Count me on the side of folks who are disappointed to see all this attention to statting out movie characters and the like. This is the way West End Games handled its various movie and novel guidebooks; I found it a bizarre allocation or resources then, and I feel the same way now. I'd much rather have more generic stuff than ultra-specific stuff that I'll likely never drop into a game. I get it that I can just change "Ezra Bridger" to the name of my choosing and never tell the players that's what I've done. But even turning him into a generic stat block for a Force emergent doesn't make his stats more useful than getting more stock starship profiles, more new alien species, more creatures, more planets, more gear, etc.

21 minutes ago, SavageBob said:

Count me on the side of folks who are disappointed to see all this attention to statting out movie characters and the like. This is the way West End Games handled its various movie and novel guidebooks; I found it a bizarre allocation or resources then, and I feel the same way now. I'd much rather have more generic stuff than ultra-specific stuff that I'll likely never drop into a game. I get it that I can just change "Ezra Bridger" to the name of my choosing and never tell the players that's what I've done. But even turning him into a generic stat block for a Force emergent doesn't make his stats more useful than getting more stock starship profiles, more new alien species, more creatures, more planets, more gear, etc.

At which point does “more” just become “more stuff I don’t need and will rarely use” though? There are definitely groups that like this canon stuff getting statted out, so even if it isn’t for you there’s value there. On the other hand we have over 80 species with stats (granted, several are variants on ‘human’) already. Planet info is easily obtainable from various online databases. We have a bunch of ships and (finally) shipbuilding rules. We have all sorts of gear. Do I really need more of that? More to the point, do I really want to pay for that? FFG is getting into diminishing returns territory here, by my reckoning at least.

Meh. I never said everyone had to agree on the matter. There are some vocal proponents of "stat out the movie characters" on here, and I just wanted to voice the other side to make sure our voices are heard, as well. I, for one, prefer more gear and species to named characters and vehicles. But you're welcome to disagree with me.

23 minutes ago, SavageBob said:

Meh. I never said everyone had to agree on the matter. There are some vocal proponents of "stat out the movie characters" on here, and I just wanted to voice the other side to make sure our voices are heard, as well. I, for one, prefer more gear and species to named characters and vehicles. But you're welcome to disagree with me.

True enough. There are always differences in what people want to see. That was one of the reasons I was so happy to see both camps represented so well in this book.

Hah! Finally found it and ordered it for a reasonable delivery price!! ($US14.36)

https://www.miniaturemarket.com/

Oh. Oh my.

I think I may have found why the Temple Training talent felt so lackluster to me originally, but is on the bottom row of the Padawan Survivor...

Reading through the long description, it makes no mention of the bonus damage only applying to one hit of the attack. You just add additional damage equal to your Lore ranks to "the attack." Meaning if that attack deals multiple hits, the extra damage applies to ALL OF THEM.

8 hours ago, Absol197 said:

Oh. Oh my.

I think I may have found why the Temple Training talent felt so lackluster to me originally, but is on the bottom row of the Padawan Survivor...

Reading through the long description, it makes no mention of the bonus damage only applying to one hit of the attack. You just add additional damage equal to your Lore ranks to "the attack." Meaning if that attack deals multiple hits, the extra damage applies to ALL OF THEM.

So great for trees that give linked then

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2018/3/26/running-rebels/

I guess this is technically an RPG related article?

18 minutes ago, Dr Lucky said:

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2018/3/26/running-rebels/

I guess this is technically an RPG related article?

I mean... technically? But it's hardly very exciting. And the news slot would have been much better served, in my opinion, with an Unlimited Power preview.

8 hours ago, Absol197 said:

I mean... technically? But it's hardly very exciting. And the news slot would have been much better served, in my opinion, with an Unlimited Power preview.

Every day we don' recurve one in a little more surprised... and saddened.

16 hours ago, Absol197 said:

I mean... technically? But it's hardly very exciting. And the news slot would have been much better served, in my opinion, with an Unlimited Power preview.

