Saturday, February 15, 2014

Star Wars Edge of The Empire RPG Core Rulebook


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Product Description

The Star Wars universe is at your fingertips! The Star Wars: The Edge of the Empire Core Rulebook is a role playing game that explores the places across the galaxy where morality is gray and nothing is certain. It contains everything that players and GMs need to conduct their adventures as smugglers in the Outer Rim, to collect bounties on the scum in the shadows of Coruscant, or to establish new colonies beneath the Empire's notice.


Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #2319 in Toys & Games
  • Brand: Fantasy Flight Games
  • Model: SWE02
  • Released on: 2013-04-30
  • Original language: English
  • Dimensions: 11.00" h x 8.50" w x 1.25" l, 3.80 pounds

Features

  • 448-page rulebook contains everything players and GMs need to start roleplaying in the Star Wars galaxy
  • Focuses on story-rich locations where morality is gray and nothing is certain
  • Concise rules guide players through quick character creation and advancement
  • Extensive background information helps players and GMs expand their adventures in the Star Wars universe
  • A complete introductory adventure launches players into action!







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Customer Reviews

Most helpful customer reviews

72 of 76 people found the following review helpful.
Excellent Star Wars Role-playing Game
By Richard Staats
My first exposure to Star Wars role-playing was West End Games' (WEG's) Star Wars (SW) D6 role-playing game.

This is the first RPG to come along since that truly captures the SW feel.

First, the book comes in at a whopping 448 pages! The book is lavishly illustrated and sewn and glued so that this volume will last you through years of rough treatment.

The folks at Fantasy Flight Games (FFG) are known for high quality gaming products that are produced by role-players for role-players. You can see that this game was an act of reverence for the SW setting.

As you open the front cover, you will find a smallish pamphlet that says "read this first." It lays out the basics of play for the complete novice. The tome is laid out in a completely logical flow beginning with how to play the game and how to generate characters. FFG has a unique approach to modeling action success and opposed activities that hinge on Skills and Talents. Skills are just as they sound. These are activities that the player character has been trained and educated in. Talents on the other hand are aspects or character chrome that give bonuses under certain circumstances, but more than just a mechanic, Talents tend to define a character. For example, the character may have the Talent "command" that indicates that the character has a knack for leadership. The "hunter" talent gives the character in any situation where a skill associated with hunting is used.

The main mechanic in FFG's SW RPG is rolling a dice pool and determining if there are more success rolls than failure rolls. The dice pool is composed of specialized dice. (You can either buys these separately or get them as part of "the Edge of the Empires Beginner's Game Star Wars: Edge of the Empire Beginner Game.")

Characters have six abilities: brawn, agility, intellect, cunning, willpower, and presence. The raw score of these determine how many ability dice are used as a base for the roll. For example, if Glognar has a cunning of "3" and wanted to use an untrained skill, say deception, relating to cunning then Glognar would roll "3" ability dice. If the skill is trained then the player can substitute one proficiency die (with correspondingly better results) per skill level for an ability die. Using the same example, say Glognar had two levels of skill in deception, he could substitute two proficiency dice for two of the ability dice. He would roll two proficiency dice and one ability die.

There are negative dice too. Nearly every dice pool will include at least one difficulty die. The number of difficulty die is directly related to how challenging the attempted action is. For example, shooting a blaster at longer and longer ranges adds more and more difficulty dice. Under some circumstances, difficulty dice are swapped with challenge dice in the same way that ability dice are substituted with proficiency dice. For example, if the player is trying to outwit an opponent who is trained in streetwise, the gamemaster would substitute challenge dice for the difficulty dice for every level of streetwise.

Finally, there are situational dice, boost and setback. If there circumstances are particularly favorable, the gamemaster might rule that a boost die should be added to the pool. If things are more challenging, e.g., it is dark, then the gamemaster might add a setback die to the pool. Specific skills and circumstances that add die to the pool are laid out in detail in the book.

The more advanced dice add new potential results from the dice pool. There are advantage and threat results. These cancel one another the same way that success and failure rolls do. Uncancelled advantage results mean that the player has experienced the opportunity for a positive consequence or side effect. Uncancelled threat results have the opposite effect. So, even though a character may succeed, there may be some negative consequence. Some skills have special results when a certain number of special results are rolled. The triumph and despair symbols are the ultimate ends of the die rolling spectrum. They are rarer than the other results and have a larger impact.

