Yeah if you are particularly interested in only humans who evolved on said planet, I suppose that's true, and only if you are interested in verisimilitude. I'm more interested in inclusion and getting new faces into the hobby, so I'm happy when I see everyone represented in my game about people in a fictional sci-fi setting.

Well, if we're talking inclusion, how about some bisexual or lesbian characters?

Because we can play PC Top Trumps all day.

You already have Lando and Mace Windu who are major characters, plus Vader and JarJar are voiced by black actors. KotOR has Jolee Bindu (plus my own Revan, who was black, as is my Mass Effect Commander Shepard of 33 playthroughs). Plus a ton more in the EU, and non-humans like Oola, Adi Gallia and Stass Allie portrayed by black actors.

Whereas we have... Juhani (maybe) and Makeb (a weird kind of quarantine zone for same-sex flirting).

And... that's... it.

But you know, I understand how Lucas feels about it, and I don't expect them to change SW or EoE any time soon just to make me feel more happy. I'm perfectly entitled to play my own characters and campaigns however I want, and choose their sexualities or ethnicities or anything else.

Also, I am happy playing male and/or straight characters too. I don't need my characters to reflect my own personality, or pander to me with tokenism.

(Weirdly enough, our group includes a white guy who almost always plays black characters, another one who always plays females, a half-Malayasian guy who likes non-humans best, and an Indian guy who seems to exclusively play teenage Japanese-type characters... Go figure.)

Anyway... Space Weasels. (getting back on topic... sort of...) If there are 99 females to one male, how is that gonna affect their sexual orientations??? We must be told.

The original quote was commenting on the book, because RPGs have a tendency to avoid illustrating people of color in their pages. I feel like EotE generally does a good job at it, better than most RPGs certainly. None of it, though, has to do with how people were cast in the films (especially JarJar...wow) or sexual orientation, which doesn't really have anything to do with the way art is depicted in the RPG books.

Think of it this way: what harm comes from depicting someone with dark skin in a book about a fictional sci-fi universe?

Think of it this way: what harm comes from depicting someone with dark skin in a book about a fictional sci-fi universe?

None, obviously. Star Wars has quite a decent amount of 'ethnic' characters and EoE reflects this in their books.

But putting black people in the Shire or Minas Tirith would feel silly. That's tokenism.

Take something like Arkham Horror, where there are four black (and two Asian) characters out of a total of 48. And that's fine, because that reflects how New England was in the 20's. And notably, their roles in the game reflect that too; two are entertainers, one is an athlete and one is a shaman from Africa. It would be stretching credibility to have a doctor or lawyer in this time period, I think.

No harm from diversity at all. But I also don't think the artists were intentionally leaving out people of color. If anything they were just trying to draw people that invoked famous Corellians like Han and Wedge. Not saying a character has to be white to invoke those characters, but it's possible the thought process didn't go that deeply.

What's the breakdown on male/female in Suns? I don't have it yet. For pure grins, I counted EtU and it's right down the middle. Trying to get the % racial representation correct is contrived, the sexual representation amongst humans far less so. Earth is ethnically diverse overall, but if you compare the crowd in an Icelandic fishing village with that in Cape Town, it's going to look very different, but it'll typically still be 50/50 men and women.

I don't think likening our demographics to Star Wars is in line with how the universe is portrayed.

Star Wars is all about diversity. Most planets are shown as cosmopolitan and have a diverse range of non-native aliens. It's clear that most populations aren't native or even suited to their environment; we constantly see things like lizard people settling on ice worlds or big, furry aliens (or even pasty white moisture farmers) on desert planets. This should be doubly true on a trade hub like Correllia.

The books so far have been fairly good at diverse artwork. That one bucks the trend is an unfortunate (and I'm sure unintentional) oversight of the part of the art director.

I dont understand why they havent put out a ships, vehicles, droids, tech and creatures books.

Because they are not doing it that way. That seems pretty clear at this point.

For better or for worse, they are giving us everything - species, guns, gear, ships, creatures - in bite-sized pieces in their various sourcebooks.

We might possibly see a compendium at the end of the series, but I'm absolutely certain it won't be anytime soon.

Bear in mind, FFG is a business, and I think the splatbooks wouldn't sell as well if they released a big book for races, droids, ships or gear. This way, you need to get Suns of Fortune if you want the stats for Selonians or Drall, for instance. I intend to buy them all anyway, so I'm not complaining.

