BX vs. Castles & Crusades

If there is one universal rule in the hobby, it is that Castles & Crusades beats every other game. C&C is easier than BX, requires less reference during play, and it is a modern set of rules that is backward compatible with any classic adventure you throw at it. The entire game plays from an index card. The characters have depth and a curated collection of modern abilities. The multi-classing in C&C makes nearly infinite combinations of characters to play.

If you want a modern game that does not feel like "walking away from 5E," then Castles & Crusades will make an excellent home for you. The game is still very old-school in its playstyle, resource management, danger, and feel, but very modern in its gameplay mechanics, with a dice roll for any situation that arises.

I still love Old School Essentials! There is a "toy factor" to these books that can't be denied, and I mean that in the best way. For a game this small, compact, and easy to use, having it be so expansive, infinite, and amazingly playable is a masterstroke. If you ever remember the magic of bringing home an NES game cartridge and having the feeling that "an entire world exists in this tiny object," then you understand the true power of Old School Essentials.

The Latin phrase for that is "microcosmus in parvo," and it fits perfectly when holding a copy of Old School Essentials. The universe is reflected in the smallest thing.

When I hold the OSE books, I am holding the universe in my hands, two tiny books, and infinite worlds and possibilities. With C&C, I am back to the "arcane tome" feeling of AD&D, where the books are big, serious, weighty, and scholarly, and arcane guides on how the world works. While the C&C books are each singularly amazing and a masterclass in game design, the OSE books have a "power in the tiny" that is undeniable.

Using the optional tertiary ability score rules in the CKG makes the game feel more modern and gives your character a lot of customization options. I am a super fan of those rules, and they broke the game wide open for me, so I don't feel my characters are making too drastic a trade-off between primary and secondary scores. Now, I get a smooth progression between my primary (12), secondary (15), and tertiary (18) ability scores.

I used to feel my human "survival cleric" lacked in DEX, having her primaries set to CON, CHR, and WIS. With STR and DEX as secondaries (15), and INT as her tertiary (18), I do not feel she is being punished as hard when she wants to balance along a ledge and force open doors.

Chef's kiss.

Seriously, the optional rules in the CKG turn C&C into about five different-feeling games and fix a few of the game's strange-feeling parts (when coming from the OSR), especially when compared to modern rule sets. You will find the game you want in C&C, and it can be a direct superheroic-fantasy replacement of 5E if you want it to be.

With BX, my survival cleric is just a cleric. I hope she has a high STR or DEX score, and that will do the same thing, but the SIEGE Engine invisibly handles the game's "skill system" without requiring one. In C&C, marking an ability score as "primary" tells us, "If this game had a skill system, I spent a lot of skill points in this ability score area." The SIEGE Engine forever fixes D&D 3.5E's massive, bloated, overdone, and cumbersome skill system by designating a few ability scores as primaries, secondaries, and, optionally, teritiaries.

Like Swords & Wizardry's single save number, the SIEGE Engine as a whole is a genius piece of game design. Rarely do we get game mechanics this good that simplify our lives and solve entire overdesigned systems with a simple, clean, and clear rule.

BX is the simpler game, with a more straightforward gameplay loop. If you have the BX gameplay loop down pat and want a modern set of rules? Want characters with something more to them than a few abilities?  Want that 1E feeling without all the complexity? Play C&C.

If you want the classic, tight, almost board-game-like gameplay loop? Play BX. Easier choices, more iconic selections, a game not overconfused by dozens of races and class choices? The rock-solid, core choices and options that make the game a classic? BX all the way, preferably the classic rules. Once you start adding "stuff" to the game, you water it down, confuse the choices, introduce classes that were never a part of the core experience, and you lose something.

You lose the game under a mass of optional stuff that ends up distracting everyone from what was there. It comes off like adding optional expansion boards to Monopoly or Axis & Allies, and all of a sudden, that core, solid, tight game experience becomes muddled, slow, heavy, distracted, and confused.

The original game is lost.

People who knew the original can see the beauty through the chaff, but any modern player will see a weaker version of what they already have in 5E and similar games. If you want modern classes and roles like those in 5E, but you don't want everyone to feel they're lacking powers or iconic class abilities, C&C will be a better fit.

There is an argument that if you play BX, you should play without all the distractions and enjoy the game as it was played back in the day.

