I ran a demo of the Edge of the Empire for the Dragon's Lair store in Austin, TX. Here is some of the feedback that I got from the players (had 2 tables of 6 people each).

Likes

• Cooperative Skill Challenges - I noticed that the rules were flexible enough to allow for "Skill Challenges" where they could assist the main Negotiator in getting the best price for the mission with information from other sources (Once character was slicing the Holonet for the best prices for the item with others were looking for Heat on the item with Perception and Streetwise). The flexibility made it so that everyone felt they were contributing and helping with the story.
• Initiative - People at first hated the idea. They did not like that it was not individual initiative until they got into a situation where they needed to go in an order that would of meant they would of lost their cargo if someone did not go first. Initiative is something that I think took a while for them to get use to it but in the end they really like the flexibility.
• Role Playing - They loved how they could use the Advantages and Threats to tell a story or make things happen. Like one person used a Triumph to add a crate of power packs near a group of warehouse security and the next person shot the crate and knocked out all the warehouse security. It made for a fun time (especially when one of the players I used his 5 Threats to make him have a withdraw from the drugs he was on and he played it up pawing all of his teammates for a fix… just a little fix).

Fixes

• Starting Attributes/Characteristic - Everyone agreed that using XP on raising Attributes was very tough and made it so that they would have no skills or talents. They would of liked to see everyone start with 1-2 free characteristic upgrades and then use XP as normal or raise the XP by 20-40 xp to allow them create the character they wanted.
• New Dice - Everyone was afraid of the dice. They did not understand the symbols or why they would roll certain dice. After about 10 rolls of the dice people started picking it up but for new groups this really slowed down play and the action till they got use to the dice. I think if you would have a section in the book of a little game play that might help people understand the dice better before their first game. 3 of the 6 people that had bought the book before the demo and read over the rule, etc. were confused about the dice.
• Hard for Kids - I also ran a demo for a group that had 3 kids and 2 parents. I did find that kids had a hard time with the advantages and setbacks or understanding when to use the destiny dice to help them. I think it is because of the free form that you allow in the game it is hard for younger kids so maybe this will be addressed in the beginners' box.
• Career/Spec - People like them but felt they were confining. Some people would rather see the Shadowrun style of skills but I think that is because they dumped more XP into attributes and did not get any of the Spec's Talents. Again I think people would enjoy the Specs if they had more XP to spend at that beginning.

This was just my initial feedback from my first runs. I will run it some more and get you some more feedback.

For someone who has not played yet, a hearty thank you for taking the time to make notes (?) during play so you could post this here.

jyanta said:

You brought up some good points, but I kinda want to focus a bit on these three in particular.

For Initiative, it is a bit odd, since for most games, the guy that rolled highest is the one that gets to go first, and not every gamer is quite so willing to give up "their spot" for somebody else. I'm glad that your group came around to the notion, since as you said that added degree of flexibility can be very helpful if it's absolutely critical for a specific PC to act to avoid an unfavorable outcome. One of the character's I've played (a Force-Sensitive Smuggler/Scoundrel), I tend to get the top results thanks to having bumped Willpower, a rank in Vigilance,and the Uncanny Reactions talent, but several times let another PC (typically the pilot) act first so that he could put some distance between us and the pursuing bad guys.

On the topic of Starting Characteristics, while I like the idea of being able to customize one's characteristics, I think there is too much player focus on "rolling as many dice as possible" and thus dumping all their starting XP into characteristics rather than buying skills and talents, and currently the math seems to validate that mind-set, even if it does have aspects of "gaming the system." However, I don't think extra XP would really work to solve the issue, as it'd probably just lead to players dumping those extra points into even more characteristics.

In the past, I've put forth the idea of giving each PC a small pool of non-stacking +1 boosts (at least 2, 3 at the most) that could be used to increase Characteristics, but with the caveat that the listed staring XP be halved. However, I'm rethinking that, and maybe instead of halving the staring XP (of which it seems the developers intended for players to spend at least half of it on raising characteristics), reduce it by a quarter, rounded down to the nearest increment of 10. And with the +1 characteristic boosts being non-stacking, you avoid having Wookiees or Trandos with a staring Brawn of 5.

Unless they are spending enough XP to get Characteristics up to 3 or 4, then they aren't going to get more dice from high Characteristics over skills. Rolling 2 Proficiency dice is better than rolling 1 Proficiency, 1 Ability (from having a 2/1 Characteristic/Skill or Skill/Characteristic). And getting the Characteristics up that high is expensive. From 2 to 4 is 70 of the starting XP. I think the problem is the realization that unlike other systems, raising Characteristics in this system is not as helpful as getting skills up and getting those Talents.