One of the neat aspects of the dice pool is that the players and gamemaster know why a character succeeded as well as whether the action was successful. If the proficiency dice had all of the successes for a roll then the group could say that it was the character's training that saved the day. If the setback die had the one extra, uncancelled failure then the group might surmise that it was the dark conditions that prevented the action from being successful. You see the possibilities.

I loved the WEG D6 SW game, but one of the limitations of the WEG D6 edition was that there was a limit to how far a character could advance before almost any action became trivial.

It would take a long time to reach such a limit in this current, FFG version.

I could go on writing for a long time given the size of the material, but one more example suffices to show the depth of the game. Adversaries are divided into three categories, minions, rivals, and nemeses. Minions are individually easy to defeat, but they add some of their abilities together, making large numbers of minions quite formidable. Rivals are the next level up, and they can be individually challenging, but typically are less capable than the average player character. Finally, nemeses are just as capable or even more capable than most player characters. In fact, there are some talents that only nemeses can have.

The FFG team has produced a wonderful new addition to the RPG library. I highly recommend this product. My group will be playing this one for years.

In service,

Rich

39 of 43 people found the following review helpful.
Great book... And a great RPG system!
By El_Tonio
Got my book a few days ago and thought I'd put my two cents in. First, this is a huge volume. As others have noted it is 443 pages long, PLUS a two-page character sheet and a two-page ship sheet for you to track the stats of your character and ship. The book itself has a thick hardcover, and everything on the inside is printed in FULL COLOR on high-quality semi-gloss paper. Overall a very high quality production that weighs nearly four pounds. And, for those who are interested, here is a list of the main heading from the table of contents (with my initial impressions about some of the best parts so far; I'll add more once I get to play it even more).

CHAPTER I: PLAYING THE GAME... I love the narrative dice pool mechanic (and, while the custom dice are recommended, Fantasy Flight Games was nice enough to include a table on p. 12 so you can use your standard D6, D8, and D12 if you prefer). I have been playing with the beginner version of the game since it first came out and find this to be a great way to run an RPG.

CHAPTER II: CHARACTER CREATION... Lots of variety here. You get to chose species (eight options -- Bothan, Droid, Gand, Human, Rodian, Trandoshan, Twi'Lek, & Wookiee; each with it's own strengths and/or limitations), a career (six options -- Bounty Hunter, Colonist, Explorer, Hired Gun, Smuggler, & Technician; each with multiple specializations and it's own talent tree), and more. Detailed descriptions of everything are also included.

CHAPTER III: SKILLS... 33 to choose from ranging from Astrogation to Xenology. They are listed in a table for easy reference, followed by a detailed description of each skill.

CHAPTER IV: TALENTS... Three single spaced pages of options to chose from (I didn't count, but it's got to be close to 125-150)... options range from Adversary to Wheel and Deal. Again, they are listed in a table that takes up three pages for easy reference, followed by a short description of each talent.

CHAPTER V: GEAR AND EQUIPMENT... I love that they include illustrations for so many of the items they talk about.

CHAPTER VI: CONFLICT AND COMBAT

CHAPTER VII: STARSHIPS AND VEHICLES

CHAPTER VIII: THE FORCE... At only 13 pages this chapter is far to short for my taste. But, it does fit in with the theme of the book (The chapter begins by noting, "Belief in the Force is nearly extinct in the galaxy" at the point where the RPG takes place), and it sounds like FFG will make up for this in a future installment.

CHAPTER IX: THE GAME MASTER

CHAPTER X: THE GALAXY... I love that they include an image of the Star Wars universe/galaxy in this section. Also includes lots of great background info on numerous planets and regions of the galaxy, too.

CHAPTER XI: LAW AND SOCIETY

CHAPTER XII: ADVERSARIES... EotE's "Monster Manual" or "Fiend Folio". There are a few monsters in it (Mynock, Gundark, Rancor, etc.), but most are sentient and humanoid minions, rivals, and nemeses "types" that you might come against in various settings such as the Galactic Underworld, Spaceport Personnel, Bounty Hunters, Forces of Law & Order, Patrons & Clients, Core Worlders, Droids, and Galactic Oddities and Fringe Dwellers. I counted 66 types. Examples include Street Thug and Stormtroopers (minions), Twi'Lik Black Marketeer and Arms Dealer (rivals), Hutt Crime Lord and Assassin Droid (nemesis).

CHAPTER XIII: TROUBLE BREWING... This is a sample adventure so you can start playing right away.