And it seems pretty stupid too. The best known RPG had its last edition fail because all it did was put out spatbooks and that threw the game out of whack (and there is an example of this in Suns of Fortune), and the last version of Star Wars had its ship book reach over $100 in Ebay for a while due to the demand.

There is also the logical error in that thinking that more players will buy splatbooks that gear books. A Bounty Hunter player is probably not interested in Explorers, but most players are interested in guns and gizmos.

Most games put out very little that makes the GM's life easier. Gear, guns, ships, creatures, and places are all things that help the GM run the game. My view is that they should go even further, to putting out books that give detailed rules on how to set up campaigns, and how to populate the game to make a continuing narrative. SAGA has a few books that went that way. Scum and Villany is the one that comes to mind first.

The reason why? You can make a beautiful and great game to play, but if it is a pain to run no one will run it and you wont sell any books. You make it easy to RUN, and you will get more people to play. Make is easer to play but harder to run and you will get less GMs and less play. Cant have a game without a GM.

And before someone mentions the business thing yet again, I would point out that the last edition of the most popular RPG there has ever been was very uncompromisingly splat oriented, and it did not even last 5 years before it was abandonded without a published replacement. That, if nothing else tells me that splat above all is not the way to go.

Lastly, I believe I said 'creatures' not 'races'. I am not against splatbooks, just against only splatbooks. Races and trees belong in splat. Creatures is to that we have something other than stormies and thugs to shoot. It is also why I dont have Enter the Unknown but do have Suns of Fortune. I dont need the stats for a player to be a Chiss, or a Big Game Hunter, but I do need to know more about Corellia, and I do want to know what the stats are for things that try to eat your face when you are pokeing around where you shouldnt be.

If Corellia has a warm area where darker-skinned people might have come from, or an in-universe reason for them to be there in large numbers, then great. Sticking them in for no reason? Not so great.

Corellians are described, under the species option for playing them, as being "as genetically and anatomically varied as other human populations" so I'd assume that there are dark skinned Corellians even if we don't see them in the art.

And it seems pretty stupid too. The best known RPG had its last edition fail because all it did was put out spatbooks and that threw the game out of whack (and there is an example of this in Suns of Fortune), and the last version of Star Wars had its ship book reach over $100 in Ebay for a while due to the demand.

4E's failure had nothing to do with splatbooks. It was a fundamentally flawed system from the get go. The splatbooks were band aids that made it a better game. Until MM3 came out the monster math had monsters be completely non-threatening bags of tedious HPs that no one enjoyed fighting. The armor math was messed up and they had to add special armors to fill in the holes. Skill challenge DCs were borked and had to get fixed. 4E made sure everyone appreciated the term "feat tax". A couple dozen small fixes to rather niggling problems got done with the 4.5E (Essentials) as well as streamlining feats.

But even had the drooling idiots at WotC not messed up the actual game mechanics as horribly as they did, they would have lost a lot of interest with their shift from a Tolkien or Conan style system (pre cartoony Hobbit movies) to a children's anime world where wounds just disappear between scenes and fighters have super powers. Had 4E been released now, after the Hobbit movie in which dwarves can fall off a cliff and have several tons of goblin fall on them and be completely unhurt, it would have been more successful I'm sure.

The fact that they failed to followup on their promises of electronic tools and the initial failure of the system to have built on it's past to be as good or better than it's predecessor killed most interest in the game. Paizo thanks them. Although WotC would like to pretend it was people who were set in their ways jumping ship to Pathfinder, the fact is that it was a lousy game from a lousy design team that did it.

But it had nothing to do with splat books. SAGA on the other hand, got ruined by splat books. The utterly broken characters you could build made the game a bit of a mess after level 10.

And it seems pretty stupid too. The best known RPG had its last edition fail because all it did was put out spatbooks and that threw the game out of whack (and there is an example of this in Suns of Fortune), and the last version of Star Wars had its ship book reach over $100 in Ebay for a while due to the demand.

There is also the logical error in that thinking that more players will buy splatbooks that gear books. A Bounty Hunter player is probably not interested in Explorers, but most players are interested in guns and gizmos.

Most games put out very little that makes the GM's life easier. Gear, guns, ships, creatures, and places are all things that help the GM run the game. My view is that they should go even further, to putting out books that give detailed rules on how to set up campaigns, and how to populate the game to make a continuing narrative. SAGA has a few books that went that way. Scum and Villany is the one that comes to mind first.

The reason why? You can make a beautiful and great game to play, but if it is a pain to run no one will run it and you wont sell any books. You make it easy to RUN, and you will get more people to play. Make is easer to play but harder to run and you will get less GMs and less play. Cant have a game without a GM.

