Playtest Report: Star Wars Age of Rebellion

Let's play Star Wars RPG: Age of Rebellion Beginner Game!

So we sat down to play this, put on the Star Wars music, and started to fulfill our fantasies about Rebels and Imperials blasting each other in the far reaches of space. Yes, this is the last of the intro sets we are playing for the Star Wars RPG from Fantasy Flight, and we had a great experience with the smuggler one, so we wanted to check this one out.

It also came with an extra set of dice, so we needed those too.

These are tutorial adventures meant to teach you the game and get you started, so you have to take that into consideration. The second beginner's set we tried had some major issues with the story line, but it ended better than it started, so we had our doubts about the rebel-themed boxed set.

Right off the transport shuttle we hit several major issues. Nobody plans an attack like that. The players just walked in! The first scenario assumed a plan for the characters and didn't let them really have a say in how things worked out. We felt railroaded, and the players wanted a little more freedom in how they attacked the problem of capturing the base.

Okay, referee intervention time.

I took the adventure off the rails at that point, ditched the rest of the encounters, and let the players run with the rest of the module. We lost the cool AT-ST and speeder bike fight at the end, and DarkgarX expressed some remorse at losing that fight, but overall things went well. Our diplomat did a fun disguise thing and talked with the base commander, posing as an Imperial spy. Our technicians wrecked havoc with the computer and security systems while sneaking around the base. Our soldier and pilot worked on capturing that shuttle. It was a cool Mission Impossible style take down and switcheroo, and the group had fun playing through the mission.

Did it come out better than the module? I feel it did, though we lament missing the vehicle battle. I don't think in any of these starter sets we ever got to a real vehicle or starship battle, so our knowledge of that system is probably lacking. Still, we had more fun than I feel the module would have let us have, and I don't regret calling for an intervention and taking the beginner's set off the rails and running it as a sandbox.

It struck us as an odd ending to put players in a lousy situation such as this, and force them to hold a base that is known to the Empire. The entire epilogue felt really weak for us, and given a choice, my players felt abandoning the base was the best bet. Even if the Empire itself can't acknowledge the base, someone in the Empire knows about it, and we expected retribution and the hammer of the Empire to be rapidly dropped on this place with just a handful of rebels to protect it.

It didn't feel like a great start to a long running game, so our group abandoned the base, silly rebel orders be damned. Once the main rulebook gets here we want to restart our game with a fresh situation and planet, and run these groups through a classic set of situations that we are cooking up.

Some of the characters also had little to do, most notably the pilot, and other characters felt like they didn't have a great role or clear skills to contribute (the commander web supplement character, and the tech and spy also being medics). The soldier also felt one-dimensional with the kill choices, and of all the beginner sets, this one felt like it had the most issues with the character designs not living up to the things our group wanted to try.

A high point in the game came when one of the players infiltrated the comm room, slayed one of the techs, and the base's robot walked in. The player tried to reason with the robot, and rolled a despair die on the social interaction. I sat there and had the robot give the player a speech about how humans are always like this, how they love war, and how they think violence solves every problem. The damn robot went on and on moralizing like a ham-filled actor in a Shakespeare play, and the players laughed and groaned with delight as the robot went on and on moralizing and giving a speech about how droids are so reasoned and superior.

"You. You. Humans. How typical. You think violence solves anything? You think these the actions of a civilized member of the galactic community? I think not." 

See that dwarf meeple in the picture above? That is the robot, and the group adopted the droid as a reluctant but hilarious mascot after that masterpiece performance dramatae. Yeah, expect more of his moralizing guys, you bought him.

Sometimes the dice just take you places in this game, and you have to go along for the ride. That is what I enjoy about the dice, sometimes they make something so cool or hilarious happen that the game takes a life of its own.

Overall, we enjoyed this one more than the Jedi boxed set, and till the smuggler set holds the top spot on all three of these for us. The decision to go off-rails helped a great deal, but still the setup for this campaign felt wrong, and the character designs lacked polish and utility.

We like the characters in these sets, but we wanted more. We will probably be redesigning them when the full books come, and making them our own. I also want to come up with my own 'tutorial' adventures based on our new campaign, and restart these heroes in an entirely new situation. I also would love to see some cross over between the groups, have them meet each other, and thrust them into the grand campaign of a classic game.

More on this soon. It is kinda fun to be excited about a game and planning adventures in one again. Also, this RPG has lived up to the hype, and we great about getting excited for the game and playing it. This is a rare treat for us, and one we want to savor and enjoy for quite a while.