I've seen references to the release of two additional Star Wars games on the next few years from FFG. In these references they are sometimes referred to as stand alone products. Does this just mean each can be played stand alone but can also expand and compliment eachother or are they intended as entirely separate systems? Is it likely they will be intended to occur during the same time frames as well or could those be rather different creating potential thematic conflicts if trying to incorporate things from one of the later books?

ShiKage said:

Given the Age of Rebellion and Force & Destiny books have been described as "core rulebooks," I'd say those are standalone products, much like White Wolf's original World of Darkness corebooks were generally standalone books, But like those books, as well as the WH40K books that FFG has produced, there will be at least some level of complimentary interaction between the three, so that you can have EotE PCs working alongside AoR and F&D PCs. It may be akin to the WH40K line where PCs from the prior supplements are considered a bit "weaker" than those in the most recent supplements, but I imagine you would be able to have minor Jedi and other Force-users fighting alongside Rebel agents and Outer Rim fringe types.

As for the time frame, the blurbs from FFG strongly indicate they are going to be set primarily during the classic Rebellion Era. Once the Jedi book gets released, FFG may decide to do supplements focused on running campaigns in other eras, such as that of the SW:TOR MMO or New Jedi Order/Legacy eras, but such things would be easy enough for fans to do on their own.

Donovan Morningfire said:

If you compare the release date of the 3rd Core book (2015) to the speculated release of Episode VII (2015), it indicates to me FFG may be planning on delving into a completely new era in 2016?

Donovan Morningfire said:

This is what I am kind of expecting as well, and hoping for. Though, perhaps, with a little more complimentary cohession than the original World of Darkness games. Sure, you could get them to work together but sometimes it was quite the headache. The newer World of Darkness rules do make things a little more baseline across all of their products which are basically stand alone products as well. I'd love to see the option where someone's smuggler could later become part of the rebelion and pick up some training in more militant style specializations as a pilot or officer perhaps or where someone's very meager force user exile could hone his skills further. And selling them as stand alone products that happen to be able to work together also lets those people that just want to focus on a rebellion based story with rebellion characters do so with only the one product.

Sturn said:

Could very well be. Could also depend on the state of the licnese when 2015 rolls around. There's been some speculation that if Star Wars once again becomes a hot commodity from a table-top gaming perspective, WotC may very well throw a ton of money at LucasFilm/Disney to try and get the rights back, particularly if FFG's license is only for 5 years, figuring it started in 2010 given remarks by other RPG companies about not being able to secure rights in that time frame. If that's the case, it may go out to bid in 2015, and if it all comes down to money, then WotC's going to be tough to beat given the 800 lbs. gorilla that is Dungeons & Dragons. Personally, I'd rather the license stick with FFG, as WotC would probably do what they did with the OCR/RCR versions and make a Star Wars RPG that's just an offshoot of whatever version of D&D they're publishing at the time.

I also would hope FFG has this for the long haul. I ran a SAGA campaign that probably would have lasted much longer if I had been using this system.

I have my fingers crossed that the 3 core books will contain the exact same rule system. I don't understand at all why they wouldn't do otherwise. For each book to be a slightly different game system would be a mess. What seems sensible is that each core book is just a repeat of the same narrative system plus new chapters regarding a different setting. So, in Force & Destiny you would have identical chapters from Edge of the Empire for "Playing the Game", "Conflict and Combat", and "The Game Master". Possibly some updates due to errata, but otherwise the same exact chapters. What would be changed are new chapters on "Creating a Character" (new Jedi classes, removal of Edge classes such as Bounty Hunter, Smuggler, etc), "Gear" (repeats of the basic gear, removal of Edge stuff such as Slicer Gear, but add different types of Lightsabers), etc, etc. Instead of having the typical rules-heavy-light-setting core book plus supplements of "The Force", "Soldier's Field Manual", and "Smugglers & Slicers", we instead have 3 core books with the same information spread between them.

Stand alone… or Complumentary… Answer is YES and YES.

They have stated continually and in MULTIPLE places (like the announcement Keynote at GenCon last year) the mechanics are all related and part of a larger system, but may be used seperate as stand alone games.

It dawned on me that people may not be familiar with the "WH40K universe" line. This is what FFG does and does well. So, I'm expecting to see a bit of the same relationship between the Core books' themes.

I'd expect to see the most rules disconnects with respect to the Force. Namely, most all of the general rules from EotE may continue, but once that Force-user Core Book comes out, it'll be an entire book expanding on what currently exists as one single esoteric talent tree within EotE. That's not to say that the rules will be completely alien; but it will be doing things with Force-powers that EotE's Force-sensitive Exile can't even dream about doing.

And for my $0.02, I'm hoping they're more WEG than WotC regarding the power imbalance of skilled Force-users.

I've said this before, I personally don't think there will be any issue at all in making they systems work together. The reason being, is we have all the mechanics down, to change them between systems would be ridiculous. The only difference all three books will have will be the feel. We have the scum and villainy feeling setting coming soon.

