Weighing in at 144 pages, this book is more substantial than ‘Enter the Unknown’, though I still feel something of this length shouldn’t be a hardback. But that’s the way it is these days.
This is the first of the ‘Sector sourcebooks’ for the Edge of the Empire game, and one imagines it will set the format for later books based on the Hutt sector, Tattooine, Hoth, etc. Speculation is rife as to what will come next, but now we have an example of each of the EoE products we are likely to see over the next two years or so: career books, adventures and location gazetteers. Seems a nice balance to me.
We open with a picture of Martin Freeman cosplaying Han Solo (at least I assume that’s what it is, it’s certainly not Harrison Ford). Although it’s part of the Core Worlds, Corellia is home to lots of other people who want to be Han Solo – it’s the maverick kid brother of the Core Worlds, always driving too fast, drinking in seedy cantinas and getting the senator’s daughter into trouble. Corellians like fast ships, skilled pilots, hard drink and walk with a cocky swagger. I really liked the idea that Core Worlds can be ‘fringe’ too, that Edge of the Empire covers all the exciting, slightly seamy part of the SW galaxy and not just the Outer Rim backwaters.
Chapter One covers the system itself and the planets, opening with lavish art of a breathtaking city vista at sunset. My players love this stuff – pictures can be worth a thousand words when setting a mood, and (as one expects from FFG) the artwork is lovely, some of it being jaw-dropping. Several planets are given the full treatment, with beautiful planet art – Corellia itself, Drall (homeworld of the hamsterlike species of the same name), Selonia (home to the Space Weasels!), the twin planets Tralus and Talus, and the enigmatic Centrepoint Station. The latter really intrigued me – it reminded me immediately of The Citadel from ‘Mass Effect’, an ancient space station now used as a hub for younger races that don’t really understand it. (I should add here that I know little about the Expanded Universe and generally couldn’t care less, using it as a reference at most… so a lot of the fluff is new to me. FFG’s treatment of it seems good though, and I didn’t notice anything that seemed particularly silly, like green rabbit-men or anything).
Lots of fluff in this section, going into good detail about the culture and cities of the Solo-cosplayers, miniature space hamsters and Giant Space Weasels. There’s a goodly amount of adversaries (like CorSec types) and no less than 14 beasties. Those who wanted more things to hunt in ‘Enter the Unknown’ could do worse than look here for beasts and animals. All in all, a really good mix of fluff and stats.
(One thing mildly bothers me; I know Star Wars has to do everything on a ridiculously epic scale, but to me it feels silly here. Does Centrepoint really have to be a million years old? Do Drall really have to have recorded their history for 35 thousand years? We had a chat about this, and the players agreed that it actually diminishes the sense of time for them, because the numbers are unimaginably big. So we basically decided to divide everything by ten – Drall having a perfectly-recorded history that goes back to their equivalent of ancient Egypt is still very impressive, and things like Black Sun being around for 300 years seems more reasonable and actually adds a sense of age and history. But YMMV.)
Chapter Two then, covers the larger Sector – and takes in planets like Duro, Nubia, Aurea, Sacorria, Corfai, Froz, Vagran, Xyquine II. Lots of information and some lovely ‘Mass Effect’ style artwork that is very evocative. (For some reason, there’s also an enigmatic picture of a female alien jedi that doesn’t seem to relate to anything, but looks cool). It’s worth noting that the ‘Empire Are Complete Monsters’ theme is alive and well here, committing genocide and destroying core worlds seemingly just for the ‘evulz’, as with poor Froz. It goes into great detail to describe the needless suffering of the poor natives, and even the ones who weren’t on the planet when it was destroyed find that they can’t breed anymore. I haven’t read all the descriptions yet, but I’m pretty sure it’s bound to have something about the Imperials kicking kittens and eating puppies in it somewhere.
