Hello. I just recently became interested in Tabletop Role-Playing games and was excited to learn that there's such games based on the Star Wars universe, I want to buy one but I need to know something:

I know Role-Playing games have rules and "campaign books" but can the players also use their imagination and knowledge of the Star Wars universe to play and invent new adventures? Or even deviate from the original content and invent their own stories (even if it has to do with time travels or even crossovers with other fictional works)?

Otherwise, between all Star Wars Role-Playing games there is (I remarked there's quite a few, even 2 games based on KOTOR and "Force Unleashed"), what would you recommand to new players?

Welcome! For what it's worth, I think you're choosing a quality RPG to try. FFG's Star Wars RPG is fun and can be learned quickly, and Force and Destiny is a solid choice for content.

On your question about using your imagination, the short answer is: yes, absolutely. Many groups don't even use the pre-made adventures, instead working together to tell a story that's entirely of their own making. Just last night, the game I play in had a brief encounter with a ship that had crossed over from a Macross -inspired dimension. That might not be to everyone's taste, but if you're making up the adventure, you all get a say in how it unfolds.

The rules exist to make things somewhat fair and balanced, as well as introduce some uncertainty to the outcomes of actions. You could all sit around talking about what your characters would do in a given situation and decide by logic what does or doesn't succeed, but by rolling dice you're adding an element of chance. As a group, you and your friends can decide what rules you want to keep, which ones you want to get rid of, and which ones you'd like to modify for a better experience for your group.

Those other books you mentioned, the ones about KOTOR and TFU, are from previous games made by different publishers. They don't use the same rules as this one, so you'll find that a lot of the mechanical information—like how much damage a blaster does, or how a character's abilities work—don't apply to this game. But they could still be useful in providing you with general information and story ideas, if you'd like to use them for that purpose.

Finally, as far as beginners are concerned, I think Force and Destiny is a great place to start. If you'd like to have a more metered introduction, consider picking up the Beginner Box and/or using the pre-made adventure published in the core rulebook, but as long as you have the core rulebook and a set of dice, you've got everything you need to play. The suggested setting in the book is during the original trilogy, but that's all fluff. The actual mechanics of the game are archetypal, meaning they can be applied to any era you would like: prequels, sequels, or Legends eras like The Old Republic or Legacy .

And if you're still unclear on things, ask around! Post questions here, or check out some of the other friends. Everyone around here is very helpful, and at this point, a lot of us have downright encyclopedic knowledge of the game.

Welcome indeed. I recommend starting with the Edge of Empire beginner game. fun in itself. and you will quickly learn all the rules. smugglers, bounty hunters and iconic characters galore.

4 hours ago, revan193 said:

I know Role-Playing games have rules and "campaign books" but can the players also use their imagination and knowledge of the Star Wars universe to play and invent new adventures?

Absolutely, they are in fact, encouraged to do that very thing. Though the risk in doing so is that some players have a habit of questioning the GM about lore. "Um, no that's not correct, actually *insert character name* was on *insert planet* at that time, so there is no way they could be here in this scene." or "A Stormtrooper's standard issue loadout includes 2 thermal detonators, 2 energy clips, and a weeks worth of rations, so that should be the loot they give us, EACH of them." So that's an issue if you aren't using a "campaign book". I personally never use those campaign books, and prefer to make up my own stories in my own little corner of the galaxy far far away. Which route you pick is entirely up to you, and how much direct input you want on the narrative being told. The campaigns are really useful for new GM's and players though, as they are usually designed with that fact in mind, and thus the encounters are tailored to teach the table about the rule mechanics, a few rules at a time.

4 hours ago, revan193 said:

Or even deviate from the original content and invent their own stories (even if it has to do with time travels or even crossovers with other fictional works)?

Yep, if you want to do that, do it. I would make sure you inform your players of this, as I was once in a campaign that started out as a Shadowrun campaign, but ended up being this insane, Sliders-esque game that had almost nothing to do with Shadowrun at all, so I wasn't too happy about that.

