2 minutes ago, Absol197 said:

I don't think it is, I think they're just random dissidents on Ryloth.

The image of "Kanan" on the cover bothers me, though...

Yeah me too. Just not a good transformation from the cartoon style to realistic.

1 hour ago, Concise Locket said:

I don't believe anyone is making that argument. The anti-stats argument is: Books have limited word counts so why are writers spending those counts on a set piece vessel that the majority of gaming tables will never encounter?

If there's a singular message about Star Wars RPGs it's that the Galaxy is a big place and there is plenty of room for other stories. The Death Star is one of the most iconic images in 50 years of popular culture, right up there with the Superman "S" shield. A Death Star was a major plot point in four of the eight films and was referenced in two of the prequels. Is there actually a Game Master out there who is going to have a unique take on destroying or using this thing?

I'm guessing, no.

If you're in a non-canonical game where the players have assumed the roles of the film characters, there are only two, very predictable, ways that the campaign ends:

1. Death Star blows up. Cue hugs and victory parade.
2. Death Star kills PCs. Death Star blows up the Alliance. Game over.

Snore.

I'd like to think that most tabletop gamers are more creative than this. Otherwise, why not just play one of the dozens of board or video games that do a better job of simulating the Battle of Yavin?

Option 3: Death Star is disabled/immobilized and requires extensive repairs. For now, it's an immobile battle station. The Alliance sees the repair of the Death Star as a ticking clock on its lifespan and seeks to find a new way to destroy it before it again becomes fully operational. This option can be done with or without the story of a Death Star II being built at Endor.

Once again there is a middle ground possibility.

Has anyone considered that maybe they just thought that statting it out (and watching eyes big out in response) would be fun?

11 minutes ago, Nytwyng said:

Has anyone considered that maybe they just thought that statting it out (and watching eyes big out in response) would be fun?

If like to see them stat out Vader and the Emperor for the same reason.

9 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

If like to see them stat out Vader and the Emperor for the same reason.

I got no problem with that.

For want of a better term “Prestige” or unique characters/items like that from the films aren’t beholden to the rules, either.

44 minutes ago, Nytwyng said:

Has anyone considered that maybe they just thought that statting it out (and watching eyes big out in response) would be fun?

No, absolutely not. It was a devilishly crafted personal assault aimed directly at some people, clearly.....

FWIW, the initial announcement article said, " statistics for many of the iconic characters and vehicles appearing in the Star Wars: Rebels television show and in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story " - the Death Star is probably the most iconic vehicle that in Rogue One , so a stat block isn't that surprising. Also, I believe Darth Vader fits the description of "an iconic character" "appearing in [...] Rogue One ", so maybe there will be stats for him, too.

6 minutes ago, coyote6 said:

"an iconic character" "appearing in [...] Rogue One "

Leia fits that, too. ****, she appears in both Rogue One and Rebels, just like Vader.

3 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

Option 3: Death Star is disabled/immobilized and requires extensive repairs. For now, it's an immobile battle station. The Alliance sees the repair of the Death Star as a ticking clock on its lifespan and seeks to find a new way to destroy it before it again becomes fully operational. This option can be done with or without the story of a Death Star II being built at Endor.

Once again there is a middle ground possibility.

This is actually exactly what happened when we set the game up all those years ago.

Everyone felt that having the Son-of-the-Son-of-the Death-Star was silly and repetitive, like the Super-Weapon escalation wars fought between authors in the old EU.

So we definitely wanted only one Death Star, the original and best, instead of the parody blow-up-five-planets-at-once versions that appeared in later films.

And it absolutely had to be the PCs that blew it up, but we needed it around as a vague threat for a while. So someone came up with the idea that after Alderaan, the original creator suffered a crisis of conscience, snuck aboard and disabled it, then started the self-destruct countdown. The Imperials found him and killed him, but were unable to overcome the clever code to re-enable the planet-killer gun, or unfreeze the countdown. Twenty years goes by, and despite working every moment on it, nobody manages to get it back online. The Empire suffers a long, slow defeat at the hands of the other factions, finally tearing itself asunder in a bloody four-way civil war. But despite that, the threat remains, and if the Death Star were to be re-operational, it could change everything...

Of course, there's no 'shoot me here' port, so the only way to do it will be to infiltrate it and restart the countdown, and go down with the 'ship'. So yeah, that's an end-of-campaign thing that will cost us some important PCs.

5 hours ago, Concise Locket said:

If there's a singular message about Star Wars RPGs it's that the Galaxy is a big place and there is plenty of room for other stories.

That is the prevailing wisdom, but we had dozens of brainstorming sessions before planning our game, and everyone, without fail, agreed that Star Wars operates better when it's big, when everything is awesome and the stakes are huge.

So the PCs have to be front and centre, the Galactic Civil War must be won or lost on their actions. The PCs will be the ones to lead factions, blow up death stars, rescue princesses, bring full sentience to droids, and restore the balance to the Force after Alderaan.

