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.

The D&D Community Advisory Group

So, D&D put together a "D&D Community Advisory Group" for what I guess is work on the next edition of the game. They did this to "discuss early product concepts and D&D Beyond tools" and likely as a sounding board for the work on the next edition.

https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/2180-introducing-the-d-d-community-advisory-group

They are about who I expect, with a few too many who seem to be "tone police" on the group, and not enough "old schoolers." It really doesn't mean much, except as a hype machine, which is why the D&D YouTubers were chosen. D&D YouTube needs a lot of help, ever since Google told a lot of them to stop making D&D content and move on to new content.

The algorithm no longer wants D&D, and I don't know how they can fight it.

I doubt forking money over to Google would help.

Still, the group is likely handling both D&D and D&D Beyond feedback, so even if there is a new edition, don't expect it to magically eliminate the complicated characters that require a live-service support model. I do not have much hope that the complexity issue that drove me from D&D 5E will ever be fixed, if they ever will, and my hopes for D&D 6E are nearly nonexistent.

BX is my game.

5E blew up for me in a live-service support model, a mess of digital DLC, and books I could not own the PDFs of. Even the games that let me do that blew up under live-service conditions due to character-sheet complexity issues. I doubt I am keeping many of the books. The game is too bloated and obese to survive.

And BX is now open-licensed and free of interference and threats. The future is bright for BX, and that is where my support is these days. BX will never need a live service model, nor will it ever disappoint me.

Still, I wish them well, and I hope they are listened to. They are not really a group I would pick for the job, but they are going to pick people they feel will help them with whatever direction they go in. Based on the group, it is not really a direction I am interested in. I am more neutral toward them than negative, but I am not seeing too many in that group that I follow regularly. Of the few YouTubers they have on there, I never watch more than the first few minutes of any, and I avoid a few.

I am over D&D YouTube, mainly because of the constant negativity there, and it no longer gets suggested to me. The algorithm has seen my choices, and it no longer delivers D&D to me much, and I do not mind. Also, bringing in a constant source of terrible D&D advice from the YouTube crowd seems like a huge mistake of committee-based design, and many terrible ideas will be added to the game.

There is a difference between a masterful, crafted, unified, and elegant design and a game-by-committee.

Still, the 5.5E playtest packets were more hype than they were for gathering feedback, so the track record of D&D and community feedback is pretty sad. 5.5E was an in-house game, and the playtest packets (I felt) were just used to bait-and-switch D&D YouTubers into giving it coverage. I do not have too much faith in the community feedback process.

In a way, D&D is too big to be cool, too big to survive, and too big to ever be compelling and a must-play game ever again. We are in the maintenance phase of D&D, where the MMO still has a huge player base to milk, but it will never be as big as it once was. Like World of Warcraft, we are post-prime and looking for new ways to monetize a shrinking crowd.

The committee will generate YouTube buzz, but YMMV, especially with YouTube being uninterested in the game. They have an uphill battle just to sustain interest in D&D Beyond, to keep the player base from slipping away further as people move on to games like BX, Daggerheart, Nimble, Pathfinder, Dragonbane, Shadowdark, Draw Steel, DC 20, and others.

While it is tough to be positive, I will give them the benefit of the doubt.

I hope they do a good job there.

But I don't have much hope.

BX Makes You Immune to Bad 5E Advice

If you follow the dungeon turn, everything will work, the universe shall keep its logical order, resources will tick down naturally, wandering monster rolls shall be made, and you will not need to endlessly listen to bad YouTube advice for 5E. The more of these 5E "advice" videos from YouTube creators that I watch, the less I want to play:

• How to Roleplay
• How to Write a Backstory
• Speeding Up Combat
• Don't Use Alignment to Roleplay
• Quick Dungeon Prep in Under 4 Hours

Just looking at the titles makes me want to poke D&D with a 10-foot pole and set the trap off from a distance. Some of them mention mechanics removed from 5.5E and present themselves as current topics. All of them are a terrible waste of time that makes me dislike 5E more than I should. They make 5E sound like the worst game ever written, since it seems like so much help is needed to play it correctly.

Terrible advice videos spread negativity and confusion for the game.

I now block, unsub, or steer far away from these videos in my suggestions.

D&D YouTube is infamous for spreading negativity and confusion for views. The vast majority of people hate-watch the negative coverage of the Wizards, just like the majority of Star Wars viewers hate-watch to see the franchise crash and burn. I stay away from most of the negativity since it is addictive like booze; you can get drunk on hate, and you need to abstain from it just to have a clear head and enjoy life again.

All of it hurts D&D, even the older editions. And the confusion and horrible advice drive people from the hobby.

How do you play the game?

By playing the game.

Back in the day, roleplaying was optional! You were not forced to, nor did you have to, come up with a backstory, declare a character goal and motivation, or layer a weak narrative inspiration-dicing system on top of the game. Due to the inspiration system, you are now forced to roleplay to gain a mechanical advantage in combat.

In BX, you do not need to engage with roleplaying to play the game, and many did not even start gaming with backstories or psychological profiles. The game gives you no benefit from roleplaying.

If you just wanted to play "dwarf," you picked "dwarf" and played "dwarf."

That was your "playing piece," like the shoe or dog in Monopoly.

If "dwarf" survived, maybe you gave him a name. Maybe you gave him some background. It was not required, nor did it give you a mechanical benefit. We usually figured it out by level 3, sometimes 5. Until then, it was just "dwarf."

