Hey guys I'm thinking about getting this but I would like to know Afew things first about the core book.

1. How many starships are there in the core book?

2. Do you have to play as a imperial or rebels?

3. How easy it is to play right way?

4. And is there a lot of fluff of background and history in the book?

1. Not sure, but quite a few, which can be supplemented by some excellent player-made resources.

2. No, you can play whichever group you want, or be independent.

3. As long as you have access to dice (d6, d8, d10 and d12) you can play pretty quickly, if you have players.

4. There is quite a bit of "fluff" and background information, certainly enough to use right away. And with Wookieepedia available as well, it's really easy.

1. I don't have a rough count, but there's plenty of ships listed, though the majority of them have a "fringe of the galaxy" flavor to them. Closest you get to a Rebel-aligned ship is the Y-Wing, while the Imps have their TIE Fighters

2. Neither. In fact, the book strongly encourages the players to be "unaffiliated" and not tied to either side. The second core rulebook for the Star Wars system, Age of Rebellion, is due out next year and will cover Rebel-based campaigns. No word if an Imperial-based campaign option will also be covered in that book or not. That said, if you want your EotE group to be allied with the Empire or the Alliance, nothing is stopping you from doing just that, it's just not the primary focus of Edge of the Empire.

3. Fairly easy. Most people will get the hang of the dice system by the third roll, and if you pick up the Beginner Box, the adventure included will pretty much guide both players and the GM as to how the entire system works, making it a valuable resource. Plus, you get dice (which retails for $15), so the tokens, maps, and such are really only $15.

4. A whole lot, even if you're not an EU junkie. It doesn't cover everything, but it provides quite a bit of background material.

1- How many ships:

8 Airspeeders types

2 Wheeled and tracked vehicules

2 Walkers

22 Starships

However, the rules are made so easy that you can technically use the same profiles for many different ship, if you want to.

2 - Imps or Rebels?

Neither, or either, as you see fit. This corebook is about living on "The Edge of the Empire", so mostly, as non-affiliated characters, but if you want to play Rebels vs. Imperials, the second corebook stated for next year "Age of Rebellion" is what you're looking for. But you could play a Rebel or an Imperial-affiliated character, it really depends on the imagination of your GM

3 - How easy to play right away?

Very easy, the core mechanics are not that hard, and yes, you need dice, if possible, the Edge of the Empire dice, or the iPhone/Android app. For my groups (both of them), it was easy to pick up and after a couple of rolls, they were able to figure out rapidly the results.

4- Background?

Yes, there are quite a few pages, but then again, Wookieepedia is a great reference. When the game was in BETA, I used Wookieepedia and old WEG source books, Antologies (non-RPG related) to use as background and inspiration.

EDIT: 'd by Donovan!

Ty for the info guy I think I would get it I got 2 may 3 friends wanting to try this. O and one more thing I would like to ask is there a chapter for adversaries and beasts in the book and how big is it?

Yes there are adversaries in the book, and it is pretty large. You'll enjoy it!

Ty for the info guys I've just ordered it

Honestly, though, you'll figure out very easilly that the adversary are really easy to create. The main ones included can easilly be used (same stats) for a different adversary.

And, contrary to D&D, you may use the same adversary over and over again, in different context, and it's still refreshing. Moreover, you'll find a couple extra adversary in the Fan-based post, if you need more.

I would encourage you to get the beginner game as well as its a solid product (not the box though!) and it does a great job of teaching GMs new to the system how to play and it comes with a set of dice, maps and other doodads.

I would keep thinking about it.

I'm not going to argue the merits and flaws of the game mechanics, but with the current amount of material and the seemingly limited character options, I should have waited before I bought. I'm not sold on this version of the game as of yet. I'm still a big fan of Star Wars Saga Edition and some of that is influencing my judgement on this version of the game. I think there are some really strong merits to the game so far, but too many flaws for me to really embrace it at this stage. I hope that character options and abilities become FAR more expansive in the future. I would even prefer if characters were much more modular.

Thats my two cents.

I would keep thinking about it.

I'm not going to argue the merits and flaws of the game mechanics, but with the current amount of material and the seemingly limited character options, I should have waited before I bought. I'm not sold on this version of the game as of yet. I'm still a big fan of Star Wars Saga Edition and some of that is influencing my judgement on this version of the game. I think there are some really strong merits to the game so far, but too many flaws for me to really embrace it at this stage. I hope that character options and abilities become FAR more expansive in the future. I would even prefer if characters were much more modular.

Thats my two cents.

I can understand that you want more options. I think the character options are fine but that is a personal thing.

