Referee's Screen: Star Wars Edge of the Empire II, part 4

Part IV: A New Hope

Let's continue our unboxing coverage of Star Wars: Edge of the Empire with some thoughts on campaign creation for the new game. There is a significant amount of game design in campaign creation, and the process can make of break the game. Let's look at some traditional pitfalls of Star Wars campaigns first, continue on to theming, and then layout a framework for building a new campaign.

Where Star Wars Games Go Wrong

I have played in a number of Star Wars games, and I have seen a number of areas where Star Wars as a game can fall apart. Usually these are story and campaign reasons, and a lot of them are common to sci-fi games in general. Let's look at the top three that I have seen and discuss them:

Theme Creep: Readers of SBRPG may recognize this one. A game centered around criminals on the edge of space shifts into a Sith versus Jedi war, alien invasion, son of Darth Vader plot, or some other 'do not want' nonsense. The reason that attracted the players to the game in the first place has been sidelined for the new 'big bad plot' and the players are showing up to just see what happens next to their characters. When the players are not driving the story and the GM is, expect things to break apart in a couple games.

The Great War: I have been in a couple Star Wars games that lost focus, and just turned into a big wargame. The Empire versus Rebellion fight gradually escalated, and the next mission had to become bigger and better than the last - with the stakes even higher. It's only a matter of time before super star destroyers and the latest and greatest superweapon (Sun Crusher, Death Star III.V, Plot Smasher, etc) shows up at this point. Players start racking up TIE fighter kills in the hundreds, the players form STAR Team 6, and the intimate feel of the game is lost.

Supervillain Escalation: This is a common one in Jedi and Sith games, and it happens all the time in superhero RPGs. The big bad is defeated, and the power level goes up for the next battle. Pretty soon, both sides raise their power levels, and the game then becomes about who can throw the biggest attack and most dice around. We saw this in our d6 System superhero game, "Well no, I got 18 dice of attack! The big-bad has 24 dice of defense! Pah-shissshhhh, let the dice tsunami roll!" The game degenerates into a power-versus-power battle, and pretty soon, the big-bad is threatening other planes of existence.

What to Do Padawan?

A good bit of general advice to avoid the above is to keep the game focused on characters, not conflicts. Nobody cares about "The Empire hates the Rebels" in an adventure where the PCs are supposed to be interacting with NPCs face-to-face. The galactic conflict should be in the background, with personal conflicts between characters taking center stage.

Let's look at this closer. If a colony manager is short of water because a local trading cartel is jacking up the price with the help of a local Imperial governor, then things start to become interesting. The 'Rebel vs. Imperial' conflict is still in there, but it is a subtext, and the smaller more personal conflict between characters is driving the plot. It is up to the PCs to interact with those characters, and resolve the situation however they want to.

Never let an ideology be the reason for the adventure! It makes as much sense as M calling James Bond into her office and this exchange taking place:

M: "James, your mission this time is the Cold War. Good luck 007."

James Bond: "WTF? omg lol"

Peeling Back the Onion

Ideologies, conflicts, wars, cartels, trade embargoes, and other large ideas should be backdrops and affect characters in the world - giving them motivation to do specific acts. It is better even yet to have these large ideas being the reason 'something else happened' and a character is involved. The more layers you can write into your adventures the better. Let's layer one out and see if we can craft a beautiful situation:

1. The Empire hates the Rebels, so...
2. The Empire supports a local Hutt boss, who...
3. Runs the local Water Cartel, that is...
4. Run by an Imperial Governor, who is...
5. Raising prices on a colony world, that is...
1. Bonus points for going deeper than this!
6. Causing a shortage of minerals from the asteroid mines, which is...
7. Causing pirates to raid ore ships, which...
8. Caused one ship to disappear, that is...
9. The reason the daughter of the captain contacted the PCs, who wants them to...
10. Find her father.

Wow. The more layers you add, the more fun you can have. Now that we have this, we can fill out each layer with NPCs the players can interact with, factions who have interests going one way or the other, and locations for all of this fun stuff. You should also keep most of the middle layers secret, and let the PCs discover them for themselves! This gives them the satisfaction of unraveling the mystery themselves, and this 'peeling back the onion' is an important part of letting the players have the satisfaction of solving a problem.

Most of the problem will be finding out the who and what, and shadowy forces will be hunting them and trying to stop them at every turn. You typically start out with generic baddies, like Imperials and monsters; and then as the bad guys figure out someone is on to them, the cartel thugs and adventure-specific bad guys start showing up. The opposition that appears is driven by the PCs actions, events in the galaxy, and what happens next.

