I picked up the GM guide, beginner game, and core book when they came out, but I haven't had a chance to actually run the game. From what I've read through, the game looks like a lot of fun. The dice looks like a hurdle, but I've seen that it's easy to get over once you start playing.

I'm part of a group that is looking for a new game. We played Pathfinder for a bit, but it was too Rules Heavy during play and too many options during character creation. How do the various Star Wars games relate? It looks almost as heavy in character creation, but the gameplay looks lighter. Is that accurate?

Let's put it this way: The system can be played in a very light way, but offers tons of optional rules, which can make it into a heavy system. Most of those extra rules are scattered in the many, many optional career and region books and even the adventures usually come with a few new mechanics.

So, just ignore the extra stuff and you have an awesome lightweight system, based on simply the great dice mechanic and the GMs and players ability to bring up new stuff for their rolled threats and advantages. I would recommend to not fall the trap to follow strictly the suggestions how to spend advantages and treats. Being a little inconsistent in the dice interpretations should be worth it not to look up dozens of tables and paragraphs with suggestions how to interpret dice results for all kind of possible situations. It nice to read to get some ideas, but in the end it adds unnecessary weight. The beginner game with an experience GM who can take those off the rails is basically as good as the game gets imho ... at least if you are looking for a light narrative system.

2 hours ago, LankyOgre said:

I picked up the GM guide, beginner game, and core book when they came out, but I haven't had a chance to actually run the game. From what I've read through, the game looks like a lot of fun. The dice looks like a hurdle, but I've seen that it's easy to get over once you start playing.

I'm part of a group that is looking for a new game. We played Pathfinder for a bit, but it was too Rules Heavy during play and too many options during character creation. How do the various Star Wars games relate? It looks almost as heavy in character creation, but the gameplay looks lighter. Is that accurate?

There are lots of options, but not a lot of requirements.

If you've got the Beginner Game, character creation is done for you. I know experienced RPers might balk at the idea of pre-gens, but I'd strongly urge you to just roll with them for the short Beginner adventure.

Once you have the basic concepts and mechanics under your belt (usually only takes a single session, for the numerous groups I've played with and introduced to the game), character creation is a cinch. Chapter II of the Core Rulebook guides you through a step-by-step process; the longest part of the chapter is the individual specializations, but you're realistically only going to be starting with one of those, so most of the "complexity" of the chapter just goes away as soon as you pick one of 6 careers, and then the rest of the complexity goes away once you pick one of your career's 3 specializations.

I would say the main core rule book weighs about 6 pounds. If you add in all the Edge of the Empire books, we're talking at least 50 pounds. I broke my scale trying to weigh all three core books and all the sourcebooks.

Wait - what were you asking again?

1 hour ago, SEApocalypse said:

So, just ignore the extra stuff and you have an awesome lightweight system, based on simply the great dice mechanic and the GMs and players ability to bring up new stuff for their rolled threats and advantages. I would recommend to not fall the trap to follow strictly the suggestions how to spend advantages and treats. Being a little inconsistent in the dice interpretations should be worth it not to look up dozens of tables and paragraphs with suggestions how to interpret dice results for all kind of possible situations. It nice to read to get some ideas, but in the end it adds unnecessary weight. The beginner game with an experience GM who can take those off the rails is basically as good as the game gets imho ... at least if you are looking for a light narrative system.

As the person who will be GMing, this is promising. I can easily fall into the trap of looking at too many rules, but knowing what the players want, I can steer to the other side.

1 hour ago, awayputurwpn said:

If you've got the Beginner Game, character creation is done for you. I know experienced RPers might balk at the idea of pre-gens, but I'd strongly urge you to just roll with them for the short Beginner adventure.

Once you have the basic concepts and mechanics under your belt (usually only takes a single session, for the numerous groups I've played with and introduced to the game), character creation is a cinch. Chapter II of the Core Rulebook guides you through a step-by-step process; the longest part of the chapter is the individual specializations, but you're realistically only going to be starting with one of those, so most of the "complexity" of the chapter just goes away as soon as you pick one of 6 careers, and then the rest of the complexity goes away once you pick one of your career's 3 specializations.

I'm definitely going to insist that we start with pregens, no matter what we do. About half the group is experienced, but the other half are fairly new and have little desire to pore over chapter after chapter looking for abilities and choices.

59 minutes ago, Desslok said:

I would say the main core rule book weighs about 6 pounds. If you add in all the Edge of the Empire books, we're talking at least 50 pounds. I broke my scale trying to weigh all three core books and all the sourcebooks.

Wait - what were you asking again?

In some ways this is a surprisingly helpful answer. In general, I would say that the systems that are lighter or less complex, I.e. Savage Worlds, also weigh less. Pathfinder, on the other hand, would take a forklift to move every single book.

I ran a pair of demos and played in a Free RPG day scenario, and the dice system seemed surprisingly easy to pick up. I'm glad to hear that it doesn't get too complicated after the beginner box.

I've recently become a big fan of pregen characters for the first session of a game. If I know we're going to have a new player, I grab one of the NPCs that's already in the game, rework him so that he makes a decent PC, and hand him to the new player. The new guy gets to learn the system, the story, and how I run my game, which will help him decide what kind of character to play for his second session. Often enough, he sticks with the same character, and we build him just how he likes. Which means that what started as an NPC goes through three different sets of stats, but narratively, he just becomes more important.