However, what do you see as flaws in the system and what do you mean by more modular? I think the characters are very modular.

Honestly, though, you'll figure out very easilly that the adversary are really easy to create. The main ones included can easilly be used (same stats) for a different adversary.

And, contrary to D&D, you may use the same adversary over and over again, in different context, and it's still refreshing. Moreover, you'll find a couple extra adversary in the Fan-based post, if you need more.

This is very much the truth.

GM Chris explained during an Order 66 podcast (prior to their formal transition to Edge of the Empire) that for a one-shot he ran for some friends, he'd put the usual amount of work into creating NPCs that he'd been used to doing for Saga Edition (a d20-based game). Come to find out, that for most instances, in EotE it's pretty easy to eye-ball what stats an NPC needs for a given encounter, and just worry about those and forgot about the stuff that doesn't apply.

For instance, if your PCs are being interrogated by a local police officer, you don't need to worry about how the guy's Wound Threshold or ranks in Ranged (Light), just his Presence, Willpower, Cool, and Coercion so that he can interrogate the PCs while having some measure of defense against attempts to lie to him.

I'm not going to argue the merits and flaws of the game mechanics, but with the current amount of material and the seemingly limited character options, I should have waited before I bought.

Man, I would have given my left arm for all the source material we have now back when WEG put out the first edition in '89. You know what I had to work from then? One rule book and a sourcebook that was spread pretty **** thin. Oh, and a canned adventure that came out a couple months later. Beyond that, a GM had to write up and stat EVERYTHING. No wookiepedia, no internet, no video games, no three previous editions to draw upon. We had 6 paperback books and the Marvel comics to work from for Expanded Universe - and that was it.

So pardon me for saying so - but limited character options? No source material? You're nuts!

GM Chris explained during an Order 66 podcast (prior to their formal transition to Edge of the Empire) that for a one-shot he ran for some friends, he'd put the usual amount of work into creating NPCs that he'd been used to doing for Saga Edition (a d20-based game). Come to find out, that for most instances, in EotE it's pretty easy to eye-ball what stats an NPC needs for a given encounter, and just worry about those and forgot about the stuff that doesn't apply.

This is actually a common element of d20 vs. not-d20. 3rd Edition D&D (and, by extension, most everything published under the OGL as a d20 product) pretty heavily relies on treating your enemies as full-fledged characters to function. In order to make a challenging and sufficiently statted-out enemy, you've got to be throwing class levels and templates together for everything you touch.

More narrative systems, on the other hand, function just as well by only focusing on the core elements of the character's interactions, and either hand-waving the rest as average or being modular and non-granular enough that you can estimate it on the fly and be fine.

Tossing the book-keeping for NPC generation out the window is the biggest reason I've been able to continue gaming after burning out on d20.

I'm not going to argue the merits and flaws of the game mechanics, but with the current amount of material and the seemingly limited character options, I should have waited before I bought.

Man, I would have given my left arm for all the source material we have now back when WEG put out the first edition in '89. You know what I had to work from then? One rule book and a sourcebook that was spread pretty **** thin. Oh, and a canned adventure that came out a couple months later. Beyond that, a GM had to write up and stat EVERYTHING. No wookiepedia, no internet, no video games, no three previous editions to draw upon. We had 6 paperback books and the Marvel comics to work from for Expanded Universe - and that was it.

So pardon me for saying so - but limited character options? No source material? You're nuts!

Us old-timers better be careful, or we'll be telling folks to get off our lawn

But yeah, I would have gleefully killed to have the sorts of resources for background material back then that we have access to now.

LordofCake,

As for character options, the amount of variety possible is quite staggering, and is really only limited by one's imagination and style of play. The ability to mix and match various skill combinations and specializations really opens up a lot of possibilities as the characters continue to advance. If the only thing a player is focused on is making the most optimized character possible, then that's the player's willful choice to take a very narrow view and thus limit the options they have available. Thankfully, EotE isn't a system like D&D, particularly 3.X and 4e where if you don't optimize right out the gate, you're going to be lagging behind. In EotE, a player can choose to diversity and pick up oddball skills or specializations that you'd be punished for doing in d20/OGL systems. After all, how many times do you see a Wookiee Hired Gun/Marauder that's also got Scholar as as specialization? Or the Twi'lek Colonist/Doctor that's also an Assassin? So there's options aplenty with just the core rulebook, if you care to look.