Remember, the conflicts are driven by the NPCs, the Water Cartel should never order an attack 'because it is'; the NPC leader of the faction should order the attack in response to a specific incident by one of the groups (or PCs). If you played SBRPG and recognize Factions and Faction Reactions at work here, give yourself bonus points. It is the same system, and it works very well in Star Wars: Edge. You can incorporate "ripples" from the events that happen in the galaxy, and have the factions react to them as well, and all of a sudden you have a cool sandbox model for running your game.

In Closing

Keeping your games focused on situations and a layered adventure model keeps your game on track, and keeps you from having to make it up as you go along. You can't sustain winging adventures from week to week, and that typically causes one of the three failure conditions to happen for your campaign. Layer your situations, keep things secret, and have NPCs drive the conflicts between factions. Doing these three things will help you manage a successful game, and keep the players involved in your galaxy.

Referee's Screen: Star Wars Edge of the Empire II, part 3

Part III: Revenge of the d6

Understanding Star Wars: Edge

It is important to get the feel of play right for the game. Star Wars: Edge is different than other RPGs you may be used to, and it threw us when we began playing. In this Referee's Screen, I want to go over some of the issues we saw with macro versus micro play, and how to run Star Wars: Edge at its best given the dicing system and results. Let's dive today into micro versus macro play.

Micro Play

RPGs that play in the 'micro' are almost totally simulation games. Every blow is vectored out with a to-hit, every wound tracked, and every skill roll broken down into subtasks. Some games have marco elements (hit points, AC), but still play with a micro feel, such as D&D3.5. SBRPG had a very micro play style, with the spending of action points towards making attacks and parries, and a detailed blow-by-blow combat system. Car Wars, Aftermath, Champions, GURPS, and many other old-school games played in the micro style.

Macro Play

Remember the old D&D thru D&D2 combat explanation, which went something like this: "An attack roll covers more than just one blow, it is all the activity of the round, including defending, feints, dodging, attacks, and maneuver"? Macro play is like that, a series of actions or activities is aggregated into one roll, such as an attack roll in Arkham Horror. In these games, you are not rolling blow-by-blow to-hits, tracking bullets, and rolling to parry incoming attacks one at a time. You likely are making a 'combat roll' based on 'combat power' for your turn based on your weapons and abilities. The original D&D and its OSR clones are great examples of macro play, along with Star Wars (d6 System).

Star Wars: Macro Dipping Into Micro

Star Wars: Edge is a macro style game that dips into the micro style of play when needed. Combat is a perfect example, especially with minions. When you make an attack roll against a group of minions, you make one attack roll, and you can eliminate multiple minions with that roll. You assume the attack roll is a series of shots, and you are figuring out the result of that sequence of attacks with one roll. This is a great example of macro-style play, and the game encourages skill checks be made in a similar manner.

For example, Chewie would probably make one skill roll to repair the Falcon's broken comm dish. Busting the repair out into a sequence of events into a series of skill checks is discouraged, such as: weld the O-ring, replace the fuses, rewire the main comm line, install the dish, and test the installation. That 5-skill roll repair process would probably make sense in a game such as Space Opera or Traveller, but not here. In Star Wars: Edge, this is one skill roll with a degree of success and failure, along with the positive or negative consequences.

This is not to say Star Wars: Edge is all macro. The game can dip down into the micro when needed, and the dice can simulate what happens when that one photon torpedo shot into the ventilation shaft is needed. The game should play in the macro for the most part, and even things like star travel should utilize the dicing system to determine what happens when you jump into a star system. Life in Star Wars: Edge is controlled by those dice, and the rolls should cover a good amount of action, with those occasional 'one shot' micro rolls.

How This Plays

Now that we understand the macro vs. micro play styles, how does Star Wars play for us? Coming off Arkham Horror with its extremely macro system of task and combat resolution, we get it. The game should play more like a European-style boardgame, with the referee proposing problems to the group of players, and the players working as a team to solve them with their skills and abilities.

The micro-style play that feels like an episode of '24' doesn't really fit here, something that is typical of games like Pathfinder or GURPS, or games where you worry about penalties for switching targets, attacks of opportunity, or other micro-tropes. The game is not a sim, it is more an adventure game where you are solving a series of larger problems. Do not worry about haggling with a shopkeeper over every stim pack (in an hour long RP session); you are solving big problems with a single roll, moving to the next location, and taking on the next challenge.

