So, I've been on here for a good, long time, since I first got Rogue Trader, Deathwatch, and some of the other 40K licensing stuff, and definitely when the news came out that Star Wars, which had been WotC/d20, was now coming to FFG, who announced this radically different game. After this much time, seven books, between the three lines, and this many posts, I'm sad to still be saying "I don't get this system" with it's weird dice, rolling symbols, and having results that weren't numbers, or successes (since 2002, most of my games were various d20 things, and White Wolf's d10 pools), more narrative focus, and such. Well, it's still a problem, but school just got out where I used to go, so now I've got a summer before it returns, and I'd really like to buckle down, and figure this new Star Wars out; it doesn't have a million skills, characters with a million hit points, and several other things I like about it, even as Star Wars, the property, is going in several directions I'm not sure that I like. Whether these next few months are enough to warm to changes, or I'll just use the old lore I know MUCH better, this is the system I want to use; it's lighter than all of my Saga books.

Here comes the problem, however. I'll likely have to GM, which is good, as I have the books, but even if I crack down, and figure out how to work it, no one else I'm likely to play with, this fall, will have been perusing the books, making them total noobs, even more than I think I am, now. When they say "yes, I want to play Star Wars", and I show them the system we'll be using, they may recoil a bit, it being so not what they have probably played, and I don't want it to take them a whole semester to learn, too. What are some good points to show people the gist of how the system works? I want them to feel mostly comfortable building their characters that night, an hopefully starting something the next week, but I haven't figured this system out in several years, so some pointers that might help me, and then help me to help them, would be great. Before anyone says "podcasts!", please don't; I haven't really cared to listen, and I'm not really keen to then have a group listen to them, again. It (the book) should be able to cover its own bases, even today, with what it's got, even though you need to figure out what skill, calculate in a variable difficulty, is it opposed, and on.

I'm sorry for what basically adds up to a whine-fest, even after all this time, and appreciate any help I can get, so that I might be able to run something fun, before Star Wars either stops being fun, or something so amazing happens that no one wants to hear the older stuff I know better! Thanks much, and please have a good one!

Find a game first to play in, not GM, and learn from experienced players. It took at least four games for me to get out of the 'Shoot & Loot' d20 mentality and get my head around the symbols.

Play a beginner box with the accompanying free PDF extension available on the relevant product page of this site. Seriously, your players need at least 2 sessions to get to understand it fully before dropping character creation on them.

The big question is "what part of Star Wars do you think they will want to play?" Personally I think the FaD beginner adventure and supplements is the best, although I haven't played the Force Awakens one.

I echo what Richard said. I just started GMing my own group, and we started with the beginner box. I did let them create their own characters for it, but I was pretty well versed in character creation already and could guide them through it. If you decide to use your own PCs and not pregens, be sure to give them a free re-roll after the adventure in case they'd prefer a different type of character.

As others have said, your best bet are the Beginner Boxes. My preferences are Edge of the Empire, Force and Destiny, and The Force Awakens in roughly that order. Age of Rebellion's pretty decent, but some of the challenges can get extremely tough if the players aren't especially clever, though Force and Destiny suffers from the final opponent being a complete pushover if there's more than one PC that's carrying a lightsaber.

For the most part, I think a group that's completely new to this system is better off using pre-gens, as it can be quite easy for an inexperienced player to create a character that looks great on paper but is not as capable as they'd thought said character would be; I've seen a number of newer players succumb to the temptation to spend the majority of their starting XP on talents and/or having 1 rank in a whole lot of skills rather than focusing on raising characteristics.

Yep, beginner's box all the way. It's specifically designed to drop down at a table of newbies, and slowly walk them through all the various mechanics of the system. I've heard nothing but positive things from people who have played them, for helping them learn the system.

As I understand it from things I've heard, the modules are basically designed, to introduce a new mechanic every new scene, and having that scene focus on that mechanic, so the players can see why it's important in gameplay.