45 of 51 people found the following review helpful.
State-of-the-Art System, Impaired Usability
By Ptom
I'm a veteran gamer who got interested in this game due to its innovations and my partiality for Fantasy Flight Games. I have been reading this book and playing the beginner game. I wanted to express my concerns about the usability of this product.

In fact, the core system and mechanics appear to be very well developed. And for the most part, I have no quarrel with the book's content.

My critique lies with the way the content is presented and organized.

With a little more effort and polish, this book could have made the game easier to learn and easier to reference during play.

[Presentation Issues]

1. Many chapters contain related sub-sections and categories without a list introducing them.

a. Take the chapter on "Adversaries" (pre-generated non-player characters) as just one example. The adversaries are listed alphabetically within sections specifying their category. Nowhere are the categories listed together. You must flip through all the pages to mentally collect them. In fact, you could open up to a page of adversaries without knowing which category is represented or if the "Sector Ranger" you're looking for will occur on the next page of that same category.

This shortcoming is magnified by the fact that both the table of contents and the index are of the more abbreviated variety.

b. Another typical example is all the sub-categories within the "Gear" section of the chapter "Gear and Equipment." In this case, there is a useful breakdown table at the end of the "Gear" section. However, a listing like this would have been more appreciated at the beginning of the section.

c. Inconsistently, the book gets it right in the chapter on "Talents." At the beginning of the section on "Talent Descriptions," there is a table that lists each talent including a page reference to its description! Now that's what I'm talking about.

2. A different presentation issue is that important rules can become buried within uniform blocks of prose (well written as it is). Rules are not always clearly delineated from descriptions or from setting flavor.

As one sort of example, see how fast you can look up the maximum number of deflector shield "units" a ship can angle to a given side.

3. Sometimes rules are spread out across separate logical sections where it may have been more beneficial to consolidate them with the most relevant game application.

For example, Talent Trees are cool charts customized for the various character types. The charts appear in Chapter 2 "Character Creation." However, you won't even find a reference there to the location of the rules describing their use in Chapters 1 and 4.

Also, each starship is specified by a list of standard properties. However, the definitions of these properties are somewhat fragmented.

In fact, I'm still trying to find rules for the property labeled "consumables." You can generally infer its typical use from a given value (i.e. "one month"), but it's also an example of a term that you won't be finding in the index.

4. Finally, I have a suspicion that some aspect of Chapter 2 "Character Creation" could be improved to streamline the basic process.

I wanted to quickly augment some statistics of a stock NPC for use as a player character in the beginner game. And I couldn't collect the essential parameters and calculations without getting bogged down in more reading than I wanted.

[Content Issues]

I was really hoping that more galactic species would be profiled than the included 7 plus human, especially since even the beginner material references others.

I had to do online searches to find out what a Devaronian or an Aqualish looks like. (Yes, I'm sure such questions are sacrilege to the seasoned Star Wars enthusiast.) Ironically, the book has such artwork, but it is not labeled.

I didn't learn that this project was going to be split out over three books until after I had purchased this book. I don't mind the cost, but I think it may prove cumbersome to reference core races, starships, and planetary systems across the separate books.

Yes, I mentioned starships. You're going to have to wait for X-wing stats. You do get enough variety of ships in order to start your career including the canon Y-wing, Tie Fighter, and a stock version of the Millennium Falcon.

[Effective Elements]

There still do exist many examples of rules, tables, and charts that are well prepared and usable.

The game mechanics appear to be well thought out and tested. They are at a high enough level of abstraction to expedite game flow, but still provide you the freedom to model most of the essential activities you would desire in a clean, unencumbered fashion.

In this regard, there are nifty rules for customizing your vehicle's weapons and systems using a concept of hard points.

Creating and evaluating the dice pools that you use to resolve actions is a fun game in itself.

The one casualty of the dice mechanic is that actual probabilities are highly obfuscated. And relating to probabilities can be very helpful to sophisticated Game Masters in adjudicating task difficulty and character potential.

Finally, the valuable map of the galaxy accompanying its related chapter is one of my favorite parts of the book.

[Conclusion]

There are many more positive qualities to the game. However, my focus was on the problems because I already had high expectations of a Fantasy Flight Games product. It disturbs me to see the amount of effort and intelligence that went in to such an otherwise quality project just to have the simpler finishing touches compromised.

In conclusion, this game represents an excellent, well-developed system backed by a book with compelling content that could have been superb but for the lack of final attention to ease of use.

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