I played the WEG D6 version of SW back in the day as well, and thought that we'd never see SW RPGs after WEG sold to Wizards. Not everyone here is 13 and needs a flame-war on blogs to get a point across. Don't take my caution over this game as an affront to your holy sacrament that is the FFG SW:EotE RPG. I'm not advocating avoiding this product, just saying that it's not for me, yet. I prefer the Saga Edition of the game. Its a fluid, streamlined system in my opinion. And it provides many, many options for character creation. Ofcourse, its all just my opinion, but I appreciate the anger and frustration received...it fills me with a joy that can not be explained.

Note that I stated that the character creation feels limited currently, and that I hope it expands in the future. I know, I know, you have six archtypes with ability tree sets that have to be followed in specific order. The possiblities are limitless (unless you count the total of 18 possibilities). Skill set packages are native to every RPG. Everyone starts with 500 credits, and that drastically limits the players ability to by the cool stuff early. I'm fine with that. All players start with "cookie cutter" stats. I'm not thrilled about this part specifically, but I understand WHY its done this way. Motivations and obligations are an interesting, but ultimately useless mechanic in the game. Wounds versus Strain I like. The critical hit system is cumbersome.

Heres my beef though, this is the big animal for me: The dice system. I really, really want to like this system. But the symbolic dice/interpretation system just seems very loose. Maybe I just like the satisfaction of the D20 system, or the D10 system, or D6 system, or some of the other more finite result systems.

I've played this game through about 4 or 5 comeplete stories, including the Beginners Kit. Really, everything I've played so far has been stuff produced by FFG. I don't hate this game at all, but FFG's new system feels a lot like the D&D 4th ed. change...a pen and paper MMORPG. MAYBE this game will break that mold, maybe not. Time will tell.

Via con Dios.

Don't take my caution over this game as an affront to your holy sacrament that is the FFG SW:EotE RPG.

Woah - hang on there a second, chief. If there's anyone getting upset here, it'd be you. I'm not reading anyone else here getting worked up about your opinion (or if you think that was me being insulting, you really need a thicker skin. You'll know when I'm pissed at something). So take a breath, we're all good here.

Everyone starts with 500 credits, and that drastically limits the players ability to by the cool stuff early.

Well, if I'm a GM who wants my party to have Cool Stuff, this is the easiest thing on your list to fix. Want them to have Cool Stuff? Add a zero on the starting credits. Boom - sorted!

As for the rest, I've found the character creation to be very flexible. Just for fun (and to learn the system) I've been building new versions of all my old characters from the various previous editions. My Episode 1 era Jedi aside, I've yet to come across a character that I have been unable to recreate to my satisfaction - and believe me, I've had some crazy, template breaking characters over the years.

I cant speak to the dice mechanic, since I've not actually played the game yet - but the rest of your issues seems easy to solve with just a little bit of creative elbow grease (and honestly, as a GM, that's our job - being as creative). Perhaps once I actually throw the dice, I'll find I don't like the system - but from where I stand now, it looks very promising.

Heres my beef though, this is the big animal for me: The dice system. I really, really want to like this system. But the symbolic dice/interpretation system just seems very loose. Maybe I just like the satisfaction of the D20 system, or the D10 system, or D6 system, or some of the other more finite result systems.

I've played this game through about 4 or 5 comeplete stories, including the Beginners Kit. Really, everything I've played so far has been stuff produced by FFG. I don't hate this game at all, but FFG's new system feels a lot like the D&D 4th ed. change...a pen and paper MMORPG. MAYBE this game will break that mold, maybe not. Time will tell.

Via con Dios.

I can understand someone preferring a more concrete system, there's something nice about having numbers you can easily calculate and determine just how effective things will be and having rules for nearly every situation. I love having these rules for D&D type games with extensive magic and abilities...

It has just never worked for me when it came to Star Wars, though. Saga put in a lot of effort to get people to use multiclassing to try out a variety of options, but there was something about the d20 roll and D&D type DCs that held it back. It had the same problem as D&D where characters who weren't trained in a skill might as well not bother, but Star Wars has always been far more cinematic than that, and EotE captures that for me. Every aspect of the system is designed for the story of things to be the main point and as a GM it's a lot more fun to run because I can improvise with ease.

Of course, not everyone wants the same thing out of their games. I have no real desire to play a game set during the Old Republic in any form, lots of people just want Jedi everywhere. I like having a dice system that encourages a cool spin on every roll rather than just another d20 and me either reaching a DC or not, but obviously that's not what you want. I do appreciate that you've at least tried the system, and hope you can see why people might like it.

For my part, I don't see how it comes across like an MMORPG except for the use of talent trees. It drops levels and makes every action worth rolling have a wide array of potential outcomes rather than just hit/miss/crit.

