Malifer said:

Exactly. The 40k books worked because each one was, despite a shared setting and system, a unique game. Star Wars is not like that. Everyone should be given the chance to play, from the get-go, whatever type of character they may want to play.

I will not say SAGA is a perfect Star Wars game, it's not. But what's nice about it, and WEG before it is this: You can buy one book, and play really whatever type of character you could really want to play. The later Saga books, other than adding a few new options for each class, really only offered fluff and Races. They didn't add new classes that you were being deprived of if you didn't buy that book. That's not me putting them down, that's saying that the core SAGA book is all you ever really need. One book.

Whether YOU personally(The collective "you") care for Jedi or not, there are tons of people who do and they should be allowed to play those characters to the fullest and have that fun without having to wait 3 years.

It simply doesn't make sense from either a setting or business sense… Unless the business plan is simply "Three books means more money." and I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt… But doing so simply tells me they have no clue what they're doing. I don't know which is worse.

Tensen01 said:

I concur completely.

I have players that would play a jedi every time, and ones that never will.

This also really makes me love the Savage Worlds model. One affordable Core Book for $9.99, then pick up whatever supplements and settings you want for $15-20.

I am not talking about the rules of the game, although I am keen on Savage Worlds, but just the affordability and not buying multiple books with the same rules.

It seems pretty simle to me. With three standalone games, you can just buy one book and have everything you need. If this were, say, D&D4E you might have to buy multiple books, say the first Player's Guide (for the rules) and then one of the later PGs if you wanted to play a race or class that was in that book.

Venthrac said:

But that is everything you need for one style of play.

Star Wars like Fantasy, or even the some of the Kurasawa films, it's a hodgepodge of characters on an adventure.

I wouldn't run a  Lord of the Rings Rpg with only Hobbits in the Shire. It could be done, probably has been. But someone will want to play Gimli or Aragorn. Sorry you need another rule book for that. If someone else wants to be Gandalf or Legolas well that's another rulebook.

And the kicker is these aren't supplement books there full priced core rulebooks that will have stuff you already purchased.

Sure if all I want to run is a Noir smuggler campaign set in Star Wars, then the one book is all I need. 

But if I want to re-create the film as a game I need all three books just to put Obi-wan, Luke, Han Solo, and Lea all on the same hunk of junk.

Doc, the Weasel said:

That's true but it looks like the core books aren't even covering all of those bullet points (Jedi PCs are left for the third book and I'm not sure Sith are even in at all), unless I'm mistaken.

Also, when you look at it that way, it would make more sense for them to include soldier, bounty hunter, droid etc. templates with options for the GM and players to color them by timeline.

And we're getting no lore or adventures for anything outside of the rebellion era.

Don't get me wrong, it's not that I hate the rebellion, it's just that I prefer other aspects of the Star Wars universe and I see no reason why FFG would deliberately restrict the core products so much. I understand Star Wars is a vast universe with many facets, but perhaps a better approach would have been a fringe/smuggler/bounty hunter book, a soldier/noble book and a Jedi book, each of them covering all timelines in terms of lore and NPCs.

Malifer said:

Well, I look at it this way: most large release games you really need multiple books anyway. Examples:

D&D, Pathfinder: Core Book (Player Manual), Monster Book, GM Guide, etc.

Previous SWRPGs: Core Rules, Rebellion Sourcebook, Empire Sourcebook, etc

It seems to me these 3 books (while they do repeat a lot of the rules) will have source materials spread across them. The only thing that really might suck for some is, if you want to run a full out Jedi, you really have to wait 2 years. Fortunately for me, I just started a D6 Campaign in exactly this "fringe" setting earlier this year. Our only force user seems it might work with what is included in this book.

It's also worth noting that this isn't the "Star Wars RPG" but rather "Edge of the Empire."  I guess one could complain about not being able to play a smuggler in the Force Unleashed but …

 Well you would think a game about smugglers, outlaws and so on out on the edge of the galaxy would maybe not concern itself with rules for Force powers and lightsabers, but that stuff is actually in the EotE book. What's NOT in the book are rules for creating full-on Jedi as a character class, and maybe that's something that's coming in a later product. I suppose you could wing it by creating, I don't know, a scholar and giving him a lightsaber and some of the Force powers, though I imagine that the actual Jedi that appears in the planned Jedi book will be a lot more fleshed-out.