Yeah, but it was better than the usual "Do you guys know that X-Wing ™ exists? Why don't you use X-Wing ™ in your game! That's a good idea!" vapid pieces that we've gotten in the past.

24 minutes ago, Desslok said:

Yeah, but it was better than the usual "Do you guys know that X-Wing ™ exists? Why don't you use X-Wing ™ in your game! That's a good idea!" vapid pieces that we've gotten in the past.

Honestly, using X-Wing rules with a few extras based on the RPG mechanics is a better idea than using the RPG’s lame space combat rules. Though admittedly, we rarely have much spaceship combat anyway and probably still wouldn’t if the rules for it were better.

On second thought, I’m happy that we have the stats for Rebels characters. Saves me time when I design the one shot campaign where the PCs track them all down, kill them, and turn the droid’s head into a steel drum for a Max Reebo tribute band.

PS. Before you think me an angry fanboy, I do like the new movies. The animated series are just not that good IMHO.

I haven't got the book yet (grrrr!), but I'm more than happy to see stats for characters. I wish we saw more of that - not because I want to bring canonical characters into my games, but 1) it's nice to see design examples for characters we know and see*, and 2) sometimes it's handy to have a ready-made character there to file the serial numbers off and use them to represent another character.

I also crave stats on ships, vehicles, creatures, etc. the way I crave chocolate! (Maybe more...maybe). However, having stats for the Death Star is, in my opinion, a bit silly. The DS only ever gets used as a plot point. Even the Battle of Yavin was all about just getting to one spot on the DS - have stats for the trench run, its guns, and the exhaust port, maybe...but the whole Death Star? Just seems silly to me. The Death Star is akin to a force of nature, not a device.

Having said that, I guess it's reasonable to argue you could have stats for something like the DS to show the "maxed out" level of statistics. You could maybe then use it as a baseiline to "downgrade" for stats for something smaller. Say, a torpedo sphere, or something like the Supremacy (which, from memory, was about half the size of the Death Star, at least in terms of wingspan).

One thing I'm hoping for - and maybe it's included as part of the DS stats - is some sort of mechanical description of planetary shields and how they work. We've seen them used a few times in Rebels , and they seem to work much more along the lines of a massive damage soak than just adding setback dice. That, of course, leads me to wonder about changing up the rules for shields overall to do a similar thing, but that's a whole 'nother conversation.

Anyway...I'm rambling because I'm actually bored at work at the moment, and I should be doing other stuff, so I'll shut up now!

* For example, it's great to have all the "generic" NPC examples in the various rulebooks (eg: "Jedi Outcast" or "Bounty Hunter Guildsman"), but sometimes I would like to see just how their abilities and such act in a cinematic form. It lets me get my head around the various abilities better, and often opens up new possibilities ("Ah! So Kylo Ren stopping the blaster bolt in mid-air was an application of Bind, not Move!" for example. Or "Oh, Vader stopping Solo's blaster bolts was a combination of Protect and a beskar glove!"). I'm actually planning on trying to write down the "gamed-out" versions of some classic Star Wars confrontations in an effort to examine how the mechanics affect the cinematics. The old d20 Star Wars actually did this with Obi-Wan vs Darth Maul from The Phantom Menace . I'd like to redo that in FFG, along with, perhaps Obi-Wan vs Jango Fett (Ep II), Obi-Wan vs Anakin (Ep III), Luke vs Jabba's Entourage (Ep VI), Lando vs The Imperial Fleet (Ep VI), and perhaps even Luke vs Vader + Emperor (Ep VI), which would include the social "combat" to convince Vader to come over to his side.

2 hours ago, Daronil said:

I'm actually planning on trying to write down the "gamed-out" versions of some classic Star Wars confrontations in an effort to examine how the mechanics affect the cinematics.

You mean something like this?

Which reminds me, as soon as I get Last Jedi on disc, I can update the thread. . . .

15 minutes ago, Desslok said:

You mean something like this?

Which reminds me, as soon as I get Last Jedi on disc, I can update the thread. . . .

Oh, brilliant, Desslok!

You just saved me a whole bunch of time!