Sure, Advanced Fantasy is the more popular game and has the most "stuff" - but an abundance of choices doesn't make a good game. Some can't play without the bard, druid, or ranger, and I am one of those, too. For me, those classes in C&C feel much better and keep other games out of the equation. I am more than happy with the C&C designs, and they fit my vision of what the modern classes should look, feel, and play like.

The BX versions of these classes are weaker and are slow to "come online" with signature powers. In lower-level play, the feeling between playing a fighter and a paladin will not feel like much in BX, where in C&C, those two will feel and play vastly different.

Your class identities are much better represented and feel in C&C than in BX, especially for expansion classes, which in the original game took quite a while to begin to feel and play differently. C&C also lets you houserule in "class skills": if a ranger should know how to do something, you make a SIEGE Engine check on the closest ability score, and do "the thing" on a success.

C&C makes adjudicating "class skills" a part of the system by default. In BX, you will rely on the referee "pass or fail" allowing it, and most of the time, if a ranger knows how to do something, they will just be able to do it (or make an ability score roll for it), and that will be it. C&C starts with the modern notion of the "skill check" and lets the SIEGE Engine drive it all simply and in a unified manner.

But do you prefer a more modern set of rules with ways to handle any situation that comes up? Rules mods that fill up an entire book? Characters with new abilities that unlock as you level? Then, C&C will be better for you. C&C does everything BX does, but with a modern rules framework that stays out of the way and handles much of the heavy lifting for you.

For me?

Castles & Crusades easily replaces 5E for me, as a game that "does anything and everything." This is my 16-bit Genesis console that "brings home the arcade."

OSE is my "game on the go" and daily driver for everything else, being cross-compatible with so many things (and even C&C) that the investment is great for every game I buy. This is my 8-bit NES or Gameboy, the tiny thing I hold in my hand that does so much.

Microcosmus in parvo.

Off the Shelf: Genesys

If you play the Edge Studio Star Wars game, you typically play Genesys. Star Wars is the entry point for this game and provides setting-neutral support for its unique dicing system. For Star Wars, you play Star Wars. For everything else, you play Genesys. This system transplants the cinematic system used in the Star Wars game to other genres, allowing you to use it for anything you can imagine.

These two are sister games, same rules, different dice, and less Star Wars.

This is "Movie: The RPG," the game. Any Hollywood movie from 1920 to about 2019 can be recreated with this system, and it works better than many of today's narrative and storytelling games since the dice leave "what happens" up to you, instead of "telling you what happens" through the rules. I put an end dat of about 2010 on this simulation system since Hollywood has changed so much in the 2020-2026 era that filmmaking is practically unrecognizable and alien compared to earlier times, due to streaming and the collapse of the theater model.

Genesys feels like a forgotten system at this point, with Cypher System feeling like it replaced it (and Cypher System fading), and these days, Daggerheart is the RPG darling of the narrative crowd. This was always in the same sort of narrative simulation systems, such as Cypher System, FATE, Savage Worlds, and other generic systems.

I bounced off Cypher System many times before I finally learned it. It is a good system, but a part of me preferred Genesys, since the dice in Genesys are more solo-friendly than Cypher's GM-driven narrative model, which is honestly better with other people. Daggerheart, I have, but never got into, partially because I have Nimble, which does everything I need for superheroic fantasy.

What I like about Genesys is that you are playing with oracle dice, there is no narrative control system, and you do not need to drop out of character to reference narrative rules and determine outcomes. There are no "hope and fear mechanics." I am not dropping out of character to accept a GM Intrusion (or trigger a Player Intrusion), tripping bennies, nor am I dropping out of character to create a situational aspect.

There is a pair of "story pools" for the GM and players, with each player getting one point and the GM getting one point. When a point is used by either side, it flips to the other. These are mainly used to upgrade dice (positive for players, negative for enemies), to activate talents, or to affect luck and slightly change the narrative (we find a crashed cache of survival gear).

The dice roll tells me "what happens in the world," and I can stay in character to make it happen, or suffer the consequences. It is simple, straightforward, and keeps the action in the "mind space" of the game and in-character" situation.

This is a classic, fun, and elegant system that relies on special dice, and it is the best "special dice" system out there. The pool mechanics are limited, and enforce a currency that flips between the players and the GM.

Weaknesses? Some people get tired of constantly interpreting the special dice symbols. The game does have a fatigue to it if you are constantly rolling the dice for every little thing, and having to look at charts, cancel symbols, and interpret the remaining pool with every single roll. I recommend that dice rolls in this game be used for the macro-level actions: one roll to sneak across the town, avoid guards, and stay out of trouble. Do not roll for every city block, and every action without consequence!

