The Empire is losing ground, the Rebellion is gaining steam, and you have a fair amount of chaos reigning in as various groups and being vie for the scrapes.

That rather depends on where Disney decide to go with their new movies. Until they make up their minds, FFG probably can't touch it.

I would like it to cover the period just after Episode VI and maybe up to I, Corran Horn or thereabouts, when force users are starting to emerge in greater numbers (so-to-speak) and the academy was beginning to be reestablished.

This makes the most sense to me, and even dovetails well with our personal Alternative Canon.

But I thought all the three games were set between Star Wars and 'Empire Strikes Back'?

That's partly why I started this thread.

One reason we retconned the Order 66 silliness was because, in the films, there's only a few surviving Jedi, in the EU there's about a billion. You can't swing a lightsaber without hitting a gaggle of people who somehow mysteriously survived Order 66. If they all came out of hiding at once, they'd outnumber the stormtroopers.

So like the 'Son of the Death Star', that had to go.

But I was wondering how FFG will handle it?

Gah! I just missed your post!

But I think so too and I don't think GMs will have a lot of difficulty with that period once Force and Destiny is released.

And I've been out of touch with things for a while but I thought this series would span the original trilogy to just afterward. And I honestly never believed that Order 66 was that successful once I read up more on the Star Wars universe.

As for FFG's handling of Force and Destiny, I think they'll do fine.

But I was wondering how FFG will handle it?

3-6 Jedi PC and some replacements falls well within the bounds of A Few.

And most of the PCs will probably be ex-Jedi like Ahsoka, non-Jedi force users like Nightsisters, beings what can weild a saber equivalent without being force users (like General Grievous and his magnaguard or Proxy from TFU), escaped Imperial test subjects (clones of Starkiller or Obi Wan Kenobi say), reformed Inquisitors or Shadow Guard or Emperor's Hands, Jedi from the ancient past frozen in carbonite and awakened to a new era like Samurai Jack or random high school kids who discover they can force choke people like in Chronicle.

Its a big old galaxy. Plenty of room to get lost.

Assuming they cover the entire original movies, that would make the most sense, I think. That the F&D PCs are the first of a new breed of a new Jedi order.

Which fits in fine with our personal canon, even if the circumstances are pretty much completely different.

But I was wondering how FFG will handle it?

3-6 Jedi PC and a few replacements falls well within the bounds of A Few.

And most of the PCs will probably be ex-Jedi like Ahsoka, non-Jedi force users like Nightsisters, beings what can weild a saber equivalent without being force users (like General Grievous and his magnaguard or Proxy from TFU), escaped Imperial test subjects (clones of Starkiller or Obi Wan Kenobi say), reformed Inquisitors or Shadow Guard or Emperor's Hands, Jedi from the ancient past frozen in carbonite and awakened to a new era like Samurai Jack or random high school kids who discover they can force choke people like in Chronicle.

Its a big old galaxy. Plenty of room to get lost.

That would work too.

I think F&D will be a book that combines many concepts. I think, on its own, it will be a book about the Force and much of what that encompasses. So there will be Force careers and specs, but maybe more generic so you can tack on Jedi, Sith or Nightsister after the fact. But I also think it will be a about realized potential in how FFG wants the game to integrate together. Characters that start in EotE can progress through AoR to end up in F&D. So you will be able to model starting Force-users or Luke's journey or whatever. I think the F&D book can be targeted at the original trilogy while still being useful to other Force-users.

Also, just because the EU has innundated us with Jedi that escaped Order 66 doesn't mean we have to do the same in our games. Remember the players are the stars so there can be as many or as few surviving Jedi as we want.

I don't think there's much room for character development if they just stick to the Rebellion era with F&D. This is supposedly the tome that will bring us full-fledged Jedi, so if they don't go with the future movies they're going to have to reference pre-Imperial times (and hopefully TCW).