I was one of the players in his game, and my biggest gripe with the XP was trying to get two characteristics at 3 as a Human. I was trying for Willpower and Presence, b/c my idea was an ex-squad leader type (Hired Gun: Merc, with the Field Commander talent) who was "extremely lucky" when dealing with people (IE, Foce-Sensitive Exile with the Influence power that lets you treat light side dots as successes on interaction rolls).

Maybe I was trying to do too much at once, but with the limited XP given, I felt a bit constrained. In the end, I dropped the Force-Sensitive spec because I needed the XP for skills and such. If we just got two floating, non-stacking +1s to characteristics, it would have solved my problems.

-EF

EldritchFire said:

I do think this was a case of trying to do too much all at once with a beginning character, and that is going to be an issue with just about any point-buy system, as rarely do you have "enough points" to cover everything you want your character to be good at.

I've seen this come up numerous times with HERO/Champions and Mutants & Masterminds, where a player has a high-minded concept, but simply lack enough points to pull it off, having to either load up on disadvantages or sacrifice key elements of their concept to fit within the character point budget provided.

About the only other solution is for the individual GM to provide more starting XP for their players. Perhaps a sidebar in the GM section about creating/starting PCs out with more XP than the default amount? It's kind of what I've done for the few high-level stress test sessions I've run, simply having the proto-PCs built using the regular starting XP budget as normal for character generate, and then giving them a host of additional XP (anywhere from 200 to 300 additional XP), which was then spent on skills, talents, additional specs, and Force powers as desired.

Regarding increasing the amount of starting XP for players, I have run three games so far, all at varying levels. One was a base XP game and it was a one shot demo that turned out pretty well. Most of the players felt good, even with a lower amount of skills and talents, though if you plan right and do not raise starting characteristics, skills and talents can go far I found. Also, the Adversary talent makes it so easy to create NPC's, even high XP cost NPCs. The second game was for my regular group of players with about 60 extra XP. All but one player dumped their points into skills and talents. One, who played a Bodyguard Ranged Heavy type dumped his points into raising his Agility to 5. In the subsequent games, he added more skills to build up his proficiency dice, which he found to be most useful. But we were play testing and I wanted to see how this worked anyways. Regardless, all the players had a blast and loved the dice mechanic and narrative style play. They were bothered by the change in spec costs in later updates, but otherwise are fine with the rules and the action. The last game I ran was for most of the same group of players at about 400 starting Xp, making them the equivalent of multiple Nemeses. Each had a couple of 4's in Characteristics and at least one 5 in skills plus more than one got to the bottom rung of talents (which you can almost do with a base character if you get really nothing but talents). They were a Rebel Spec Ops team operating in the Outer Rim, and were able to do a great deal with their skill sets, as one might imagine. Regardless, with decent henchman and nemeses, they were still taking damage, and I have found Space Combat to be a little more of a level playing field, with the PC's always taking more damage (or my dice rolls are just luckier in Space Combat… I can be a streaky GM). Overall, I enjoyed all three games, as did the players, so I think varying XP levels are a great thing and can work depending on the work your GM and players are willing to do. With the way NPC's are constructed, you get a fair idea of how to balance the player group, especially now after 5 game sessions, I can usually stat some encounters on the fly if need be. The only thing I am still getting used to is the Force related rules, only because I have only had one player run a Force Exile, and that was with the first set of rules. In all, I think this is an excellent game with great potential and my players have thoroughly enjoyed themselves, probably not as much since the halcyon days of the D6 era. I certainly feel that way as a GM. I hope FFG continues their great support so far with their updates and response to our feedback and really looking forward to what the future holds for the game.

jedimerc said:

If they had a couple of 4s in their Characteristics, then they spent more on those than they should have been able to. I can't think of any race that provides 140XP to start off with. This also continues the illusion that Characteristics are what they need to be bumping up, rather than spending that XP on secondary Specializations, skills and other Talents.

I think it would be better if they built a starting character and then were handed the rest of the XP to upgrade from.

jedimerc said:

If they had a couple of 4s in their Characteristics, then they spent more on those than they should have been able to. I can't think of any race that provides 140XP to start off with. This also continues the illusion that Characteristics are what they need to be bumping up, rather than spending that XP on secondary Specializations, skills and other Talents.

I think it would be better if they built a starting character and then were handed the rest of the XP to upgrade from.

I thought about that option as well, but I was interested in seeing how it would play out with those characteristics. I will try it the other way next time and see how it pans out. Thanks for the feedback.

Once I played with open initiative, I never wanted to play it any other way.