Hi again everyone. I recently started reading the core rulebook for Edge of the Empire and this hobby seems incredibly daunting. I'm assuming I need to read through the core rulebook in it's entirety to get a handle on the way the game plays. Is it a good idea to read through it several times as I've never played a tabletop RPG before? I have zero experience with this new hobby. I will be the GM and I'll be required to educate three other individuals who also have no experience with this. I feel like I should have an extreme understanding before embarking on our first gaming session. In case of anything troublesome during play, should I keep my rulebook by my side while we are gaming? I cannot find the beginner's game anywhere and I'm becoming discouraged. Maybe I created the tone of this post subconsciously, intending for some sort of pep talk, perhaps to help shake off this insurmountable feeling of being overwhelmed. Learning tabletop RPGs seems to me, almost impossible. Please help with any word of advice and encouragement. Thanks.

If you have bought the core book already then telling you to buy the Beginner's set might seem crappy, but there a HUGE amount of advantages to it.

1. You get a set of dice

2. if you buy the TFA set, you get an awesome galactic map too

3. It comes with a "Rulebook" that really condenses the core books down to about 20-25 pages and teaches you everything you need to know to run or play in a game

4. It comes with an adventure that is totally geared towards introducing you as GM and a set of players to all the core concepts and rules

5. It has maps, tokens, pre-generated characters and everything else you will need to have a fun 3-4 hours with pals or family

Make no mistake, the core rulebooks are AWESOME and packed with wonderful info, but if you start to break down what you have, you get roughly 45 pages of classes, 45 pages of skill explanations, 40 pages of gear, and so on - this is all very useful information that fleshes out the game and the world, but it's not what you need to digest in order to be able to play.

If you don't want to get a beginner set, download some of the pre-gen chars & adventures from FFG and then, at a bare minimum, read up on building dice pools & interpreting the dice, and combat, wounds & strain. Everything else can come once you've started enjoying the game!

Pre-gen Character example

Under a Black Sun adventure

Note: all of the above info is canon, as I went through it myself

Edit: the TFA box set is evidently only $20 on Amazon today . A total steal, given that the dice are $15

30 minutes ago, Bojanglez said:

If you don't want to get a beginner set, download some of the pre-gen chars & adventures from FFG and then, at a bare minimum, read up on building dice pools & interpreting the dice, and combat, wounds & strain. Everything else can come once you've started enjoying the game!

Pre-gen Character example

Under a Black Sun adventure

Note: all of the above info is canon, as I went through it myself

Thanks bro. This sounds like a good option. I have approximately five sets of Star Wars RPG dice. I hope purchasing that many wasn't a mistake. I wasn't sure how many dice I needed. I thought it would be a good idea to have an abundance of them so I just went for it. I also have the GM screen, which came with an adventure. I'll check out the adventure you listed as well. More or less, the core rulebook is a useful guide (Consisting of races, weapons, equipement, skills, talents, etc.) with rules thrown into various chapters/sub-chapters. Correct?

Pretty good summary.

there really about only about 25 pages of “core mechanics” and the rest is flavor

The big thing I want to address from your original post is that no, you definitely do NOT need to read the Core Rulebook cover-to-cover, especially not multiple times, even if you're starting as your group's GM.

I've been playing RPGs for closing in on two decades, I own close to a hundred RPG books for different systems, and I'll tell you what: I've never, not once, read an RPG book cover-to-cover. This is going to change here in early March (hopefully!) when Unlimited Power comes out, but that's just because I'm insane and ridiculously enamoured with Mystics .

What you'll want to do is read the first chapter that explains the dice and symbols, skim through the species and career chapters (stopping on 1 or 2 items that you find interesting to see how they work in detail), and then skim the other chapters, too. Other than the chapter on GMing, which you might want to dive a little deeper into, you don't need anything other than a cursory understanding of things like species, specializations, skills, talents, weapons, vehicles, etc. Skills might be the exception, you might want to read up on some of the odder or less obvious skills (like Vigilance), but generally, get an idea for generally HOW these things work, not necessarily specifically what they do.

Then, once your players get their characters built, you can read up on their talents, skills, and equipment in a bit more detail so you know what you're working with. Then, for building your adventures and such, basically decide what you want to do, then read the sections for those things as you need them. Basically, think of the Core book as a reference guide, not as an instruction book. Once you understand how the system works (i.e. how to build dice pools and interpret the results, and how combat works), the rest is just look it up when you need it, or are curious about something.

And while I've not used or played through any of them, I've heard nothing but good things about the beginner games, as mentioned above.

1 hour ago, ScruffyHanSolo1987 said:

Hi again everyone. I recently started reading the core rulebook for Edge of the Empire and this hobby seems incredibly daunting. I'm assuming I need to read through the core rulebook in it's entirety to get a handle on the way the game plays. Is it a good idea to read through it several times as I've never played a tabletop RPG before? I have zero experience with this new hobby. I will be the GM and I'll be required to educate three other individuals who also have no experience with this. I feel like I should have an extreme understanding before embarking on our first gaming session. In case of anything troublesome during play, should I keep my rulebook by my side while we are gaming? I cannot find the beginner's game anywhere and I'm becoming discouraged. Maybe I created the tone of this post subconsciously, intending for some sort of pep talk, perhaps to help shake off this insurmountable feeling of being overwhelmed. Learning tabletop RPGs seems to me, almost impossible. Please help with any word of advice and encouragement. Thanks.

You can jump onto Youtube. There are some sessions there to watch and get a feel for it.