On the contrary, I'd say there's plenty of room for character growth even within that limited time frame. Not just for Jedi PCs, but for Force-using PCs in general. One of the running themes from the WEG days was in regards to Force-users in general and Jedi in particular was finding someone that could teach you the ways of the Force (even if it was simply for the mechanical benefit of being able to buy-up your Force skills at a quicker and less expensive rate).

The Rebellion Era is a time when heroes are needed and it's been proven the Empire isn't an unstoppable behemoth. So the room is there for young students of the Force to embark on darn fool idealistic crusades, both to fight the Empire but also to expand on their own Force abilities.

As for the mix-and-match of character types from all three books, it was pretty clearly stated from the start in the Edge of the Empire intro video that FFG made that the design intent was to allow for mixed groups from Day One, as the three games were designed and developed as part of a unified whole.

In terms of starting characters, you're probably looking at rank newbies with a Force Rating of 1, and that like characters who purchase the Exile or Emergent specializations, they'll have to work to increase their Force Rating. A Force Rating of 2 is nothing to sneeze at, and makes a Force-user a great deal more capable, but a Force Rating 1 for an F&D character would really only amount to a 20XP savings compared to an EotE or AoR PC... and that's not a whole lot in the long run, and is about one adventure's worth of XP awards.

As for balancing Force-users, in both the game and in a mixed group, I think a lot of that is going to fall on the GM to keep Force-users in check. I'd prefer that FFG not try for an entirely game-mechanics approach, as such attempts tend to only be as good as the GM enforcing them (though Gary M. Sarli's "Five Questions" proved incredibly helpful for Saga Edition on when to assign a Dark Side Point). Truthfully, I think that just using the fluff of the setting (Force-users are rare, they are highly mistrusted by the general populace, and the Empire is gunning for them) would go a long ways towards cutting down on Lightsaber Syndrome. There's also the balance factor that a Force-user has to split their XP between their specialization talents (particularly to get that very useful Force Rating talent) and buying Force powers & upgrades, which in turn cuts down on the XP they have to spend on skills, which are the real bread&butter of how effective a character is in this game.

I think F&D will be a book that combines many concepts. I think, on its own, it will be a book about the Force and much of what that encompasses. So there will be Force careers and specs, but maybe more generic so you can tack on Jedi, Sith or Nightsister after the fact. But I also think it will be a about realized potential in how FFG wants the game to integrate together. Characters that start in EotE can progress through AoR to end up in F&D. So you will be able to model starting Force-users or Luke's journey or whatever. I think the F&D book can be targeted at the original trilogy while still being useful to other Force-users.

Also, just because the EU has innundated us with Jedi that escaped Order 66 doesn't mean we have to do the same in our games. Remember the players are the stars so there can be as many or as few surviving Jedi as we want.

Well, Steve Horvath has said that his Force-using PC in an in-office campaign started as an Exile in EotE, progressed further in the Force courtesy of AoR, and will complete his destiny in F&D, so that sort of progression isn't lost on the design team.

As for the career/specialization deal, outside of Jedi (which if that isn't a separate career with individual career specs, I'll be very surprised), the fact that there are so many Force traditions to draw from has me thinking that the notion of a single Force-user career might be the best option, again treating each Force tradition as it's own universal specialization, with the F/U career getting to select one of those universal F/S specs as their starting specialization; in effect, it would treat any Force-based specializations as being a career specialization.

It would certainly provide a lot of versatility for players that don't want their Force-user to default to being a Jedi; a common complaint with Saga Edition was that if wanted a Force-user PC and didn't start as a Jedi, you were putting yourself behind the 8-ball (which I think is a load of dung, but the complaint's been raised often enough in the past to warrant mention). The Exile and Emergent would be options for this solitary F/S career, but likely be less appealing than specs based on Force traditions, which makes sense as the the Exile and Emergent are in the "self-taught" category, with the Exile being a grab-bag of Force-based tricks and the Emergent being more of the "act on instinct" type.

But I was wondering how FFG will handle it?

I suspect that they'll take their cues from the early days of the EU, when rogue Jedi weren't a common occurance, and actually being trained in the ways of the Jedi was a pretty big deal.