In many cases, just do not roll; let the character's skills and abilities grant automatic success, and only roll when it means something, when there are consequences for failure, or when the path forward is uncertain and potentially dangerous.

Landing your starship at a starport in normal circumstances? No roll needed; that is a routine action and should be covered by your normal training and ability as a pilot. If there were a situation that made it difficult, such as enemy fire or severe weather, roll. But - only if you need to! If the bad weather can't force anything to meaningfully change, then why roll?

"Just to see" is not really a good enough reason.

If there are others being chased by stormtroopers, and you need to stick the landing on the first attempt, or else that group will be stuck down there, playing a desperate defensive last stand, then, yes, roll. If the bad weather just means a sloppy landing, or landing in a far-off, clear spot where no roll is needed, then don't roll. Why? Does it matter?

Before you roll, think of the dice as the director of the scene "on the set" wanting to film "the best movie possible." Does the scene have conflict? Is there an uncertain outcome? Does failure have consequences? Is the scene interesting enough to even film?

If the scene is a nothingburger, assume success and move on to the next scene that the audience does want to see. Why waste film on filler? Why waste a die roll on the same?

Being frugal on your shot selection makes for a great movie.

Being selective in rolling the narrative dice will avoid burnout.

Part of why I fell out with Genesys was GURPS, and GURPS is its own amazing thing that can do anything, too. GURPS tends to enforce a gritty reality on everything it touches, which is amazing to see superimposed over Star Wars or any other "false reality" game (including D&D). However, gritty realism does not always work across genres, and it can dramatically change things.

If I am playing "D&D with GURPS," I can get those moments where a goblin is hit in the leg by an arrow, hobbling around, and bleeding to death. That is a dark, gritty, and hardcore level of reality that is cool to experience in a hyper-realistic system, and it gives a wonderful feeling to "see D&D through realistic glasses."

If I want to play a movie game, GURPS can do that with a few tweaks, but there are times I want to play a narrative, curated experience where the rules have a lot to help me. The dicing system in Genesys is fun and produces unexpected outcomes. This is good stuff, and things that GURPS does not give me without adding oracle dice or other tools.

The system is more weighty than Savage Worlds, FATE, or even Cypher. The dicing is simple, but there is a lot going on behind the scenes, special rules, and sections of the rules to master. Once you get the hang of it, everything runs smoothly, and you can mostly play with just a GM screen reference and be fine. There are fewer "toys" (cards, bennies, tokens) than Savage Worlds, and no XP and per-character pool economy like in Cypher.

Cypher is still a lot easier to convert into, requiring only one challenge number and a few special abilities for monsters (or any challenge). This requires source data and conversion, so it is par for the course for games like GURPS or Savage Worlds.

The real advantage here is that the dice are all oracle dice, and you are not taken out of character to figure out what happens next in the narrative. The flip-flop story pool between the players and GM is an acceptable extra pool to track, and accounts for momentum shifts and narrative control flips.

The characters are also top-notch, with the talent trees being an excellent part of the design, solving the character depth issue in a single page of the character sheet. The characters here are far more fun to build than Cypher or Savage Worlds, with only GURPS beating them in design flexibility.

Dated? Compared to the game-of-the-week that comes out on Kickstarter? Yes, a touch. Clunky? Not really, the narrative dice are the reason to play. VTT support? I haven't seen too much, so that is a minus, but I play solo, so not for me.

The community content on DriveThruRPG is excellent.

If you are playing Star Wars and want to stay in the Star Wars groove while playing in other settings, Genesys will work perfectly. The same types of dice are used here; the mechanics are identical, and there is not much more to learn to play.

This is still a solid generic system; it still holds up, and the solo-play factor is high due to the assistance from the oracle-like dice. A strong recommendation.

Classic Star Wars as the OSR

There is a parallel between Classic Star Wars and the OSR. We have a game, the Edge Studio 2012 Star Wars RPG, still licensed and in print, that feels like it comes from a time before the sequel trilogy. It does, and even though the books have Disney on the covers, the game predates the era, and to be honest, Disney did make a few good Star Wars movies and shows. I would put Rogue One up at the top, and something worthy of being considered canon.

I have to be fair and honest.

