First Impressions: Star Wars: Edge of the Empire Beginner Game

I recently had the opportunity to run a few friends through the Star Wars: Edge of the Empire Beginner Game by Fantasy Flight Games.  While I'm not quite ready for a full review, I thought I'd discuss what I liked, what I didn't like and what I'm wary on.

For starters, the components are excellent.  The pre-generated character folios have some great full color art right on the front.  It's easy to look at Oskara, the Twi'lek bounty hunter or 41-VEX, the droid colonist and get a good impression of what to expect from the character.

A nice spread of all the Beginner Game's components - look at them folios!

The proprietary dice are very nice, high quality polyhedrons in a set of color blind friendly shapes and colors that make them very easy to distinguish from one another.  The game also comes with a staggering array of cardboard tokens to represent player characters, non-player characters and ships as well as a full-color, double sided map.  Really, the only complaint I have with the components is with the box it all comes in.  I'm not sure if Fantasy Flight was just thinking folks would toss the box and keep all the tokens and dice in bags, but it's probably the flimsiest cardboard I've seen from them outside of their Print on Demand line of mini-expansions.



The adventure itself is a very simple affair.  It's extremely linear and introduces game mechanics slowly from encounter to encounter.  The core mechanic of the game is in building dice pools based on your character's abilities and proficiencies.  Once the pool is complete, players roll and see if they can get more success symbols than failure symbols.  If so, then they've succeeded and whatever task they were attempting.  However, the dice also have symbols such as Threat, Advantage, Despair and Triumph which have no direct affect on whether a roll succeeds, but may change the situation around a given roll.  The adventure slowly integrates new options for interpreting these additional symbols.

The varied results of the dice pool mean that a GM has to be on their toes to react and explain the action based on what is rolled, but the Beginner Game has plenty of tables and charts to easily identify all the options available to players and GMs alike.  The game also has a fantastic initiative system which allows players to decide who goes in which initiative slot during combat - a subtle change from more traditional RPGs that I think will have a positive effect on players all around.

So where do I stand?  Well, I'm definitely excited to play some more.  I haven't had this good of a time roleplaying in the Star Wars universe since Wizards of the Coast's Saga Edition.  I have a good track record with Fantasy Flight's RPGs and this one has potential.  I love the dice system and how it opens up a lot of options for players and GMs to interpret the dice pool.  However, I am anxious to see the rules for character creation and how deep they go.  Additionally, I have no idea how the Force is going to be handled and that can make or break any Star Wars game.

The core rulebook has a nebulous release date of "somewhere in the second quarter of 2013".  I've got one on preorder at my friendly local gaming store, but until then I'll be running a few more sessions with the Beginner Game contents just to put it through its paces and test these core mechanics backwards and forwards.

First Impressions: Civilization and the Lord of the Rings LCG

This past Saturday was a good day for gamin'.  I got to head to my friendly local game store after class and spend the whole day playing games.  We started off with Civiliza...err, Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game, got to try the Lord of the Rings Living Card Game and ended on a high note with Red November.  Now, I've already reviewed Red November and both Civilization and LotR were learning games, so I'm just going to give some impressions and notes rather than any full reviews.

First up was Civilization.  Before I say anything else, I must once again give Fantasy Flight Games kudos for posting all of their rulebooks online.  Being able to skim the rules beforehand (as well as watching Drakkenstrike's excellent components breakdown) took some of the edge off of setting up the game, but we still took out time with the rules until we got used to the turn order.  The components lived up to Fantasy Flight's usual standard - especially the map tiles, which were rich and vibrant, and the market board, which hosted a lot of mechanics/components very efficiently.  I was particularly enamored with the combat system, but I'll save that analysis for the full review.  Overall, Civilization was a blast and I am eagerly looking forward to playing it again.

Now, halfway through Civilization, I noticed a brand new box sitting up on the demo shelf.  I gasped audibly and leapt our of my chair to grab it and peruse it's grim contents.  This was the Lord of the Rings Living Card Game - a game that I've been lustily eyeing for a while now.  It's good.  Very good.  Probably one of the best cooperative experiences I've had from Fantasy Flight.  The cards are stunning and I often found myself totally absorbed in reading the bountiful flavor text and staring wide-eyed at the beautiful portraits on each card.  If you like the idea of forming a fellowship consisting of your favorite characters from the books as well as a few unique additions provided by FFG, then check this game out - and bring a friend.  I'll be reviewing this as soon as I can get my Gollum-like mitts on a copy.  In the meantime, there's a wonderful introductory video series on the FFG page (at the bottom).

Lastly, as the store was closing, we broke out Red November.  For this game, we were joined by a few new recruits who had never served aboard a gnomish submarine before.  Due to time constraints, we ended up rushing a bit and there were a few turns that were dominated by one player or another dictating what someone should do (a classic problem with co-op games), but everyone seemed to enjoy themselves - despite the fact that the sub somehow caught fire and we all died.

Things will be quiet for the next week as I head out of town for Thanksgiving.  I've got a few posts in the works, though, so expect a lot more in the coming weeks.  Have a safe and happy holiday!