Love some of the speculation both for and against. I think FFG designers know very well how Force powers will work. I just don't think all of them have been vetted yet as I think they are still in the playtest stage. Except for the three we got in the beta. Plus I think there are many talents being designed and vetted which will accompany the powers. On top of all that they are working on Age of Rebellion, wanting it to be ready to come out next year, as is their wish. I also think lessons were learned from the 40K line and they went into this with a little more fore-knowledge. Certainly the Jedi have the potential to be uber, but I will hold off saying whether they will or not until I actually see something.

But please, feel free to whine, naysay or share conspiracies as they are always entertaining.

mouthymerc said:

That's it right there. FFG isn't maliciously 'keeping' Jedi from players' hands, they're just trying to make three games that all work harmoniously together. That's a tall order.

People will have their Jedi game. In two years. FFG have been nothing but transparent about their intentions, and complaining about a no-Jedi rulebook (in the Rebellion era, no less), is akin to walking into a movie theatre and screaming, "why isn't Episode VII playing??"

Two years seems like an awfully long time to wait for Jedi. People are clearly interested in playing Jedi sooner than that, so isn't there something that can be done to move them forwards and get Jedi in to peoples hands on a shorter timeframe?

Something has been done. Our good friend Donovan Morningfire has developed a rather in-depth force supplement , I suggest you check it out. If it's not what you're looking for, there are a number of other fan-made supplements out there. You could even try making your own system and rules.

FFG isn't going to move on their stance, and complaining isn't going to help, especially when it's been done to death.

ErikB said:

No.

FFG are not running on your timetable. While many people want to play Jedi, only some are impatient and want them now rather than when FFG have them planned. Sales will determine whether their course is working for them, not a few people demanding Jedi now rather than later.

mouthymerc said:

+1 I will.

It seems some people are nothing but inconsiderate and self-absorbed, and would rather whine about not getting specifically what they want, rather than being happy for actually getting a SW rpg. It shows a distinct lack of respect and appreciation, it is childish and douchy. You should be ashamed of yourself and your humongous egos.

One of the wonders of RPGs is also to challenge oneself, to test and play different roles, different styles of games and stories - look upon this as an opportunity to test your roleplaying capabilities, expand your limits and be something more than a robed glowstick toting hippy-gone-paladin. If that is too hard and difficult too bad, try anyway or play computer games instead if the difficulty persists and you cannot bring yourself to have fun in new ways.

I don't buy any of the era arguments, those limitations are not set in stone, they are put there by the players/GMs themselves. It's invalid and poor arguments trying to obscure the fact that they'd rather play a different era, because they can be Jedi (which is a fair desire), also/or it betrays a distinct lack of creativity to play with what you've got. It has nothing to do with "being the centre of the story" or whatever, that is just a steaming pile of

I can't help but notice that people find it much easier to tell other people to STFU when they already have theirs.

You guys might really enjoy playing Jedi if you were willing to give it a go…

I can't help to notice you ignore most of what people write, either intentionally or because you lack basic reading skills.

Playing Jedi can be fun, and challenging, but so can smuggler, bounty hunter, explorers, any other type of character. That is the point some people on here is trying to make, but is constantly ignore by the "but… meh… but me wanna play 90s rave paladin with glowstick"-crowd. Sure Jedi is fun, challenging and cool, no one is denying that, wherever you get that notion I have no idea, but its not from these boards, not if you can read. I'd love a all-in-one game, but its not what we're getting. Tough. Instead of whinig and being a nuisance and all self-absorbed about not getting what I want, I adapt and will try it this way, which so far has met with great success in my group. Many of whom have played Jedi in earlier campaigns of the perverted d20 nature.

Stop being a child and act up, take it like a grown up and either wait, impatiently, or try something new, try to enjoy it. If you need a glowstick for it to be fun, I think you're doing something wrong, but then I have a pragmatic and open view of what roleplaying is (compared to some at least), can be and I intentionally want to enjoy it, to have fun, regardless of trivila details like class options, types of dice or whatnot. It's the joint storytelling, the collaborative art of improvising, sharing and creating stories, narratives, events … its these things that - to me - is roleplaying. Not porting swtor to around my table with friends trying to reproduce the flashiness and monotonous swish-bang of computer game combat. It's story. Now Jedi opens for great stories! Awesomesauce-stories, but so does exploration, non-jedi untrained force sensitives (which are in the game already!) discovering old ruins on Ossus (before Luke rediscovers it in Dark Empire 1 or 2), bounty hunting, smuggling, heists, climbing the corporate ladder in some crime organisation, and so on. Great stories, Star Wars stories, in no need of glowsticks - except for the non-lethal kind when entering dark ruins on some desolate world long forgotten.

