Fantasy Flight Explain The Thinking Behind Edge Of The Empire
July 4, 2013 by brennon
On Monday I wrote about Fantasy Flight Games exploring an encounter in Star Wars: Edge of Empire. Well, it's out and about in the world now and the video above should give you a run down of their thoughts when building this game.
Edge of the Empire seems to be the role-playing game we've been waiting for. A lot of the complicated systems behind the Saga series have been done away with and it looks like a fresh and exciting narrative experience.
I like the new narrative dice and their ability to drive the story forwards, even in combat. It reminds me a lot of Gurps and other systems where the dice aren't the be all and end all of your experiences. There is also a conversion table for those people who don't have the dice!
The one thing I am in two minds about is the addition of The Force. Of course it's a big part of the Star Wars experience but I always worry that everyone's going to want to play a Jedi or Force Sensitive hero! I guess it's up to games masters to deal with this but I personally will be looking to play as a Smuggler or Bounty Hunter!
As well as Edge of the Empire Fantasy Flight also explore the additional books in this growing series which explore the war against the Empire and the Jedi themselves. It seems to follow the trend we've seen with the Warhammer 40,000 system.
Ready for an adventure?
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Hmm.. I love FFG for their production values and I like a lot of their other RPG products but I’m still not sold on this version of Star Wars versus Saga Edition.
IMHO the FFG is way ahead of Saga Edition – the dice system brings role playing back into the game 🙂
My blog has examples of sessions and other thoughts for anyone interested…
http://zephyrcorpdreadball.weebly.com/
Touché! Roleplaying is what your players bring to the table, irrespective of the rules 😀
http://bristolgamers.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=67
Rules systems can encourage or discourage even the best or worst players. The argument that the rules don’t matter as long as you always play with fantastic veteran roleplayers ignores that most of us are trying to get new players engaged in our games as well.
I don’t disagree that rules can become a crutch for people who prefer to game rather than roleplay but that is a truth rather than *the* truth. My wargaming history may be spotty and my painting experience almost non existent but I’ve been GMing for the better part of 15 years. Whether it has been the rules heavy Rolemaster or the highly narrative Marvel Heroic Roleplaying I have had the good fortune to introduce many fine people to roleplaying by letting them play their character first and the game rules second. The mechanics get introduced as and when they become… Read more »
To be clear, the whole ’15 years’ thing isn’t some stick that I am waving around. I brought it up to highlight that I’ve had a good run and these experiences with rules heavy games and great roleplayers aren’t isolates incidents. A rules-lite game with an interesting and abstracted resolution mechanic is not automatically a better RPG in my opinion, but neither is a complex, rules heavy system. I evaluate them on a case by case basis and in this case I just like Saga edition more.
Isolated, rather. Curse you, tiny buttons and a lack of an edit button! 😀
So far I like the conceptual vision for this game system. I believe the ‘roleplaying’ aspect of roleplaying has often been lost in the pass/fail mentality of dice rolling. I will be seriously considering recommending this to my roleplaying group.