I was really looking forward to ‘Enter the Unknown’ for a number of reasons. I thought Explorers were the worst-realised career in ‘Edge of the Empire’, lacking any combat abilities and generally being a grab-bag of mismatched skills and talents that didn’t support or line up with each other. Also, as the first splatbook, this would give us a good indication of what future releases might look like. From the description of ‘Dangerous Covenants’, FFG are going to follow this approach very closely for all their EoE career books.

What is immediately apparent is that FFG are giving us the SW universe in little bite-sized pieces, a few races and equipment and ships and other things, here and there. Those wanting a book for species or vehicles will, I think, have to wait a while.

My first thought was that a slender book with 93 pages wouldn’t have been a hardback in years gone by – but hey, that’s the way it is now, and at least it will make it hardwearing. There’s a prologue which has some fiction using the three ‘iconic’ characters we will see throughout the book, and some general fluff about exploration in the SW universe, including discussion on the six Explorer specialisations. What was interesting is that they mention that, under the Empire, newly discovered races are now exploited or just slaughtered, rather than left alone as they were in more enlightened eras. While anyone is free to change canon as they wish, this makes it clear that the default role of the Empire in these games is that of the ‘Bad Guys’. YMMV.

There follows three chapters, the first of which, ‘Galactic Sojourners’, is the reason most of us will buy this: new species, specialisations and character options. Firstly though, there’s some nice fluff on background options for Explorer characters – academic, criminal, entrepreneur, ex-Imperial, fallen noble, wanderer. All of these are discussed for each specialisation, which is a nice touch.

Then there’s some reworked Obligations specific to Explorer characters. There are two new ones – I really liked ‘Sponsorship’, which adds all kinds of interesting possibilities, and moves EoE away from its assumed default of ‘criminal/underworld’, allowing for characters who are perfectly legitimate. ‘Fervour’ is the other one, and it’s one of those ‘motivational’ Obligations that seems out of place as a concept. Why would an archaelogist’s internal drive to find new places or an addiction to pod races be an ‘Obligation’ rather than a Motivation? I feel Obligations should be externalised pressures upon a character, not their own internal aims or goals.

The new species are the Chiss, Duros and Toydarians. It felt weird that the Chiss have Presence as a dump stat, when they are portrayed as lordly and charismatic. The stats for Toydarians are interesting, as they break the previous mould for alien species, having high stats in two areas and low in another two. Their rules for ‘hovering’ are very simple, just ignoring difficult terrain and not really flying. There’s a weird non-rule in their fluff write-up about them being ‘completely immune to any manipulations via the Force’. But this doesn’t appear in their racial abilities as it does for droids, and it doesn’t say if they can use the Force or not. Can I ‘manipulate’ one using Move into the side of a starship? It doesn’t say. As this doesn’t appear in their actual racial abilities, I assume it is simply represented by a high Willpower, and doesn’t have any more game effect than the other bit of racial fluff that says they smell nice.

The Duros are reprinted from the Age of Rebellion beta, as is the Driver specialisation. I don’t mind some overlap – but it occurred to me that by the time the official AoR book rolls around, I will have paid for three separate books with the Duros and Driver information in them. At this stage, I don’t see overlap as a problem, but as the games roll on, it might feel like we are paying for a lot of repeated information between the various games. True, we don’t have to buy all three editions, but I think that most players will invest in all three versions of the game to some degree or other. We shall see if it ends up being a problem – it’s interesting that the ‘One Ring’ game recently abandoned this approach, because they felt that reprinting the rules several times over would not be good value for money.

Then we have the new specialisations, Archaeologist, Driver and Big Game Hunter. These feel much more enjoyable and focused than the Explorer specialisations in the main book. Each of them has a much-needed option to have some combat potential, and the skills and talents have much better synergies. Archaeologist feels like a field version of the Scholar specialisation for Colonists. I really liked that they have ‘Well Rounded’ as an early talent, allowing the use of guns or fisticuffs, without making every archaeologist into Indiana Jones. They have a unique high-tier power, Pin, which lets them make good use of their Athletics skill in combat.

Driver is a straight port from the AoE beta, but Big Game Hunter is a much-needed option that allows good rifle skills and stealth, something the Scout sorely lacked. They have outdoors talents and a few unique abilities like Hunter’s Quarry and Bring It Down. The ‘Hunter’ talent from Survivalist seems to be a serious omission here, considering the BGH fluff tells us they specifically hunt animals and dangerous beasts. So why wouldn’t they have the talent that, y’know, actually supports that mechanically?

There then follows a new Motivation - Discoveries, which highlight a character’s drive to find treasure, challenges, historical records, new places or even self-enlightenment. It makes much more sense including this here than under ‘Obligation’.