ErikB said:

Once again, there are multiple force supplements out there, why not give them a go? Or, as I said before, make your own to suit what you're looking for.

Besides, you might really enjoy NOT playing Jedi if you were willing to give it a go…

ErikB said:

Personally, I am waited with bated breath for that book to come out. I have a lot more ideas for what I could do with heavy force users than I do for fringers. I just don't demand that the world (let alone a business) to turn around my wants.

This isn't an argument about "haves" vs "have nots." It is about people being patient vs impatient.

Protege said:

I agree that this is a valid concern. It's not easy to design a system that has melee, ranged, and magic (the Force) all working smoothly in combat. It's even harder when some of those features (Force and melee) have to work in conjunction. Then throw in game balance that meets with the expectations from years of showing these powers and such in print, TV and film, and it's no simple task.

The WHFRPG does a pretty good job but it benefits from not having to meet these cinematic expectations. I am pretty sure these guys have the chops to handle it well, but it does concern me that they are following the 40k path. All of these elements should be built in at the very beginning, especially in early playtests, and not added in later. Even if you believe it's fine that they are doing this stepped release and Force powers/Jedi/Sith are added last, it's reasonable to be concerned.

It would be a shame if after building a solid base with non-force elements of the game only to have it fall apart like previous incarnations when when you add in the powerhouses that are Jedi/Sith. Better to know that it's going to work right off the bat.

Another thing to consider is that their current release schedule will coincide with the release of SW7, which is basically Legacy Era so it will make sense to have a film tie in supplement at this time. However right now there is a great deal of Clone Wars and Old Republic media now and it will likely be overshadowed if they try and release content for these eras too late.

Lastly, regarding discussions about this topic and whether or not it will make a difference in FFG's development cycle, who knows. I'd like to think that community feedback is useful to designers and the business wonks to help gauge interest in their product line. It can't hurt, except possibly the negative health effects incurred by those who get their blood pressure up insisting people drop topics they don't agree with.

FuriousGreg said:

Well, if you take a look in the back of the Beta rulebook and the Final Week updates, you'll find that FFG has already included rules for Force-users. Combine that with the stats for lightsabers, and you've got enough to work with to create a low-tier Jedi-in-training type of character. It also will allow FFG to gauge where the Force system works and doesn't work; the extensive changes that came in the 2nd week's update should tell you plenty about how much work was needed on just the bare-bones Force system that was introduced in the Beta.

As was noted previously, given how badly Force-users have broken every prior Star Wars RPG, maybe FFG's got the right idea to take a different approach and make sure the fundamentals of their new system work before introducing a known game-breaker. By holding off, maybe they can avert the issues that other Star Wars RPGs have had in regards to Force-users in general. By listening to what folks have to say from using the limited Force material that they have provided, FFG can see what works and what doesn't, and make any necessary tweaks when it comes time to write Force & Destiny.

If it's a choice between "have a crappy system that ruins the game for everyone now" or "wait a couple years for a solid system that ensures everyone gets to have their fun," I'm willing to wait a couple years for the official rules. We've already seen what happens when you try to rush everything out at once, as was the case with WotC and their OCR version of Star Wars d20 aka "D&D in Space."

I've skimmed through several other forums, and aside from the overly vocal minority here… much of the talk is that folks are glad there's a reduced emphasis on the Force and pretty much no Jedi in the first book, either because they're sick of hyperfocus on Jedi characters in the EU we've had over the past several years, or because of gameplay issues with Jedi PCs hogging the spotlight. So yes, FFG may very well be paying attention to what folks are saying, but sadly for the folks that are decrying the lack of full-blown Jedi, they are very much in the minority. So from what FFG is seeing, people generally like their proposed business plan for three corebooks with full-fledged Force-users being in the final book.

Bear in mind that most of the time when I've played Star Wars RPGs, I've been the guy playing a Force-user, usually some type of Jedi. As much as I'd have liked there to be even just a bit of Jedi-based material (namely a universal specialization to cover Jedi Basics 101), I can appreciate that FFG has a design vision for their product line, and that right now, Jedi don't fit into that vision.

And as opposed to self-entitled whiners like ErikB, I opted to do something about that lack of material and create my own material. Will that material eventually become obsolute? More than likely, but that's the risk with any set of house rules for a game that's only in its early stages. Does the stuff I wrote work for everyone? Again, probably not, as there are folks that are just fine with the present lack of official rules for Jedi or any other type of Force-user. But hey, it's an option for those that would like something now and aren't too worried about the lack of it being official material. And if folks really do want full-blown Jedi careers, there's at least two options out there that can be used in the interim, and you'll likely see more once the EotE core rules are released in a couple weeks.

