Edge of the Empire (RPG)

[Dasquian Belargic]

This is a new Star Wars tabletop game that Fantasy Flight Games is bringing out!

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite_sec.asp?eidm=218&esem=1


Star Wars: Edge of the Empire is a roleplaying game that captures the visionary essence of the Star Wars universe, while focusing on its grim and gritty corners. In control of a character exploring the Outer Rim, you’ll do business in places where morality is gray and nothing is certain, living on the fringes of both the galaxy and its society.

In an Edge of the Empire campaign, bounty hunters, smugglers, mercenaries, and explorers not only rub elbows with doctors, politicians, and scholars, but they find themselves thrust into adventures alongside them. During these adventures, you and your fellow fringers will often find yourselves facing any number of challenges, from repairing a damaged starship or slicing your way past a security panel to exchanging blaster fire with hired gunmen out to collect a bounty. With little law or order on the Outer Rim, you must rely on your innate abilities, trained skills, and special talents to survive.

I'm attending a beta playtest session this Saturday afternoon, so will hopefully be able to report back with news that the game is as cool as it sounds.

[Dasquian Belargic]

Just got back from a 2 hour session playing this game for the first time, and it was surprisingly easy to pick up. Everything is built around a set of custom dice featuring symbols rather than numbers, on which you roll either successes or failures, in varying degrees. For instance, you might roll two successes, two advantages and one failure. The failure cancels out one of your successes, and the advantages allow you to do this like give a bonus dice to the next player character who acts, put a penalty dice into the enemies dice pool for their next action, disarm someone, etc. Conversely, if you roll is a failure overall, the GM gets to use advantages on the enemy characters.

There was no 'battle map' used, as seems to be the case in D&D, but you did have a mat showing the range that enemies were away from you (since that has an impact on which weapons you can use, if there are any bonuses or penalties to your rolls.) I definitely prefer that to having a map and using character tokens, since you have more freedom and incentive to describe/roleplay out the environment and your actions.

Aside from dice, you have 'destiny' points which can be used to turn the narrative story in your direction, or before you make a roll to upgrade one of your dice (to one with less chance of failure). Every time you use one of those destiny points, the GM gets a destiny point of their own to use, and vice versa... so although it helps you out, it also gives the GM more opportunity to fuck with you, which is a nice balance mechanic.

I can't comment on character creation, since we went with pre-built characters for the ease of getting right into the action, but one thing that did come up was the 'talent trees' that you use to advance your character. You start off as a single basic class, such as bounty hunter, with an advanced element, like gadgeteer - and you then have the ability to pick up a further specialisation as you level up, so even if you do have a party with a couple of smugglers, you should end up with a variety of skill sets.

It seems like the group who I've started to table top game with like the game, and I'm the one with the most Star Wars knowledge there (who woulda thought) so I will probably end up GMing an adventure once the game is officially released at the end of the year.

EDIT: Oh and I forgot to mention, if it isn't obvious already from the games flavor text... this is set just after the destruction of the Death Star! The 2nd book they're releasing is going to be the Core Worlds (politics, Rebels, Imps) and the third book will be Jedi and perhaps Sith, though of course they should be rare given the timeline it's taking place in.