c8tiff said:

I think it is a good idea to use some of the WFRP 3rd system, because Star Wars is a big enough franchise to overcome the resistance to change and innovation that is so common among tabletop gamers. WFRP 3rd might have gone a little too far in the bits and bobs category, but really, I think the 40k franchise is much, much stronger overall. Even without the system, I didn't see too many people interested in Warhammer Fantasy, but lots of people went nuts when they heard a 40k RPG was coming. 40k RPGs sell despite the system, not because of it IMO.

From my experience with the 40k RPG system, it is much clunkier than the WFRP 3rd system in everything but table setup. Star Wars looks to be even smoother and better streamlined than WFRP 3rd. Not to mention that the custom dice can be atmospheric when done right, as well as giving lots of interpretive information to both players and GMs. I think using the 40k system for Star Wars would have been a big mistake, and I think using mini's/grids for a Star Wars RPG might be even worse. We have enough RPGs that use the mini/grid system, including other Star Wars editions.

IMO, i am not fond of the percentile system, the tens dice is really the only important one, but it gets gameplay as opposed to whfrp 3, although whfrp 1 & 2 are ancient in rp terms, they still get vastly more play than does version 3, that should say alot.

just because the other star wars versions already had minis and mats, thats not a good reason in my mind not to do it some more…

when is more of a good thing not better??

c8tiff said:

I tend to agree on the minis and mats sentiment. Not because I feel that I need them, but because of my current gaming group! No matter what setting we play in, they really want to a visual representation of what their characters are doing and where they are in relation to other characters and geographical features. And that could be the fault of the systems we game in, since it's largely Star Wars Saga Edition and Pathfinder (we've done a bit of DnD Next, which I didn't have minis for, and they really balked at it due to that fact).

I'm actually looking forward to not having to rely on minis, and I'm hoping that this edition does an adequate job of it.

All the same, it's nice to have the option of playing with miniature stormtroopers and send them flying with your adjacent Yuzzem figurine.

c8tiff said:

episode 1,2 and 3

thanks, loved the response!!! --- only thing is that eps 1-3 were not a good thing, so they definitely werent more

c8tiff said:

tequila fits as more and more really is not better

"collectable" minis in concealed boxes or "collectable" cards for that matter, do not qualify as good things

(should we high-jack this thread some more???)

I have a LOT of Star Wars minis from WotC's line. For the most part, I purchased the REALLY cheap stuff online, like 15 cents to a dollar per mini, and I tened to get a few of the cheap-cheap ones for mob purposes.

But FFG has been known to make their items TOO good, which means EXPENSIVE. I'd love to play that X-Wing game they have, but 15 dollars per extra TIE fighter? Jesus, I'd hate for that to snap a wing off. In comparison, WotC's starships were not cheap, but made cheap. Demand was an issue, so I'll stick with narrative space combat, but I might throw down a few minis for skirmishes, just to help the players know who's on first, etc. But not for distances, cover, or any of those fiddly-devil-in-the-details,

awayputurwpn said:

Haha - fair enough. Likewise, while it could be interpreted as an insult to say simplistic, it was more in reference to the singular content of the post itself, and was not intended as a reflection of you, the individual. Clearly you're well spoken and fairly intelligent!

awayputurwpn said:

Which I appreciate, but I think when it comes to a property like Star Wars, which while there are certainly sci-fi alternatives, there are few that scratch the same itch.

awayputurwpn said:

Sadly that seems easier said than done… I only need to refer to every major D&D edition release, 40K release, and whatever else us passionate people seem to endlessly debate about.

awayputurwpn said:

The point I'm trying to make is that, while it's easy to say "just play what you want", it can be frustrating when a new edition doesn't scratch an itch and you bow out for the next unforeseeable amount of time. But I also agree with your point that it's too early to tell, and without even a playtest out yet, most of us do not know how this actually feels to play yet.

awayputurwpn said:

Personally, my issue with the 'money grubbing' is that the 40K line is starting to feel like that, and FFG "seems" to be moving towards that model. My issues with it:

- a 3 core line, became 5, and who knows how more.

