As a disclaimer, while I own EotE I have only played a couple sessions of it. I really enjoyed the game mechanics and I like the Star Wars Universe a lot. Not the Expanded Universe, simply because I have only read one SW novel (Splinter in the Mind’s Eye) and my Star Wars knowledge is limited to the movies and the Clone Wars animated series.

The biggest reason for my not really getting into EotE is, and please do not take this too bad or as a personal jab, EotE boils down to just another steal/loot their stuff game. I have been playing RPG’s for many many years and the ‘outlaw, lone-gun, anti-hero, their, lone assassin, etc” motif has really gotten LONG in the tooth.

Which is why I was really stoked to hear about AoR centering around the active (ie military) side of the rebellion with Duty rather than personal profit being the plot driver. (Another disclaimer, I do not have AoR Beta). A game that shifts player focus from personal profit to a non-personal objective takes me back to my old days of gaming.

All that said, the only real information about AoR seems to be centered around the small stuff, just tweaking character occupations and skills. The addition of the Duty mechanic is the biggest thing to date. In EotE out of 438 pages, only 145 where aimed at the character generation and abilities. 290 odd pages were concerned with the world, from equipment and weapons, to starships, to the physical galaxy, to law and order, to GMing the game. And very well done in my opinion because a person like me who has very limited Star Wars knowledge can easily build a scenario or campaign. A game built around being a criminal true, but a good game none the less.

But here comes Age of Rebellion! To showcase the trial and tribulations of the Rebel Infantryman in fighting to free his planet, the Stormtrooper fighting to preserve the order of the Galaxy and the Empire, the Starship Captain as he holds back the Imperial onslaught or the lowly fighter pilot engaging the enemy to protect his ship. This kind of game is a lot different from the standard loot it game (D&D, Shadowrun, Pathfinder, EotE, etc ) where, for whatever the PC’s twist on motivation happens to be, the overall game relies on PC profit. The addition of Duty stands out as proof that FFG realizes the difference.

What, in the AoR Corebook will there be to assist a new GM in the establishing the critical world sense needed for this kind of game and at the same time wean players from trying to build the bounty hunter/assassin/thief/rogue that just happens to be wearing a uniform.

In the past, the military campaign games I have run ran into two issues.

1) Missions need to be important in the “big picture” and that “big picture” must keep evolving so the PC’s can use it for a motivation driver. The PC’s operations may be small scale, but the large scale engagements, defeats and victories, set the backdrop for those actions, and that backdrop needs to continue to progress.

(And before anyone says it, yes many experience GM’s can just adlib it. But then an experienced GM doesn’t really need rules or a game at all when you come right down to it. But AoR is a game, and to be successful it needs to meet the needs of the new GM that just discovered table top RPG’s even exist.)

2) In a successful military game the PC’s will advance in rank and influence. How will AoR handle game-mechanics’wise the use of PC’s abilities and skills when they are actually in command of large units and/or fleets? Several people have pointed out that AoR is NOT a wargame and should NOT have rules to fight out major battle on the table top with dozens of figures and units. Which I totally agree with. But there should be some kind of system built into AoR to handle this. Maybe a narrative system with a PC’s skills being used for big picture skill rolls that can influence the battle. We have Charts to spend Advantages and Triumphs as well as Threat and Despair in personal combat, We have Critical Charts for characters and vehicles. Might there be a way to make spends to affect the overall battle and critical effects for the overall battle? As with the individual encounters it will always fall to the GM to weave the die results into the narrative with a very healthy dose of player assistance. But just like the Vehicle and Character results charts are different, a spend chart for personal event will be different from greater event results.

Thoughts?

The biggest reason for my not really getting into EotE is, and please do not take this too bad or as a personal jab, EotE boils down to just another steal/loot their stuff game.

I think that's underselling EotE by quite a bit. Maybe that's played up in the fluff, but it has little to do with the kind of games you can have. It's really up to the storyteller what EotE games are about.

My son's game has been completely different: grandpa, previously a mine owner, has disappeared, and the mine ownership suddenly transferred to another company. After a long series of investigations, turns out gramps has been swindled by a former associate, and put into carbonite…along with several other families from previous swindlings. It's been a dark mystery story.

I really don't know how you come to that conclusion.

As a disclaimer, while I own EotE I have only played a couple sessions of it. I really enjoyed the game mechanics and I like the Star Wars Universe a lot. Not the Expanded Universe, simply because I have only read one SW novel (Splinter in the Mind’s Eye) and my Star Wars knowledge is limited to the movies and the Clone Wars animated series.

The biggest reason for my not really getting into EotE is, and please do not take this too bad or as a personal jab, EotE boils down to just another steal/loot their stuff game. I have been playing RPG’s for many many years and the ‘outlaw, lone-gun, anti-hero, their, lone assassin, etc” motif has really gotten LONG in the tooth.

Thought 1: somebody either didn't bother reading or did not comprehend the "running obligation" section

Truth be told, EOTE can be VERY mission oriented. Pick someone's obligation, have them do something related to it. Every adventure was predicated off of someone's obligation; they did it because they wanted that reduction.

VERY little is "KTAATTS" play. The only "loot" my EotE players took by killing the owners were blasters (after the fact), one group stole a ship (because that's the nature of the beginner box adventure), and one wookie kept a few trophies. They made their money alternately smuggling, trading, and selling acquired secrets.