And before someone mentions the business thing yet again, I would point out that the last edition of the most popular RPG there has ever been was very uncompromisingly splat oriented, and it did not even last 5 years before it was abandonded without a published replacement. That, if nothing else tells me that splat above all is not the way to go.

Lastly, I believe I said 'creatures' not 'races'. I am not against splatbooks, just against only splatbooks. Races and trees belong in splat. Creatures is to that we have something other than stormies and thugs to shoot. It is also why I dont have Enter the Unknown but do have Suns of Fortune. I dont need the stats for a player to be a Chiss, or a Big Game Hunter, but I do need to know more about Corellia, and I do want to know what the stats are for things that try to eat your face when you are pokeing around where you shouldnt be.

Um ya comparing EotE releases to SAGA's releases is like comparing the Ewoks cartoon with the OT.

SAGA is a GM's NIGHTMARE.(IMHO so clam down fanboys)

Every book for SAGA had game breaking options for players and either vague or unnecessary information for GMs.

On top of that the Core Rulebook for SAGA had barley any info regarding the galaxy or how to run a game for a novice GM, it's also half the size of EotE rulebook and cost around the same or more. There is/was a high demand for the ship book

because you kinda NEED it if you wanted more than the 18 vehicles(that includes speeders and walkers) presented in the core rulebook, on top of the fact that several of the campaign books actually had you refer to said ship book( and the monster book for that matter) for stats that probably should have just been reprinted. The SCUM and VILLAINY book has a "Fringe Elements" chapter in it that is filled with USELESS npc stats for Movie/EU characters and at the very end of the chapter is a small chart that serves as in index to look up generic npc archtypes (for a fringe campaign) in the "Threats of the Galaxy" book.

All I have is the Edge of the Empire Core Rulebook and really thats all I feel I actually NEED to run this game.

Any extra books is just icing on the cake.

Agreeing with Union and Dmoney on their opinions, for the most part. Here is my .02.

I remember when D&D 2E did this exact same thing. They didn't release an entire system all at once. They released their core sets, (Rulebooks, then Campaign Settings), and then incrementally released their splats. Same with 3E, and then 4E.

This is how you maintain profit and interest. Also, you don't pummel people with a vast swath of material to absorb right out of the gate. Anyways, there are some people out there who seem to feel a bizarre sense of entitlement to having what they want, NOW.

I would suggest that we all just enjoy what we've got, and not whine so much about why our favourite ship or species wasn't in every book right away.

Also, maybe we don't have these vehicles/species/gear whatever, because they will be released with AoR, or FaD. Think about it. We have to start saving our ducets! If there are support/supplement books being released for EotE, there will be for the next two! That's eighteen career books right there! Each with their own chapters on gear/vehicles, etc.

Consider the bigger picture. I think it's pretty nice as well that FFG is only asking for $20-$30 dollars (+/- for your country...) for these books. By the time AoR releases, we'll have approximately 50% of the EotE Career books, never mind modules and books like SoF. So in theory if you are going to buy every book (I will) then I'll be picking up a dozen career books by the time FaD releases in 2015. Then six more books after that.

That's a bucket load of species, career specs, gear, weapons and vehicles spread over 18 books, as well as books like SoF.

I'm sorry if your favourite whatever wasn't in the very first book they released, but I imagine that somewhere along the way, it will be there.

And ultimately, you have the power to stat it out on your own by now. There are enough published resources out there to cobble together a rough idea until the published version comes out.

Has anyone talked about what they LIKE about this book in a while? I'm not known for my sunny disposition, but I can't pick up my copy until Tuesday, so maybe we could concentrate on that for a bit. How are the modular encounters? Do you think the ships they HAVE statted are accurate? What kind of GM advice is offered? For instance, I really enjoyed the chapter for GMs in EtU. I thought that it was a good resource for novice/intermediate GMs and players to provide a nice perspective on the career...

It's not really about forcing ethnicities and cultures into the fluff. It's about diversity in the look and feel of the game. RPGs are pretty whitewashed products and it's nice for people of color to see themselves reflected in the art of the game, sometimes.

Yes, but only if it's appropriate for them to be so. I actually like Pathfinder for incorporating Asian, African and Arabic cultures as central to their world and having examples of these characters in their iconics. But I wouldn't be happy with someone sticking black characters in, say, One Ring, if there's no equivalent culture in the Wilderlands area that would support them.