The feeling I get when I play the Edge Studio Star Wars game is the same as when I play an OSR game. The memories come back, the feeling is there, and that magic happens. Tooling around the universe as my smuggler, letting the dice fall where they may, and getting myself into all sorts of story trouble feels great, and it comes from a time before modern "story gaming," which has gone so far down the road of an artificial, curated experience that today's narrative games feel manipulative and far too controlling.

Sure, the Star Wars game uses special narrative dice, but they have a charm and mystery that add to the experience without detracting from the narrative flow. I am still interpreting results here, which can get tedious, but the results are up to me, and the game isn't getting in the way and telling me "what happens." There are suggestions, but the decisions on narrative flow are still up to me, and the game has not taken them out of my hands, unlike some narrative games today.

Nor is there a pool mechanic tracking different types of narrative currency. Cypher System has its XP, and Daggerheart has hope and fear. The dice stay a creative tool, up to interpretation, and the results are up to you to determine. Every roll is like an oracle helping you determine the next cinematic result.

Also, this is not a D&D-like game where monsters and NPCs throw their lives away. Like a movie, there is always something else to a fight, and the narrative flow and push-and-pull of the active situation are the real fun here, not killing everything in a room and looting the bodies. Playing a D&D-type dungeon crawl with this game would be less than ideal, while playing a D&D fantasy movie based on characters, a module, or a setting would be a lot more fun.

There is a generic version of this system called Genesys, ideal for other settings with the same rules but slightly different dice. This one is also still in print and great fun for simulating that classic "Hollywood" movie experience from the 1920s to about 2010. There is an innocence to this game that many other generic narrative-driven games lack. The dice are intended to be "tools of imagination" like a set of oracle dice, and most everything from that point is left up to you.

You are not pushing and pulling narrative-currency pools against a referee. The game isn't telling you exactly what happens. You are not triggering boss abilities by rolling badly. You are not asking the players to "take an intrusion" in exchange for narrative currency.

You roll the dice.

They produce a result.

Your imagination takes it from there.

The rules stop here, and the narrative outcome remains in-game, feeding into the next situation. You are not tracking pools or stepping out of the game, into player or GM-mode, and making narrative flow choices based on an artificial rules framework. Oh, something cool happens: my blaster hits a nearby stack of clay pots, and they collapse onto the group of stormtroopers, allowing us a chance to make a break for it. Nothing in the pools has changed. No rule is activated. No special encounter ability has been triggered. Nothing on my character sheet is activated by my good-guy narrative pool. No player intrusion needed to be triggered by spending an XP.

Genesys uses the same dice, but with slightly different symbols. The Star Wars game comes with loads of "Star Wars toys," so it is a better experience for playing in that universe and for having classic, OSR-style throwback stories and adventures based on movie-like experiences.

I don't have to drop out of my character's head a moment and figure out what rule or ability was triggered. This is key. This is what keeps Genesys and Star Wars a cut above many other modern narrative games. You play the game with oracle dice, and you are not dropping out of character to reference the narrative flow rules.

The dice give me direction on what happens in the world.

And it happens.

I stay in character.

We move on to the next scene.

Playing classic Star Wars stories with the special dice feels like an old-school game to me. I am firing blasters, evading enemies,  shooting the controls to a blast door to try to get it to close, and doing all sorts of other "space hero" stuff that I can't get in a traditional OSR game. The OSR has this spreadsheet math going on when combat happens, and combat is typically a failure condition, so combat is punishing and to be avoided whenever possible. The moral and reaction roll rules in the OSR mitigate the "to the death" combat math.

In Star Wars? Combat is dangerous, but also a part of the film. In many ways, combat is fun and cinematic, as my character runs across a street with blaster bolts flying by, trading shots with stormtroopers, and figuring out "how to get out of this mess."

This is clearly in the realm of "combat is fun" narrative action games. If I want realism, I have GURPS. To live in this "movie reality," then Star Wars and Genesys work very well and provide that curated, action-oriented, popcorn-gaming experience.

And I can keep Classic Star Wars apart in my mind from the modern era, and in fact, treating the Classic era as an OSR-type experience helps me return to the fun, and put the not-always-so-good present in perspective. I still need to be fair and give new things a chance, since this is a licensed game and it will never replace new stuff that happens to be good.

But for classic throwback Star Wars romps and tales of two-fisted and blaster-firing adventure that bring me back to my childhood? This is good stuff. It makes me happy the way the OSR and BX do.

