The Force Awakens Beginner Game - My Review

By Br'nn, in The Force Awakens Beginner Game

I'm somewhat late to the FFG Star Wars RPG party, getting to play a couple of sessions of Edge that my buddy owned before the inevitable failed attempts of adults trying to find time together to game happened. However, in the months following Force and Destiny being released, I decided to take the plunge and get into that version, and have since gotten all the books for it (and started on Edge of the Empire, getting 5 books in thus far). At the same time as I was acquiring those, this Beginner game released and I decided that it would be a good addition to the collection, especially since I got another set of dice and then a whole game session for just a little more. However, again, time conspired against me and I've only managed a couple of sessions of Force and Destiny and hadn't played this. Until this past Thursday, Star Wars Day 2017. My local shop ran an event and I volunteered to run the TFA Beginner Game, and then I ran it again at my bi-weekly RPG group (that has a Star Wars hater in it and flatly refuses to consider a FFG SW campaign, but stayed home for the one-shot) this past Tuesday. These are my thoughts.

Overall, I felt that the adventure was relatively easy, but fun enough to overlook that. It definitely was made for people that were new to the game, but in the two games combined I only had one person that had ever tried FFG SW other than me, so that part worked well in the game's favour. Both groups were quickly able to understand the dice and it was easy to see how many dice they had for any kind of skill checks. The Pre-gens were all nicely tied into the story, there was a nice mix of skill checks and combat, and the reveal of Captain Phasma for the final encounter added a "cool factor" to the adventure that the players weren't expecting.

There's a lot to like and recommend in this package. The Lite Rulebook provides a solid base for a beginning player, and the scenario does everything it needs to do to walk a new GM through the game session. The NPCs were well developed and their folios had everything the players needed for the entire game. Like the other Beginner Games, FFG has done an excellent job introducing their game universe to new recruits. And it's hard to argue with the value, when you consider the price of the dice on their own. As pointed out in other threads, the dice are about half the cost of this, so you get all the rest of it for $15-20, which is excellent value.

My players on Star Wars Day enjoyed this enough that there's interest in doing the online follow-up scenario, putting more value into this package. I look forward to continuing the pregens adventures in the TFA era.

I definitely recommend this product, even if you weren't a big fan of the movie. Its well worth it.