Representation is good. Tokenism is bad.

If Corellia has a warm area where darker-skinned people might have come from, or an in-universe reason for them to be there in large numbers, then great. Sticking them in for no reason? Not so great.

And as I said, EoE isn't too bad in this regard. We have a very rakish picture of Lando, looking all smooth, and the iconic Driver character, Janese, is black.

I am actually aware. I just like quoting Chasing Amy.

Ye gods, how I hate that film. It's right up there with the prequels for me.

Awww...I think I liked Jason Lee in that. It's been a long time since I've seen it...but it wasn't as bad Hayden Christensen as Anakin was it?

And it seems pretty stupid too. The best known RPG had its last edition fail because all it did was put out spatbooks and that threw the game out of whack (and there is an example of this in Suns of Fortune), and the last version of Star Wars had its ship book reach over $100 in Ebay for a while due to the demand.

4E's failure had nothing to do with splatbooks. It was a fundamentally flawed system from the get go. The splatbooks were band aids that made it a better game. Until MM3 came out the monster math had monsters be completely non-threatening bags of tedious HPs that no one enjoyed fighting. The armor math was messed up and they had to add special armors to fill in the holes. Skill challenge DCs were borked and had to get fixed. 4E made sure everyone appreciated the term "feat tax". A couple dozen small fixes to rather niggling problems got done with the 4.5E (Essentials) as well as streamlining feats.

But even had the drooling idiots at WotC not messed up the actual game mechanics as horribly as they did, they would have lost a lot of interest with their shift from a Tolkien or Conan style system (pre cartoony Hobbit movies) to a children's anime world where wounds just disappear between scenes and fighters have super powers. Had 4E been released now, after the Hobbit movie in which dwarves can fall off a cliff and have several tons of goblin fall on them and be completely unhurt, it would have been more successful I'm sure.

The fact that they failed to followup on their promises of electronic tools and the initial failure of the system to have built on it's past to be as good or better than it's predecessor killed most interest in the game. Paizo thanks them. Although WotC would like to pretend it was people who were set in their ways jumping ship to Pathfinder, the fact is that it was a lousy game from a lousy design team that did it.

But it had nothing to do with splat books. SAGA on the other hand, got ruined by splat books. The utterly broken characters you could build made the game a bit of a mess after level 10.

I always thought SAGA was like 4e and the most of the books were terrible. I liked a lot of west end stuff however..I think right now FFG is doing an awesome job with Edge...more adventures!

Yeah what was really bad was that some of the SAGA sourcebooks apparently included material which was meant for later books in their encounter list. For example Galaxy at War had the Etti Light transport listed as a class of ship commonly encountered in CSA hangers. The thing is there are no stats given in the book, or elsewhere in SAGA so if you decide to let the players steal one or be pursued by one in a plot you have to either make up stats or convert the D6 stats if you have access to them. What's the point of suggesting encounters with a ship class if they weren't planning to give you the data to use it for more than a background prop?

Honestly I always found Galaxy at War kind of weird, almost like it was only half done. It mentioned some new Starfighter and Capital ship models (new to the system at least) but included no new Starfighter stats and only stats for only one new capital ship.

Edge of the Empire is much better on that front but I'm not apologizing for being disappointed that some of my favorite Corellian ship models weren't included in a book focused on the Corellian sector, or being worried about what that might imply for the chances of similar ships appearing in future books.

I liked WEG's books but sometimes they really needed more through editing. Like the Carrack class cruiser's Lasers which were stated to be intended for point defense against fighters in the class entry but stated to be Capital grade weapons in the stats.

And it seems pretty stupid too. The best known RPG had its last edition fail because all it did was put out spatbooks and that threw the game out of whack (and there is an example of this in Suns of Fortune), and the last version of Star Wars had its ship book reach over $100 in Ebay for a while due to the demand.

I've sold two of them for over $100, and more for $50-$75ish (I have 1 left, part of my complete set).

The ship books (previous company's game, as well) always seem to demand high prices later and I always grab them when they appear in second hand bookstores (I even got one at Goodwill for $20). I have no doubt that a FFG one would perform well.

I'd much prefer these things be collected rather than have to drag out a dozen books to look through what ships I might want to use (or races, creatures, droids, guns, etc). I find it a deterrent to FFG's line, myself. They are succeeding in spite of this rather than because of it, in my opinion, but success is success and here's to hoping for the success will continue.

Maelora, remind me to ask you why you hate Kevin Smith the next time ErikB starts a thread.