Gaming should transport us to a different world, a feeling, or a moment in time when times were good and the world looked infinite and full of possibilities.

This does that for me.

The Best Outcome

I get the feeling that The Mandalorian and Grogu movie dying quickly as a box office bomb is the best outcome for Star Wars. This is the end of mediocre television series being turned into movies, and it puts the series back into a "stay hungry" mode, where they will need to return to the classic stories and plots.

I don't feel the news today that the Clone Wars showrunner is directing the new three sequels is great news; I would rather see the Clone Wars series put to bed and the influence of those characters and plots sunset. We have had enough Clone Wars spinoffs, please, no more of this (arguably great) series coming back from the dead, and characters and plots brought back that very few have a clue who they are.

Granted, given Lucasfilm's track record, the director will be replaced anyway.

Just get George Lucas to write, cast, and choose the director for the next movies. Seriously? He could course-correct this mess. Give him complete creative control.

We need the Legends Universe to return and for the slate to be wiped clean. Make these movies, as written, no changes, and do them justice, and the studio will have decades of billion-dollar hits on their hands. I know, they don't want to make them, but at this point, making those stories would be like Peter Jackson making The Lord of the Rings, done right, and you have a franchise again. Sure, everyone "knew the books," but treat the novels with respect, and all the fans will return.

I get the feeling that isn't what is going to happen.

But, still, the "TV movie" fading quickly is a blessing.

It means it will be forgotten, and we won't get any more of them. And I feel Grogu is a fad whose time has passed, like Bart Simpson, Groot, and other cultural icons. Time for that character to get older, wiser, and speak. Perhaps it is time to retire Grogu for good, let the animation division have him go on adventures for a younger audience in streaming shows, and move on.

But there is still hope left in Star Wars.

I have my games and stories, set in the Expanded Universe.

We have an MMO that is modernizing its engine.

I can weather the storm while everyone else calls it a dead franchise to boost their YouTube views. Most of them have moved on; the dead horse has been beaten.

There is still "life out there" in the Star Wars universe.

Treating Classic Star Wars the way we treat the OSR gives me immunity to the current bad news, keeps the torch lit, and lets me enjoy the stories I grew up with. I tell my own stories and ignore the hobby's current state, letting the negativity wash right past me, and it never affects me. The OSR does this well, with classic stories being told with whatever version of BX or 1E you have on hand.

Does 5E matter to us anymore? Only if you fall into the trap of caring. It is a cold and callous place to put yourself, but, honestly, if 5E has stopped speaking to you, why play it? Not to "play with others" or "ensure you have a game" because why do something you don't enjoy? I get it, we do put up with less fun games just to play with others, but I am done with those days. My group never got started.

And I love the old Star Wars and the classic stories, even when updated with my twists.

It is a win-win.

And there will be better days ahead.

BX Cures Burnout?

There is a truth to BX being a cure for gamemaster burnout. In BX, the procedures for running a dungeon are very clear. You have a set dungeon turn, the referee tracks time and rolls for wandering monsters, the players track resources and interact with the environment, and the referee tells them what is around the next corner. Encounters are dynamic and fluid, with no preset script to read from, just a few ground rules about who they are, what is happening, and what the consequences could be.

But there is a structure here that creates the experience.

Modern gaming, like 5E or Daggerheart? We just jumped from the real sport of Greco-Roman wrestling to the WWE. Prescripted railroad adventures. Encounters with the story and outcome are prewritten. The dungeon has a story; the characters have multi-page backstories; and everyone and everything is telling a story.

We have moved from D&D being an unpredictable sandbox game to D&D becoming scripted professional wrestling. This is the single largest difference between classic BX D&D and modern D&D 5E.

Modern D&D replaces the BX sandbox simulation engine with a prewritten story you need to buy, read, and spend hours preparing to run. There is more money in fluff-filled hardcovers, after all.

And there is no game structure in modern gaming, just the prescripted flow of a story. Imagine playing baseball without any concept of innings, outs, or a set procedure of play. Imagine playing football without a strict timekeeping system or a division into quarters and halves. The teams get on the field, and just play the game until a preset outcome is determined, and the fans walk away happy since "everyone wins."

If you ran a game like that, you would get burned out since nothing really means anything.

Read the script, phone it in, turn off your brain; you are running a modern storytelling game.

And this sort of model is assumed for all modern games, where the rules exist to support an extensive story overlay required to even play the game. Pick up most games designed today, and you will see an overemphasis on story and very little emphasis on structure.