If everyone is on the same page about it being a genre bending, setting blender, then great, knock yourselves out.

5 hours ago, revan193 said:

Otherwise, between all Star Wars Role-Playing games there is (I remarked there's quite a few, even 2 games based on KOTOR and "Force Unleashed"), what would you recommand to new players?

Eh, that can very a lot based on the preferences of the player. If you are talking about games for them to play for good "roleplaying" experience, that's a bit more limited, as a lot of the star wars video games are more action oriented. Personally, I wouldn't suggest playing any video games to try and get an understanding of how to roleplay. I would suggest playing them however, to get a feel for the theme of Star Wars, that the FFG game system is trying to replicate. Star Wars is high action, science-fantasy. The heroes do big, heroic things (read: sometimes stupid things, but stupidly awesome ) , the villains tend to be overly dramatic and villainous on a level akin to a pulp science comic like Flash Gordon. Some of the video games capture that feel very well, so playing them might get someone "in the spirit" to play star wars. Otherwise, just play them for fun, that's what I do.

As for personal preferences, mine would be Force Unleashed and the Jedi Knight series. I love playing a Force using character, and those two game lines were really good at replicating the power fantasy of it to a level I enjoyed. Others will praise the KOTOR games until the last embers of the final star burn out, personally I don't really remember them that much, and they didn't really stick out as anything amazing to me, game wise. *shrugs* So, personal preference I guess.

Welcome to the club. As others have said, a lot of us create our own adventures and use the source-books for suggestions and guides. I started running my group about 3 years ago and started with Force and Destiny because - Jedi. I did pick up the Edge of Empire and Age of Rebellion main books because as the game progressed I had players that wanted to play non-Force characters. In the EOTE forum, there is a Resources thread tacked that has a list of some fan-made adventures that may be able to help get you started as well.

7 hours ago, revan193 said:

I know Role-Playing games have rules and "campaign books" but can the players also use their imagination and knowledge of the Star Wars universe to play and invent new adventures? Or even deviate from the original content and invent their own stories (even if it has to do with time travels or even crossovers with other fictional works)?

Yes!

There's a Gamemaster, who acts as the lead storyteller, referee, and general overseer of the game. It's this GM who is ultimately responsible, broadly speaking, for the setting, adventure, and overall content. Of course RPGs are group exercises, so the players as well re expected to have a sizable amount of input into these, at least up front. So if everyone idea of a good time is taking a SuperTARDIS through Star Wars, Conan, GIJoe, and StarTrek... go for it.

That said, the Star Wars system is configured for a Space Opera setting with Force users. If you want something more generic, the Genesys system may be more to your liking. It uses the same core mechanics, but sets it up in a more generic presentation, and adds some minor tweaks and improvements.

7 hours ago, revan193 said:

Otherwise, between all Star Wars Role-Playing games there is (I remarked there's quite a few, even 2 games based on KOTOR and "Force Unleashed"), what would you recommand to new players?

There's 3 versions. I recommend this one. I've played the first version extensively, and the second version a bit. This one does the best job of both capturing Star Wars and doing so in a way that doesn't cause too many problems. The previous versions had a bad habit of overpowering force users.

11 hours ago, revan193 said:

I know Role-Playing games have rules and "campaign books" but can the players also use their imagination and knowledge of the Star Wars universe to play and invent new adventures? Or even deviate from the original content and invent their own stories (even if it has to do with time travels or even crossovers with other fictional works)?

Otherwise, between all Star Wars Role-Playing games there is (I remarked there's quite a few, even 2 games based on KOTOR and "Force Unleashed"), what would you recommand to new players?

1

Hello and welcome!

As several posters already mentioned, the short answer to your first question is YES. What type of campaign, and how much follows the cannon, is something that the GM and players decide.

