Hey everyone, ThatOneGuy here... I seem to have wandered over from the X-Wing Miniatures forums. I just got so engrossed in this book I'm reading, and suddenly I looked up and somehow I ended up here. What's this book called that I'm so distracted by, you ask? Hmm, lemme see... Age of Rebellion... Neat.

Well, while I'm here, I was wondering if you guys could help me out. I'm going to be starting a campaign in this very intriguing new system. It's going to be primarily centered on space battles. But I've never been an Extended Universe sort of guy. If anyone could point me to some good online resources (besides Wookiepedia), that would be great. Things that talk about the Alliance's command structure, any base or capital ship layouts, common equipment used by the Rebellion, really anything that can help me enhance the sense of verisimilitude of life as an Alliance pilot would be great. Anything that might help inspire some mission ideas would also help (descriptions of planets, space stations, or other locations would be nice). Also if there are any good maps of the Star Wars Universe's various solar systems, that would be beautiful.

FFG's own Stay on Target sourcebook would be a good starting resource, as well as

Dig into West End Games' old Star Wars RPG. They were the forerunners of a great deal of the Expanded Universe, predating Timothy Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy by a while. In particular, the Rebel Alliance Sourcebook and the Imperial Sourcebook may be helpful. Most of it can be found online nowadays.

The Rebellion Era Campaign Guide from Saga Edition may also be useful, it may be harder to track down.

I'd second all of what Blackbird says. Stay on Target especially should be a must-have for you if you want to run a starship-based campaign. Lead by Example would be good, too, if you want more stuff on capital ships.

What exactly does Lead by Example offer for capital ships? Nothing more useful than the other books IMO (some stupidly big ships unlikely to be workable in players hands is about it).

The alliance command structure is already explained in the AoR core book, with ranks, different divisions within the alliance (Starfighter Commander, Logistic, SpecOps, etc).

For a great squadron based campaign I would recommend the AoR core book , the AoR GM screen , for its locations and the squadron rules, which are essential imho to give named characters a little bit of plot shields in battle, furthermore Stay on Target for the terran and astromech options + the spaceships, especially the smaller carriers. These three are your essential gear for a squadron based campaign. X-Wing and Armada models are cool to use for atmosphere, but totally non-essential.

On top I would recommend three more books:

• Fly Casual for hyperspace travel, smuggling and piracy. It basically covers the civilian side of space. Useful, because the alliance is always resource hungry and this gives the players the tools and tricks of the trade to build a squadron on alliance privateers and secure supplies for the war.
• Lead by Example for the mass combat rules and a perspective into commanding roles. Longer campaigns tend to promote player characters into positions of power and thus into commanding positions. That book has you covered there.
• Forged in Battle for the fortification and alliance infantry stuff. Aces never want to fight on ground, but sometimes you don't have a choice, you get shot down behind enemy lines or your mission requires you first to operate from the ground, etc This has you covered here.

Anything else? Mainly based on players interests, my astromech loves his special modifications because she loves to build stuff during downtimes, a force user will naturally be interested in the whole Force and Destiny line, while ambassador players for sure will like to take a look into their career books, etc …

3 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

What exactly does Lead by Example offer for capital ships? Nothing more useful than the other books IMO (some stupidly big ships unlikely to be workable in players hands is about it).

Mass Combat rules to work as background action for squadron battles for example. Commanding capital ships and fighter squadron is great fun in context of AoR and space combat heavy campaigns.

2 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

What exactly does Lead by Example offer for capital ships? Nothing more useful than the other books IMO (some stupidly big ships unlikely to be workable in players hands is about it).

SEApocalypse covered it.

I tend to think the mass combat rules suck donkey balls, so that may explain my dislike of LbE . This is from multiple uses on Arda and in Friends. Lots of dice rolling for no real gains.

17 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

I tend to think the mass combat rules suck donkey balls, so that may explain my dislike of LbE . This is from multiple uses on Arda and in Friends. Lots of dice rolling for no real gains.

We had fun with it. Defending MonCal from an Imperial Scout Fleet / Trap, but Friends seems to be a little too much of a railroad thing with the mass combat rules being used. So it might be not the rules, but rather how they are used that cause the problem. They are mainly just backdrop stuff to do on the sides, the key elements are still the personal scale encounters which the PCs play, even when mass combat rules are used.