So yeah, grab one of the BB's, and go to town, that should handle the fumbling around that we all had when starting out with the system.

Well, I prefer Force & Destiny (I have several friends who will only really want to play this game if they can be "Jedi", or, at least Force-users), and Age of Rebellion, so, based on what's been said, I think I'll get F&D BB (yay, a fifth set of those dice), so the Force won't feel tacked on, spend the summer looking it over, and the actual books I have, and see later if Force Awakens becomes available again, or grab AoR, even if it is harder, story-wise, so they can get a feel for Duty, and the one, or two, who WON'T want to play Force-wielders. Sadly, I know I won't get to play this, before I run it, but I've got the freedom of a whole summer to look it over.

Thanks much, everyone, and May the Fourth Be With You!!!

As to you not being able to play this before running it. That's not necessarily true. You could probably find a pbp (play by post) game on this forum, or one of a couple different gaming forums, and dip your toes in that way.

I'm not quite sure what your question is. I run two campaigns... a total of 14 players. NONE of them have any books. I taught them the system in 10 minutes and we started the first adventure. The things you indicate above are... honestly... for most GM's... very simple. The system is the easiest to learn and teach and it's not even close.

75% of the game situations have set difficulties and the others you can invent before they start. There are some rules of thumb sure but...

Do you have any specific worries or something about the system? It seems like you're reading a system that isn't d20 and your mind is not wrapping around it.

I also would listen/watch games online.

Yeah, seriously, ask your questions about the stuff that is concerning you. This system is REALLY easy to run, once you get your head around it. And while it can be a little puzzling at first for some people. Pretty much every player I've heard talk about it, has said that once they were actually tossing dice, and adding up the results, it made sense in no time. And I can attest that at my table, it was pretty much the same way. In fact, the system makes it REALLY easy to adlib stuff that comes up. You don't have to worry about your players derailing your plot train, as you can very quickly establish some challenges and difficulties, and keep rolling.

Well, for me, the thing is always thinking in d20, which this isn't, obviously. I'm not always sure how to decide how hard something is, if opposed rolls are often, and if they share difficulty, when to add boost/setback dice, what to do with all the results (success vs. advantage, and what to give them) sort of stuff. I got the Beginner's Set in the mail, so maybe if it walks one through some examples of the results of the symbol dice, I'll stop worrying.

As a goofy extra, for opposed rolls, does the opposing NPC want to roll "well", get more successes/advantages than you, and avoid bad results, same as you, or do they want to roll "poorly", and use those to cancel your successes/advantages?

Opposed and Competitive checks are different things. An opposed check involves a single dice roll where the ability and proficiency dice I determined by one characters Characteristic and skill rank is in the normal way. The difficulty of that check is calculated using an opposing characters characteristic and skill rank, the higher determines the difficulty while the lower determines how many upgrades there are.

A Competitive check involves multiple characters making Skill checks with a pre determined difficulty, the character with the highest number of success is the "winner".

So let's look at an example of each. The The characters involved in both examples will be a PC and a group of four storm troopers.

Example 1: For the Opposed check let's say the PC is trying to Coerce the Stormies. The Stormies have a Willpower of 3, with 3 Skill Ranks due to their numbers. The PC has a Willpower of 4 and Coercion of 2, as well as a rank in the Plausible Deniability talent, her fellow PC just failed a charm check and rolled 2 Threat, so the acting PC is taking a Setback to the check. Another Setback is coming from the fact these characters shouldn't be here in a restricted area, the Troopers are already on alert.

So let's roll the dice and see what happens:

Coercing Stormies : 2eA+2eP+3eC+1eS 0 successes, 1 advantage

So she didn't coerce them, but perhaps unsettled them a little and sowed the seeds of doubt, a Boost to the next PC.

