EDIT- As EdgeOfDreams suggested below, I'm making it more clear on the scope of this project. It is intended to have the same size as a FFG FAQ/Errata and will not ignore any FAQ/Errata that are published by FFG, as it will attempt to make minimal changes. Many have suggested public FAQ/Errata playtesting from FFG, this is an attempt to do that without having to go through the delays caused by being a corporation.

I was waiting for FFG to post their FAQ/Errata after Gencon, and now that Gencon is over and I don’t see a FAQ/Errata, I figured now is a good time to start this.

Recently, the design of the game has gotten worse- There are more NPEs, lists have more hard-counters to each other, fewer iconic ships are on the table, and the difference in strength between a beginners list and one that is seen at a tournament has gotten wider.

I would like to implement a player-run FAQ/Errata, and in order to do so, I would need help from 2 types of people- Community organizers and designers/high level players.

The first type of person I would need support from is community organizers- We would need people to be willing to play with this FAQ/Errata in order to see if it is effective, and to encourage people to make the switch after it is finalized. If you organize your area’s weekly meetups, monthly tournaments, league nights, or the like, I’m asking for your help. I understand that this is a big thing to ask of a group (using a player-run FAQ) so I have something to offer in return-

Prize Support, in the form of playmats. I have and can make playmats and offer them as prize support- I have around 20 designs, and can make more. I made a couple for the still-unclaimed Krayt bounty, and I figure I might as well use those for trying to support this experiment. I can pretty easily print off more as well (and ones that are significantly less silly at that).

If you want playmats for prize support in exchange for running events with this FAQ/Errata in place, or plan to run events with this FAQ/Errata in place email me at [email protected] for playmats and survey forms.

Secondly, I’m looking for high level players, or people who understand the game well who would be willing to join in as a designer of this FAQ/Errata. I would need at least a few other people, as if I was to do this entirely on my own, I’d be more likely to get caught in some sort of spiral. The more people that we would be able to get would be more viewpoints to be able to use to solve problems.

If you think that you understand the game at a high level, have worked with game design, or think that you would be a good person to help with the design of this FAQ/Errata, email me at [email protected]

I’ll be trying to respond to any questions or comments posted here as well.

Feel free to post this to any of the podcast or regional group pages- The more visibility this gets, the better.

Looks interesting- prize support means this actually has a shot at working out, unlike many other awesome community initiatives that lack player involvement incentives

If people like the idea, I'd love to get involved as a designer. I've been messing around with amateur game design for a few years now and I think I'm also reasonably knowledgeable in terms of X-Wing.

You should team up with the other community rebuild that started recently.

More power together and it already has geniuses involved.

Reposting my below comment from Reddit, because I think it's worth discussing. OP, if you reply to me in one place, please copy-paste the reply to the other, so at least the top level answer can be seen in both places.

Assuming you get enough support from the right people to get this plan going and it gains traction in the community, how do you feel about the potential downside of splitting the community into two groups - those who play and run tournaments by the official rules and those who play and run tournaments by your new rules?

How do you see this impacting the experience of new players who are just starting to get into the game?

2 hours ago, EdgeOfDreams said:

Reposting my below comment from Reddit, because I think it's worth discussing. OP, if you reply to me in one place, please copy-paste the reply to the other, so at least the top level answer can be seen in both places.

Assuming you get enough support from the right people to get this plan going and it gains traction in the community, how do you feel about the potential downside of splitting the community into two groups - those who play and run tournaments by the official rules and those who play and run tournaments by your new rules?

How do you see this impacting the experience of new players who are just starting to get into the game?

The ideal end goal is to have FFG themselves incorporate this FAQ into their own. it's not an unheard of concept- FFG tried to purchase HotAC, but the creator denied them, as he wanted to maintain full control. The goal is to have this be the public FAQ playtesting that many have demanded, as as a community we could have a faster turn around time.

Additionally, the fictionalization will occur and is occurring regardless of this fan-FAQ, it's just occurring along different lines. There is a growing division between casual and competitive players, and it exists and gets larger because there is a more and more pronounced difference in the lists themselves between casual and competitive lists. Look at 7th edition 40k (I know a very large amount of X-wing players are 40k refugees) if you want to see how bad this division can get.

