Star Wars: Edge of the Empire

This is the new Star Wars system, developed by Fantasy Flight and loosely based on the Warhammer 3.0 system. Make your comments where you can, any thoughts are appreciated.

Characters

I felt like the characters had enough variation. The folios were also nice, it had a ton of info and in some ways this made it easy to reference the stuff you as players needed. In fact, I often felt like you guys were doing things better than I was.

(Allen) The characters seemed built to highlight specific skills which was a good showcase for the mechanics. I both liked and disliked that all skills were usable even if you were untrained. The destiny system is a good ebb and flow for adding tension.

Combat

The combat seemed pretty easy, but also kind of simple and flat. This might be because I was not using the elements well.

(Allen) I agree that combat was flat and boring. It seemed the only option each turn was to make a basic attack and while the dice make things a little more dynamic they couldn't hide the pig under all the lipstick. Maybe that is because characters were low level or being underutilized but I doubt it.

Interaction

The social interactions also seemed a little flat.

Other Thoughts

I was woefully unprepared for this game. A lot of what was ailing the game was my lack of prep, and some of it was my lack of in depth setting knowledge. My hope was that this game would move quickly and be as dynamic as WH but in space, so I could use this to replace Hero for a space opera game. Right now, I am still thinking some kind of Deadlands or Aces & Eights hack is the way to go, unless it is Hero, of course.

(Allen) I felt the medicine skill was done very poorly. Stimpacks are so incredibly effective that you could heal 21 points of injury per day by using six stimpacks before you'd even need to see the medic. Depending on severity of injury it would be entirely possible for a medical roll to heal less than a stimpack application (or fail and exacerbate existing wounds). This is way on the other end of the spectrum from WH 2nd Ed where medicine is absolutely required to heal certain injuries - in SW medicine skill is basically unnecessary.

--Jason 12:33, 14 January 2013 (MST)I think the big thing you hit on here, and in a few other spots above, is that things were too easy. There is no challenge. This is both good and bad. The bad guys hit you pretty easily, just like you hit them. Skills were one step above superfluous, because the ability of an untrained person to use them was high. I think my perception now is I like a lot of what it attempts, but it is a failed attempt.