- Compatible game systems does not mean interroperable and interchangeable.

- Originality in those lines have taken a significant drop

- Proofreading has become ATROCIOUS and the number of basic errors plaguing the later releases is embarassing. When your forum goers offer to proof read your product for free, you know you have a problem.

In other words, my pesonal concerns about their ability to maintain multiple lines successfully without alienating a chunk of their population is based on my legacy as one of their fans, and I haven't even brought up the concerns about whether or not FFG has the rsources to maintain all of these RPG lines (WHFRP I'm looking at you in particular) simultaneously.

But, to each their own. I'm here largely because I want to see how this all pans out before making my ultimate decision to jump on, or off, board. Being able to have a decent dialogue with multiple points of view is a good start.

In Re D&D 1E

UncleArkie said:

Oh, and some people DID ***** mercilessly about the d20 called for in one optional rule. (Well, optional so long as you owned chainmail.) One of them was the esteemed Ken St. Andre. Not only did he gripe, he wrote the first serious contender - Tunnels and Trolls - which still to this day can be played using only d6's, and has one optional table using d100, which fans are still writing replacements for using d6's…

In Re Traveller Beta CD

The T5 Beta CD got you access to the private Beta forums, and while it gets you no discount on the final dead tree. It does get you the final rulebook PDF on either CD or memory stick. In other words, it's a preorder of the final edition PDF, more than a paid beta. Now, the Kickstarter buyers who bought the beta CD get extra swag. I've got the beta CD, and it wasn't worth $30 - but the final PDF will be, as the final book's slated to be a $60 monster, and I've enjoyed being part of the beta discussion. I've also realized that I won't bother trying to run T5 - ever - I detest the mechanics of T4, and T5 is T4 on major detail-steroids.

c8tiff said:

What v1 and V2 say, is that many gamers hate change, especially expensive change (3rd is markedly pricier than 2nd or 1st was). Just look at the brutal edition wars that happen every time a new version of any game comes out, especially when it is buy a new owner of a license. The internet has only made it worse, as it forms a brutal echo chamber where misconceptions and even outright lies can become ingrained into the culture, essentially killing or crippling games before they even launch, or in rarer cases, hyping it to the point that the only possible result of actual play is disappointment. It seems like everything is more extreme at the edges than before (politics and hobbies especially lol), but it is probably just that the internet has given the extremists a really loud voice…

I don't mind the price tag on the Beta book because… well… you ARE getting the entire friggin' game (minus artwork and fluff, but I know enough about the setting to add the fluff myself). I was really looking forward to seeing what FFG would do and now I can… and I can play it… and it only cost me $30. It's a very flexible system and gives great leeway with what I could do with it. I could run a campaign for YEARS on this one book so it will hold me over more than enough until the primary products start hitting the shelf.

In terms of how good it is, I like it… so far. The act of forming die pools seems a bit cumbersome, but I get the impression that it will move pretty quickly once I get the hang of it. Other than that, the act of statting NPCs (and PCs) and running things on the fly takes me back to the days of D6 when you didn't need to worry about the complex character builds and interdependent abilities I got with D20. If I need a character on the fly I can just toss out a few stat numbers, assign some reasonable skills, and boom. The NPC is ready to rock. No fuss over level balance, calculating hit points and defenses, choosing feats, blah, blah, blah. I can go back to GMing the way I used to GM: nothing at the table but a plot sketched out in my brain and a fist full of dice.

aramis said:

As far as miniatures are concerned: I doubt they will be essential, as FFG tends to prefer abstract things instead of concrete, even going as far as denigrating combat maps and the like in WFRP 3rd. However, I would like there to be at least optional "battlemap" rules, or provide more concrete distances so you can work it out yourself. The absract distances in WFRP are… well a bit difficult to keep track of ("So, wait… I am halfway towards being at medium range, yet I am still at long range? And I now need to remember this until next turn?"), and make it harder for players to have a picture in their head of what is going on, except in the most general sense. I don't mind narrative combat, but the WFRP mechanism for that is a weird halfway point, abstract but carefully measured. There were at least a few people trying to work a gridded system onto the WFRP system.