And it seems pretty stupid too. The best known RPG had its last edition fail because all it did was put out spatbooks and that threw the game out of whack (and there is an example of this in Suns of Fortune), and the last version of Star Wars had its ship book reach over $100 in Ebay for a while due to the demand.

I've sold two of them for over $100, and more for $50-$75ish (I have 1 left, part of my complete set).

The ship books (previous company's game, as well) always seem to demand high prices later and I always grab them when they appear in second hand bookstores (I even got one at Goodwill for $20). I have no doubt that a FFG one would perform well.

I'd much prefer these things be collected rather than have to drag out a dozen books to look through what ships I might want to use (or races, creatures, droids, guns, etc). I find it a deterrent to FFG's line, myself. They are succeeding in spite of this rather than because of it, in my opinion, but success is success and here's to hoping for the success will continue.

You sold copy of Saga Star Wars rules for over $100?

I'm curious about the Gravity Belt too... I see it has a list on the equipment table, but no corresponding description. Any errata yet?

I think they mention it for playing a sport on Nubia. I'm afb right now so I can't check.

I think they mention it for playing a sport on Nubia. I'm afb right now so I can't check.

Checking it now, and it appears that the Nubian entry only refers to special boots in order to play Grav Ball. No mention of special belts.

It's true, and that's just an offhand comment in a sidebar... shouldn't there be a description in the equipment section to correspond with the chart?

I almost had to cry today. I had been making a group order at CSI for today and was just going to throw this in there. When I went to make the order this morning it was showing as out of stock. But not wanting to hold p the rest of the group I put in the order as planned. Then at 3 I get the email saying that Suns was back in stock.... arrrg. Thankfully a quick call added the book to the order anyway since it hadn't shipped yet.

And it seems pretty stupid too. The best known RPG had its last edition fail because all it did was put out spatbooks and that threw the game out of whack (and there is an example of this in Suns of Fortune), and the last version of Star Wars had its ship book reach over $100 in Ebay for a while due to the demand.

I've sold two of them for over $100, and more for $50-$75ish (I have 1 left, part of my complete set).

The ship books (previous company's game, as well) always seem to demand high prices later and I always grab them when they appear in second hand bookstores (I even got one at Goodwill for $20). I have no doubt that a FFG one would perform well.

I'd much prefer these things be collected rather than have to drag out a dozen books to look through what ships I might want to use (or races, creatures, droids, guns, etc). I find it a deterrent to FFG's line, myself. They are succeeding in spite of this rather than because of it, in my opinion, but success is success and here's to hoping for the success will continue.

You sold copy of Saga Star Wars rules for over $100?

I suspect he's referring to Starships of the Galaxy, which along with the KOTOR Campaign Guide has a tendency to sell for very high prices on Amazon and eBay due to the limited print runs of the Saga Edition books (only the corebook got a second printing).

So finally got my copy after work today. Not had a chance to do much more than skim through it,

The modular encounters look pretty neat, and wouldn't take much to transplant from Corellia to any other setting, so that's a plus.

The new weapons provided have some interesting potential, and I just like the notion of the Nomad armored coat. Going to be busy adding these in for OggDude's chargen program.

Wasn't exactly wowed by the starships offered, though having more ships to pick from for encounters isn't a bad thing.

And upon seeing the Corellians... I'm kinda left flat in regards to "variant Humans" to the point that I think they could very easily been replaced with a non-Human species, particularly as the book covers more than just the Corellian system.

Received mine today as well. No real difference of opinion from most here.

I do like the modular encounters a great deal, having fleshed out NPCs are quite useful.

The weapons are fine and do give me a feeling and direction to go in creating my own for my game. Same goes for the equipment.

Of the playable races I know some here are very excited for their 'space weasels' and I have to say that race in particular would rank as my favorite of the three. I'll just say it now though, the Corellian variant human is silly. Humans are already designed to be played as multi-talented and diverse to the max in the galaxy. They should have just incorporated another race.

Very large number of planets/systems, which was really nice. I like that a great deal and look forward to it as a trend. Adds to the feeling of hugeness in my mind.

I like the idea/concept of Center point station and it definitely is a reason to get my group of players to Corellia.

Plenty of additional adversaries.

I like the book overall a great deal. I'm not a big fan of canned adventures and don't typically bother, but I do enjoy source books like this. Reference guides that provide a wealth of background information which allows me to tap into it and focus simply on a story idea without having to create all the fluff myself for game sessions.

All in all I'm happy with the purchase.