. I'm betting they are held up based on some approval step from the LucasFilm story group. Ghosts is probably sitting in a warehouse, complete for many months, waiting for a final licensor sign-off...

On that note, given how important GenCon is for FFG, I'm betting all this stuff gets pushed through in time for the convention next month, as happens every year.

Hmm hmm hmm... Cyphers and Masks just twitched a little on the Upcoming page. It hasn't changed status, but it has changed its "most recent update" entry to be today. I unfortunately haven't been tracking these little blips, but I feel historically, they tend to happen soon before a change in status.

On the one hand, that'd be nice to see it start moving so soon. On the other, it really makes me wonder about FO.

Maybe Absol they are trying to throw you off your game! That could be why FO and GoD aren't here already!

I already know they're trying to throw me of my game ! They've been doing it since Savage Spirits was announced or of the product code order!

Look. If FFG is trying to throw Absol off her game by not releasing FO and GoD I think we need to march into their offices and tell them to LET HER WIN ALREADY! This way we all get books and her numbers start to behave

Roll for initiative. Highest Cool check goes first.

Darn it! If it was Vigilance I would win for sure, but Cool...

Do I at least get to use my Foresee Control upgrade on this one?