FFG Star Wars RPG

[selderane]

So, Fantasy Flight Games released the new Star Wars RPG at GenCon. I snagged a copy while I was there but it should be available at most retail gaming stores. Has anyone taken some time to look at it?

I'm going to be running it for my gaming group here in a few weeks. I'm a diehard fan of the old West End D6 version but I'm very excited about the current incarnation. There has been some criticism leveled at it because of the lack of Jedi, but I've been of the opinion that Jedi and non-Jedi shouldn't mix. Jedi are not D&D wizards (no matter how much Wizards of the Coast wanted them to be). There aren't Jedi in this first book for two reasons: 1. The book is focused on scoundrel/explorer/bounty hunter types. 2. It takes place around A New Hope and the Jedi are all but extinct. I like the FFG takes that last bit seriously.

The Jedi book is coming. Along with a Rebellion book. These books will round out the core lines, it appears. It something similar FFG has done with the Warhammer 40K property, for example, you can't play a Space Marine in Dark Heresy. But Space Marines became playable in Deathwatch.

Anyone else looked at it? Planning to look at it? Have questions?

I just really want to talk about it!

[Deepfreeze32]

The Spoony one has covered problems with the whole jedi/no-jedi thing before, and I think he raised some good points. Jedi make everyone else look insignificant.


That said, I don't know enough about this new version to comment. I will say that the d6 version got super broken (Sort of) at higher levels, as you'd end up rolling 40+ d6 at a time. That's the same problem White Wolf games have had, which is kind of disheartening.
Either way, I'm definitely interested in the new incarnation. I'm gonna wait until I hear more feedback before I make the jump, though.

Heh, I wish we could get a group together to play it though. After reading Darths and Droids, playing a Star Wars RPG has been a major fantasy of mine.

[selderane]

What White Wolf game are you playing where you're rolling 40+ D10s?

I guess you can do that in Exalted. I never really looked at Mage or Werewolf, so I don't know if things got that ridiculous in those games. Rolling a bazillion dice in D6 Star Wars was possible because there wasn't a cap on skills. I don't recall if there were for attributes.

I know pools didn't get that big in Vampire, Hunter, or blue book World of Darkness. I think the cap for skills and attributes in V20 is nine, and if you're chucking 18 dice you're a god amongst men.

But that was a great thing about D6 Star Wars! I remember filling my tumbler o' pop full of dice, shaking it violently as if to beat the dice into rolling nothing but sixes, and letting the spoils spill across the table. "Go ahead and take your turn," I'd say. "I need to count the sixes first..." It was the best!

The new dice mechanic is... weird. I could try spelling it out but it may sour you on it and I don't want that to happen. It's something you need to spend some time with to wrap your head around because when I first saw it my eyes crossed. It was bizarre. Namely for the fact it uses custom dice. Which, I hear, if you're familiar with Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay it's not dissimilar.

[ArcticFox]

A rep point to the first person to identify the logo on Spoony's t-shirt in that video.

[selderane]

Captain Hammer.

Come on, that was easy.

[Deepfreeze32]

Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog. That's Captain Hammer's shirt. And I want one.


As for White Wolf, I never got to 40+. I got to 18 several times, which made rolling kind of ridiculous. XD I prefer D&D's d20 system to rolling a crapton of dice. Just makes it so much easier. Though rolling a lot of dice is oddly satisfying...

[selderane]

I don't mind the D20 mechanic, I just think it's a bad fit for Star Wars. I don't think Star Wars should operate with a level cap of 20 because every named character in the setting ends up crunched into levels 15-20. I suppose you could argue that each level is exponentially more powerful than the next, but the mechanics don't bear that out.

As for White Wolf, rolling a ton of dice is nowhere as bad as West End Games. With WEG you needed to add all that stuff together. With classic White Wolf you just care about a success on the die. That should be pretty quick to determine.

The new Star Wars RPG works a bit like the Storyteller System in that regard.

[fathom123]

This is the first time I've heard of the new Star Wars game. I love the d10 mechanic for Savage Worlds over the d20 mechanic for D&D (3.5 is my preferred version). It seems simple and with the exploding dice feature, it feels way more awesome when you get a "crit." I haven't played any whitewolf games but I am interested in Night's Black Agents, which I hear is a variant of Vampire and Cuthulu mythos mixed together. It's like a Vampire conspiracy and you're an agent looking to stop it. Pretty cool.