WEG and pre-Saga WotC both hadled "newbie Jedi PCs" with the notion that the PC's initial master wasn't a surviving Jedi Master (or even a Jedi Knight), but rather an apprentice that had managed to avoid attention, and passed on what little training they had to the PC, possibly with a lightsaber if the PC was really lucky. in fact, in the Rebellion Era sourcebook for the OCR, the campaign path included such an NPC, an apprentice that managed to avoid the purge (said book was published prior to Episode II being released) and could be used to allow a PC to start taking levels in the Jedi Guardian class (OCR and RCR both had a setting restriction that Rebellion Era PCs could not begin play in either of the Jedi base classes), and much later in the campaign a Jedi Knight was encountered to help guide a Jedi PC through the Trials.

So FFG could take a similar approach, allowing that any PCs that start with the Jedi career had either received a modicum of training from a survivor of the purge, or they were a failed apprentice that left the Order (and obviously are quite old by the time of the Rebellion Era) and have decided to pick up where they left off in their training. WEG covered both approaches with the Minor Jedi template (a youngish student that had only received a modicum of training from a Jedi survivor) and the Failed Jedi template (an older individual that was a drop-out and had turned to booze to cope with the stress of being a failed apprentice). The Quixotic Jedi template really wasn't much of a Jedi (granted, WEG pretty much used the term "Jedi" as shorthand for "Force-user) and the Young Jedi template was written as being something of a prodigy that had heard about the Jedi Knights while growing up and figured it'd be cool to emulate them.

But as the EU has noted, it's a big galaxy, and there's plenty of room for an apprentice to lose themselves in... so long as they keep their heads down and don't draw attention to themselves. In fact, per the Revenge of the Sith novelization (writen by Matthew Stover and very much worth reading), Yoda and Obi-Wan managed to change the holonet beacon at the temple to warn any survivors of the Clone Trooper betrayal to go into hiding until further notice; instructions that would be heeded by those Jedi survivors as it came from the Grand Master of the Order as well as one if it's more respected members of the High Council.

The EU may have gotten a little carried away with just how many Jedi managed to survive Order 66 (particularly from the ranks of Jedi Knights and Jedi Masters), but I don't see where FFG has to follow that example to the letter. Though to again pull from the EU, this time the novel Darth Vader: Rise of the Dark Lord has Palpatine observe that he knows full well that Order 66 didn't kill every single Jedi... but he doesn't care, because the Jedi Order's power base has been broken, and from where he sits, Vader's obsession with hunting down every last surviving Jedi is more of a personal vendetta than a matter of serious concern. As long as those surviving Jedi stay in hiding and don't cause trouble, Palps couldn't really care less. it's the ones that try fighting the Empire (such as General Rahm Kota or the PCs for that matter) that should be actively hunted and destroyed.

When I made my predictions for Age of Rebellion, I was almost bullseye
Let's try this one more time

I honestly think F&D will be of the same power level and format as AoR and EotE. So there will be 6 classes with 3 specializations each. I also think F&D will take place in the same timeline as AoR and EotE, so in the Imperial Era. That being said, I think they'll include the 3 main specializations (careers) for jedi, thus opening the way for other eras.

So these are the careers and specs I think we'll see :

- Sith : I've used the Sith ranks seen in the Imperial era... but I was really tempted by Warrior, Sorcerer and Assassin...

- Inquisitor

- Prophet

- Assassin (emperor's hand, Darth Maul, etc.)

- Jedi Guardian :

- Ace

- Peacekeeper

- Weapon Master

- Jedi Consular : I had a lot of choices for Specializations, but I choose those 3 because they had more flavor to them in a lore point of view.

