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Happy Star Wars Day!

For this day I wanted to talk about my very favorite Star Wars RPG (and one of my favorite RPGs in general): Edge of the Empire. (The Wikipedia entry is pretty good!))

Those interested in more resources are best served by checking This (SWRPG Community) out as a vibrant haven of resources, intro materials and the rest.

I'd also recommend checking Table Top Empire on youtube for an intro series and how-to series. It's excellently done and Nate seems like a great guy!

Edit: Also, /u/Kill_Welly pointed out the Order 66 Podcast is another invaluable resource

Why should you strongly consider Edge of the Empire, Age of Rebellion and/or Force and Destiny?

The game is the first second (WFRPG 3ed was the first! Thanks /u/Ar4er13 for the correction) in FFG's use of the "Narrative Dice System". I posted an overview of this system in a different thread which I'm shamelessly copying here:

"Narrative dice are incredible. It's core resolution mechanic is so good that it will ruin other games you play. In fact, if you don't want to get into it for this reason? I understand.

First, Edge of the Empire (and the genre-neutral version Genesys*) uses proprietary custom dice (this is where 1/2 the people that bounce, bounce. They don't wanna buy special dice. I get it). There's good dice (attribute d8, proficiency d12, boost d6) and bad dice (difficulty d8, challenge d12, setback d6). The good dice have two symbols on them "Success" and "Advantage". The bad dice have "Failure" and "Threat" (all my homies just call it "disadvantage"). You make your dice pool up by taking your attributes (in attribute dice) and upgrading (substituting) a number of those dice into proficiency dice based on your skill ranks. If there's some positive complication (maybe you had some kind of favorable situational modifier or talent) you might add boost. The rules are very explicit when. The dice roll is* player facing*. So the GM then tells you how hard that thing is. Depending on how hard it is you add a number of Difficulty dice to your pool. If it's super hard, you might upgrade those difficulty dice to Challenge dice. If you have some situational modifier (enemy has cover, weather is bad, whatever...) you add some number of setback dice.*

Then you roll them and compare the symbols.

Failure cancels success. Threat/disadvantage cancels advantage. And you're left with some combination of succeed or fail (you need at least one success to succeed) and with some positive complication (rolled one or more advantages than threat) or negative complication (rolled one or more threat than advantages).

So you get really interesting outcomes. You can absolutely roll a straight succeed or fail, that's possible. But more frequently you get something like "Succeed with advantage" and now your advantage can do something cool- often open to narrative flexibility- but with good guidance on what 2 advantage might get you compared to... 4, for instance.

Now to add even more spice to the mix, the really important dice you can add: Proficiency and Challenge dice, have one facing with a special symbol. Those symbols are "Triumph" and "Despair", respectively. These serve as your "Critical Success" and "Critical Fail" results. But usually this is to introduce a major narrative complication as opposed to subverting the outcome of the total roll. So you can "Succeed with a Despair" which basically means you complete the task but something really bad happens ("I hacked open the spaceship airlock, but just learned that Boba Fett is on the ship I just docked with" Stuff like that).

The "interpreting the dice" part is the part that the other 1/2 of people bounce off of. But I'll die on the hill that they just need to keep trying. I've run so many games of this with so many players that I've yet to see a group say they actually don't like it once they get more comfortable with it (the inverse is always true for me, "Hey I didn't like this at first but now I love the results"). To be fair it does take a GM that is encouraging players to think of ways to interpret their advantage/ disadvantage and get creative with it. I wonder if some people get bored because they just default to "Oh you rolled 2 advantage? Take two boost dice on your next test" which is boring.

It's a skill-based game with a generic list of skills. However, there are "talent trees" that exist for each "class" which grant interesting and flavorful bonuses much like a class based game (very much a best of both worlds situation, in my experience) and it does things like multiclassing well. It's XP-to-buy improvements over time, so there's no levelling. Only a gradual but steady improvement in skills, talents, etc."

What does this system do very WELL:

• The Narrative dice, as above
• It delivers on the flavor of Star Wars. It's very "cinematic". For instance, falling to 0 Wounds (hit points) doesn't result in death immediately. Instead, you roll a d100 to determine a Critical Injury. Astute readers note that you need to roll above 100 in order to die. Certain weapons (e.g. Lightsabers), talents, and previous (unhealed) critical injuries will add to the d100 roll. This makes the system feel lethal, but actual character death is extremely rare
• Intuitive "minion" rules that keep combat moving fast
• Theater of the mind combat support to encourage freedom of descriptions and movement during combat (range bands)
• It's a sort of middle-ground between "class-based" and "skill-based". There's a list of skills available to all characters. In addition to this, players pick a class called "career" (and subclass, called a specialization). So you might be an Ace and have a choice to specialize in Pilot (Ace Pilot), Gunner, or Driver (land vehicles).
• Each specialization unlocks a talent tree with a list of talents that provide thematic flavor and strong mechanical benefits fitting of your ... talents. The fan made ReSpecialized Project is currently ongoing by passionate SWRPG fans and updating the older talent trees!
• Gain and spend XP in a gradual fashion to slowly advance your character as the story proceeds.
• Multi-classing is easy. Simply spend XP
• Phenomenal sourcebooks and lore support. There are excellent adventures (Jewel of Yavin is among one of the best adventures for ANY RPG I've read) and sourcebooks available for every career (providing additional subclasses) as well as bonus sourcebooks for things like Corellia, Hutt Space, and Rebel Base Building
• There's also a robust community as noted and ALL rules are available on the SRD and Star Wars FFG wiki_Wiki). There's also a small but healthy community of folks here on reddit at r/swrpg!