That gameplay loop and dungeon turn structure are the "sandbox engine" of BX.

And it is there to save a referee 90% of the work needed to run a game.

For the most part, BX runs itself.

Put a modern referee in BX, and wait a minute? What is all this structure? You mean, parts of the game that I had to write stories for and account for in each encounter automatically run themselves? And it is easier than hours of prep for each game, you just "hop in and play" and "the system takes care of the rest."

What is this game?

The game is BX, and the structures the designers built all the way back in the 1970s automatically eliminate the need for endless story writing before the game, and they allow any group to hop into a "dungeon environment" and have the story "dynamically generate." The same with wilderness adventures, there is a structure there, too.

Even if a referee had zero prep time, like homework was due and they had to go to band practice, that game could still be played. All the referee needed to do was "follow the procedure," and the game mostly ran itself, allowing the referee almost infinite room to be creative on the fly within that framework. A game could be run with zero story and no prep, and run just fine.

And what inevitably happens is that these story games adopt their own structure for story gaming and narrative flow, and that structure returns. Cypher System and its extensive narrative flow-control tools, and Daggerheart with its pools and dicing system, are examples of the structure coming back to "help referees," so you are not really getting away from structure; it has been renamed and moved to another part of the game (and likely less effective at running dungeons than the BX system).

The narrative dice in Star Wars and Genesys are another way to shift the structure to the dice for generic storytelling and are a touch fairer than other narrative gaming tools, since they are dice-based rather than at the referee's whim or tied to spending pools, as in Cypher or Daggerheart. Interpretation of the pool is still needed, but at least I am not feeling like I am "screwing my players" as I am in Cypher by triggering an Intrusion, or in Daggerheart by dropping fear on players. Those systems are more adversarial, whereas in Star Wars/Genesys I can point to the dice, shrug, and say, "bad luck."

My job as a narrative referee is a lot easier if I feel like I am not fighting my players. BX referees are a different thing entirely, and they enforce the game's structure at an event, with clear procedural rules. I am slowly shifting back to the narrative dice system of Genesys/Star Wars rather than systems like Cypher and Daggerheart, as they work better for solo play and clearly tell a story of what happens without referee intervention or bias.

As a referee, the more structure I have, the easier my job becomes.

The less of my own bias I introduce into the game, the easier my life is.

Structure cures burnout.

The elimination of bias and adversarial play makes the game more fun and engaging for the referee. These "screw the players" narrative trigger systems are ultimately fake tension, meant to be overcome anyway, and feel like throwing sand in the gears to create artificial tension and resistance to a predetermined story outcome.

With a sandbox system or narrative dice, the outcomes are not predetermined. Even the referee does not know what will happen. The next wandering monster check could kill the party. Rolling despair could mean a fatal wound, and that is the end of your character in one bad roll. There is no script. Your lives are at the mercy of uncaring, mathematical systems that have no care for your life or well-being, and you fight to minimize the impact of the cold, hard math of the system.

The story is how you deal with these impersonal, absolute, cold, hard systems during the game, together as a team. The story is never prewritten as a script before the play begins, cutting out all player input, and is doomed to be ignored anyway.

If you are burned out, tired of writing endless stories your players end up ignoring, and think roleplaying is "story gaming," give BX a try. If you are more of a story gamer, try Genesys and break free of the need to constantly oppose the players.

Let other systems do the work; instead of the game relying on you to constantly write reams of stories that will never get seen, read, or appreciated. Discover how great the game is without the need for all those scripts and massive, story-based railroads. Imagination happens during the game as a shared experience, not in hours of story prep toiling alone before it!

Immerse yourself in the structure.

Let the dice free you.

And discover the power of shared imagination.

Mail Room: Force and Destiny Beginner Game

The Edge Studio beginner boxed sets are a lot better than the previous Fantasy Flight sets. First up, the boxes are textured, heavy cardboard, meant to be opened and closed many times, with a top cover. This is a huge improvement over the thin cardboard boxes of the original beginner sets, and the components are mostly the same. The bottom cover even has an angled cutout so the game components can be pulled out more easily, and this is a huge improvement over my now-crushed Fantasy Flight beginner boxes.

This is a professionally designed box, and it shows. This box will display well and hold together on a shelf or in a backpack. This is a huge plus.

Why this game isn't more popular, I have no clue. The game is fun, the beginner set is solid, the dicing system beats many narrative games on the market today, and it is a well-thought-through, well-put-together beginner experience. There are three beginner sets; this one is for the Jedi experience.