Here's a good example of how this plays the best, at least in our experience:

GM: You land at the star port of the ice world, ship heavily damaged by that fight with the pirates. You will need a new reactor core, and you also have that encrypted holo-message to deliver to the contact named Jerak, who is supposed to be here, but you don't know how to contact him. All you know is that he is an alien, an asteroid miner, and is wanted by Imperial Intelligence.

Bob: Okay, Sam, you fix the ship, I'll put your pog here on the starport where our ship is. I will take Jane out to the local watering hole and start asking around for asteroid miners, where are the starport bars?

GM: Here, and a really dangerous looking one over here near the salvage yard.

Bob: Okay, let me put our pogs on the dangerous bar at the salvage yard, and we will take Vex-4 along so he can drop by the yard to shop for a new reactor. Does anything happen on the way?

GM: Make a streetwise roll, are you avoiding trouble, or doing something else along the way?

Bob: Avoiding trouble. [makes roll] 2 successes and 1 threat, what happens?

GM: No one beats you up, but it does look like a rough neighborhood. You bump into an Imperial patrol looking for troublemakers, and they take note of you and move on. You arrive at the bar, which looks like a total hole-in-the-starport-wall. Sam, make a roll for your first repairs on the ship....

The game works best with that conversational style, with a higher-level play using a large map. When something happens, either handle it with RP and skill checks, or bust out a quick tactical map for combat. Most checks should be macro, with the advantages or threats from these macro rolls guiding the action.

Use micro play on the zoomed-in combat and tactical maps, such as a roll to pick a lock, repair a distress beacon, or for one-on-one combats. Zoom back out to the macro play style as soon as possible, and don't get bogged down in the details.

Understanding how to zoom in and out like this, and keeping your game focused on macro play will give you greater enjoyment, and also keep that Star Wars feel in your game sessions. Star Wars is about the big picture, and you need to be able to aggregate action into dice rolls, keep players moving, and avoid everyone being bogged down in a dungeon hall.

Games that focus on dungeon halls are rightfully more micro and work better that way, but for dramatic sweeping sci-fi action, you need to play with a larger focus and picture. The Star Wars: Edge dice are designed to help you do this, and you need to understand how they will work for you to get the most out of the game.

-Hak

Referee's Screen: Star Wars Edge of the Empire II, part 2

Part II: The Polyhedral Menace

Meet the Dice

Today, let us meet the symbols on the Star Wars: Edge of the Empire game. They are an interesting collection of mahjong-like symbols used in every roll to determine a four-axis result: success vs.failure, good outcome vs. bad outcome. I say mahjong-like and I mean it, the symbols on the dice cancel each other out like in mahjong. It is an interesting Eastern influence on the game, and one that harkens back to Star Wars' "Seven Samurai" inspiration.

We came up with our own fun names for the dice, to help us remember what they are for and what they do, and I will share those below. They are intended to be a fun way to understand how the dice work, and how we use them in the game.

Bang: This symbol is the success symbol, which we call a bang. Bang means explosion, and in Star Wars, the side causing the most explosions is usually the more successful one. Bangs are probably the most important result in the game. Bang is also one syllable, so George will announce, "4 bangs on this roll!"

If you roll positive bangs, the roll is a success. Many bangs indicate greater success, and if you get over four, we houserule you can say something crazy and stupid at the table to celebrate, "Don't get cocky kid!"


Sith: Countering the bang is the Sith, which the game calls a failure result. Siths oppose bangs, and remove them from the roll, one to one. We liken this to Siths being emo, negative, and generally opposed to the action movie trope of 'explosions are good.' Sith usually live on the darker dice, which is typical, and they are a bad result.

If you roll more Siths than bangs, the roll is a failure. Roll enough, and you have really failed big time. It's time to start thinking about career choices when you roll four or more, Leia is wounded, and you have a whole battalion of stormtroopers asking what you are trying to do by getting through that blast door.

Fuzzballs: Before you say this picture is upside down, I will tell you that this looks exactly like Luke's haircut in Star Wars. In fact, it looks like any good hairstyle in the 1970's, and it brings it's good-looking karma with it, what we affectionately call the fuzzball. In the game, this is called an advantage, but we liken fuzzball to that 70's magic of Farah Fawcett, blow dryers, and hairspray. Roll a lot of them, and you can laugh it up, fuzzball.

Each fuzzball increases the magnitude of something good happening because of the roll, independent of the success or failure of the roll. Roll a lot of them, and you are guaranteed something good happening; because in Star Wars, if your hair looks good while doing it, it doesn't matter if you are winning or losing. Just ask Billy Dee Williams or Chewie about Hair Club for Men.