In fact, that "feature" let us get new people into the game more easily, since it reduced the pain of losing a character and the number of decisions needed before play began.

Want to play with us? Want to play an "elf"? Sure!

You did not need to think about roleplay to play BX D&D.

You just "played."

And prep? The modules were typically 16 pages long, shorter than a single high-level character sheet, and you could read them during lunch break. This 6-hour fallacy for session prep is alien and not D&D. Most games needed no prep. Flub a room description or miss something? Most of the time, it didn't matter, and we put whatever was missed in the next room. The dungeons were meant to be expanded, so you could always make a new room and put it in there.

I get the feeling mixing D&D with a narrative game was a mistake. Writing "roleplay rules" into the game complicates play, creates a barrier for new players, and makes the game less accessible. Giving mechanical advantage to an out-of-game roleplaying reward cheapens storytelling and investment. Are you really playing your paladin as chivalrous, or are you just trying to gain inspiration for a combat benefit?

BX was a clean, simple, and straightforward game.

Let the narrative games be narrative games.

Mixing the game with a storytelling system was a misstep, and it ended up hurting our ability to tell stories with the game, since it linked mechanical benefits to something done naturally and for no benefit.

OSR Buyer's Guide Page Updated

https://sbrpg20.blogspot.com/p/osr-buyers-guide.html

I updated the OSR Buyers Guide page to cover BX, and here are my best suggestions for getting started with various editions in the hobby. Today, information, links, and discussions of BX are laid out, with my picks for the best in the genre, both in inspirational material and rock-solid books for play.

Gone are the discussions of alternate editions and versions (Labyrinth Lord, Dragonslayer, etc.), and a page will likely be added later to discuss them. Times change, and those need to be updated.

Can White Star do ...Star Wars?

White Star feels like a White Box Star Wars game, but it pulls in so many other inspirations that it feels like an "anything" White Box game. That unfocused feeling, where star squirrels are running around with space-pirate halflings, makes the game capable of handling Star Wars, since it has many of the iconic elements, but is very all over the place in terms of genre support.

There is Star Trek, Guardians of the Galaxy, and a bunch of other stuff going on here.

I wish the game were less random and more focused, with the special genre support in expansion modules. The base game should be as generic as possible, and things like Star Knights and other "war-of-the-stars-like" elements should be added in the "science fantasy" module.

The Trek-like elements could be added to a space federation module, with xenomorph-style content in that module, and so on. There is room in BX for a "star opera"- style game, and White Star tries to be an everything game, but it feels like it is trying to do too much.

I love the idea of BX sci-fi, and I miss the old Space Opera game, which did generic science fiction that could be Wars, Trek, Alien, Galactica, Rogers, Apes, or anything else. A BX version of that would be a dream game.

White Star sort of floats in generic sci-fi, not really Star Wars-inspired, and just generic, yet with oddly specific classes and race choices. With a lot of work, it could do Star Wars, but it would need a lot of houseruling, custom classes, gear, vehicles, and starships. A lot would need to be cut out, but it is possible.

For others to play with me? Easier to play the official game and let them experience that. I have had "let's play X with Y" games fall apart on me before, as it is too hard a sell for people to buy into, and even more so if "X" is available as its own game. There are times when it is easier to buy something they can buy and agree to play that together.

If we are playing Star Wars, and the game is available and in print, we will play that. It is far easier to sell and get people interested in the official game than in a homebrew or a modded system.

But, White Star does an okay Star Wars with some modding and tweaking. It needs the iconic aliens, or facsimiles, as classes. Some of the goofy classes should be pared back. We need more gear and a bunch of starships to replace the official ones (most work fine, but I want to see more). It works; it could be better if it were more focused, and some assembly is required.

If you are looking for a game that is in the OSR that could serve as a Star Wars game, White Star is as close as you can get at the moment.

Community: What We Lost Along the Way

I went to a Society for Creative Anachronism event the other day, and it hit me.

This is what we had in role-playing games, online games, MMOs, and other social spaces where we come together as a community and share that sense of community and companionship. Us as many, we as one.

These days, any online space I go to feels like something meant to hustle people through an 'experience' as fast as possible, queue people up for a bunch of story events, and get as much money from you while keeping the line moving.

Even D&D adventures feel like "tourist experiences" that simulate the actual thing, a best-of experience, meant to let you say "I played Tomb of Horrors" without actually playing Tomb of Horrors. Not like it was intended. This is the "you can't die" version, without 14 levels of campaign build-up and having months of play on the line if your character does not make it out. Every one of these classic dungeons is presented on some "infinite staircase," which is just a level-select tool for playing something, saying you experienced it, and ultimately meaning nothing to you or your character.

None of those level-select dungeons mean anything.

No community in most online games that I log into means anything.

In the SCA, you are at the event, you talk with people, you contribute, and what you put in is what you get out - even if it is just to dress up and enjoy the day, it is a real experience with real people. It isn't D&D or even a place to play D&D; you are actually "doing the thing" as close as you can to back then, and trying to understand and live the life of someone from that time.

The crafts, music, simulated combat, archery, fencing, foods, and ambiance of the era bring back that camaraderie and community that I sorely missed in today's online games.

And there is no "group finder" or "paid progression" in real life. Cosmetics? Find them yourself, or learn how to make period-appropriate garb. Learn a craft. Learn music, for real, not a "skill" that D&D says you have. Learn how to fight or fire a bow. Learn calligraphy or period art.

Meet actual people.

Become a part of a group.

Get an actual skill instead of a game telling you that you have one.

Do something real.