This should be at least as popular as Call of Cthulhu, and the niche of gamers who love and play it remains strong. I find the beginner experience of these starter sets to be far superior to that of D&D 5E, and the roles and adventures are far more familiar and engaging than generic fantasy. To me, this is a far more gripping and compelling experience than fantasy.

It is unfair to mix the current, inconsistent Star Wars with the classic experience, and I can keep the two apart in my mind and still be a fan of the good stuff. I suppose those really into Star Wars roleplay are on Star Wars: The Old Republic and getting the full experience. I like the world, the lore, and all the action figures and toys of the RPG.

It is good stuff.

Is that a "gun character?" That is cool and an option for those who like shooty-style gameplay. They include a few character types as pregens, and you pick the playstyle you prefer.

There is a small canon break here: there are more Jedi and Sith in Star Wars than just the final few we have in the Star Wars trilogy, around the end of the first Death Star. There are many more Sith and Jedi, and the players play as Jedi initiates in this game, complete with Force powers. There are active Sith as enemies, too. So this universe is already breaking canon for fun and gameplay purposes, and that is cool.

And we get four pregen characters, who all look fun to play and are instantly accessible to beginners. I like the Force Monk; he looks fun to play, and we would be fighting over who gets to play him as kids. This is the type of Star Wars I miss and wish they would make today, that "aw, cool" version of Star Wars we grew up with.

Looks like we have a shooty character, a martial artist, and two saber users, which feels like a good balance and reflects differing gameplay styles.

We get a map and tokens, too, which is very nice and makes this game very beginner-friendly. I love the design of this boxed set, and it is something that D&D never sticks the landing on. You can play quite a few adventures with this set, too, not just the beginning adventure, as it suggests areas to branch out in and continue the fun, for those who need to wait a while to get the game's corebook.

More adventures and the ability to play the game beyond the starter adventure are excellent features that help lower-income and younger players who may need to wait a few weeks or months to play. More value in the beginner box is a huge plus, very generous, and it hooks players in and gets them looking forward to the full game.

Plus, you get a set of special dice! Eventually, you need two of these sets to have a full "four yellow" die roll for higher-level play, but this is good to start. You get one in every beginner set, so you will eventually collect enough, plus you can always pick up a set.

More Jedi is fun, and it fits the power fantasy of this universe well, pulling Episode 4's timeline more in line with the SWTOR "many Jedi and Sith" experience, and it opens the door for players to be actual Jedi instead of wandering around the galaxy and hearing about them. I would love to play in an EP4 universe with rising Jedi and Sith factions, that would be cool and change up the future of the universe. The roleplay would be more like SWTOR, especially if you allowed Sith characters, and the infighting and faction building would be amazing in that timeline.

Most of the Star Wars RP is online and concentrated in SWTOR, but the pen-and-paper games are fun and a part of this universe. Truth be told, the role-playing and universe of SWTOR are better than most anything in the current timeline of Star Wars, and the abundance of Jedi and Sith make this universe feel far more like the true "fantasy genre" of Star Wars. The technology is more primitive, the force users and powers are far more abundant, and the setting feels grounded and approachable.

Force and Destiny sort of brings that feeling forward, but does not make the SWTOR leap of having large Jedi and Sith factions running around. The Sith and Jedi are still around, just not in control of the two sides of the galaxy like they are in SWTOR.

If anything, SWTOR feels like the "real roleplaying universe" of Star Wars, well-hidden and concentrated in the online game, and it has much more of the fantasy vibe going on than anything that came after.

This type of strong "Sith and Jedi fighting in the current timeline" would invalidate the "there is another" of EP6, and the whole Skywalker Saga would be diminished, but it would be more in line with the MMO-style of universe and still fun. Seeing active and growing Jedi and Sith factions would pull in Vader, Luke, Yoda, the Emperor, and many others, and mess up the timeline permanently - but all is good in the pen-and-paper reality, and this game is more for fun than recreating the timeline down to the last event.

If you want it, then have it! This beginner set allows you to play with your action figures and live out those fantasies in this universe, so have fun, drop all the negativity, and play this game like it was 1977 again. Have massive Jedi and Sith factions fighting it out, and live in this galaxy again.

An excellent boxed set, and worth the upgrade.

Star Wars is Not Dead

One side says, "Star Wars is dead, stick a fork in it."