Death Stars: The only thing awesome enough to counter Luke's hair is the Death Star. The game calls these threat, and each one cancels a fuzzball. Advantage and threat work exactly like success and failure, one cancels another on a one-to-one ratio. Rolling lots of them puts you in the cross hairs of fate, or the Death Star, your choice.

If you roll more Death Stars than fuzzballs, you have a roll that produces a negative consequence. If you managed to disarm the starship's engines but accidentally set the self-destruct sequence, you've probably rolled a ton of these small moons, and you are about to have a very bad day. Sometimes, you don't even know how bad it is until later. If you are rolling to find a safe landing spot in an asteroid, and the landing spot that has teeth, you've rolled a bunch of these suckers.

Palm Trees: Play the Star Wars music now, you've just rolled a palm tree. Oh yeah, we are looking at another upside down die, this time, the game's triumph symbol. This is technically treated as a success, but is a very good roll to make. They look like palm trees in Hollywood, complete with a little sun behind them. Getting one of these on the roll guarantees your adventure blockbuster status. This is Hollywood, after all.

One of these could send that photon torpedo down the air shaft. They act like successes, but they are that extra special "play the music and swing across the chasm with the princess" results that make your character oh so cool. Roll two of these, and you are probably eligible for bullet-time and a cool soundtrack to back you up. I hear Mace Windu has gold plated dice that are covered with these symbols, for when he needs to bust out his 'd12 ass kickers.'

Bikini Bottoms: The only symbol fierce enough to counter a palm tree is the dreaded bikini bottom. Ask Leia, if you end up in one of these, you have hit absolute rock bottom. Yes, it's upside down. Yes, it's a silly name, but it has a Star Wars pedigree in the inspiration, and bikini bottoms and palm trees go together like nothing else we know. And yes, we know it's a Sith symbol.

The game calls this the despair symbol, and they cancel triumphs. When you roll one of these, the 'Star Wars despair' music comes on, someone dies, something terrible happens, and the 'bad feeling about this' happens at the worst time. You know you've rolled a bikini bottom when you blow your charm roll at a party, and walk into the next room, where Vader and Boba Fett are just finishing up their appetizers.

May the Dice Roll with You

Well, that does it for our twisted little view on the dice, and hopefully this helps you remember what symbol cancels what, and how they are used in the game. Yes, we do use our crazy names for them around the table, and we have fun with the results. That's what the game is about, fun, and coming up with silly names for the rolls and their results adds to the party atmosphere around the table. They days of laughing at a RPG, quoting your favorite Star Wars character, and having fun are back.

Referee's Screen: Star Wars Edge of the Empire

Part I, Attack of the Clone

As a companion to George's "Players" section, I will write my impressions of Star Wars: Edge of the Empire Beginner Game (SWEoE:BG) from a referee's perspective. I will call this series "Referee's Screen" since this is mainly my feelings and impressions as a referee for this game. I will limit my thoughts to pre-play observations, as we will get into playtest reports later.

Unboxing
The box is filled with all sorts of goodies, and is really a complete mini-game covering the basics, including combat, starships, skills, advancement, and even a collection of creatures. Character creation does not seem to be included, so you are stuck with the 4 basic characters. Kudos to Fantasy Flight for getting this much of a game done in just 48 pages (!), and their skill at keeping the system to-the-point in this age of 300+ page rulebooks is astounding.

A self-contained 32-page adventure is included, which teaches you the system as you play through it. This works in tandem with the character folios, which give you four pre-gen characters, and everything you need to play them with. This is a key selling point, and mirrors what Paizo did with their Beginner Box. The beginning adventure here is in my opinion better than the one in the Beginner Box, and gives you a structured part to play in, and then an open world mini-sandbox in the city.

You also get a map covering the first adventure, and also a sheet of tokens. Pretty cool stuff, and appreciated. They had better sell add-on tokens in future products, or something like Paizo's cardboard pawns. These are useful things to have, and I hope they keep this up in the future.

I will ding Fantasy Flight on the dice! You get a good selection of these funny dice to start, but some skill checks in the game require more dice than what they give you (ex. 4 green dice and 1 purple). Of course, this is a minor point, but one worth mentioning. I will probably be picking up a couple sets to make a pool for play, so in the long run, the dice won't be an issue.