It can be a little weird doing this with a full set of new players, but I like to think of it as a pilot episode. Go back and watch the very first episode of Star Trek. Spock is literally the only character that makes it to episode 2. Captain Kirk, Scotty, Bones, Uhura and Sulu are nowhere to be found. Sounds to me like most of the players had fun with the first session, but wanted to roll their own characters. Leonard must have liked Spock, but probably took the opportunity to adjust some stats, and also suggested some cool in-game stuff about Vulcans to GM Roddenberry.

I'd say the Star Wars systems, even with all the optional rules, is still only a mid-crunch game. I play in two groups, one plays predominantly Pathfinder, and the other does Star Wars. Once you know the system, everything in Star Wars moves faster. Character creation, combat, role play scenarios, etc. They all move more quickly. The only thing that slows down the game is the group trying to figure out how to adjudicate threat/advantage/despair/triumph, and that's all part of the fun.

There are definitely lighter systems (both figuratively and literally) but I like a bit more structure, and Star Wars fits it perfectly. That's why I'm so excited about the upcoming Genesys system. I'm hoping to move these Star Wars rules into fantasy or other genre.

2 hours ago, LankyOgre said:

As the person who will be GMing, this is promising. I can easily fall into the trap of looking at too many rules, but knowing what the players want, I can steer to the other side.

I can tell you that in the last three years I've cracked the book to look something up only a few times. Once you get a handle on the dice, the skills, and how to narrate the dice results, you almost never have to look anything up. I find it very quick to use the dice to make a decision and move on. If something comes up I can always research it for the next session.

A few things help to keep things at your fingertips:

• A good character sheet, for which OggDude's character generator is highly recommended. The player should know their skills, talents, and combat info, saving you the hassle of having to remember it all.
• A printed chart of the basic Advantage/Threat/Triumph/Despair options for combat.
• A GM screen (any of the three will do).
• An initiative slot and turn counter sheet. (Lots of these on the resources sticky thread.)
• The Adversary Decks, very useful when you need some quick stats.

Beyond that you don't need much, if anything, else.

There is a compiled list of all the suggestions for spent adv/threats etc. It's not even as crazy or in-depth as you'd think. So even if you wanted to jump into the crunch it's still fairly kiddy pool to learn as its separated into fairly distinct situations.

Character creation way less then pathfinder, yah liked ad&d as a kid, but no... Never going back to that mess... This is way easier way more intuitive and way more flexible.

The hard thing, and I'm learning it's really not that hard... Is Chase sequences... that's as hard as this thing gets.

8 hours ago, Desslok said:

I would say the main core rule book weighs about 6 pounds. If you add in all the Edge of the Empire books, we're talking at least 50 pounds. I broke my scale trying to weigh all three core books and all the sourcebooks.

Wait - what were you asking again?

Dang Desslock, you stole my thunder! But I think the rules are closer to 12 pounds.

But seriously. I've played some OLD school D&D (Long before they had any point zero versions) and Star Wars is very streamlined by comparison. Most of my intel about the more modern D&D stuff is from second hand experiences and from what I know, Star Wars should be WAY easier to pick up and WAY more intuitive.

There is a learning curve, but it's not as steep as GURPS (III or IV).

Star Wars also makes WAY more sense then Savage Worlds and is faster and easier to run than Savage Worlds. (Oh my how I loath Savage Worlds . . . but I digress). Both are cinematic but Star Wars seems better grounded in reality and it can play faster than Savage Worlds.

The really cool thing about learning the Star Wars RPG are these forums. There are a lot of ingenious new concepts to RPG's with the FFG rules, but you can easily search and ask questions to achieve enlightenment in the system.

As the others have said, there's a learning curve around dealing with the dice and reading the results, but most players will usually have a handle on it by the end of the session, if not the end of the first encounter. I've really only encountered one person that's had serious trouble grasping the dice mechanics, but then she has a lot of trouble with game mechanics no matter how soft or crunchy the rules are.

The Beginner Box sets are a fantastic investment, as the adventures included are designed to help both novice players and novice GMs get a handle on the system by slowly introducing the various working bits to help ensure that neither the player or the GM are overwhelmed with information. That you also get a $15 dice pack for a $30 box (less if you go searching online) is an added bonus.

And while a lot of the career sourcebooks add some cool stuff to one's game, none of them are truly necessary, and you can very easily play the game with just a single core rulebook of the flavor of your choice.

On 7/14/2017 at 11:23 AM, 2P51 said:

There are lots of options, but not a lot of requirements.

Great way of phrasing it

The basics are easily learned, but there is a surprising amount of crunch below that. People compare it to Pathfinder, but with all books and rules, Pathfinder is one of the most expansive rules systems out there, so hardly a yardstick to measure against.

For a comparison: we have been playing for about two years, the characters are in the ~500 XP range, and some of the sheets have 10+ pages when printed from OggDude's excellent generator. I find that running it is quite OK, because the rules are smooth and the nature of the dice precludes rolling for every single thing, but the amount of options for players alone mean there is enough crunch. At the beginning, I was quite enamoured with the lightness of the system, but right now I would place it in the upper middle class of crunchiness, and far, far away from light systems.

EDIT: Of course, that is always subjective. I have played Rolemaster (2nd, FRP/SS), D&D 3rd and Pathfinder, and have a certain tolerance for systems like that.