For players that are absolutely brand new, they will most likely tend to absorb their understanding of the game from their local community. It might be a bit confusing, but it can't be more so than just saying "this is a tournament with some rules changes"- it's smaller than the current FAQ, and they have to learn that already. Additionally, the cards being targeted are not cards known for being used by new players.

I hope that answered your question fully.

2 hours ago, Velvetelvis said:

You should team up with the other community rebuild that started recently.

More power together and it already has geniuses involved.

I assume that you are referring to Major Juggler's X-wing 3.0? I've talked with him, and is project is much longer in intended time, and larger in scope. If he goes public, I'd happily jump on board with his project though . One of the biggest differences (as I understand it) though is that he is re-doing most point costs from the ground up, and I'm intending to limit the scope of my changes to something that could be released as a $15 deck of cards by FFG.

3 hours ago, Elavion said:

Looks interesting- prize support means this actually has a shot at working out, unlike many other awesome community initiatives that lack player involvement incentives

If people like the idea, I'd love to get involved as a designer. I've been messing around with amateur game design for a few years now and I think I'm also reasonably knowledgeable in terms of X-Wing.

Go ahead and send an email- I'd love to get more input on the current draft, and eventually it should be able to move on to me just analyzing data and other groups of people designing the rules changes. It just needs to get off of the ground with some more people and time.

Thanks for responding to my questions.

I think it would be very helpful if you made it clearer in your top-level post that you don't intend this to be a permanent splitting of the community and that the scope of your changes would be relatively small. The initial impression I got was that you were planning to accumulate a large number of house rules over time that would diverge further and further from the FFG rules with every new release.

Let's say this project gets going and you arrive at a decent small FAQ/Errata that you and other participants agree on. Then FFG releases a new FAQ/Errata that has some similar rulings and changes, and some different ones. What do you do at that point? Would you take the newest FFG FAQ/Errata as a new baseline and make a fresh start?

17 hours ago, Kaptin Krunch said:

The ideal end goal is to have FFG themselves incorporate this FAQ into their own. it's not an unheard of concept- FFG tried to purchase HotAC, but the creator denied them, as he wanted to maintain full control.

Uh, pretty sure that didn't happen, at least not like that. The HotAC creator spoke with Alex Davy at an event and Alex advised him to keep full control of it himself. There was never any offer made to purchase HotAC that I'm aware of.

1 hour ago, EdgeOfDreams said:

Let's say this project gets going and you arrive at a decent small FAQ/Errata that you and other participants agree on. Then FFG releases a new FAQ/Errata that has some similar rulings and changes, and some different ones. What do you do at that point? Would you take the newest FFG FAQ/Errata as a new baseline and make a fresh start?

Your guess is pretty close actually- as an example, there are 2 listed changes to the Jumpmaster chassis and Mindlink in this FAQ- the leaked change, and a change that we would test if the leaked change does not come to fruition. I would not ignore anything FFG puts out in terms of rule changes.

If FFG puts out a change to something else that we are changing, provided it's not a totally insignificant change or in the opposite direction (eg; if a new FAQ comes out and buffs the Jumpmaster) we would replace our change with theirs for a testing cycle.

The recurring thing here is that this draft FAQ is constantly looking for the next tallest blade of grass, so to speak.

1 hour ago, Kaptin Krunch said:

Your guess is pretty close actually- as an example, there are 2 listed changes to the Jumpmaster chassis and Mindlink in this FAQ- the leaked change, and a change that we would test if the leaked change does not come to fruition. I would not ignore anything FFG puts out in terms of rule changes.

If FFG puts out a change to something else that we are changing, provided it's not a totally insignificant change or in the opposite direction (eg; if a new FAQ comes out and buffs the Jumpmaster) we would replace our change with theirs for a testing cycle.

The recurring thing here is that this draft FAQ is constantly looking for the next tallest blade of grass, so to speak.

Gotcha. The minimalist approach of staying as close as possible to FFG's official rules makes this something I'd be more likely to support. Thanks for clearing up my initial wrong impression of it. You'll probably get more support if you can make that super clear in your top level posts about this.

18 hours ago, EdgeOfDreams said:

Gotcha. The minimalist approach of staying as close as possible to FFG's official rules makes this something I'd be more likely to support. Thanks for clearing up my initial wrong impression of it. You'll probably get more support if you can make that super clear in your top level posts about this.

Thanks- I've edited the post to clear that up.