Age of Rebellion, is going to have new classes, most likely broken down the same way we've already seen, BUT, they will have a military feel. I expect to see Fighter pilots, Officers, Commandos, etc. There will most likely be rules for large scale combat and/or for running a fighter squadron. We'll see rules for capital ship combat, possibly rules for the players being in charge of a large ship playng the command staff. Or even operating as a rebel cell. The classes (and specializations) will have many of the existing talents, possibly with a few more that lead to a military feel. I'd expect a fighter pilot to have less daring maneuvers than the smuggler's pilot tree, and more squad formations and such - I really thing the Age of Rebellion will focus the players on being a member of a squad such as the infamous Rogue Squadron. Hopefully we'll get a small section in the book about running an imperial viewpoint game (Marek Steele from TIE Fighter anyone?)

Force and Destiny is the trickiest of the three to add in, but I think the FFG would have learned from some of the issues they've had with scaling from the 40k books. Once again, this is my viewpoint only, but I feel that a Jedi is not inherantly more powerful than any other character in Star Wars - that is even including the prequels and EU. They aren't, with the exception of a few characters (Mainly Skywalkers). The difference a Fully trained Jedi has is just that, their training. A Jedi starts training from a VERY young age. To put it simply, I think that the Force and Destiny book will put a new character with just the xp from their race as a padawan type character. I'm thinking that this game will focus on being a disciple of a more powerful force user, whether it is a Jedi or a Dathomir Witch, you will be an apprentice. This gives you a story based reason to be a lower level character, and will make the game mesh easier with the previous books. A Jedi that survived order 66 wouldn't be more powerful, just have a lot more experience under his belt and that's what makes a fully trained jedi seem powerful, their training. Yes, they have access to the force, but they have to spend experience to use it.

I also think that Force and Destiny will expand the force power trees. The cost per tier go like this: 0-5-5-10-10. I'd expect we get 15-15-20-20-25-25 as well. Making extremly powerful force users, but you have to spend a hell of a lot of experience go get that. Also, adding in a full blow Jedi to an existing game can be scaled by the number of experience points said new jedi character starts with 100 (from race) being padawan level to 500 being that of Obi-Wan as a full Jedi Knight, circa the Clone Wars animates series. If a group has been running a long running campaign over the three years, they could easily have a really high experience point count, so adding a Jedi with lots of force powers will be compatible, by said jedi having to have spent his experience on those powers with a sacrifice of other talents. Makes every character be on equal footing. The jedi could be more powerful but focused, while other characters could very well be more versatile.

If things were done this way, it would make the games feel unique, without a character from any one book overshadowing one from another. Not to mention, we'll get new gear/creatures/and possibly new rules in each book that can expand the capabilites and scope of the game. After all, we've seen in the movies where a scoundrel just trying to get money becomes a general and leader in the Rebellion, and a farm boy go from being on a planet farthest from the bright shining centre of the galaxy to the Leader of the reborn Jedi Order… well maybe. We'll see if the EU gets tossed out by disney.

That's pretty much the sense I get as well. Well said.

Donovan Morningfire said:

I hope Wotc stay away, all 3 D20 rulesets are pretty bad. We run a D20 revised campaign right now and it worked excellent for the first 5 levels or so but after that all none Jedis became so powerless that even my Mandalorian bountyhunter is really weak in comparision and the rest are close to useless.

Edge of the empire seems pretty good to me though, after trying the beginners box and beta books. But then again, the Jedi book might make the fist 2 more or less useless in groups, but I hope FFG are a little better on balance.

Pour Le Merite said:

That has pretty much happened in all the Star Wars RPGs so far. And, er, I don't have any real reason to suspect this time will be any different.

Indeed, I think that this time around they have noticed that none of the previous attempts at balancing Jedi have worked to many peoples satisfaction, and that their 'New Approach' to the problem is to split Jedi and non-Jedi in to their own games, which can then be the best **** Jedi games and the best non-Jedi games they can do.

(And I am not sure balancing Jedi would even be appreciated by many. DnD 4th made an attempt to fix the problem that Wizards were better than everyone else at high level, and it turned out that the Wizard players LIKED being better than everyone else at high level. They felt it was their right. So much so that last I looked DnD next was trying to bring back overpowered wizards at high levels (I haven't been following for a while, so I don't know what the current state of the discussion is).

Similarly, Ars Magica was created to try and let Wizard players make the Wizards they really wanted to. It is done by having everyone play a Wizard with fantastic cosmic powers, and also have some non Wizard characters who take care of the other stuff.)

100% agree with Samophlange above. But as I have stated before, FFG has basically SAID that is how it is going to boil down. I am not sure why there is all this speculation.

As for the force powers, they are already a bit nutty powered even with Exiles. My campaign was converted from the WEG d6 system. We oddly chose to go with this "crimial idea" for our campaign 9 months before EotE was even announced. One of our characters is an escaped agent from The Emperor's Hand. In the old campaign his only real power was Force Jump and tossing Medium objects around… no saber, etc.

Since we had already been running the campaign, I tossed around some extra XP, so we already were hopped up a bit… and this guy is picking up stormtroopers 2 at a time and tossing them at each other taking out 3-4 at a time. Talk about cinmematic! It is like watching someone play a video game.