- Diplomat (he could call upon friends to hide him from the Empire)

- Lore Keeper (trying to saveguard the history of the jedi from the great purge)

- Healer (always usefull and pretty resilient)

- Jedi Sentinel :

- Investigator

- Shadow

- Watchman

- Witch of Dathomir : (this lesser force tradition has been under the spotlight a lot in the Clone Wars series, I thought it would be a good idea to include it)

- Nightsisters (more like Assaj Ventress)

- Shamans (a la Mother Talzin, even if she's a Nightsister)

- Beasts Riders (a Jedi on a Rancor... everybody wants that)

- Zeison Sha (any other lesser force tradition could have been included... but this one lived trought the great purge and has a special feel to it with discblades and armor)

- Telekinesis expert

- Discblade master

- Armorsmith

I need to find better names for the Zeison Sha specializations...

I also need a universal specializations like the FS Exile or Emergent from EotE and AoR... it should be something not related to the force... maybe something like FUGITIVE... a specialisation to help escape the great purge, with emphasis on hiding and underworld dealings...

There should also be some force powers to go with those new careers... Maybe a healing power (light) and a injury power (dark) ... The other powers found in EotE and AoR should also make a comeback. I'd like to add maybe 1 or 2 more force powers but I'm all out of ideas

Also, to balance things out, I think there should only be 6 career skills instead of the usual 8. Since force-users careers (only at character creation) get 1 free rank in Force Rating. When you buy additionnal specializations, you dont get another rank in Force Rating... only when you buy the last tier talent from each tree.

And finally, I really like Logan Ambrose's suggestion about the equivalent of "Obligations" :

Lightbulb! What if the obligation system for F&D (assuming its force based) allows you to pick your slice of the force to work on. Knowledge for example would be about recovering knowledge and sharing it and thus hoarding or destroying knowledge would be a shift to the dark side. This makes each characters struggle with the dark side different and personal.

So when your character reaches 100, it turns to the dark side... it would be nice.

So... what do you guys think ?
Will I hit the bullseye again ?

I reckon there will be an intro adventure that is something like All the PCs are have been captured by the Inquisition (individually or as a group) and are being transported to Coruscant for torture/experimentation/execution on the same ship. They escape, and, pursued by the Empire, begin to seek their destiny!

Explains why a bunch of disparate forcey types are all hanging around together.

And I think expecting a group of Jedi fanboys who have just got their sabers to keep a low profile is wishful thinking.

My personal theory is that Jedi or Witches of Dathomir or any of the like will not be careers. I suspect that there will be several specialties repeated, after all there are plenty of examples of force using pilots.

I really don't think that the force using characters will be significantly more powerful or outclass characters from other games. Can a force user be 'more powerful'? Yes. However, the characters we see in the movies and The Clone Wars are characters with lots of experience under their belt.

I'm put forth that specific orders will be represented by the Obligation/Duty mechanic that Force and Destiny will put forth: Commitment. The deeper the commitment to an order, the more benefit.

Moving away from canon, it seems as though most here are thinking there will be straight Jedi careers and specializations. Does anyone think they will stick to the universal career tree approach and Force Power trees they are using currently and simply expand on that approach?

My guess for their next mechanic after Obligation and Duty?

Destiny.

I think the mechanic will somehow act as a guiding light for your character, opposite how Obligation pushes your character from the past and Duty drives your character's present course. It's an incomplete thought, honestly, and I don't really desire to delve that much further into it, but I'm calling it now: the next mechanic will be called Destiny.

The timeline will be a little interesting, but in all the material I remember, they talked about Force and Destiny dealing with survivors of Order 66. Ergo, the book will probably be set in the original trilogy timeline, dealing with Jedi either hiding out in the seedy underbelly of the galaxy (EotE) or helping the Rebellion (AoR) or trying to restart the order (FaD).

As for the question of careers, since AoR is focused on the Rebellion, I think the next round will be focused on Jedi. Also, much like AoR, the careers for FaD will be built such that you could easily do a name swap and do a Sith character. (Example: there will probably be a Seeker career that can be used for Inquisitors.)

Moving away from canon, it seems as though most here are thinking there will be straight Jedi careers and specializations. Does anyone think they will stick to the universal career tree approach and Force Power trees they are using currently and simply expand on that approach?

