Playtest Report: Star Wars Force and Destiny

So we picked up Fantasy Flight's Star Wars Force and Destiny RPG Beginner Game the other day and sat down for a playtest. They have a boxed beginner's set for each of the main rulebooks, and it is a pretty good deal if you are picking up sets of dice. You can pick up one of these sets (with dice) for around $20 on Amazon, and a set of dice is about $15, so you get some maps, an adventure, some pogs, and a set of intro rule books for just a little more than a set of dice by itself, so these boxes are a good deal.

If I played this game with others on a regular basis? BYOD, because, really. And if you get into high level play you will need two sets ideally, so this game can get expensive. A couple thoughts on that:

• It is a licensed game, so it is expected.
• It is too bad, because sometimes we play with groups with limited financial ability to buy in.

To be fair, there are official Fantasy Flight supported dice rolling apps for smartphones off the Google Play and iTunes stores for only five bucks, and you can roll as many dice as you like with these programs. While I normally don't like smartphones and tablets at the tabletop, this is an answer for those players who can't spend $30 on a complete double set of dice.

The books are expensive as well, and there are no PDF versions of the game. This is another sticking point for us, since character creation and options are 'book heavy' activities, and this means lengthy pass around sessions at the table. With expensive books, this feels like a problem since I like having hardcopy print outs for character creation and leveling up ready and available for player use without passing a book around.

I am one of those 'character sheet only' referees, and I dislike distractions such as books or phones at the table. If someone is reading (even the rules) or playing on a phone, it is a distraction. We have limited time when we get together, and I like to keep things moving because it is fair to everyone spending free time to be at my table. If a game requires constant book reference by players (like 4th Edition D&D), it is a less optimal design for groups I run.

The Force and Destiny game itself is fun though, and we like the dice. They are a unique narrative control device that handle story elements and what happens next in one skill roll. If you haven't read our older article on the dice, please do so since it is a good primer and hilarious as well. Some groups have reported the dice got in the way of the fun of the game for them, as players had trouble deciphering the symbols, but we haven't had that experience. The dice work for us, and I think that is because we figured out the game's narrative control structure.

Read our previous article on macro-style play for Edge of the Empire. I went and re-read this before we played, and we had a great time since we understood not only how to roll the dice, but when. Fantasy Flight's Star Wars games are by default, macro style games more like Arkham Horror than they are micro-style games, such as D&D or Pathfinder. In a micro-style game, you are rolling dice for every single blow in combat and splitting tasks into sub-tasks so you can roll for those individually. You do not aggregate tasks into larger sweeps of the brush as you do in this game, and understanding that will keep you from endlessly having to throw the dice and interpret results.

Do more with less rolls.

These Star Wars games can do micro-style play for critical rolls, but that is the exception, not the rule. If you are trying to do micro-style play and roll for every shot or subtask, you will tire quickly and the narrative control of the dice will be lessened since so much crazy stuff will happen. The sheer number of results and consequences will overwhelm you, so it is best to treat the dice as a larger tool that determines the results of a task with one roll for the entire "scene" of the movie instead of splitting the scene into smaller parts and rolling for those.

For example, we had a situation come up last night during our play session on the first encounter of theStar Wars Force and Destiny game. Some players wanted to not cross over into the hidden valley, and build a shelter to recover from the trip. Yes, players are how players are, and if they wanted to stop and hang out for a couple days in the first "make a skill roll and just get moving" encounter, I say let them play. This brought up two questions that made us stumble a bit with this adventure:

• We needed survival rules for food and water.
• How did this group of players find each other?

The second question we hand-waved away, but it would have been nice to know how this group of people met each other and decided to trudge up a mountain together in the middle of nowhere. This brought up the second question of survival on the face of a snow-covered mountain. I let them build a shelter with a mechanical roll, and the other half of the party went out looking for food and water.

The game doesn't have food and water type survival rules, although we worked out a system using the game's resilience skill after an Internet search and some forum post reading that seemed like it would work well. The game does have survival rations as an equipment item, but none of the starting characters came with rations or survival gear, so everybody was kind of stuck on the face of K2 without preparation.