Well, I'm used to running massive combats in other, more stringently number-based systems. So I already had an idea of what I was going to do for that. Basically, just use how well the PCs are doing to create a single dice pool that gets rolled every round or two, then use that as a framework and narrate it to the PCs. Add fudge as necessary. Also, since the book often mentions using advantage results to let the PCs "notice some important detail", I figured one thing that I can use that for is to give them the opportunity to notice a wingman in trouble and sorta use that to suggest the PC's next target, and that would be the bridge between the PC gamespace and the more broad-strokes NPC gamespace.

But I think that since I'll be new to the system, I'm going to avoid large scale battles for a while. Mostly it will be small raids and dogfights, maybe some softening attacks on installations. I used to play a lot of the '95 era PC games like TIE Fighter, so I'll probably be taking a few small cues from their mission structure. Really what I think my biggest hurdle will be is creating a world that feels rewarding and complex for the players to simply exist in, and use that to drive interest in the game. I say this because as mentioned previously I've never been one for the whole EU. But the sources all of you have suggested seem like they will be great help. I'd been mostly working my way through the mechanical stuff in the core book, so I hadn't gotten around to the fluff-stuff later on.

As a warning, in fairness, the vehicle rules are one of the more criticized aspects of the rules. Coming off the backs of something like X-Wing, this is almost the exact opposite. If you come into this expecting a storyteller's version of X-Wing, expect disappointment.

I would suggest picking up the Age of Rebellion Game Master's Kit. The packed in booklet includes the squad and squadron rules, which many say help patch the mechanics, and Stay on Target is also very helpful. In general, it helps to choose your vehicle environments; empty swathes of space are going to be boring, so go for debris fields, planetary atmospheres, nebulae, space battles, asteroid fields, etc., which add modifiers into the pools.

He will be disappointed? Nah, it exactly is a storyteller version of TIE-Fighter.

8 hours ago, Blackbird888 said:

If you come into this expecting a storyteller's version of X-Wing, expect disappointment.

Nnnnnnope, not my plan.

I think the novels (now Legends) about Wedge's career outside of his contact with anyone named Skywalker or Solo would be a good resource. They're fun, short, and give a candid view of life for a group of pilots. Amazon has a deal on the whole set, written by Michael Stackpole.

9 hours ago, JRRP said:

I think the novels (now Legends) about Wedge's career outside of his contact with anyone named Skywalker or Solo would be a good resource. They're fun, short, and give a candid view of life for a group of pilots. Amazon has a deal on the whole set, written by Michael Stackpole.

Stackpole also wrote the concurrent X-Wing Rogue Squadron comics from Dark Horse. Also well worth reading.

Get the NPC cards, they're really cheap. If your group is anything like a lot of other groups they will, let me repeat, they WILL derail you and throw curveballs at you. Having these cards at the ready has helped me tremendously as my group derails me every session. They make it pretty easy to come up with NPCs on the fly instead of having to dig through the books mentioned. I would definitely love to see FFG come up with a vehicle set of cards. Now those would come in handy. It's hard to fill the universe with NPC ships and speeders and such when you're digging through books.

Being an Xwing and Armada guy myself, the mini's do add a flavor to the game and I use them often. I've forgone the ship to ship combat in the books and have modified both Xwing and Armada to the liking of my group. We use the maneuver dials and templates for moving, using a piloting space check, if succeded, they can make the move. If failed, they have to do a maneuver one speed slower or they don't get to do the full maneuver, like if they were doing a hard bank 3, they'd only get through half of it. GM chooses. Same for me, if I fail the check, they get to choose where the enemy ends up. For shooting, we do range the same way, but use AoR's gunnery checks. With added difficulty for range, and adjust how many blue or black die they get for different factors. Damage is done in system as I like the critical hit system way better than in Xwing.

Another point of advice, read through the forums. Look at different things, ask questions, etc. I've only started here on the forums and have found them rather helpful, and a pretty good community of players that have no problem helping out. This place is a good resource.