Finally for this chapter, we see the new innovation of ‘Signature Abilities’ – a small tree similar to the Force powers in EoE – that can be tacked to the bottom of an existing specialisation tree, to give new options for higher-level characters. This is a really nice touch – why should Force-sensitives have all the fun anyway? In fact, I’m going to re-skin these abilities as low-level, subtle Force powers – not enough to give Force dice or lightsaber use or anything, but a little reminder that the Force touches even the Han Solos and Boba Fetts of this world.

The powers shown here – Sudden Discovery and Unmatched Mobility – are flavourful abilities that don’t seem overpowered. The latter gives extra manoeuvres, but is really only powerful when you’ve maxed out the tree. The former is mostly GM-orientated, allowing the character to ‘suddenly discover’ an item, location or a safe route. It occurs to me that a generous GM could make it quite powerful, while a mean one could nerf it into uselessness.

I really liked the fact these Signature Abilities are available solely to actual Explorers, making choice of career more important than it is currently. It will be interesting to see if the Signature powers for the combat classes like Hired Gun will be equally well-balanced.

Chapter Two is ‘Outfitted for Adventure’ – a real treasure-trove of gear, ships and weapons aimed at Explorers. I was immediately impressed with the weapons – including a bunch of tools that could be used to maim opponents in a pinch. Then there’s a sporting blaster, a stun-gun, a souped-up blaster sniper rifle that comes with some drawbacks, and a net gun or glop grenades for non-lethal captures. My favourite by far were the ’Czerka Legacy Arms’ – old fashioned ‘slugthrowers’ like an air rifle, high-caliber hunting rifle and shotgun. While I can’t see an Imperial soldier toting these, they make perfect sense for a big game hunter or an eccentric bounty-killer. It’s nice that they keep pace with most blaster weapons, but I’d have loved to see some mods or talents that work specifically with these archaic weapons.

Then there are explorer outfits that can double as armour, and a ton of explorer-orientated gear like scanners, backpacks and translators. There's a range of really fun droids – what explorer wouldn’t want her own cyberdog or spiderbot? How about a mini scout walker or a floating specimen cage? Finally, there are some great scout ships, bikes and other craft perfect for explorers, including the Ghtroc freighter from the Beta book.

The last chapter, ‘Grand Expeditions’, is only fluff, but it’s good fluff. Here are discussions about the various types of Explorer characters, and ways to tell stories and create adventures for them. Some of the artwork here, as on page 68 and 81, is just jaw-dropping - beautiful panoramas of alien worlds that make me want to set an adventure there. The game discusses the kinds of adversaries you could make for Explorer characters - however, I would have liked to have seen some statistics for beasts and alien creatures here, something for the Big Game Hunters to stalk or capture.

All in all, I thought this was an excellent addition to the EoE game, packed full of both ‘crunch’ and ‘fluff’. The Explorer career gets the updates it sorely needed, and players can now make the Lara Croft or Nathan Drake types they envisaged. There are plenty of new options for players to use – species, specialisations, weapons, gear, ships, talents (and the modular nature of the game means that these things work fine with non-Explorers too). All of it seemed very well-balanced – I didn’t see any ‘power creep’ or things that made previous options obsolete. This bodes well for future supplements, and indicates that FFG really have a great grasp of the mechanics of this game and an idea of where they want to take it. My gripes – no mods, no adversaries, a few odd choices for species and talents – really were minimal compared to all the great stuff we do get. And I loved the support for EoE characters who are not simply ‘Shadowrunners in space’. With the expected beautiful production values, and great content, this is another fantastic FFG product – highly recommended, must-buy!

Marcia

Nice review, one quibble: for Bring It Down, you add the target's Brawn, not the character's Brawn.

Nice review, one quibble: for Bring It Down, you add the target's Brawn, not the character's Brawn.

Thanks whafrog - we were both reading that wrong! That actually makes a hell of a lot more sense, as it's clearly meant to bring down bigger creatures. I always wondered how being strong helped you kill things with guns. <blush>

My group took to the gear in this book like moths to a light, and for some reason more than half the group wants to be a Driver. My only gripes are with the Chiss, really. Presence as a dump stat is odd, particularly when Cool is their racial skill. It makes very little sense to me. I've houseruled Chiss to have high Intellect, no dump stat, Infravision, and 85 starting XP.

My favorite aspect of the book is definitely the whole concept behind narrative Signature Abilities. Sudden Discovery has only been used once so far, but I absolutely loved it. When faced with a visiting Imperial ambassador as well the local sector Admiral to the player's home colony, the party Trader used Sudden Discovery to open up a hatch in his mine's larder and discover a stash of 300-year old wine, cheese, and other finely aged gormet ingredients to throw a luxious banquet with. Giving players that much imput into the narrative can have some really interesting effects, and I can't wait to see what other Signature Abilities are out there.