I like the dice, they are cool and from what I saw work very well. They provide a large variety or results, along with roleplaying situations built into the rolls as results. They are very clever, and worth looking at purely from a game-design perspective. They remind me a little of Fantasy Flight's Warhammer FRP dice, and they are different and cool. +1 to FF for making use of these, and making them work. They are a cool, Star-Warsy addition to the experience, and shape the action in the game.

Full Game Coming Soon
Remember, this is just an intro game, and the full 400+ page behemoth main game rules is scheduled for release early next year. Something will always keep me coming back to this set, since the beauty here is keeping the game focused and simple. It is fully playable, and will keep a group of players busy for a while. All in all, I get a good feeling after unboxing this, and it doesn't feel short or missing anything terribly significant.

I didn't expect rules for star destroyers to be in here or a lot of equipment, but what they do give you covers enough of what you'd want to play with when you are starting out. You get an ad for the full book in the box, and it looks like a fun game. Bonus XP to FF for putting Han and Chewie on the cover, two guys who typically get limited cover space on Star Wars RPGs. Han has this cool WTF look on his face, which rocks. Party on Han & Chewie, you guys are the original gangsters of Star Wars.

Also of note is the X-Wing minis game (see the catalog in the picture), which is a totally different game from this one, but still cool. More on this in a later post.

Part of me wonders if they are going to do an all-in-one book focusing on the criminal element first, and then dedicated sourcebooks for Jedi's, KoTOR, etc. We shall see how this happens, or if the game focuses on 'Edge of the Empire' stuff primarily, and includes those subjects as also-thoughts. The focus of the game is important. The d6 system game was focused on the shooty-movie action, the d20 version had an equal focus on everything (though Force powers tended to be dominant), and we shall see the 'take' of this game. There are a lot of fans to please in the Star Wars universe, and there is a risk pushing the smuggler angle over the Sith/Jedi angle, Imperial/Rebel, and so on. I hope they can achieve that balance, without making the game all about the Force, big battles, or any other area that can 'take over' the game.

"Chewie, WTF are we doing on the cover of a Star Wars RPG?"

Star Wars: Off the Rails
The game has a smuggler, criminal, and fringe system vibe to it - which is cool. You are not meant to be playing mainline rebels in giant CG battles, Sith, or Imperial agents in the center of the galaxy. You are assumed to be playing on the outer rim of the Empire, shortly after the destruction of the first Death Star.

This is a cool direction to take the game in, and makes it different than the d6 and d20 versions of Star Wars RPGs. You know, I am sure there will be support for all that stuff in the main rulebook, but keeping the game 'down to Earth' as a game of smugglers and criminals is kinda a cool direction to take, and reminds me of the Star Wars Scoundrels novel that's coming out (Star Wars meets Ocean's 11).

The Yoda Rule: "Impossible to see the future is."
If I started a new Star Wars campaign with this system, I would probably make a grand pronouncement to the players when we started:

"The Fate of the Universe is up to You"

In short, I would call this the "Yoda Rule" summarized by Master Yoda's own quotes, "Impossible to see the future is," and "Always in motion is the future." I would pull those two out whenever someone brought up cannon, and how the game is straying from it. When it comes to conventional wisdom, Yoda always wins, bitch.

This would mean there would be no script for anything past the first Death Star destruction, the events in Empire and Jedi will not happen, and the side the players are rooting for will probably lose the war. To make a change in the universe, it will be 100% up to the players. Of course, if they play both sides, all the better, and the war will probably never end. Everything will be paid for, and major characters will never have immunity to anything bad that happens.

Anything outside the main rulebook won't exist, just to keep spam from the Expanded Universe from a minimum. Events and books in the EU past the first Death Star will be similarly de-scripted, eliminated, or changed outright. As a thought, since they had the freedom to create all that stuff for the EU in the first place, so it gives me the license to go to town and create my own stuff. A race of giant green rabbit men? Sure! Jedi Don Quixote? Go to town! Anything can happen, and the universe is open and free again. This shall be known as the optional "I am Timothy Zhan" rule, which may come into play. To start, I will feel better keeping the game simple and to the stuff in the book at first, then we shall see if the IaTZ rule needs to be used.

The important point is to make the Star Wars universe the players' - they will own the outcome, if they want an outcome. Nobody can come along and say 'such and such happens at this time' or 'no, this person was a good guy' - everything is on the table. If my girlfriend's Sith assassin wants to seduce Han Solo into working for the Empire and she pulls it off - so be it. It won't be easy and will probably take a long time and lots of RP, but hey; this is not the approved script anymore, nor will it ever be. The players will write the script, as Yoda would have it.

Overall Like it. Will be buying the main game. A winner.