Of all SW RPG, I recommend picking the one developed by FFG or Star Wars (West End Games, 1st edition*). What core to choose, it would depend on what type of campaign you want to run. Since your posting here in the Force and Destiny forum, and you mentioned KOTOR and the Force Unleashed... probably you already know the answer.

*: also sold by FFG

Hello and Welcome ?

On 9/10/2018 at 5:36 AM, revan193 said:

Hello. I just recently became interested in Tabletop Role-Playing games and was excited to learn that there's such games based on the Star Wars universe, I want to buy one but I need to know something:

I know Role-Playing games have rules and "campaign books" but can the players also use their imagination and knowledge of the Star Wars universe to play and invent new adventures? Or even deviate from the original content and invent their own stories (even if it has to do with time travels or even crossovers with other fictional works)?

Otherwise, between all Star Wars Role-Playing games there is (I remarked there's quite a few, even 2 games based on KOTOR and "Force Unleashed"), what would you recommand to new players?

FFG's system is actually pretty light on "campaign books," and most modern RPGs are, actually. Adventure modules have really taken a back seat to groups who love to craft their own stories from the ground up, and that's exactly what most RPGs encourage players and gamemasters to do.

Now, not everyone is a highly creative type who can write awesome stories, but part of the beauty of an RPG is that you don't necessarily have to be (though I am a writer and creative type, so it does certainly help). A tabletop RPG is collaborative storytelling experience, where the GM and the players both have input on the story. At it's most basic, it's something like this:

GM: You see a big, slimy fangbeast. What do you do?

Players: We shoot it.

OR

Players: We offer it a nice, juicy steak and scratch it behind the ears, telling it it's such a good slimy fangbeast, yes it is, yes it is !

But it can be a lot more involved than that. A lot of modern RPGs have systems that allow the players, when creating their characters, to clue the GM in on what kinds of adventure they'd like to see, what sorts of challenges they want their characters to overcome, and how they would like the campaign to play out in broad strokes. But if nothing else, sitting down with the players beforehand and deciding on what kind of game they want to play is vital, so everyone knows what they're on board for. If someone wants to play in the Prequel era as a Jedi Padawan on their way to Knighthood against the backdrop of the Clone Wars, while another wants to play a Rebellion-era Smuggler running supplies for the Rebel Alliance, while a third wants to play a Yuuzhan Vong warrior on the warpath during the New Jedi Order invasion. . . well, you've got a problem. Even without going into a different eras, if one player wants to be a diplomat in a political campaign while another wants to be a rough scoundrel from the Outer Rim who lets his blaster do the talking, it's going to be hard to get both of those characters engaged in the same game. Getting everyone on board with a concept for the campaign itself is vital. But too little diversity is as bad as too much. If everyone's a rough scoundrel who lets their blaster do the talking, who's going to solve those problems that can't be shot to death?

Encourage the players to think about their characters, who they are as people, what their motivations are. A useful tool I've found is what I call "The Babylon Four." The sci-fi series Babylon 5 (check it out if you haven't seen it, it's awesome) has four questions that reverberate throughout the series, "Who are you?" "What do you want?" "Where are you going?" "Why are you here?" Here's an example of "What do you want?" The idea is based, I gather, from a kind of psychological experiment where you ask someone the same question over and over, rejecting each response as "unacceptable" until you get them to the point where they literally can't think of anything else, paring the answer down to its most fundamental aspect. Now, you don't want to interrogate each of your players over and over and over for hours, but getting them to think about those questions in relation to their characters will get them thinking about them beyond bonuses on the character sheet, which is the biggest problem most new tabletop players have. This isn't a collection of statistics, this is a character, a real person in this fictional universe. There's another scene from the same episode the above video is from, where the same guy (Mr. Morden) asks the question to another of the alien ambassadors, G'Kar, who's people are mortal enemies of the Centauri, who Londo in the linked video represents. G'kar eventually answers that he wants to see the Centauri crushed, destroyed, and driven before the Narn, to suffer as they have made the Narn suffer. When Morden asks G'Kar "And then what?" G'Kar replies that he's never really thought about it. . . and he supposes, as long as his people are safe, it doesn't really matter. So what does G'Kar really want? Safety for his people.