In general, I have mixed opinions about the availability of minatures support in any RPG. I like them to be available, but I don't want the rules to depend on them. D6 was good with this, d20 was not (talents and powers relied too heavily on relationships on a grid to be played without them). So far I think the approach FFG is taking is good (similar to D6). I have tons of Star Wars miniatures (the best thing to come out of WotC's ownership of the line) and I really enjoy using them, but I want to be equally able to completely disregard them if they're a hassle. Taking out any core reliance on them is a cost savings to anyone who doesn't want to spend the money on miniatures needed to represent combat. And there is nothing in the rules that prevents me from using them if I want.

Wow, there is a lot of heat in this thread! I'll throw in my two cents: I'm excited that this is coming out & I really hope that it is good. I think that FFG could have done better on two points. This is OPINION people!

1. Custom dice are always bad. They are gimmicky & annoying. My group are not hard-core gamers. They enjoy RPGs, but have no knowledge of anything that I have not introduced to them. Teaching them "weird dice" will be an added (and unnecessary) difficulty if we try this game. Also, as an experienced gamer, I find that custom dice are not intuitive.

2. I understand that it is hard to cram EVERYTHING into a core book release. I think the product would be better served with a strong core book, and a series of expansions to flesh things out. Chopping the game universe into three seperate chunks doesn't work for me. The way they are doing it, you couldn't even create the classic original "party": Jedi, Core World Noble, Scoundrel, Wookie Muscle/Mechanic. I think that a Star Wars game that doesn't let you follow this basic formula right off the bat is on the wrong track.

One thing that I hope to see is a LOT of playable race options. The Star Wars Revised Edition game was awesome for that!

aramis said:

You still needed to spend money on something else, in this case rules, int the case of star wars dice.

Alpha Chaos 13 said:

That assumes that such a "party" is classic, original, or even part of the "basic formula." If you're referring to Luke, Han, Leia, and Chewie as the template for that core group, well, Luke wasn't even a Jedi (on the level that would be beyond the scope of this release) until Episode VI and they weren't even what I would consider a "party" (i.e. they weren't even in the same room) for but maybe 20 minutes out of the entire original trilogy. They were telling largely individual stories. Heck, almost as much time was spent with Lando in the group. Even if you go beyond the movies and into the EU, you're still looking at the majority of their adventures together taking place between E IV and E V when Luke's abilities as a Force user were far more in line with what we could build using this release.

Again, this boils down to different perspectives of what is "essentially Star Wars." No perspective is wrong, which is kind of the point. They can't please everyone with one release. The scope is just too large. I see the classic party as being Han, Luke, Leia, and Chewie as we see them between Episode IV and V which can easily be built using Edge of the Empire.

Unless they have started giving actual figures for distances it makes it hard to use miniatures and maps. FFG seems very anti-mapped out combat. They stopped explicitly mentioning using miniatures in the 40k RPG line, even though the combat system was originally designed so that it easiest using maps and the like, and starting introducing concepts that were very difficult to map out. Warhammer 3rd edition almost criticises the use of miniatures in RPGs ("Look! This way is just so much better!"). If, like Warhammer, distances are very abstract, and no guidance is given what the various distances represent, it becomes very hard to map things out.