It's likely possible to run a fun, intriguing, SW game that looks at the small picture, but that absolutely wasn't what everyone wanted; there are other genres for that. If it's Star Wars, for us, it was 'go big or go home'.

5 hours ago, Concise Locket said:

Is there actually a Game Master out there who is going to have a unique take on destroying or using this thing?

I'm guessing, no.

Well, there's Happy and I at least.

I don't think it needed stats, though. I'm tempted to think that statting it is one of the designer's idea of an in-joke about the fans who want 'official' stats for the movie characters.

I mean, what was Rogue One if not a unique take on a story that partially took place on and around the Death Star? Clearly, there is more storytelling potential to consider over it's nearly 20 years of construction.

Also, consider that. 20 years of construction. The second Death Star is fully operational and visually like 66% built by ROTJ, just 3 and a half years after ANH. So it would seem the second death star is under construction long before A New Hope. There are perhaps others in various stages of construction as well.

There was an EU source that suggested the ultimate plan was to have a Death Star in every oversector (there were like 20?) for each Grand Moff to keep their local regions in line. So maybe they were on a plan to roll out another Death Star every 5 years or so, which means there might be up to two other death stars in earlier phases of their development out there somewhere. They PROBABLY don't have working superlasers yet, but who can say. And who knows who got a hold of them as the Empire fragmented.

I imagine once Galen Erso & co. had solved the superlaser problems, that problem was solved & the Empire had the capability to build new ones. They just needed enough materials - metal, kyber crystals of the correct sizes and qualities. Of course, those resources might have been a problem eventually.

Of course, there's a good post-Yavin adventure or even campaign idea - identify, locate, track down, and destroy every store of data recording how to build a superlaser. The Empire already got the project started - Galen and his team were all killed, and Tarkin blew up the data stores on Scarif.

1 hour ago, KRKappel said:

There was an EU source that suggested the ultimate plan was to have a Death Star in every oversector (there were like 20?) for each Grand Moff to keep their local regions in line.

See now I'm picturing an AU where the Death Stars get made, the Empire takes over the galaxy completely and Palpatine dies of old age. Vader takes over, acts his normal self around Imperials that don't bring in results he expects and this spurs thoughts of rebellion in the ranks of the Imperial Moffs. The Galaxy turns to war once more, where the few Moffs who believe they can run things better than Vader train up their people to fight the Empire and use Death Stars as their bases of operation/WMDs. Hit and run tactics with those things would be crazy hard to get right. Maybe they turn to droids to man the station so there's less loss of life once they deploy units.

...and that's when the droids cause an uprising.

16 hours ago, Blackbird888 said:

I wish they would employ a fact-checker. I am available for such a position.

This. I wish FFG would have its own quality control unit which would make sure nothing conflicts with earlier publishing. But maybe that's just my OCD / autism talking. Thankfully books have been fairly balanced up to this point, and conflicting information has been fairly rare.

12 hours ago, coyote6 said:

FWIW, the initial announcement article said, " statistics for many of the iconic characters and vehicles appearing in the Star Wars: Rebels television show and in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story " - the Death Star is probably the most iconic vehicle that in Rogue One , so a stat block isn't that surprising. Also, I believe Darth Vader fits the description of "an iconic character" "appearing in [...] Rogue One ", so maybe there will be stats for him, too.

There are not too many options. Vader, Leia, Tarkin, Mon Mothma, Bail Organa (IMO, these last two could be seen as iconic), R2D2, 3-CPO, Saw Gerrera, Death Star, Tantive IV. These are what come to mind. Vader would be a small surprise for me. But just small.

There is a 99% change I will buy this book anyway. FFG hasn't disappointed me too much yet.

I just think DS stat block was a step to wrong direction. (I don't think this is general truth, but my personal opinion.)

In this case, I think iconic is going to mean Rebels characters (crew of the Ghost and antagonists like Kallus). I don't know if it really means iconic to all of Star Wars.

My wishlist of things I want to see statted up in the book:

U-wings

Mc75 Mon Cala cruiser

Deathtroopers

Hammerhead Corvette

Wookiee gunship

Imperial Light Cruiser

Imperial Super Commando (although could just use Friends Like These stats)

KX Enforcer Droids

Imperial Sentry Droids

Imperial Bulk Freighter

Lasat

AT-DP

Pelta-class frigates

Iakar

It's a long shot but they all seem fairly cool things which could provide options for players and GMs to enrich the game. Some of these are well overdue with how common or popular they are. Particularly the small warships as they will fill a game friendly hole in the list we have just now.

That Kanan illustration looks a bit like Freddie Prinze, Jr, which makes sense. Rendering characters with big-eyed anime face isn't an option if the editors want to keep a consistent art style. The illustrators have a hard task in painting glossy, hyper-realistic portraits of cartoon characters who aren't necessarily based on the actors who voice them.

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2017/10/9/imperial-living/

The newest article reveals SIX new universal specialisations with a preview of a Clone Veteran tree.

The filename of Hondos image teases a pirate tree.