Chapter Three is what most of us came here for – SPACE WEASELS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Um, I mean, ‘Player Options’. We get the hamsterish Drall, who have weak physical stats but a whopping 4 Intellect. Wow, that’s a first. They are clearly titchy, but nothing here says they are Silhouette 0. (Nice work, FFG!) Then there’s the Selonians, the aforementioned Space Weasels, who look more humanoid here than I’ve seen them previously. They get low Presence (understandable I guess seeing as how isolationist and dour they are), low Cunning (for some reason), and high Agility (natch) and Willpower (no idea why). They also have a natural weapon like wookiees and ithorians – in this case a tail-slap that uses Agility! Very cool. Finally, we get the contentious inclusion of ‘Corellian Humans’, who I may just jury-rig as near-humans. They get +1 to either Piloting skill instead of two non-career skills, and interestingly, can start with 3 in that skill (a first). Mechanically, that seems okay – most humans would benefit more from the two skills, but if you want to be a great pilot, I guess it’s an option. More controversially is the inclusion of variant humans at all, with some players feeling robbed of a new species. Are we going to see ‘Tattooine Humans’ in future, for instance? Mandalorian ones? I personally didn’t mind these guys, but I’m not sure I’d want to see too many human variants.
Then there’s weapons and armour – which for some reason struck me as underwhelming. I understand they don’t want to make uber-weapons that invalidate the standard ones, but most of these are cheap and inferior versions of standard weapons. And ‘cheap and inferior’ seems a weird motif for Corellia, to me. I’d have expected them to be better, but more expensive or rare. A case in point is the Space Weasel glaive, which I found disappointing – it’s heavier and more expensive than a bog-standard vibroaxe, but has a worse critical, and a point more Pierce and Defensive 1, while losing Vicious 3 and Sunder. Doesn’t seem like a fair trade to me, and that goes for most of the weapons listed here – the trade-offs feel unequal, and some are just inferior in all ways.
As someone who finds obvious armour ‘un-StarWars-y’ (is that a verb?) I did like the Catch Vest and Nomad Greatcoat, the latter of which has been dubbed the ’flasher mac’ by my players, for reasons we won’t go into here… There’s other gear too, like a cybered pilot upgrade, and the infamous Whyren’s Reserve Corellian Whisky. Most mysterious of all is the elusive ‘Gravity Belt’, an item so utterly enigmatic, it completely lacks a description. Apparently, its inclusion here is one of those errors like the Drall not being Silhouette 0. At 500 credits, it probably wasn’t that great anyway.
Then there’s lots of vehicles, as you might expect from a sector full of Han Solo cosplayers. Airspeeders, landspeeders, wheeled and tracked vehicles, walkers, starfighters, freighters, transports and a capital ship. I would have liked a few more pictures as to what they looked like, but I can always look them up on Wookieepedia, I suppose. What art we do get is beautiful – I particularly liked the two young teens on their speeder at night, with the backdrop of the planet behind them, looking out at the infinity of space (or maybe a drive-in movie screen, it isn’t shown…)
Chapter Four is a new one; ‘Modular Encounters’, prefaced by a nice picture of a female Han Solo cosplayer. The idea here is that we are given lots of little mini-adventures, rather than one medium-sized one. It’s a great idea, especially for GMs like me who like to make their own stuff up. You can drop these vignettes in any time, or string them together to make a Corellian mini-campaign of sorts if you have the inclination. All give a distinctly Corellian flavour – dealing with the Space Weasels in their tunnels, catching a Drall thief at market, or bargaining with Duros. There’s a high-stakes Sabbac game, with the rules for those who don’t have them, and a cantina brawl that’s interrupted by an angry Ronto. Some are just brief encounters that can be repeated, like a run in with CorSec, while others are up to four pages. The swoop race already revealed on line is great fun and probably my favourite. There’s a mountain climb that explorers should enjoy, and finally the ‘Corellian Shuffle’, a timed smuggler race of sorts, making drop-offs throughout the system. The fact this one is ‘on the clock’ actually makes the otherwise-useless Astrogation skill handy for once, something I enjoyed. All in all, a nice mix, and any GM should find something here they like.
I should also mention that the whole thing felt very ‘canon lite’ to me – no cheesy cameos of movie heroes, no stats for Han Solo or the Falcon. While it’s set in the classic era, it’s mostly all usable for anyone who wants to set their EoE game in other time periods, and generic enough to steal for other games too (I got a Mass Effect vibe from the whole thing, but that probably just goes to show how massively those games ripped off Star Wars…).
All in all, a worthy purchase for me – not the ‘must buy’ that EtU was (unless you love Space Weasels as much as I do!), but good value and a product up to FFG’s high standards.
Now, what to call my Space Weasel…? “Squee!”
Marcy
xxx
Edited by Maelora
(Something my wife actually pointed out to me after she got super excited about their existence in the Star Wars Universe and started researching them on her own.)