Example 2: The Competitive check. In this instance I'm going to say it's a Chase scene on foot, the PC is trying to escape the Stormies. The difficulty is Average, but this happening in a crowded marketplace, so 2 Setback to checks to run away. The PC is going to try Coordination, dodging between folk and stalls, with 3 Agility and 2 ranks in Coordination, but she also has a rank in Shortcut. The Storm Troopers are muscling their way through, relying on their reputation and strength, so it's Athletics with a Dice pool of 3 Proficiency.

so here are the rolls:

Escaping through a crowd : 1eA+2eP+1eB+2eD+2eS 3 successes, 2 threat

Catch that Rebel! : 3eP+2eD+2eS 0 successes

So the Agitator "wins" and puts some more distance between herself and the Empires finest. Unfortunately something bad also happens and perhaps she knocks over a stall, slowing her slightly and giving the Troopers a clear shot on her if they wanted or at least a path to follow, granting a Boost to their next check.

As far as determining a Difficulty there are a few basic tenants for GM's finding their feet

1. Pick a difficulty based on your gut feeling, then reduce it by at least 1 and add at least 1 Setback. It's not a 1 to 1 thing, you may reduce Hard to Average but add 2 Setback.

2. A Destiny Point is not always required for upgrades to the difficulty. In fact I try to mostly use Destiny Points to introduce facts, reinforcements or a change to the environment. If a PC is attempting something that has an inherent risk associated with failure then I'll just upgrade the difficulty without a DP. An example is crossing a high wire between 2 buildings, at ground level that wire would be a Hard difficulty... 10 stories up though and falling risks death, so at least a single upgrade with the explicit expectation that Failure with a Despair will result in falling.

One of the most challenging things for me, coming from 3 decades of d20/D&D gaming, was that it isn't necessary to kill things to gain XP. Sometimes, the NPCs are just NPCs - they're there for the PCs to interact with socially, or as set dressing, or some other non-combat challenge. Combat in this system is fast and brutal and healing is a bit different than d20; if the PCs try to go D&D-style murderhobo, they will quickly get worn down and start accumulating Critical Injuries, which can lead to actual character death (not normally easy to achieve).

If you like F&D, I'd suggest you string together the Beginner Box adventure and the downloadable companion, tie in the one from the back of the core rulebook, then tie that into the one from the GM kit. Those 4 adventures will make a nice little mini-campaign that will culminate with the PCs gaining kyber crystals and, presumably, crafting lightsabers. By that point, both you and your players will have a firm grasp of the mechanics, you'll know better what an appropriate challenge is for your group, and you'll have a pretty good idea of what an adventure in this system looks and feels like.

At that point, you'll be ready to take the training wheels off, so to speak. To do so, I'd strongly recommend you pick up some or all of the Adversary Decks. They're not necessary; you can certainly play without them. I find that they're nice for those player-induced plot twists, where the party decides to interact with an NPC that you didn't really have stats for. They also serve well for "random encounters." If you have time to plan your adventure, I'd strongly recommend using the DM Tools on OggDude's excellent character generator. The encounter builder is a great way to get all of your info together in one spot. If you're trying to convert Saga or WEG material, this is a good place to start. Your friends should definitely use it for character generation as the real-time calculation really helps them see how their decisions affect the character's final disposition.

Finally, if you decide to do a "sandbox" campaign or at least to stay away from the published adventures, I'd recommend you go to BeggingForXP.com and look for the "Tools and Handouts" tab, then scroll down and read the post about "Session Zero." It's a great way to get details for a campaign and increase player investiture. They recommend doing it before character generation, so you could certainly incorporate it in that fashion so long as your players all realize that you'll be tackling some published material first. Best of luck to you!

Best 4 pieces of advice I can give when dealing with this games dice system:

1: If the roll is a success, it succeeds. Doesn't matter how many threat or despair are generated, the task attempted still succeeds somehow.

2: If the roll is a fail, it fails. Doesn't matter how many triumph or advantage are generated, the task attempted still fails somehow.

3: PC's choose what happens with their advantage and triumph, and what happens with the GM's threat and despair.

4: GM chooses what happens with his/her advantage and triumph, and the player's threat and despair.