On the subject of setting, crossovers can certainly be done, if that's your cup of tea, and your players, too. Not everyone is going to want to see a Star Destroyer square off against the Starship Enterprise , have their Jedi be hunted through the forests of Endor by the Predator, have their X-Wing dogfight Cylon Raiders, or roll Medicine to try and cure vampirism. But if your group wants to play a crossover game, great, have fun. The GM will just need to homebrew most of the stats, which means they'll need a good grasp of the system so they don't get overpowered. Then again, homebrewing is a great way to learn the system (you don't really understand something until you've broken it into a billion pieces and have to try and put it back together). For a straight Star Wars setting, you can do pretty much whatever you like. Your characters could be living around the events of the films, watching as Luke Skywalker destroys a Death Star, or you could play the characters from the films in other adventures, or even the events of the films themselves and see how they play out differently as the players make different choices, or even discard the canon characters completely and leave the fate of a galaxy far, far away in the hands of the players and their original characters. It's your game, your group, your table, do whatever you want.

As for "games" based on KOTOR and TFU, what you're actually talking about are sourcebooks. Sourcebooks are supplementary books, not required to play but helpful as they introduce new abilities, gear, characters, and so on. Star Wars Role-Playing Games have a long history, dating back to the late 80s with West End Games and their Star Wars Roleplaying Game (mostly referred to as "d6 Star Wars," since the system exclusively used d6s). Around the time The Phantom Menace came out, West End Games lost or gave up the Star Wars license, and Wizards of the Coast (behind Dungeons and Dragons 3rd Edition and later and Magic: The Gathering among others) picked it up, and produced three different Star Wars RPGs based in varying degrees on their d20 system: OCR/RCR ("Original Core Rules," the first one, just branded as "Star Wars Role-Playing Game" and "Revised Core Rules," a minor edition switch that polished up a few things) and Saga Edition. The KOTOR and TFU books are from Saga Edition (Saga Edition books are easily recognizable for being square, not rectangular). WotC lost the license, Fantasy Flight Games picked it up, and now we have what we call "FFG Star Wars." There are three different games, but all use the same system and so are compatible with each other: Edge of Empire (covers "Fringe" characters, smugglers, bounty hunters, mercenaries, etc.), Age of Rebellion (covers military characters), and Force and Destiny (covers Force-Sensitive characters). Getting a complete Star Wars RPG experience, with support for all character types, can be quite expensive, but as mentioned, all you really need is the Core Rulebook of your choice (Edge of Empire, Age of Rebellion, or Force and Destiny) and a set of dice. FFG Star Wars dice should be available at the same place you can get the rulebooks (gamers refer frequently to their FLGS, or Friendly Local Gaming Store), but there's a chart in the books to convert "regular" RPG dice to the symbols used by FFG Star Wars Dice. I'd recommend getting the proper Star Wars dice, but if you don't want to spend the money and/or have regular gaming dice lying around, the conversion is the more economical option. There's also some Star Wars Dice Roller programs online, if you trust electronic random numbers (I, for the record, do not). Sourcebooks from one edition of the game won't be terribly useful for others, and everything not FFG system is out-of-print (the companies don't have the license to print them anymore, though FFG did/is doing a reprint of West End Game's d6 rulebook, not sure on the status of that at this particular moment), but the Sourcebooks can still provide very interesting background information and story hooks, and can be found used through various outlets (my FLGS has a pretty extensive section of Star Wars RPG books dating back to d6). For my money, the best sourcebooks for that kind of information are the West End Games one, they dealt a lot more with "fluff" (background, setting, and story material) than "crunch" (rules, stats, and mechanics). Those are two other terms you'll hear tossed about the tabletop gaming community fairly often.