This is the media, be forewarned, this is the same media that shilled every Star Wars project, good to terrible, for the last ten years. Keep that in mind.

The other side says, "Look at the media saying Star Wars is dead! Affirmation!"

No, you got it wrong: the media is throwing in the towel on being the ones burdened with selling terrible Star Wars for the last 10 years. If terrible Star Wars was somehow a success, they would be cheering for this. The media is basically going "sour grapes" on all of Star Wars and giving up trying to shill for the latest pet project, and they collectively know what is coming.

We are going to get what is in their eyes, populist Star Wars, consumerist, "please the audience", simple, back-to-basics entertainment. There will be no message in the next Star Wars, since the company can't afford it, and the people with other agendas trying to sell "using Star Wars" will be told to find another franchise to ruin.

The media is not on your side.

In fact, I can see the same sort of thing coming for D&D. The moment D&D goes "old school" with a revamped AD&D 2nd Edition, the media will pile on it, saying it's a "tone deaf" release, meant for "grognards and old men." It "doesn't speak to an audience who wants narrative storytelling." They will tell people to pile onto Daggerheart and other similar narrative games. 

If the media doesn't get what they want, they will tell people to "stick a fork in it."

This is the consequence of letting the media and social media sell your product. You live by them, and you will die by them. The moment they feel they will lose their "power" over the brand, they will turn on you with a vengeance.

And just like D&D, the company will come crawling back to the old-school crowd, asking for forgiveness and asking us to get hyped once again for "a product made for true fans." And we will always be the first ones shown the door when it gets popular, since the media and message crowd will flood in again, if the new version takes off. We are always too "toxic" and "not the younger audience they need."

Yet the true fans are the "hype engine" the brand needs to take that first step toward legitimacy.

It is a cycle as old as the tides at this point, and if you can't see this, go stand next to the ocean for a while and touch sand.

Well, I have my Star Wars games right here. I have decades of solid lore to draw on when writing stories, and Disney did me the favor of invalidating it all by branding it "Legends" content, which means it is set in stone and can never change. Remarkably, there are no warning labels on these books and games, unlike the history of D&D, which the parent company has deemed toxic.

Star Wars Legends lore will not change, is rock solid, and a consistent storyline for me to use to base my own stories on. What a gift to gamers this is. Thank you, Disney!

DIY Star Wars will be the best Star Wars for the next few years.

I arguably have a greater and more stable source of lore and canon to draw upon than anything in D&D, as the Forgotten Realms has always been a world of shifting geopolitics where the map and gods change at the whims of the next edition. Demons and devils come and go, and eventually become character options. New races are dropped into the world without history or lore to support them. The lore changes with every edition of D&D to "sell the product." It is a multiversal planar mess right now that needs to be brought back to basics and untangled.

BX does that perfectly, by the way.

And I am happy to say Disney CAN make a good Star Wars movie or series. Andor, Mando 1 & 2, and Rogue One are proof. They haven't been able to make the magic work recently, but I have faith. They will return to the true fans one day. We just have to have more of a backbone than the media, who give up on a franchise because they don't get what they want.

Did Disney have many huge misses? Oh, for certain, I did not enjoy much of what I watched over the last few years. But I need to have faith that "the audience has spoken" and that they will course-correct. This is what the media is trying to prevent by calling Star Wars "dead." "Sticking a fork in it" is the metaphorical equivalent of throwing down the gauntlet, and the media saying, "prove us wrong." The media wants more and more "bad Star Wars" to continue. And they are throwing a tantrum unless they get it, and they all probably know what is coming down the pipeline.

If anything, their saying "Star Wars is dead" is probably the best sign of hope we have ever had. Something wonderful is coming. If it doesn't, well, I can wait a little longer. If Disney wants me as a fan, they know who to call and what types of stories to tell. I will be there for them should they make magic happen.

I will be telling my Star Wars stories over here on my game table, and I will be patient, waiting, and in the long run, I will be right.

I will remain a true fan.

I'm not giving up.

I shall build upon the rock, while others build upon sand.

I got four decades of the best storytelling and universe creation backing me up. Yes, the new stuff is hit-or-miss, but we have decades more good than bad here, and I am not letting a few tone-deaf mistakes tarnish my childhood memories and love for these stories.

The media, at this point, is an AI-written website that will be gone in a few years.

Mine is the better bet. DIY Star Wars "is the way."

Trust the Force.