So..... just got the book. Popped on through to the parts my players will want to see: gear and ships and droids and races. You know, best to get a head's up on this before they start springing surprises on me. And wow... when it comes to ships, talk about surprises! Were the people writing the descriptions and the people writing the stats and attributes locked in separate rooms?! There are so many ships with weapons described in the writeup that are not reflected in the stat blocks. Example: The Hammerhead Corvette: according to the writeup? Two heavy lasers, two light ion cannons. In the stats? A twin heavy laser (okay, good) and a... twin... light... TURBOLASER? That's a little... not an ion cannon...

Zeta class shuttle? Writeup says a trio of medium lasers. Stat bar says forward mounted TWIN medium laser cannons with LINKED 3?! And no, not two twin medium lasers, just 'twin medium lasers' that apparently have 4 barrels. If it were just a typo or something fine but that's three separate things all about ONE weapon set.

The TIE/SK apparently has room for a passenger or small amount of cargo.... yeah, passenger count 0, encumbrance 4 doesn't sound like it.

Don't even get me started on Prototype B6. What in the world!? I'm willing to overlook a missing ordinance launcher on the Auzituck gunship, I can add that in myself, but man. Some of this is like people were only allowed to communicate via smoke signal. And if that's the case, okay, fair.... impressed they got this much right lol!

Now, everything ELSE is awesome. So, assuming the starships portion was last through the editor's desk close to deadline or something?

On 3/22/2018 at 12:29 PM, nameless ronin said:

At which point does “more” just become “more stuff I don’t need and will rarely use” though? There are definitely groups that like this canon stuff getting statted out, so even if it isn’t for you there’s value there. On the other hand we have over 80 species with stats (granted, several are variants on ‘human’) already. Planet info is easily obtainable from various online databases. We have a bunch of ships and (finally) shipbuilding rules. We have all sorts of gear. Do I really need more of that? More to the point, do I really want to pay for that? FFG is getting into diminishing returns territory here, by my reckoning at least.

"More stuff I don't need and will rarely use" can describe every supplement in this product line. I have 5 players and we've played campaigns across all three titles. As a GM, I've cracked open and used every book. Gear has never been as useful for me as for my players. Gear entries tend to be for pieces of gear that are very situation specific. But I've utilized almost every ship stat and almost every generic NPC in some way. Still haven't used that Spaceport Urchin NPC but maybe one of these days...

Planet information is of mixed quality on Wookieepedia and unless it's a planet spotlighted in one of the movies, details tend to be spotty. However, planet write-ups aren't strictly utilitarian. They serve the important purpose of providing brainstorming fodder. Books like Suns of Fortune (hands down, the strongest setting book FFG has written for Star Wars ) or Lords of Nal Hutta show how locations can be grouped together thematically, which has helped me give my campaigns a more cohesive feel. Also, until SoF came along, we'd never had a good write-up on Corellia.

For a game that's supposed to be about fantasy space heroes visiting fantastical locations, we have more write-ups on weird guns and oddball droids than creatively written entries on planets. I'm not expecting every book to be Galaxy Guide 7: Mos Eisley but it doesn't feel like the writers are pushing themselves if they can't come up with 1 or 2 pages worth of fun details on Scarif or Eadu.

If you want to talk about using pre-existing guide books and databases, the Death Star is so pop culturally iconic that it already has several game- and non-game-related technical manuals.

On 3/28/2018 at 2:31 PM, Concise Locket said:

"More stuff I don't need and will rarely use" can describe every supplement in this product line. I have 5 players and we've played campaigns across all three titles. As a GM, I've cracked open and used every book. Gear has never been as useful for me as for my players. Gear entries tend to be for pieces of gear that are very situation specific. But I've utilized almost every ship stat and almost every generic NPC in some way. Still haven't used that Spaceport Urchin NPC but maybe one of these days...

Planet information is of mixed quality on Wookieepedia and unless it's a planet spotlighted in one of the movies, details tend to be spotty. However, planet write-ups aren't strictly utilitarian. They serve the important purpose of providing brainstorming fodder. Books like Suns of Fortune (hands down, the strongest setting book FFG has written for Star Wars ) or Lords of Nal Hutta show how locations can be grouped together thematically, which has helped me give my campaigns a more cohesive feel. Also, until SoF came along, we'd never had a good write-up on Corellia.