And they avoided getting caught like the plague - the very last thing they wanted was the group obligations to exceed 100 and freeze XP spending. So they avoided crimes that might bring Criminal obligations and/or bounty obligations.

In fact, there has been FAR FAR more taking of their stuff in my AoR game than either of my Edge campaigns, and it's lasted less time. The difference is that they're not keeping the loot, but passing it upchain. Or selling it cheap to buy stuff that's not readily traced back to being stolen imperial equipment. They're already facing a huge threat - if they get caught by the impies, it's game over. Further, tho', they don't accrue criminal obligation while on Rebel missions and attacking/stealing from the Empire. So the big reason to be not stealing is gone. Now that the beta window is closed, my players are facing some increasing obligations. And it's not making them happy. (I'm using the two charts method).

Thoughts?

Many. And firstly, as others have said, you're selling EoE very short. 'Fringe' does not equal 'criminal', and you can play an explorer, doctor, politico, scholar, mechanic with no criminal elements whatsoever. The first sourcebook centres on explorers, and the first adventure is an exploration one. You can play an entire EoE campaign without ever seeing a Hutt or a smuggler. EoE is much more than Shadowrun set in the SW galaxy.

As for new players... I don't know much more than what's in the movies, and the EoE book has a wealth of information about background stuff, enough to keep anyone going without ever reading an EU novel or wookiepedia. Keep in mind that the AOR Beta book is just that, and it's stripped down to the bare bones of rules. All the 'fluff' will be in the main book.

And I think those wanting a more tactical or wargaming experience will be disappointed, as FFG seem to be pushing this game as a narrative experience. In the movies, all that stuff is mostly just backdrop. On Hoth, we pretty much see everything from the heroes point of view anyway. I'd be surprised if we see detailed rules for starship battles or ground warfare. At best, that stuff is going to be dealt with as their 'one roll combat resolution' rules.

Also, the AoR book does have detailed rules about rising in rank and everything. Which I am ignoring personally, because I want all that to be dealt with in the narrative, and our PCs don't start as raw rookies anyway.

I do think the OP has a point, though, even if only on the surface. EotE doesn't seem to be going out of its way to say that it's the perfect game if you want to play a 'wide-eyed farmboy who wants to fight the good fight', for instance.

But it's kind of the 'why no Jedi' argument all over again, and the short answer still applies: it's coming. We'll have every flavour of Star Wars (if you count the F&D beta as a legit product) in less than 12 months...

The issue/question is the handling of things in AoR, not EotE...

Just glancing at the intro paragraphs of the Game Mastery section in the AoR Beta, it is clear that there will be word-count devoted to establishing the correct tone for a military game (the book specifically says it will discuss themes and story lines appropriate to Age of Rebellion).

However, I do not have anything to suggest they will add in mechanics for affecting the big picture, beyond the consequences of your personal-scale and vehicle-scale actions.

However, I think that just getting the tone right will help a great deal, encouraging players and GMs to push for large-scale consequences and involvement.

The best way to handle large space battles is to focus the narrative on the players and let the rest be narrative-driven, not mechanics-driven. If the player characters are in roles like Lando and Ackbar (coordinating the attacks), their rolls should have a narrative impact, perhaps opposed by the enemy commander's, which would then affect the narrative as normal on the success/advantage axes. I think the last thing that needs to happen is to create lots of crunchy mass combat rules: I have never seen a mass combat rule set that works well or is fun to play out. Not that I think this system would be promoting crunch-bloat in the first place though.

If the player characters are in roles like Lando and Ackbar (coordinating the attacks), their rolls should have a narrative impact, perhaps opposed by the enemy commander's, which would then affect the narrative as normal on the success/advantage axes.

Great thoughts. You could have a big battle based on Leadership ("Fire the port side cannons...no, no! The 'other' port!") or Knowledge-Warfare (do you know the tactic the enemy is using? can you counter it?), and perhaps Knowledge-Lore (is there something about the system you could use to your advantage?), you could Negotiate or Coerce surrenders of enemy captains, other players could lead squads of starfighters based on their Leadership and Piloting...

If you needed crunch, you could assign simple values based on Silouette (hull=Sil^2; armour and base damage = Sil). Each success on Leadership or Knowledge-Warfare by a capital ship captain would give extra damage; bombing runs by fighters against capital ships would benefit from leadership and piloting ...hmm, I think I'm going to work up a one-off scenario based on this. Thanks for the idea!

I am working on a system to track space battles by assigning dice pools based on unit shooting and target for one-roll resolution but I've kind of stalled a bit as I don't know how to resolve defenses well. Right now space battles are abstracted based on silhouettes (with range just being what weapons can hit a target), but I wanted to do something a little more structured, like in ground combat.

I know I've mention this before, but I like to look to TOR for basic storyline samples/examples that can be modified up for later - in particular, the Trooper and Imperial Agent storylines. A lot of changes would need to be made, but the general feel has always driven me with ideas. (And having a visual aid always helps!)

Despite knowing a fair amount on warfare (potential officers are required to know about it), I'd shy away from how 'realistic' a touch I spin on AoR battles. The obvious, common sense principles apply, of course, but I'd stick to the principle that this is EPIC SPACE OPERA - the actions of the PCs will have far-reaching consequences on the outcome of the battle, even if all that command asked of them was to fetch the Commander a taco (they're having a two-for-one today!).