Hey all!
I am back and mostly intact from a hellish
semester and personal life insanity. I still have three deadlines to meet till
November, so don’t expect regular posting just yet. That said, I needs to
write, so I will try to trickle out a few interesting things.
Anyway, during my absence from blogging it
seems D&D 5e dropped like a bomb on the scene and still continues to burn
up the blogosphere. Like most people I cut my teeth on Ye Olde Game and have
probably played more D&D than any other system. That said, I am far too
busy and disconnected to enter the fray about 5e, and so for the foreseeable
future I will be offering an alternative to D&D and fantasy gaming in
general. I plan to write mainly about science fiction gaming, so if that sounds
good to you, watch this spot and enjoy!
REVIEW – Star Wars Edge of Empire + Age of
Rebellion
After the semester a friend kindly invited
my family to his cabin on Mount Rokko, the verdant mountain that overlooks the city
of Kobe. It was
a great chance to unwind, let my little son interact with their baby daughter
as well as different adults, and generally rehumanize myself and my partner.
While this main objective was met in
spades, the host also got me into a game of the latest Star Wars RPG with a few
of his friends. I haven’t gamed in over a year, and the last Star Wars I played
was in the 90s, so of course I was overjoyed.
Overall, I had a blast. Although a marathon
6 hour session in an unfamiliar system is admittedly tiring, I was entertained
and impressed and so I offer a review.
THE BOOKS
The two rulebooks are GORGEOUS, there is no
other way of saying it. Remember the wonky art of the old comic book
adaptations of Star Wars, how Yoda looked like Grover, Leia like a generic
supermodel, and Luke her sister? The art in these rulebooks are the total
antitheses of those old comics. The cover picture of Luke IS a portrait of Mark
Hamill circa 1979, while the aliens and tech inside are reverse-engineered from
the movies back to the palette of Ralph McQuarrie’s original concept art. Even
if you unfortunately never play the game, it makes your gaming shelf shine with
its beauty.
CHARGEN
The character sheet is sufficiently old
school, with boxes for attributes, skills, special abilities, and equipment. Chargen
itself is new school, with point-buy all the way. Although it wasn’t anywhere
near as execrable as 4e’s point buy, I kind of miss random chargen and having
to roll with the punches. If that doesn’t bother you, chargen is fast and
relatively painless. I made a Trandoshan bounty hunter – not terribly original,
but fun for a guy dropping into someone else’s game for a session. My fellow
players and the GM advised me, and with the point-buy I was encouraged to buy
off all the racial weakness of my character. Although normally I would have
balked against this filling in of the character’s holes, it was good enough for
a one shot appearance.
MECHANICS
The mechanics are streamlined and easy to
pick up – to resolve an action, grab a handful of dice equal to the higher of an
apprpriate attribute or skill, then get a bonus from the lower of the two. Add
in some difficulty dice, roll the whole whack of polyhedrals, then cancel out
successes and failures to find your ultimate level of achievement. Dice are special
d6s, d8s and d12s with symbols instead of numbers, which affect play in ways
that take some getting used to. However, the amalgamation of player dice and
difficulty dice is a wonderful innovation that makes rolling go fast and gives
a great feeling of satisfaction to the roller.
PLAY
Play was overall not much different from
any other rpg I’ve played, with the aforementioned dice rolling making things
run very smoothly. If there is one thing that hinders play, it is getting used
to the dice. Dice in Star Wars have success, triumph, and advantage symbols
versus failure, despair and threat symbols on their sides. What this means is
that you can succeed in an action but end up threatened, or fail yet gain some
advantage. This system offers much more possibility than the binary
succeed-fail mechanic of traditional dice, which encourages improvisational
storytelling and really suits Star Wars. The initial effort needed to memorize
the dice meanings and get used to the resolution mechanic is well worth it for
the storied gameplay you’ll have.
THE STORY & THE MASTER
Regardless of how good a system is, a good
GM really brings a game to life. My friend the game master is a former
astronomy student and highly technical-minded man, which showed in the intricacy
and breadth of his descriptions. We really felt immersed in the Star Wars
universe, especially the tech and cultures. I am more of a fast and loose GM
myself, and felt that although my friend ran a great game his way, I could do
one my way with as much success.
In the session, my character delivered an
imperial prisoner to the rebels and met the PCs, a human medic, a hacker-type,
and a Twilek con woman. Suddenly the imperials arrive and start bombarding the
rebel outpost, so I deliver my prisoner and hitch a ride on a transport with
the player characters, which rendez-vous with a waiting cruiser. While in
hyperspace, the shipment of droids the cruiser carried comes to life and begin
sabotaging the ship, so of course it was up to us to save the day.
The flurry of action included hacking the
ship’s system to lock out the evil droids and turn the air back on; missing a
shot but taking out the enemy with a falling gantry; crashing a Y-wing into the
aft landing bay; and turning the hyperspace engine back on minutes away from
getting sucked into a blackhole.
In other words, it was Star Wars through
and through.
VERDICT
You like Star Wars? You like rpgs? This
game is chocolate and peanut butter, and boy do they go together. It is
probably the best realization of an IP in a roleplaying game I have ever seen,
so pick it up and enjoy. My friend also has a huge collection of the Star Wars miniature
game and uses it to resolve space battle scenes, so this can add a whole new
dimension to the game. Yes, in space no one can hear you nerdgasm.
