I was at Free RPG Day at the FFG Event Center Saturday. There was an FAQ with three developers and then they ran Shadows of a Black Sun for us. They also had copies of the Core Book and GM screen to examine, but not for sale.
My group has been playing the Beta since September and of course we looked up our character's talent trees and species. Going in we were worried about having to remake characters when the core book comes out next month but it doesn't look like that is the case. The only change for our group is that the Ghtroc 720 was replaced with a ship I'm unfamiliar with. I don't remember the name but looking through SWSE's Starships of the Galaxy it looks a bit like the Citadel-Class Cruiser on p. 70.
The hardcover is beautiful. There is an expanded section on planets, systems, and organizations, more NPCs, and more equipment. The Force Power tables are updated to reflect the Update changes and the graphic design shows the actual price for upgrades that go over multiple columns.
Some comments from the experience:
In the adventure, the GM flipped Destiny Points very frequently, and encouraged us to do so. Most of the time it was to upgrade difficulties. We have tended to hoard them like Action Points or Destiny Points in d20 systems for the toughest encounters, so it was a big difference. It was a lot of fun, and I think we'll be using them like that in our games from now on.
There is greater clarification in the Talent descriptions about when Talents apply to certain skills, particularly combat skills and the differences between during character combats and starship combat. The compiled description section should be referenced rather than the tables, though, because the latter have more generic information.
I asked about the use of defensive talents during starship combat. The dev said that talents like Dodge wouldn't work but the Sense Ongoing power might apply. During starfighter combat the Sense power should work because of how Jedi use it in the movies and books. However, it probably wouldn't work in freighters or bigger ships.
Taking an extra maneuver costs 2 Strain as in the Beginner Game.
Two weapon fighting works like it did in the latest update. I think it was pretty effective, but I was down to 4 Strain at one point from using extra maneuvers.
The characters in the Free RPG Day adventure do have Obligation and it came into play during the session. No spoiler, but the conclusion of the adventure was pretty interesting. Both the Bothan Slicer and the Trandoshan did things in the adventure to significantly reduce or eliminate their Obligations. The GM suggested that they might be reduced and then changed to a new Obligation reflecting the results of the game.
Another interesting thing was that the GM used our Obligations during the game as a reputation reference for the NPCs. It seemed like he did a check to see if they would know about our characters. For example, I was playing the human Scoundrel and when we were in the casino one of the NPCs asked about my character's brother and I needed to make a Deception check to bluff that I wasn't involved with the same criminal organization.