Personally I hope for the inclusion of a Imperial Defector and a Rebel Benefactor or something along those lines.

Also mentioned are four new races one of wich are going to be Gigorans aka totally-not-snow-wookiees.

I'd be surprised if one of the races isn't going to be Lasats.

If they're pushing the Rebels angle, which they seem to be doing, they'd better have Lasats. The only issue is that there seem to be a loooot of races with 3 Brawn and 1 something else, which seems the best fit for Lasats given what we've seen of Zeb. How they're going to keep differentiating them sufficiently is beyond me.

Talents, I guess.

Lasagna being good at Athletics or having some sort of jump/climb talent seems nice.

I was going to edit the autocorrect of Lassat to Lasagna, but decided to leave it because it amused me.

Wert the other Lasat we see particularly brawny? I remember them only vaguely.

27 minutes ago, Stan Fresh said:

Wert the other Lasat we see particularly brawny? I remember them only vaguely.

Not really. There were only two other Lasat in Rebels, one of wich was an elder and the other a kind of caretaker for the elder if I remember correctly.

Zeb himself was also the former captain of the honor guard, so he had extensive training and combat experience.

On 9/28/2017 at 11:07 AM, HappyDaze said:

Option 3: Death Star is disabled/immobilized and requires extensive repairs. For now, it's an immobile battle station. The Alliance sees the repair of the Death Star as a ticking clock on its lifespan and seeks to find a new way to destroy it before it again becomes fully operational. This option can be done with or without the story of a Death Star II being built at Endor.

Once again there is a middle ground possibility.

That middle ground is non-canonical, which I did mention as a disclaimer. We know what happened between the time the final touches were being made to the Death Star and the time it was blown up because we saw it all on screen.

On 9/28/2017 at 3:26 PM, Maelora said:

That is the prevailing wisdom, but we had dozens of brainstorming sessions before planning our game, and everyone, without fail, agreed that Star Wars operates better when it's big, when everything is awesome and the stakes are huge.

So the PCs have to be front and centre, the Galactic Civil War must be won or lost on their actions. The PCs will be the ones to lead factions, blow up death stars, rescue princesses, bring full sentience to droids, and restore the balance to the Force after Alderaan.

It's likely possible to run a fun, intriguing, SW game that looks at the small picture, but that absolutely wasn't what everyone wanted; there are other genres for that. If it's Star Wars, for us, it was 'go big or go home'.

Well, there's Happy and I at least.

I don't think it needed stats, though. I'm tempted to think that statting it is one of the designer's idea of an in-joke about the fans who want 'official' stats for the movie characters.

In fiction, stakes are measured by the importance of the conflict to the characters not the amount of destruction the opposition can cause. I'm absolutely not disparaging your table's choices; I mention this as a way of pointing out that there are ways to emulate existential threats without revisiting the same old things. I also enjoy going big when it's appropriate to the genre. I regularly read DC comics in my youth and was always tickled with Superman would, say, fight a sentient sun or punch through time .

On 9/28/2017 at 7:53 PM, KRKappel said:

I mean, what was Rogue One if not a unique take on a story that partially took place on and around the Death Star? Clearly, there is more storytelling potential to consider over it's nearly 20 years of construction.

Also, consider that. 20 years of construction. The second Death Star is fully operational and visually like 66% built by ROTJ, just 3 and a half years after ANH. So it would seem the second death star is under construction long before A New Hope. There are perhaps others in various stages of construction as well.

There was an EU source that suggested the ultimate plan was to have a Death Star in every oversector (there were like 20?) for each Grand Moff to keep their local regions in line. So maybe they were on a plan to roll out another Death Star every 5 years or so, which means there might be up to two other death stars in earlier phases of their development out there somewhere. They PROBABLY don't have working superlasers yet, but who can say. And who knows who got a hold of them as the Empire fragmented.

I'm not seeing how that ties into a statistically measured - i.e. operational - Death Star, which is what was presented in the preview. I'm perfectly fine with using the DS as the subject of a game. It's a small, metal moon with lots of components so there's always some MacGuffin there that can be tied into a PC's story. Recovering stolen DS laser tech would make for a great post-RotJ adventure.

The briefing room scene in The Force Awakens kind of kills that Death-Star-for-Every-Moff plot line as it points out that Starkiller Base is the third iteration of the technology. Again, if you want to go non-canonical...

I'm starting to realize what's peeving me about this. It's less about Death Star stats and more about the inherent hypocrisy of statting out the Death Star in a clearly non-canonical move while, basically, abandoning usable non-canonical Legends materials. Edge would really benefit from one or two more setting supplements - a shadowports book and a Corporate Sector book would be inherently more useful and welcome - but they're being pushed aside for setting material we've only seen on the screen. Seriously, how likely is it that a book about out-of-the-way criminal hide-outs or about hyper-capitalist exploiters tucked away in a corner of the galaxy is going to somehow collide with the next Disney movie or TV show? Just strip out all ties to existing characters and you're perfectly safe!

Ugh. It's nobody's fault, it's just a crappy legal situation.