What does the game do POORLY? (and my shameless excuse making)

• Some folks won't love the Narrative Dice system. (I say, keep checking it out! Keep trying! It takes a few sessions to really let it sing). But I get it. Proprietary dice don't feel good. But my trusty 3-4 sets I got all the way back in late 2012 will stay with me until I die!.
• Official Support: FFG sold the license to Asmodee/Edge Studios back in 2019(?) and, since then, theres been no new major material or releases on the horizon. This means two things: the books are often out of print and hard to find and any new material will be fan-made. (I will say this, though, I ran a LONG campaign off of the core book when it first released and all of the rule supplements and adventures, fan adventures, would fill a table with decades of playtime)
• Three core rulebooks: I see the intent here- Edge of the Empire is for outer rim smuggler style adventures. Age of Rebellion is for rebel adventures. Force and Destiny explore all things the force. The fundamental rules remain the same, but the flavor, careers, and are different. They also introduce a unique rule for each. Edge has an "obligation" mechanic meant to represent your debts that accumulate and come back to bite you in the back. "Duty" serves as a track in AoR to measure your increasing standing with the Rebellion and resources you can count on. "Conflict" in Force and Destiny refers to the inner moral struggle of a Force user and the risk of falling to the dark side.
• You want a different extreme... which segues to:

What other Star Wars options do you have!
Well I can only recommend what I've played.

- WEG's D6 system is a good alternative for those wanting a more "traditional" experience and is the "OG" star wars RPG. It relies on D6 dice pools and is relatively easy to learn and play. It's a little bit more "OSR" in the sense that it shares similar design sensibilities as well as being a more lethal experience than Edge. At a certain dice pool size the system does break, but most folks lean into this and enjoy it- stating it satisfies the Star Wars feel. One particular advantage of WEG is that it was made pre-Prequels so much of the material is very Extended Universe (Legacy) content. Many of the community supplements have borrowed heavily from WEG. The rules do get heavier than Edge in my opinion (especially 2e content). So if you are looking for more crunch, this might satisfy that craving.

- Scum and Villainy - a Forged in the Dark system. If you like more rules light play this could be up your alley. It focuses more on fewer rolls providing more information. Say more, roll less, but with sufficient mechanical support to satisfy many players. It's well designed and balanced and I enjoyed it. However, while it definitely delivered on the feeling of Star Wars, it didn't quite have the lore support of FFG's product line. So if you want to get into the nitty gritty of modifying starships, buying and selling spice (or what each spice does to you), or running a rebel base with a little more granularity, this might not be the system for you.

- SAGA/D20- sort of a 3.5 D&D + Star Wars. I didn't really particularly enjoy this system, so I won't say much. It's class based and plays straight like D&D+Star Wars, in my experience.

As you can see, I've got my clear favorite.

Please AMA! I'm passionate about great system design and I can't stop coming back to this one after more than a decade of playing it. Some of my very favorite campaign moments and memories live in this system.

May the Force be With You!

If there was ever a day to check out my pal JP Coovert's Star Borg RPG, today would be it!.

I was lucky enough to play this with him at GaryCon and had an absolute blast. If you're looking for a Star Wars experience, you'd be doing yourself a disservice by not giving it a once-over.

Pretty straightfoward I guess. I'm looking for tabletop RPGs mixing both Dystopic Cyberpunk and Fantasy genres.

Shadowrun is the most famous example in that blend, but thing is that I am not interested in running Shadowrun, at least right now.

Therefore, I am looking for any and all RPGs that aren't Shadowrun, which means that the Shadowrun RPGs editions 1 to 6 and the Anarchy version are excluded from the field of study. Feel free however to post your alternate Shadowrun homebrewed ruleset if you have any, it's always an interesting read.

I recently left a group. We were only a few sessions in, and one player in particular kept challenging and whining about almost every action my character took. The GM didn't step up to manage this, so I had to be put in the uncomfortable position of standing up for myself after being interrupted multiple times in the middle of my turn.

At this point, things might’ve still been salvageable, but the GM’s hostile attitude was the axe that killed it.

We were near the end of the session and I got approval to make an action (which I rolled for). I was in the middle of resolving this action when the GM suddenly hard-cuts the whole group into a narrative shift for no reason. When I tried to pause what was happening to ask if I could finish my action, or try to understand what was going on, I was shut down repeatedly in a hostile and deeply disrespectful way. I ultimately gave up, and just went along with what the GM wanted. The session was so bad that no one said bye to each other as we were all leaving.