This is not like WEG d6, which gave real life distances and the like, that meant you could very easily convert to a map if you wanted, but didn't require it (unless d&d 4th, which while technically possible without a grid, doing so kind of defeats the sort of problem solving nature of the combat in that system). I am a fan of rules allowing either. Warhammer 3rd doesn't, and unless they have really changed things up, neither will Star Wars.

borithan said:

You are correct that without numerical figures, it is not entirely like D6 (though some of the original D6 did work in range bands and not in numerical ranges; particularly in space combat, but I digress). But this does not prevent the use of miniatures. The range bands are generalize in "a few meters," "a few dozen meters," and "more than a few dozen meters." While this doesn't give you anything exact to go on, it can still be used along with miniatures. "Well, he's about eight inches away so that would still be short range, while this guy is about twenty inches away… that's medium range." In previous editions, most combat that occurred indoors happend at short range anyway. Beyond that, miniatures help in remember where enemies are and who's next to what. Still very possible and useful.

@Borithan, I remember WHF3e's range being handled with tokens between 2 characters. Adjacent stand-ins was melee, one token was close, two was medium, and three was long range. I think it also took as many maneuvers to close a distance equal to the current tokens. So going from long range (3 tokens) to medium costed 3 "move actions," then there would be two tokens so medium range, and you could keep track like that.

Does it not work this way in EotE? 'Cuz I think this would be easy to track, and allow you to use minis, but do it fairly abstractly. I't probably what I'll do.

Oh, I know about the tokens in WFRP. It was the matter of remembering how many manoeuvres were left to get from one thing range band to another. I often just took the fatigue to move one full range band so that I didn't have to bother with remembering "Oh, that's two manoeuvres left before I am at medium range."

my worry, is not that this is a teaser beta, nor the fact that i am paying for it, nor the fact that there is no full blown jedis, species, or planetary system. my worry is not that i or my players have to learn to play with custom dice, or to pay for them. my worry is that is seems to use the core dice mechanic of whfrp 3, which in my region, cannot find players because they feel it isnt roleplay, that it is just descent/doom/gears of war repackaged into a book as star wars or whfrp 3. the players want to describe their actions fully then roll dice, not roll dice which then must be interpreted into a result --- its hard to come up with a reason why their stealth is successful but delayed when they have tried to take all precautions ahead of time

as opposed to mats and minis, most of the players like positioning and using com stations for cover

GoblynByte said:

Split parties do happen, but I will concede the point. That being said, it was an example & I think the option should still be present to the players. As for Luke, I'm thinking in an RPG context, rather than the use of the title "Jedi". I would say that he was a Jedi (character class) in Episode 4, when he left his old life behind & began learning from Kenobi. Luke is a good representation of an RPG character. We meet him at a low level and watch him grow & improve, becoming much more powerful as time goes on. I'd say no other Star Wars character is a better example of an RPGish progression than Luke.

I just love the title of this thread.

I mean, it is so darn slippery. I would love to know exactly who "we" is. Does the OP mean himself and me? Or himself and other people? Does he mean the entire Star Wars RPG community? Or does he mean players of only the most recent game?

I don't know! It's madness!

It would probably be more clear and sensible if he'd titled it "Is this the Star Wars Roleplaying game I'm looking for?" Now at first you might think, that's a rhetorical question, and really only the OP could decide that for himself. But, I can see it working if you frame the thing in the context of an effort to solicit opinions from those of us who actually have the book and have spent some time reading over it.

Or perhaps he could have gone the other way and titled the thread "Is this the Star Wars Roleplaying game you're looking for?", in which case it would have been more like a poll, in which each forum user could explain why he or she is or is not looking forward to the game.

But instead, we get this undefined "we," which has a potentially massive scope. And of course, this invites everyone to enter into a sort of gladitorial contest where the weapons are words and the prize is the right to speak for "we". No wonder the result is 6 pages (and counting!) of heated exchanges.

See, this is a marvelous example-in-microcosm of everything that is wrong with modern internet forum communication, and how text on a page can rarely presnet context, imiplication and tone in any adequate way. I just think it's equal parts fascinating and amusing.

So let me close by answering this very open-ended question my way.

QUESTION: "Is this the Star Wars Roleplaying game we're looking for?"

ANSWER: "I guess everyone will have to decide that for themselves."

*waves hand understatedly*

"This isn't the Star Wars roleplaying game you're looking for."