And amusingly enough, if my Ways of the Force material is used and remarked upon, particularly if my suggestion to cap a Force-user at Force Rating 3 is ignored, it could very well provide some useful feedback to FFG on their Force system when it comes time to begin working in earnest on Force & Destiny.

So what if we wait two years and it turns out that the system just fundamentally won't do Jedi very well? As happened with the Jedi equivalents in the 40k games?

Seems like a hell of a risk that we just don't need to take. Are people really willing to risk getting stuck with an entire generation of terrible Jedi rules if it turns out that you can't build a good Jedi system on top of the EOTE game? With new Star Wars movies coming out?

Not to mention the two years of no Jedi which sucks on its own.

ErikB said:

ErikB, FFG are making you a hamburger. Would you like them to cook it? There's a possibility that the flavour might not be to your liking. So, if you prefer, they can just serve you a scoop of raw hamburger right now!

With the 40k games it turned out that they were stuck trying to make a hamburger out of excrement, and it went as well as you might expect. And they couldn't throw away the excrement and go out and buy beef because it had to be backwards compatable with Dark Heresy.

This time I'd kinda like to smell the beef to check it is fit for human consumption.

--

Seriously though, what if two years down the line it turns out they can either make a sh*tty Jedi game that is backwards compatable with EotE, or a good Jedi game that isn't compatable with EotE?

Which would people prefer they do?

ErikB said:

And what if it works well? What if they learned their lessons and are taking the time needed to do it well? Besides, WotC had them at the get-go and they were some much more uber than everyone else. Just having them now doesn't make the chances of them being balanced with the rest of the system.

ErikB said:

It would be more risky to rush them out now to satisfy a few people that want them now than to take the time to refine the mechanics for 2015.

ErikB said:

I would prefer they take the time to get it right. So your arguement is they should rush it out now and that will be good, but if we have to wait, the rules will be bad and it will suck?

Bwahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!

(Picks myself up off the floor.)

Always entertaining, Erik.

Smore that they may as well get the wonky ass first edition over and done with as soon as possible.

And also, if the EotE system is going to need hard pruning to do Jedi, it may be easier to change it sooner rather than later.

Yeah we really want FFG pulling a WotC D&D 3.0/3.5. That'll go over well. Talk about milking your audience. I thought one of your arguements was that they are trying to squeeze more money out of us? How is this different? Oh wait, you get what you want.

Hey, how many iterations of D20 Star Wars did they go through before they hit a decent one?

Leechman said:

ErikB said:

Did they really ever hit a decent one? I don't think so, it was terrible really, in some cases workable and possible to live with, but largely it was mechanically sub-standard, all three editions. Not that I didn't enjoy playing RCR tremendously, I really did and had one of my best sw campaigns with that system, but not because of the system, rather despite of it.

Your "concerns" could be labelled valid, but I won't label them so, because you speculate too wildly based on silly "what ifs" and assumptions. Its speculative, simple and fits better on some news website under the celebrity section commentary field.

Yeah, sure, this game could, like its predecessors end up being broken (chances are it might if we look at history, forget the WH40K line its a poor example, we have longer history to use). If it ends up being broken its nothing new and we should be able to cope as we've had to cope with broken force and jedi rules since 1987. Although what they have given us so far proves to be better and not so broken, which is great. It means that your scenarios and wild speculations are less likely to occur, particularly if they have more time to refine how these things should work together. Rather than just throw out some half-baked chicken pasty with salmonella, much like what WotC did and what you want them to do. I'd rather have it slightly over-cooked and chewy, than risking typhoid fever and potential death due to some impatient whiny child not inclined to wait for its meal like a decent, grown up human being.

ErikB said:

Depends heavily on one's point of view.

There are some folks (mostly hardcore D6'rs) who say WotC never got it right. There are some that say WEG did a hatchet job and that the game was only good for one-shots and micro-campaigns consisting of no more than six or so linked adventures.

There are plenty that say Saga Edition was not only the best of the d20-based Star Wars systems, but the best iteration of the d20 system every put to print.

There are some that feel the RCR did a pretty good job; it had it's flaws (mostly those inherent to the d20 system), but was far superior to the OCR.

So far, FFG seems to have hit the sweet spot in delivering a solid, general purpose Star Wars RPG. Obviously it doesn't cater to everyone, but quite frankly, what RPG does truly cater to the entire market?

Aside from a very small number of petulant trolls, the general response has been quite positive to their new system, and most folks are quite content to wait for Jedi to show up down the line, especially given the issues that Jedi PCs have caused in all the prior Star Wars RPGs, official & homebrewed.