Did I leave anything out? ![]()
I never thought I'd say this, but... this system is rapidly becoming my system of choice for Star Wars (or anything, really)!
This is largely due to the narrative dice. There are three types of both 'good' and 'bad' dice, and they have symbols on them instead of numbers - Successes and Advantages on the good dice, Failures and Threats on the bad dice. You grab good dice based on your skill and other helpful elements, bad dice based on difficulty and impeding elements, and roll them all.
Successes and Failures cancel each other out, one-for-one. If you have any Successes left over, you've succeeded, and if not (or if you just have some Failures left), you've failed. But it's not just a pass/fail system, due to Advantages and Threats. They also cancel each other out, one-for-one. If you have any Advantages left, whether you succeeded in the task or not, something good happens. The reverse happens with Threats - again, whether you succeeded or not. Then, it's up to the player (or the GM, if the player doesn't want to), to describe what actually happens.
So, say Indiana Jones rolls an Athletics check to jump the chasm to escape the temple before the door closes. He succeeds, but he's got some Threat left. So, the player explains that he made the jump and grabbed onto a vine sticking out of the ground on the other side - but now the vine is pulling out of the ground! He's gonna have to make another Athletics check on his next turn to climb out safely.
Yesterday, my character took a shot at a Gamorrean and failed, but with an Advantage. So it was described that, while her shot completely missed its intended mark, it shattered a light fixture right next to another Gamorrean who was attacking one of my character's allies, startling it. This enabled that player to roll an extra 'Boost' die on his attack, and he plugged the Gamorrean.
With all the players (and not just the GM) throwing creative ideas in the soup in this way, it enables everyone to start riffing off of each other and making scenes really cinematic and exciting. Certainly better than saying "I need to roll an 18 to hit this guy" while all the other players play with their phones and wait for their turn. Unimaginative players who just want to spend the evening chipping away at somebody's hit points will probably hate this game, because it would shine a spotlight on their shortcomings. But for players like everybody here, it's a goldmine.
Hit points! Damage! Another great system. Remember in other games how everyone would ooh and ahh when you rolled a 35 for your attack roll when you only needed a 13? And then you rolled damage and barely grazed him? Here, every net Success you're left with on your attack roll is added to the weapon's damage. So the better the hit, the more it hurts. Net Advantages (usually about 3-5, depending on the weapon) can be spent on Critical hits. There's a table for that, with all sorts of nasty effects. And vehicle combat works in exactly the same way - if you get Critted, roll on the table and see what's happened to your beloved starship.
Another great system is Destiny points (tokens). They're a little better than D6 Character points, a little not-as-good as Force points. Each session begins with a random number of them (usually about 3-8). Each one has two sides, dark and light, and they're attributed at random. If you really need to succeed at your task, you might reach out and flip one of those light-side tokens over, which will add a benefit to your roll. The trouble is, that once-light Destiny token is now a dark token, which means it's available to the GM to flip over when one of the baddies really needs to succeed. 'Balance of the Force', indeed!
D6 still has the edge in ease of learning (due to the familiar dice), and ease of character creation (nothing will ever top "just spend your character points on whatever skills you want"). I haven't really gotten into the Force chapter yet, so I can't comment on that.
But that is a major gripe among some people: Edge of the Empire is just one game of an eventual three, all cross-compatible (so we're told). Edge of the Empire deals specifically with the galactic underworld, while Age of Rebellion (due next year) brings in the galactic civil war. Force and Destiny (2015) is supposed to bring in full-on Jedi characters. So you can't be Mace Windu yet, which had a lot of people whining on the forums. But given the very specific original trilogy time frame these games are set in, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.
Wow, I didn't mean to go on like that. Nutshell: game = good!