Hopefully some of this advice is helpful to you. Welcome, have fun, enjoy, and we're always here to at least attempt to answer questions and provide feedback!

On ‎9‎/‎10‎/‎2018 at 3:36 AM, revan193 said:

Hello. I just recently became interested in Tabletop Role-Playing games and was excited to learn that there's such games based on the Star Wars universe, I want to buy one but I need to know something:

I know Role-Playing games have rules and "campaign books" but can the players also use their imagination and knowledge of the Star Wars universe to play and invent new adventures? Or even deviate from the original content and invent their own stories (even if it has to do with time travels or even crossovers with other fictional works)?

Otherwise, between all Star Wars Role-Playing games there is (I remarked there's quite a few, even 2 games based on KOTOR and "Force Unleashed"), what would you recommand to new players?

Yes. If you have the Core Book and the Dice you are good to go as long as you are able to Reverse Engineer things to fit your campaign and are not concerned about toeing the official line.

For instance:

Humans have a starting stat of 2 for each Characteristic, so you can learn how the mechanics work, but use that as a baseline for creating species, creatures, or droids of your own.

The Narrative Dice can be interpreted in a huge variety of ways so you can really do so much with the description turned narrative action and/or mechanical effect that you will be free to describe a lot of situations and circumstances in what I feel is the best way: situationally to the moment.

The underlying system for the game is so excellent that they made a generic version of it called Genesys that can handle any genre, so if you are good at tinkering you can certainly use SWRPG for your own creations.

Also: This game is very much designed to look and feel like you need the official stuff to play it, and that I am sure was the company rightfully trying to monetize their excellent product in a market that is hard to make money in, but you can make your own stuff. The only time that may be a problem for you is if you have vets from the system who know the official form of things from the books. I have a lot of books but comparatively my collection is small. I'm still into this game line for hundreds of dollars though because I love the product and the quality of the books.

If you're looking for a quality rpg, in terms of ruleset

Ffg starwars/genesys tops my list

My second choice would be to pick up the cortex plus hacker's guide

I created my own "3D" system that is kind of like 20% ffg star wars (destiny pools, advantage triumph, despair, threat) and 30% cortex plus (dice system is sort of similar), with bits from fate (aspects->themes) rcr/saga (wotc star wars), d6 star wars (character points instead of xp), dnd 4.0 (diagonal squares count as 1), fuzion (costing of skill improvement), rifts (it was designed to handle the setting) and a whole lot of new stuff of my own devising. I haven't worked on it in several years and I was in the middle of a range band rule update then. The biggest selling point of the rules is the dice statistics the "average" result is the most likely result (vs. a d20 roll where no result is more probable than any other, the statistics of ffg star wars is a little wonky). It's not ready for primetime and in its current state I wouldn't call it a serious contender for ffg starwars/genesys ruleset.

Bottom line is ffg starwars is pretty much the best system to get into the hobby but I personally prefer Edge of the Empire to Force and Destiny. You can do whatever your imagination allows but table top gaming involves judgement calls by the GM to be able to handle virtually anything.

On 9/10/2018 at 6:36 AM, revan193 said:

Hello. I just recently became interested in Tabletop Role-Playing games and was excited to learn that there's such games based on the Star Wars universe, I want to buy one but I need to know something:

I know Role-Playing games have rules and "campaign books" but can the players also use their imagination and knowledge of the Star Wars universe to play and invent new adventures? Or even deviate from the original content and invent their own stories (even if it has to do with time travels or even crossovers with other fictional works)?

Otherwise, between all Star Wars Role-Playing games there is (I remarked there's quite a few, even 2 games based on KOTOR and "Force Unleashed"), what would you recommand to new players?

Jump on the discord server and I'll even run a oneshot for you!

Ping me I'm a mod there @ shard

May the force be with you, always....

https://discord.gg/TmBHaN5