For a game that's supposed to be about fantasy space heroes visiting fantastical locations, we have more write-ups on weird guns and oddball droids than creatively written entries on planets. I'm not expecting every book to be Galaxy Guide 7: Mos Eisley but it doesn't feel like the writers are pushing themselves if they can't come up with 1 or 2 pages worth of fun details on Scarif or Eadu.

If you want to talk about using pre-existing guide books and databases, the Death Star is so pop culturally iconic that it already has several game- and non-game-related technical manuals.

There are several issues.
Books need to have a broad appeal. gone are the days when you can get away with doing a gm centric book. Those books do not sell as well as books that have an appeal for players. So rather that make books that only sell to gms they try and put a little of everything in every book. So they put planet write ups in region books and core books and adventure books. Also printing costs have gone up so prices went up. so to keep prices at a manageable level they dont have as much page count. I dont think it is fair to say the writers aren't pushing themselves. also keep in mind FFG does not have nearly the free hand to create stuff WEG had. And people whine and complain when the movie iconic locations are not covered. So they dont have as much room to create whole new worlds.

I’m compiling a reference document for my players, and my copy of the book is tied up in a pre-order. What are the page references for the species?

1 hour ago, OriginalDomingo said:

I’m compiling a reference document for my players, and my copy of the book is tied up in a pre-order. What are the page references for the species?

Species are covered on pages 92-97

7 hours ago, XGrifterX said:

Species are covered on pages 92-97

Thanks for the reply, but I was actually looking for a breakdown by species.

On 3/22/2018 at 4:00 PM, SavageBob said:

Count me on the side of folks who are disappointed to see all this attention to statting out movie characters and the like. This is the way West End Games handled its various movie and novel guidebooks; I found it a bizarre allocation or resources then, and I feel the same way now. I'd much rather have more generic stuff than ultra-specific stuff that I'll likely never drop into a game. I get it that I can just change "Ezra Bridger" to the name of my choosing and never tell the players that's what I've done. But even turning him into a generic stat block for a Force emergent doesn't make his stats more useful than getting more stock starship profiles, more new alien species, more creatures, more planets, more gear, etc.

TBH my view on this kind of stuff (character stats) should be free pdfs. I know that if I asked my 8yr old twin nephews if they wanted to sit at the table and play SW: Rebels they'd love it...I'd run the 'get onto a Star Destroyer' episode/adventure

Disappointed? yes I am. Have I ACTUALLY read through the splat yet? No. When the book finally arrived (Thank You Shiny Games) I did a quick flick through. As soon as I saw the SW: Rebels stats I placed it on the shelf and now it's the 1st FFG splat that I feel I've been a**r**** with - just like TFA & TLJ films

I've preordered the final to F&D career books and I have a feeling that'll be me done for FFG SW stuff. I've stopped getting the XWing ships - I have enough early waves for a decent, fun game when we want and my GM has spent a shedload more on Age of Rebellion, ImpAss, Witcher boardgame, Rebellion and waaaay more Xwing ships than me.

I think this is my first large post/reply in at least six months - we're still trudging around Barovia trying to kill the blooming Strahd geezer - 40 sessions and counting (only because it's railroaded sandbox and we want to out GM to get his moneys worth on both the financial and time investment on prepping)

Do the Gigorans need a vocorder to speak Basic?

On 3/22/2018 at 3:49 PM, Absol197 said:

Oh. Oh my.

I think I may have found why the Temple Training talent felt so lackluster to me originally, but is on the bottom row of the Padawan Survivor...

Reading through the long description, it makes no mention of the bonus damage only applying to one hit of the attack. You just add additional damage equal to your Lore ranks to "the attack." Meaning if that attack deals multiple hits, the extra damage applies to ALL OF THEM.

Has this been confirmed as the intent? Or has it been clarified to apply to only one hit?