$30 and undoubtedly shipping for a play test manual? Any interest I had in this has evaporated. Sorry.

 The $20,- Only War pdf Playtest was fine by me, this is a bit too much…

Santiago said:

Agreed, I lsot faith in FFGs 40K line a while back (around Black Crudade's release) but was willing to spend $20 on a PDF I could print out, mark in, and so forth, but not so much $30 plus shipping for a book that will one day probbaly be a "collector's item" unless, of course, you marked in it.

PDF please.

Peacekeeper_b said:

And at least Only War also had art in it.

Peacekeeper_b said:

Oh, and by the way, you cant go lower than $11.05 on shipping, making this a $40 book.

Peacekeeper_b said:

Shooting yourself in the foot, FFG style.

So $40 to play an incomplete version of this game, that gains me nothing towards the final product, AND doesn't allow us to play Jedi as player characters? WTF? Count me out! Anyone that pays for the priviledge to Beta test something, as opposed to being paid or at the very least granted access and some form of future reward, is out of thier gaming mind. IMHO.

Only War Beta is fair.  You pay 20 only because you get the game early and you get a full coupon for the full version down the road.  That screams buy me as I feel like I lost nothing.

This book in the other hand…  You want me to pay for the book with no coupon on the full version which is bad enough.  Now I have pay shipping on top of it which is more bad icing on this bad cake.  It is just to much and not very smart if you ask me.  I like stars wars as much as the next guy, but come on what you are selling looks like a rip off.  Not only that, but you proven to have a smarter way to do betas while still making cash with Only War.

JTekarian said:

Huh? There are Force rules in the book, so you can play Force users - maybe not on the level of The Force Unleashed, or the prequel trilogy, but the likes of Luke in the main trilogy are possible, from what I've heard.

This is basically the same as the printed version of the Pathfinder beta, and there wasn't all that much complaining about that, from what I remember.

 What happened to the days of filling out a form that included your RPG experience and then being chosen to playtest the game and signing a NDF on behalf of your gaming group. Being sent the game via PDF for free and then playing and sending in session reports and questions pertaining to the rules and how they work in game? I have playtested a few RPG's that went to print for companies and had my name in them. It was a privilege to be chosen to help round out a soon to be finished product. This PAYING to playtest destroys the very concept. How about you PAY the people playtesting. very backwards FFG. I expect better from you!   

CanadianPittbull said:

They still do the closed playtesting stuff - I know because I've been doing it for the 40k RPGs since Rogue Trader was released in 2009, and as Only War shows, they did the closed playtesting (see the last pages of the PDF, the playtester list, including my name, is there), but they know that hundreds of people are more likely to spot problems than about 20 people.

It's also not that crazy an idea - you could buy printed copies of the Pathfinder beta when that was being playtested, and I don't remember people arguing about that. It's a shame it's not out on PDF too, but I've heard that's something LucasArts dictated (whether that's true or not, I can't say).

 That's cool. I just think paying to play a Beta seems weird, at least at that price point. 

MILLANDSON said:

The PDF for the Pathfinder Alpha/Beta, if I recall though, was free, and the book was optional for those who prefered that option. 

Seems a shame.  I know a lot of people who skipped the WotC era of Star Wars and kept with WEG editions waiting to see what future versions of Star Wars would look like.  In the few people I've spoken to in that crowd now, the opinion seems to be that this feels like an unfortunate cash grab for what FFG knows is going to be a license to print money.

How much do you think is fair for a 224 page, full-color softbound book with all the rules in it?

$20?

$10?

Free?

I understand people not wanting to get it (I'm waiting until there is a finished product, myself), but if you do buy this you are actually getting $30 worth of stuff.

 Much as it is "bad form" in one perspective to have people pay to play a sort of public beta, let me toss in a couple of comparative perspectives from outside of RPG play.

If you are a video gamer on Playstation 3, you can have Playstation Plus, which is a paid service. Part of the draw to that paid service, especially early on, was early access to betas of various games. Granted, the betas were "free" with the subscription, but the subscription itself had its cost. It isn't unheard of to that extent.

More specifically to Star Wars, though, a collector would view this situation as an opportunity, not "bad form." For a couple of years now, I have been receiving advance copies of Star Wars books from Del Rey, and back in the first couple of years of the Wizards of the Coast RPG, I was receiving advance copies of those as well. These were essentially review copies, at no cost, pending reviewing and whatnot. Now, a few of those have been "unfinished" versions like what FFG seems to be doing with "Edge of the Empire." When it comes to the novels, these "advance uncorrected proofs" (often just called ARCs for Advance Review Copy, even though some are finished and these are specifically unfinished) are something that are produced in limited numbers and acquired only through being a reviewer or if a reviewer sells them later online. As a collector, I have often considered adding to my own personal collection of "uncorrected proof" copies by picking up some being sold by other reviewers when those items are from before I began receiving them. I'd gladly pay for the ability to add those "unfinished" versions to my own collection due to their limited availability and the oddball nature of  them among an Expanded Universe library.

In the case of Edge of the Empire, FFG is basically condensing that down and cutting out the middle man. Rather than sending out unfinished test copies to a few people for review, then those few putting them up for sale, then collectors buying those online, FFG is making it possible for those who want that kind of unfinished, time-limited release version to get them straight from the source, rather than having to buy on the aftermarket or get onto a comped reviewer list.

If the price is a major issue for some (and, hey, even I was shocked to find the total cost with minimum shipping to be over $40 in the U.S.), then that could be a decent way of using simple supply and demand to limit the number of betas out "in the wild" before the finished, official releases hit the market. The more people balk at the price tag, the smaller the beta release, and the more the finished version, rather than this version, will be dominant in the marketplace (both consumer level and aftermarket) once the finished version is released.

I myself do not see an issue here.They seem to be allowing some folks a taste of what the rules will be like, the price seems in line with a full color 244 page small print run book. No one is forcing you to buy this and honestly the price is not bad for what it is.