The GM later reached out saying they felt they performed horribly and that they were sure I had questions. To me, thats such an indirect way of admitting you f*d up - but putting the burden on the other person to address it. I politely let them know I needed to step away from the campaign, but I appreciated all he had done to run it and that I wished the game well going forward. He reacted emotionally, slamed the door in my face, then went through a sprial of depression, and to this day I'm almost positive he blames me for that.

I grieved for a bit after pulling the plug because I did care about the campaign, and a lot of investment went into building my character and their backstory. I was truly excited to have the opportunity to be part of something like this, and looking forward to it all. But in the end I didn't feel like it was a safe space.

I’m on the fence about trying again. Part of me still wants to play, but I don’t want to deal with that kind of table again.

Anyone else run into a player + GM combo that just killed a game? Did you find a better group after, or did it turn you off for a while.

Just kind of interested in why you guys play ttrpgs? What do you like about them and what makes them a unique hobby to you?

If you respond I would be interested in knowing you’re a player GM or both.

I started playing roleplaying games about a two years ago after a long hiatus. I got interested in this hobby because of roleplaying. I used to play a lot of video games and went hard in anything I played min maxing and theory crafting. I actually wanted a break from that after realizing what really drew me into games initially was the active participation in the fictional universe. I just got lost in the obsession of levers and numbers.

What made me fall in love with ttrpgs was in character gameplay. I love how fast the games are this way and how active the world feels like this.

What I have found though is a lot of the hobby enjoys the game as more of a board game, wargame or a social hangout or more narrative type play where you sort of describe your turns in a longer moment to moment style of play.

It actually seems like in character gameplay is a small minority in a hobby about tabletop roleplaying. I could be wrong but I’ve played in quite a few different spaces and found this to be the case.

So yeah what do guys like about this hobby and what do you think makes it unique? Are you a player or a GM. Is your table a mix of player types?

Edit - just wanted to say thanks for all the comments I have really enjoyed reading your responses!

I'm not actually looking for advice here, I actually wanted to share a story that is one of the things I love about my group.

I was just thinking about how each of my players in my Vampire the Masquerade game have given me really fleshed out characters with back stories that have been really easy to implement into the setting and form a really interesting story. I try hard to make sure all my players have a moment in the spotlight somewhere in the story, and their backstory plays into the greater mystery somehow.

And then I have one player, a really good friend of mine, who has very little roleplay experience. She is playing a Nosferatu scientist, the most recently embraced kindred of the group, who was embraced while working at a pharmaceutical testing firm that actually existed before getting shut down for animal cruelty. We just changed the circumstances of how it got shut down to being a cover for "a freshly embraced vampire went on a rampage because she was fed up with the treatment of the animals". We worked together on this backstory because she wasn't really sure where to go with it. She gave me the details as to where she was before she was embraced and I fleshed it out.

Other than this though, she's kind of just along for the ride. We've had conversations about the role she wants to play in the story and if she has any other backstory ideas I could incorporate, and she's told me she's happy with where she's at. She still interacts, but she's mostly reactive, whereas the other players have goals that drive them and individual arcs they're going through.

Despite this, I'm still pretty resolute on giving her an engaging role to play. So what I've done is made her and her sire ally with the local Tremere Chantry. They've given the two a lab with minimal oversight, and they send them occasional work to help with the chantry's goals. They aren't really kept up to date on what those goals are, but being Nosferatu, they have their ways of finding out. Essentially, the specific Tremere that oversees them is a member of the Horned Society (they don't know exactly what that entails, they just know that the specifics of the experiments they are sent are kept under wraps and have covers on covers), and is using their lab to experiment on Thin-bloods, trying to understand their prophetic abilities regarding the actions of elders and ancients. They want to focus their visions to gather specific information, particularly the True Names of demons the Horned Society (and the Baali that control them) are after. This has been great because through the experiments and the related research, I can just outright explain lore of Vampire to this player, and make it engaging and relevant to the plot, and they really seem to enjoy it.

Anyway, that's my story. I just wanted to share it and see if anyone else had stories about creative ways they've kept new players engaged.

From the outside, Italy seems to have this whole thriving indie RPG scene that actually publishes in Italian. Translations, original designs, active communities around them. In Norway we have just a handful of published games in Norwegian total. What does that do to the culture around the table? Do you play mostly in Italian? Do English-language games still dominate even with all the local publishers?

I saw some VTM books at my local game store and thought about buying them to run a game with friends. They are a little pricey, so I wanted some opinions on the game before I drop cash and go in blind.

I just got the Land of Eem special, SUPER good price for *everything*! But it is probably more suited to older kids.

I have heard of Quest Kids (but not a whole lot of direct experience playing/running feedback).

Any other systems that have rules (not totally rules-light) you'd recommend for that age range?

Obviously I should prepare some Npcs. Maybe some locations. How many significant Npcs and locations should there be? Should I take extra preparations for other game elements?

I’ve always been interested in dnd, but haven’t really sunk too deep into it, but i’d like to play dnd or a similar tabletop game with my wife, however being a DM just seems like alot to learn so it’s a little off putting. I’m curious of any tabletop game, or just easier version of being a DM that can get my wife and i into the genre. thanks