Moving away ??

You mean jedi training from childhood, taken from their homes at an early age and given tutelage at the jedi temple... Even Darth Maul was trained from a very young age by Darth Sidious... True force-user careers fit the canon perfectly...

And also... I think a few fan would see red if FFG didn't include true force-user careers in F&D. A lot of ppl don't want to play a farmboy turned pilot turned jedi but a real born, raised and trained jedi.

The real problem I see with the universal specialization idea is that jedi users will become one-trick poney.... Since a FS-exile and FS-emergent both give rank 1 in Force Rating when you buy that spec, FFG would have to keep this mold for future universal force specs. But notice that you don't gain another +1 Force Rating (for a total of 2 Force Rating) if you buy both those Universal specs. A jedi oriented character that bought many force-user specs would have access to so few career skills he would be gimped in that maner. So the only efficient way to spend XP would be on force powers and talents (from the force-user specs) alone.

I think FFG choose to not give bonus careers skills to FS-exile and FS-emergent was because they gave you 1 Force Rating instead.

One thing they could do that would be nice... give the new Force-user career specs a Minimum Force Rating of 1 to take... so if you already have a Bounty Hunter FS-exile or Smuggler FS-emergent, you have 1 FR and can then buy into the Jedi Guardian Peacekeeper Specialization... and if you start a new force-user character, when you take the Jedi Guardian career, you gain 1 FR and then can choose the Peacekeeper specialization. It would be a nice touch since the career, and not the spec, gave you the 1 FR...

I like how all of this is coming together...

I hope the devs are taking notes

Moving away from canon, it seems as though most here are thinking there will be straight Jedi careers and specializations. Does anyone think they will stick to the universal career tree approach and Force Power trees they are using currently and simply expand on that approach?

Moving away ??

You mean jedi training from childhood, taken from their homes at an early age and given tutelage at the jedi temple... Even Darth Maul was trained from a very young age by Darth Sidious... True force-user careers fit the canon perfectly...

And also... I think a few fan would see red if FFG didn't include true force-user careers in F&D. A lot of ppl don't want to play a farmboy turned pilot turned jedi but a real born, raised and trained jedi.

The real problem I see with the universal specialization idea is that jedi users will become one-trick poney.... Since a FS-exile and FS-emergent both give rank 1 in Force Rating when you buy that spec, FFG would have to keep this mold for future universal force specs. But notice that you don't gain another +1 Force Rating (for a total of 2 Force Rating) if you buy both those Universal specs. A jedi oriented character that bought many force-user specs would have access to so few career skills he would be gimped in that maner. So the only efficient way to spend XP would be on force powers and talents (from the force-user specs) alone.

I think FFG choose to not give bonus careers skills to FS-exile and FS-emergent was because they gave you 1 Force Rating instead.

One thing they could do that would be nice... give the new Force-user career specs a Minimum Force Rating of 1 to take... so if you already have a Bounty Hunter FS-exile or Smuggler FS-emergent, you have 1 FR and can then buy into the Jedi Guardian Peacekeeper Specialization... and if you start a new force-user character, when you take the Jedi Guardian career, you gain 1 FR and then can choose the Peacekeeper specialization. It would be a nice touch since the career, and not the spec, gave you the 1 FR...

I like how all of this is coming together...

I hope the devs are taking notes

No moving away from canon as in I don't want to talk about the new movies, the old movies, the games, the cartoons, the legend, the background, the fluff. Just how they will handle the careers and talents and such.

I really don't think that the force using characters will be significantly more powerful or outclass characters from other games. Can a force user be 'more powerful'? Yes. However, the characters we see in the movies and The Clone Wars are characters with lots of experience under their belt.

Another thing to remember is that strong characters in The Clone Wars like bounty hunters Cad Bane and Aurra Sing have been shown to really give the Jedi a run for their money, even in one-on-one fights.

Seems to me there's no reason that player characters in our games can't be at least as cool as those two!