Ofcourse, its all just my opinion, but I appreciate the anger and frustration received...it fills me with a joy that can not be explained.

I think you're misinterpreting disagreement. If that "fills you with joy", it suggests the problem is not where you think it is.

Heres my beef though, this is the big animal for me: The dice system. I really, really want to like this system. But the symbolic dice/interpretation system just seems very loose. Maybe I just like the satisfaction of the D20 system, or the D10 system, or D6 system, or some of the other more finite result systems.

The dice system is the big draw for me, I love the flexibility. I can see it's not for everyone though. My son loves it. One of my friends is enthused by the concept (we have yet to play, hopefully I we can go through the beginner game this weekend); another friend I know from the past will have a lot more trouble with it.

The thing is, you can still keep it concrete if you like: success or fail is already accounted for in the rules. If you wanted to add all the rest of the symbols, there are concrete listings of how to spend them which you could easily limit to just those effects.

The thing is, you can still keep it concrete if you like: success or fail is already accounted for in the rules. If you wanted to add all the rest of the symbols, there are concrete listings of how to spend them which you could easily limit to just those effects.

Indeed, one should not try to swallow the bantha all at once -- small bites is fine. Interpretting the riders (yes, that's what I'm calling them from now on -- just get used to it) can be daunting, even for veterans. But here's the magic -- you're not alone at the table, hopefully. Players get frist crack at interpretting their positive riders, so if it sounds good and moves the story along, great. If they get analysis paralysis, they can just recover strain and move along. It's surprisingly easy for GM's to interpret threat because they continually stare over their cardboard screens like caged animals with depraved hearts full of malicious intent...

I love the dice mechanic! No more waiting 5 minutes for my turn only to, "Swing and a miss! Next." At least my action will do something to the story and that is what it is about for me. Failure and a despair! "Well, this will be fun..."

I played the WEG D6 version of SW back in the day as well, and thought that we'd never see SW RPGs after WEG sold to Wizards. Not everyone here is 13 and needs a flame-war on blogs to get a point across. Don't take my caution over this game as an affront to your holy sacrament that is the FFG SW:EotE RPG. I'm not advocating avoiding this product, just saying that it's not for me, yet. I prefer the Saga Edition of the game. Its a fluid, streamlined system in my opinion. And it provides many, many options for character creation. Ofcourse, its all just my opinion, but I appreciate the anger and frustration received...it fills me with a joy that can not be explained.

Note that I stated that the character creation feels limited currently, and that I hope it expands in the future. I know, I know, you have six archtypes with ability tree sets that have to be followed in specific order. The possiblities are limitless (unless you count the total of 18 possibilities). Skill set packages are native to every RPG. Everyone starts with 500 credits, and that drastically limits the players ability to by the cool stuff early. I'm fine with that. All players start with "cookie cutter" stats. I'm not thrilled about this part specifically, but I understand WHY its done this way. Motivations and obligations are an interesting, but ultimately useless mechanic in the game. Wounds versus Strain I like. The critical hit system is cumbersome.

Heres my beef though, this is the big animal for me: The dice system. I really, really want to like this system. But the symbolic dice/interpretation system just seems very loose. Maybe I just like the satisfaction of the D20 system, or the D10 system, or D6 system, or some of the other more finite result systems.

I've played this game through about 4 or 5 comeplete stories, including the Beginners Kit. Really, everything I've played so far has been stuff produced by FFG. I don't hate this game at all, but FFG's new system feels a lot like the D&D 4th ed. change...a pen and paper MMORPG. MAYBE this game will break that mold, maybe not. Time will tell.

Via con Dios.

I understand people having different tastes but I was just curious what you meant when you said it was flawed.

The dice mechanics are excellent.

The concealed odds are actually pretty nice; it's important to understand that a green is slightly better than a purple for success, but dead even greens vs purples is success but threat.

Yellows are more good than Reds are bad.

Yellows increase successes more; reds increase threat more.

Black and blue are dead even for success, but blue gives twice the potential advantage as black gives threat. So, if you can get blue, you're better gaining blue than removing black.

I had. I'll repost the averages… corrected from prior postings.

Die

          Success  Advatage 
Blue       +8/24    +16/24 
Green     +15/24    +15/24 
Yellow*   +20/24    +16/24 
Black      -8/24     -8/24 
Purple    -12/24    -18/24 
Red*      -18/24    -16/24 

* Includes Triumph/Despair as Success/Failure.

