OK, this is where I'm coming from:

I've played D&D, AD&D AD&D2, and DD4 (plus a handfull of RPG in the '80-'90).

The main issue I had with DD4, was the amount of time an encouter would take. We ended up running 2 encouters per evening, and the game wasn't progressing unless we played all evening for months. (ok, a bit exagerated, but still…)

My main question is for those who played the Beginner's box OR the Beta:

How long does an average encouter takes to run through? Is it something like 30 minutes, or closer to 2 hours?

I'm curious as well. The system seems to have the same roots as Warhammer 3rd, which once you got used to tracking your cooldowns ran rather quickly due to high damage low health characters. The big problem was all those cooldowns and tracking tokens. Star wars doesn't seem to have that from the previews I've seen though so I'm hopeful.

Combat encounters in this game are pretty quick, especially once everyone gets the hang of the assembling the dice pools and interpreting the symbols. Most encounters in the dozen or so game sessions I've played in take less than 30 minutes, particularly if you've got at least one character that is really combat-savvy.

If you've played any of the d20 versions, combat in EotE moves much quicker and smoother than those systems, even when the PCs have racked up a few hundred XP compared to high-level d20 characters.

Combat is about as fast as WEG's 2E, perhaps a bit faster.

Character gen is quick, but not as fast as WEG.

I can't really compare to WOTC's editions - while I have the core books, I've not run them. (I burned out on d20 during the T20:Traveller's Handbook playtest.)

I'm curious as well. The system seems to have the same roots as Warhammer 3rd, which once you got used to tracking your cooldowns ran rather quickly due to high damage low health characters. The big problem was all those cooldowns and tracking tokens. Star wars doesn't seem to have that from the previews I've seen though so I'm hopeful.

None to track! Thus no slowdown to track them!

In my experience with the beta, once the players got a handle on the dice (as noted above), the combat flew by. I've never played a star wars rpg (and I have played them all), where it went this quickly. A good GM, and BAM, it feels like the movies, minus the whiney jedi).

Hope it helps,

Mac

Thanks, this is what I'm looking for! Thanks for all your answers, I'll be testing the game on Friday, so I'm looking forward to see how it goes!

aljovin said:

Chris Witt aka GM Chris of the Order 66 podcast recording a live-play session of EotE, which you can listen to here:

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Order66/~3/7vKM08ng9hE/episode1.mp3

Bear in mind two important details.

First, this is a Skype game, so none of the players are interacting face-to-face, and Skype being Skype lead to people's voices occasionally cutting in and out, as well as some lag issues with Roll20, which was used to provide the players with a map to better enable them to visualise where their characters and other NPCs were when necessary.

Second, Chris had none of the handy hand-outs that the Beginner Box came with, though he did provide them with a reference sheet that forum-user Gribble created.

Even though the only player with experience with EotE was Sterling Hershey, the rest of them caught on fairly quickly, and by the end of the episode, were quite adept at calculating their dice pools and calling out the results. So I'd imagine the second half of this adventure, we'll see combats move far more quickly.