I loved the old West End Games D6 Star Wars RPG. I played it with friends every second Sunday (every other Sunday was D&D) for years. It was wonderfully easy to understand and play and the sourcebooks were superb.

I bought the WotC Star Wars RPG but never got around to playing it. It did not seem as easy to understand or play, but I loved their Star Wars minis skirmish game and have hundreds of Stormtroopers.

How do you rate this new Star Wars RPG compared to the above RPGs or other RPGs? Is it smooth and easy to run or burdensome and difficult to understand? Does it capture the feel of the Star Wars universe?

I never got the chance to play the West End version, but I did play briefly in SAGA edition. SAGA edition is a decent game and you can have a lot of fun with it, but there was this feeling of "too many chefs in the kitchen" with having an ensemble cast. You'd think it would be fine considering the plot of the original trilogy but it's a bit of a mess in practise. I'm sure with a better GM we would have had a more cohesive game but it seemed like the one we had dealt with a lot of difficulty in tying all these mismatched characters into one story. That and the Jedi was a showboat because his powers were FAR too useful. That said SAGA is a fine system.

When WFRP3e came out, I was in the camp of people recoiling in horror. After playing it I still didn't think it was a proper WarHammer game but I felt that the system was a really novel idea that would cater to a very cinematic game (which, to be fair, WarHammer fits that bill). The dice that I scoffed at first were neat in play (even if the idea of "storytelling" was completely lost due to "count the symbols to pay for this card's ability") and the abstracted mechanics really allowed for more handwaving for the sake of a good story.

When I heard this star Wars game was going to use a system very similar to WFRP3e I was pretty excited because the Star Wars story seemed like a perfect fit for the cinematic action of the gameplay. The icing on the cake so far has been that the focus of the game is more streamline so groups feel a lot more logical and connected, the Obligation system is great, and even the way the dice are used have been tweaked to better serve story. It looks like FFG took what they learned from WFRP3e and applied it to SW, streamlining the mechanics and ditching the billions of tiny cards, and kudos to them because it's shaping up nicely. Am I going to say this is the BEST Star Wars game? No, because without playing the West End games I feel like it would be ignorant to make such a claim, but I will say that so far this seems a lot easier, more fluid, and overall more fun than SAGA edition.

Stormtrooper721 said:

It's qutie smooth and very easy for GMs to run, once you get used to the specialized dice, which in most cases really doesn't take all that long, anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour at most.

It's a bit more complicated than the SWD6, with the addition of talents, talent trees, and the career/non-career skill costs, but nowhere near as complicated as any of the SWd20 games; as streamlined as Saga Edition made things, it's still a d20 game at heart and comes with a certain amount of crunchiness both in terms of combat and character stats, though it's far better than the OCR/RCR versions.

Prep work for a GM is far and away much simpler than the d20 systems, with D6 only being easier for on-the-fly minor NPCs due to difference in how their dice pools are calculated.

As for the "feel" of the Star Wars universe… I've been playing Star Wars RPGs for over a decade and a half, and the "Star Wars feel" is an incredibly subjective thing. What I consider the "feel" of Star Wars could be vastly different than what you and your group consider to be the "feel" of Star Wars. The action is pretty quick, and once your group starts getting a handle on the Advantage/Threat mechanics, turns will go by pretty quickly, as players will be able to call out results and tell you how they're going to spend any Advantages they have.

I have played or ran every version of Star Wars since it became a role-playing game and I was for resistant to purchase the Beta version but once I looked over the Beginner Game and looked at all the updates to the Beta, I am very impressed with what FFG is doing to the game as they did listen to the Players and threw the WEG and WOTC versions together to get a very impressive game system together.

A couple Days ago, I was looking for a BETA edition book but no one had one until I went and picked up the beginner game from my gaming store and happened to come across a Beta Edition and am now Really happy to have the original book. Order 66 podcast is even on board for this system which makes me even more excited for this system as Order 66 podcast supports the Star Wars System and even has writing guests that talk about the system and you can even throw questions their way and will listen to your experiences with the system, so check them out every week-end. I would highly recommend this game system to any star Wars gamers out there.

Stormtrooper721 said:

I, too, love the WEG d6 Star Wars. I prefer, in play, the dice mechanics of Edge, by a small margin. The feel is right akin to WEG's d6.

Edge is as smooth to run, and as easy to run. The big brain-change is the two-axis results, instead of single: axis 1 is success/failure, axis 2 is advantage/threat. It's possible to fail the stated task, yet accomplish some related effect, or to accomplish a primary task but fail to get the advantage needed for the secondary effect desired.

Combat is more abstract than WEG-SW, so description needs to be more consistently used by all involved. The dice mechanics really do help with that, tho', by having those two axies of results.'