** No "Successes" nor "advantages"

-X successes are +X failures
-Y advantage are +Y threat.

All in 24ths for comparison purposes.

I played the WEG D6 version of SW back in the day as well, and thought that we'd never see SW RPGs after WEG sold to Wizards. Not everyone here is 13 and needs a flame-war on blogs to get a point across. Don't take my caution over this game as an affront to your holy sacrament that is the FFG SW:EotE RPG. I'm not advocating avoiding this product, just saying that it's not for me, yet. I prefer the Saga Edition of the game. Its a fluid, streamlined system in my opinion. And it provides many, many options for character creation. Ofcourse, its all just my opinion, but I appreciate the anger and frustration received...it fills me with a joy that can not be explained.

The fact that any implied anger "fills you with joy", is evidence of the fact that your making this post specifically to troll people.

Note that I stated that the character creation feels limited currently, and that I hope it expands in the future. I know, I know, you have six archtypes with ability tree sets that have to be followed in specific order. The possiblities are limitless (unless you count the total of 18 possibilities). Skill set packages are native to every RPG. Everyone starts with 500 credits, and that drastically limits the players ability to by the cool stuff early. I'm fine with that. All players start with "cookie cutter" stats. I'm not thrilled about this part specifically, but I understand WHY its done this way. Motivations and obligations are an interesting, but ultimately useless mechanic in the game. Wounds versus Strain I like. The critical hit system is cumbersome.

Yeah, there are currently 6 Carrers, 18 trees (with more on the way), 20 some odd skills, and 6 characteristics. And How you build your character is entirely up to you. You don't level up, you choose how you improve your characters over time.

Every character starts with 500 Credits if they don't take on any obligation at all at character creation. You can totally take on 20 Obligation and get almost 10,000 credits for starting equipment, or extra experience to pump into your character. Obligation itself is an extra resource for players to gain materials they wouldn't ordinarily have access to for a variety of things. It's also a built in storytelling mechanic. When the groups obligation reaches 100 they can't spend experience points anymore until they lower it below 100, which gets characters involved in coming up with session ideas and gets players in on the story telling.

The Critical System is a simple D100 roll typically with additional + 10s or - 10s to the result. If you've got the GM Screen the Crit Table is right in front of you for both vehicles and ships, which makes it super easy.

Heres my beef though, this is the big animal for me: The dice system. I really, really want to like this system. But the symbolic dice/interpretation system just seems very loose. Maybe I just like the satisfaction of the D20 system, or the D10 system, or D6 system, or some of the other more finite result systems.

Here is my beef with Star Wars D20 and Saga Edition. Saga edition is an excellent edition of rules for wargaming Star Wars.

The difference between the dice system in EotE and Saga Edition is that Edge of the Empire's dice system turns the players into storytellers as well. Creative interpretation of threw events using the dice rolls.

When my players roll the dice, I tell them their difficulty dice, and they tell me if they succeed or fail. Not only do they tell me if they succeed or fail, but they also tell me how they succeed and fail. They can even tell me how they triumph. Of course if they create threat or despair I can make things happen.

I've played this game through about 4 or 5 comeplete stories, including the Beginners Kit. Really, everything I've played so far has been stuff produced by FFG. I don't hate this game at all, but FFG's new system feels a lot like the D&D 4th ed. change...a pen and paper MMORPG. MAYBE this game will break that mold, maybe not. Time will tell.

Via con Dios.

While I agree the 4th ed was pretty bad, Edge of the Empire is a completely different animal.

The point of the system is facilitate not only facilitate a shared storytelling experience, but also for GM to share some of that story telling power with the players at the table so that the players can tell their stories too. You don't want to just play the modules, you want players to go off the rails and help shape their own stories.

You mentioned somewhere that the rules feel "loose". That's to help facilitate storytelling and bringing the players into the storytelling process. My best advice if you are going to be the GM of an Edge of the Empire game is don't be afraid to improve, because the system itself facilitates that in ways that Saga edition never could. If you were really familiar with the D6 system you could do it pretty well, but in my opinion Edge of the Empire is slightly more intuitive in that regard.

I admit I wasn't too keen on this system when it was announced and reading bits and bobs around the Internet. Until I got to play in two sessions with the beginner's set, by the end of the second session I was hooked.

The dice really put me off at first but having used them I now think they're a good idea. Some players have pulled faces at the dice, but yesterday we ran through a cantina battle while waiting for the DM to turn up. And that was enough to change opinions.

I've had two DMs offer to end their games so we can play Star Wars.

Currently reading through book and this forum in preparation. I'm interested to see how easy it is to run.