I can see both sides of this argument. It does seem silly to have to buy the rules more than one time, but I played in a campaign that was based on Luke's new Jedi academy and all the PCs were Jedi. A game like that would have been perfectly well served by just the one Jedi RPG book FFG is planning to do.

No we don't need three stand-alone games.  We need a well designed and thought out system to make it worth buying…another Star Wars game.  If it takes FFG three books I'd rather see them do that, instead of crapping out an inferior single book version of the RPG like WotC did.  WEG was able to do it because the d6 system has only a fraction of the complexity and accounting required for d20 games (and d6 game mechanics had a tendency to shake apart in the late game).  In the end FFG's attempt might fall flat and suck-diddly-uck.  Wouldn't be the first time a new thing turned out to be lamer than Stephen Hawking's legs.

Bring on three stand-alones.  And of course it's a money grab.  A Star Wars license holder would be bloomin' crazy NOT to squeeze as much money out of the world's Star Wars fan base.

I'd make people buy my rulebooks three times if I had the license.  Heck WotC made a bunch of people do it:  d20 (Phantom Menace-wars!), Revised (now with more photos of Hayden Christensen!), and Saga (please buy the game again but this time it's sideways!)

Callidon said:

Interesting perspective :)

Also, what did you mean by Saga being "sideways" compared to d20? I had very little experience with OCR/RCR, and so tend to look at as related to Saga Edition in an anachronistic fashion so I often don't get people's perspectives on those two editions.

awayputurwpn said:

awayputurwpn said:

Oh, god, not sure whether to be upset and insulted, or cry and laugh.

What he means by sideways, I think, is that it was square-shaped, 9 inches by 9. Or that the rules were really the playing ground for 4th ed D&D, but I think he meant the shape.

Edit: Dang, knew I waited too long to reply to that one.

Venthrac said:

I am pretty certain that the force powers listed in the EotE book is no where near what will be in the Force book. The only thing in this book is rules on characters who are force sensitive… which could apply to anyone. There are tons of force sensitives who are not Jedi. The Antarian Rangers were full of force sensitives who were not powerful enough to be Jedi.

Which is where the 40K "trilogy" is starting to break down, and why a lot of people are questioning the need to have made Only War a seperate game. Personally as a 40K lifer, I'm really, really, hoping that Only War is the last one. 

The irritating part is that while a significant chunk of the game rules are the same, they tweak tiny little things (or big things like the way Psychic Powers work), which makes compatible easier said than done, and you're still shelling out $60+.  What's doubly irritating is that to get a full bestiary or armoury you have to own all the settings - Tyranids and Eldar and several others are spread across all the lines, and tracking down a specfic creature can be a minor miracle sometimes, and quite often the systems (like vehicle combat) that could exist quiet happily across all the settings get two, three sometimes more variations. 

Much of the character creation, gear, skills and talents, combat rules, how to play, etc., sections are identical or close enough to probably feel the same if read back to back.  For all intents and purposes the Dark Heresy system could have just been a generic RPG system with the other Deathwatch, Rogue Trader systems and and whatnot put out in supplements.

While I think it's important to give FFG the benefit of the doubt, my faith is wobbly, and I'm not sure I believe that the lightsaber and force powers, or vehicle combat, or whatever will be the same by the time 2015 rolls around, and interchangeable is not what everyone thought it was.

People can critiscise those of us who have concerns about how FFG is going to handle the line, and it's their right to do so, but there is building evidence elsewhere that this multiple release/core system has flaws, and there's very little word from FFG about how they are going to fix them.

VagrantWhisper said:

Yep.  :). That's-a-me!  Whassup?  

And we have a review slated this for this week.  ;-). Hopefully, with a designer on the mic.  A