Where d6 has it over Edge at the moment : More flexible Character generation. Better scaling rules. Jedi Rules. Actual support for playing active duty campaigns.

Where EOTE has it over d6: It's in print. Two axis results. Much stronger archetypes. No dice notation as an ability rating to confuse transfer-in from other RPG's.† Component/book layout.

Note that later books in the line are expected to add way more options. I really look forward to the Jedi corebook. Which will be the make-or-break point for me.

†As an aside, One guy, after a very patient explanation that the skills in WEG are all rated in dice, methodically went and rolled to a static number every ability on the sheet. Then, couldn't grasp that, no, there are no fixed ratings, the die code IS the actual rating. It took him 3 sessions to grasp the method. And he wasn't dumb - IQ in the 120's, SAT's in the 1500 range - but he was mentally rigid and had started with D&D…

I can't really say yet. I own a ton of West End books and played the heck out of it. Once FFG puts out a few more books for this system I will be able to say, but I like what I see so far. This system seems closer to West End games than to the D20 version.

Hi,

I've played Star Wars D6 since it's inception and have played through a campaign of WFRP3. I've also played the Star Wars D20 variants.

Those other Star Wars games are much more precise in actions and especially movement. Edge of the Empire allows for a more narrative take on encounters while still leaving enough dice rolling for the old school gamer.

While the two systems are have their differences EotE still has Attributes & Skills making them pretty similar in that repect. The difference is in how they are applied.

I think it's a system I could get used to. Some games have a feel to them; D6 had it but it's something the D20 & RCRB game were lacking. The EotE Beginners set certainly has a great feel for being Star Wars. It does seem like a game that I'm going to play. A lot.

Agree with ugavine,

The system is a great balance between narrative style and rules weighted games.

Common ground can be found with little effort since this fits somewhere in the middle.

There are alot of options for character advancement and though you advance in carreers you don't feel as forced as a say class based d20.

It feels more be what you want to be like in d6, at least as long as you stick to 2 or 3 core specialites. But really in d6 if you spread to thin its counter productive anyway so ends up about the same.

The edge that the new rules have over d6 is the talent trees that really lets you tweak the feel and abilities of your character.

Any carreer can learn any skill but the the techie will be able work faster, in worse conditions, and with fewer tools than the highly skilled but untalented hired gun for example.

The other thing that Edge has over d6, is how force powers work, while not the focus of the game at this point the way you gather and use force is brilliantly done and feels perfect. the slide to the darkside tempatation that d6 had but d20 never really got just right. You basicaly role for whats available then can use dark side points if you want. the way the dice are set up you are more likely to get dark side points than light side, even though the number of pips of each color are the same on the die. You advance your talents along a tree like everyone else.

It remains to be seen if jedi become broken as in d20 and d6, but since the non force types can invest in talents and gain abilities that are usefull the gap should be somewhat smaller. At least for edge of the empire purposes.

What Edge has over d20 at least for now is that the talents are laid out clearly and dovetail very well with the rules. so while you have more things to pick from than even d20 it not cumbersome to track them and add them to your character like it can be with d20. They are also described more loosly if they let you do something cool so it is easier to apply them broadly without getting bogged down in minutia.

Same with the rules overall, it is much easier to eyeball difficults and build the roll on the fly than d20 (assuming you bother with all the modifiers d20 provides) but its done in a logical fashion so it doesn't feel to handwavy. This keeps things moving very fast once everyone understand how the dice work which really doesn't take that long once you start playing.

Art and layout wise the quality blows d6 and d20 away.

I have played in the old days the d6 from west end games, both player and gm. Also played as gm the wotc d20 system. My fav was always the d6 system. As has been stated it was easy to understand, and the source books at the time filled that need for EU stuff since there wasnt yet much EU out.

The new EOTE custom dice system i must say is awesome. I wish there was some ways to convert my old books to this but i guess ill have to just wait till they come out with their own source books. I am very much hoping they do. As a gm its allot of fun running the premade adventures they have in the beginner game and the free download. Im really hoping they will continue to give us new adventures maybe monthly or bi monthly. Or at the very least new premade adventures in the new source books that come out.

I enjoy creating adventures but lately just dont have the time to do so. The premades made it easy on me as a gm and instead of needing tons of prep work and trial and error runs.

Also the custom dice are great once u learn them. The only thing im still having a hard time with as a gm is figuring out some of the dice pools for certain npcs that are listed differently then others in the book. Like some have them with the dice and then others have skills listed but no dice pools and some dont even have ranks on the skills. But then ive only run one session so far so well see with more study.

But yeah dude i highly recomend it.

yagyu said:

There is a conversion thread for D6 to EOTE in the General discussion section of the EOTA BETA board. If you haven't checked it out already here is a link : http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=319&efcid=46&efidt=751947 . Hope that helps.