My guess for their next mechanic after Obligation and Duty?

Destiny.

Funny, we had a discussion about this months ago and I put forward then that "Destiny" seems too broad a concept when you compare it to Obligation and/or Duty. I thought that Oath or Code would be a good mechanic if the game has light side PC's only.

I really don't think that the force using characters will be significantly more powerful or outclass characters from other games. Can a force user be 'more powerful'? Yes. However, the characters we see in the movies and The Clone Wars are characters with lots of experience under their belt.

Another thing to remember is that strong characters in The Clone Wars like bounty hunters Cad Bane and Aurra Sing have been shown to really give the Jedi a run for their money, even in one-on-one fights.

Seems to me there's no reason that player characters in our games can't be at least as cool as those two!

Another Pro-Canon anti-balance here! (And I introduce elements from Megaman X and Chrono Trigger/Cross in my games sometimes) XD

I mean, I wouldn't like the idea of "everyone is almost equal with +/- 1 Difference" and that you will be different just you pick a different weapon. Every warrior is above so strong than the other but with the differences that one is based on Agi and the other in Brawn and also one has a Blaster Pistol and the other one a "sparky saber of light" XD

Jedi are near over because they are! In Matrix hackers are over and so on. Evil guys on SW don't use to say "are two rebel soldiers... run away from the base!" They change rebel soldiers for Jedi XD

Always remember that GM is the last and definitive power of the galax... game! If GM consider that some "Force-Saber Freak" breaks the fine rebel warriors game idea/balance then don't let players pick that Force monster! But if do you want a two speed games like "Padme fight the battle droids and save the planet from the invasion while Qui-Gon and Obi just fight a lonely and tatooed guy with jumps and Force pushes".

And all this just because its Star Wars! Strong people are stronger, but this doesn't mean that they NEVER can beat those weak ones.

PS: When I mean Star Wars I try to forget Force Unleashed OK?! XDD

PS2: I believe that people from FFG will create a "moderate" or almost balanced version from Jedi that won't fit either Anti and Pro Jedi's XD

The EU may have gotten a little carried away with just how many Jedi managed to survive Order 66 (particularly from the ranks of Jedi Knights and Jedi Masters), but I don't see where FFG has to follow that example to the letter. Though to again pull from the EU, this time the novel Darth Vader: Rise of the Dark Lord has Palpatine observe that he knows full well that Order 66 didn't kill every single Jedi... but he doesn't care, because the Jedi Order's power base has been broken, and from where he sits, Vader's obsession with hunting down every last surviving Jedi is more of a personal vendetta than a matter of serious concern. As long as those surviving Jedi stay in hiding and don't cause trouble, Palps couldn't really care less. it's the ones that try fighting the Empire (such as General Rahm Kota or the PCs for that matter) that should be actively hunted and destroyed.

I believe that this is how "the wider EU" reconciles Order 66 with the sheer number of survivors that have kept popping up in the EU... that, and "ya pick one up, 'n Vader knocks 'em down"... we do know that based on the recent EU trend of focus on the Dark Times/Original Trilogy-period, all the survivors are only going to have done so much... or lasted so long.

My guess for their next mechanic after Obligation and Duty?

Destiny.

Funny, we had a discussion about this months ago and I put forward then that "Destiny" seems too broad a concept when you compare it to Obligation and/or Duty. I thought that Oath or Code would be a good mechanic if the game has light side PC's only.

I just think Destiny is a very Force-sounding mechanic. It'll probably have an application for non Force-users as well, plus being vague and broad means it can be applied to a swapped Sith character. That said, I could easily believe their mechanic would be called "Oath," since I'm pretty sure dark siders have oaths as well.

This is all assuming FFG is concerned with making swappable careers. I could be way off base with that.

(I will say that I'm excited about a career I could co-opt into an Imperial Knight career for a Legacy-era game.)

I think there would be more classes with the jedi as inspiration and a more force powers.

It's going to look a lot like the other two books.