Since it is entirely unfair to do this to players in an in media res start, I let them roll back time for a moment and buy any gear they thought they would need for the trip (up to 5 ration packs). We then picked up where we left off, and the group at least had some food and water to chow down on while they sat around in their improvised shelter.

But back to the macro-style play example. The players, even though they had rations, still wanted to scrounge around for supplies. They had a survival expert along, so it seemed like a good exercise to get used to handling a survival-style situation. So as a referee, I could have split this up into several rolls:

• Roll to find a good place to scavenge in nearby
• Roll to scavenge food
• Roll to scavenge water
• Roll to find animals to hunt
• Roll to find out anything else about the terrain and paths forward

In a micro-style game, this feels like a good way to break up rolls for the survival task. It may feel a bit excessive, but in games where the narrative control of 'what happens next' depends on die rolls, you need this level of granularity to determine the results of differing actions and if something is discovered or happens as a result of the dice. You have no other way of determining sub-task or related results, so you end up rolling the dice more, often for every little thing or question you need an answer on. How I decided to do this in Force and Destiny is this:

• Roll once to determine the scavenging result

Why only roll for all that? Successes will determine the success of the result, and if the primary thing sought after will be found (food and water). Advantages will determine the extra benefits of the roll, things not sought after but would be nice to know (paths forward). I wanted to do all of the above in one roll, with a primary focus on scrounging supplies, but a secondary focus on information helpful to their current situation. Plus, I didn't want too many rolls since this would generate so many good and bad story results the task would blow up and create a mess of consequences to resolve.

The roll came out that the group failed to find supplies, but they generated enough advantages on the roll for me to rule the group found a great place to cross the icy ridge, and using that path would give each party member a boost die on the skill roll they used to traverse the ridge the next day. This was one roll, it provided the task result and extra information or result we wanted, and we rolled the dice less for more actions covered. Handle more with less rolls? Exactly.

The next day, everyone got moving and made their individual skill rolls, covering each person's actions in the micro sense as required by the module. Knowing when to aggregate and play in a macro style will be the key to your success in enjoying this game. Knowing when to switch to micro will also keep that feeling of individual achievement and contribution going with each player, and this will also contribute to your success when running the game.

Is this an enjoyable game? Yes, and it is competing for time at our table with the other big games. It pulls in a lot of the Star Wars myths and lore, and it is a fun and enjoyable experience. Is this a game that could hold a group's attention? I feel so, yes, because it fills that Star Wars fantasy experience quite nicely, and the character level-up options are deep and allow a high-level of customization.

Does this compete with D&D 5 and Pathfinder? For attention yes, most certainly. I could play this instead of those games, and being a referee of a Star Wars style game would give my game a drawing power that would definitely attract attention, especially if I setup a weekly game at a hobby store. People like to play Star Wars, there is no doubt, and even when we played the d20 version this had a great wow-factor as well.

There is a side-effect of Disney's de-canonizing of the old Expanded Universe that is drawing in players as well, since the barrier to entry to the universe is basically knowing what happened in the six main movies (plus Clone Wars if you are a purist, but you could get away with just Star Wars thru Jedi and be just fine as a player or referee).

So, licensed games? When I bring in Dragon Age, I begin to see a new pattern emerging with tabletop roleplaying, where licensed games feel like they have a larger pull than the more generic offerings. Admittedly, D&D is more popular than Dragon Age in general, but I am sure if I ran it the Dragon Age game would attract attention from those not only into D&D, but also people who have played the videogame as well.

For Star Wars, the dice could be an issue for some (especially those used to micro style games), but we have mastered them quite quickly using our techniques and theories on how the game should be played. They aren't difficult to use, and they do add a lot to the game. We are huge fans of macro-style games such as Arkham Horror, so having a Star Wars version of that experience is a huge plus for us.

Will we be buying in further? Most likely. For a game that is pricey and lacks PDF options, that is quite a huge feat, and it says a lot for the design and production quality of this game. It is one of the great games of tabletop roleplaying at the moment, and one we are getting a lot of enjoyment out of. More playtest reports soon.