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Category Archives: Age of Rebellion

When I Can’t Decide: Vote!

23 Saturday Apr 2016

Posted by Aegeri in 13th Age, Age of Rebellion, Edge of the Empire, Force and Destiny, General, Night's Black Agents, Promethean the Created, Star Wars, Trail of Cthulhu, Trail of Night's Eldritch Agents

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#Vote, 13th Age, Promethean The Created, Roleplaying, Star Wars, Tabletop, Trail of Cthulhu, Trail of Night's Eldritch Agents

 photo sticker375x360_zpsrkt1kcd7.png

Given that it’s currently all about elections in the USA and Australia, I thought it only appropriate to do something similar with the new games I will be starting soon. I’ve had a bit of a prolonged break from roleplaying, for various reasons, so I decided to experiment with some different ideas. After much thought, I decided that it would be best to let my players decide what they wanted to play – after all, I love most of my campaign idea’s pretty much equally! I decided to put things to a vote and see how my players felt and what they might want to play most. These were the options I gave them.

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Starting New Campaign: Star Wars; Hunters of the Force

24 Monday Aug 2015

Posted by Aegeri in Advice, Age of Rebellion, Edge of the Empire, Force and Destiny, Star Wars

≈ 5 Comments

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Advice, Age of Rebellion, Edge of the Empire, Force and Destiny, Hunters of the Force, Roleplaying, Star Wars, Star Wars RPG, Tabletop

Hunters of the ForceThis fantastic scene is a slightly changed color and cropped image of this piece, which was originally drawn by the incredibly talented Simon Goinard.

From the moment I tried Edge of the Empire by running the excellent beginner’s box, I fell in love with and became very interested in Fantasy Flight Games Star Wars Roleplaying system. Of course the tricky complication is that there are actually three separate products making up what FFG’s “Star Wars Roleplaying” actually is with Edge of the Empire, Age of Rebellion and the most recent addition, Force and Destiny. As I mentioned in the previous reviews, each individual game tackles an aspect of the Star Wars Universe and gives detail on that particular style. Edge of the Empire is about being rogues, bounty hunters and smugglers – effectively Han Solo or Chewie type characters. Age of Rebellion is where you play primarily as soldiers or saboteurs of the Rebel Alliance fighting against the Empire. Force and Destiny on the other hand, covers force sensitive characters hiding from and even trying to piece together the Jedi order from whatever fragments of its lore they can gather.

It is completely possible to run an individually fantastic game in any one of these systems, which are built to give each campaign an individual style and feel. On the other hand you can also do something really ambitious: Combining all three of the products into one and allowing players to make characters sourced from any of these books. This provides some tricky elements in terms of storytelling and is quite daunting from a “running the game” point of view. I say “Daunting” because if you got into this system late to the party like I did, you’re going to be reading three pretty thick books to get up to speed with the ins and outs of each “pillar” of the game. On the other hand to me this extra work isn’t even a consideration for why I would do this, because I really want to capture the feel of Episodes IV and V. In doing so, the source material in these two original films most closely resembles what the game looks like using all three books at once.

So I decided to take the plunge and make Hunters of the Force about all three books at once. Of course, having an idea for running a game and doing so are two different things. The first thing I had to do was determine which of my groups would be interested in a potential change to Star Wars. As my Trail of Cthulhu group had been playing in that system for nearly two years, I thought that would be a good place to start for a potential switch in system. So here’s my first tip on how you propose changing a system, start by bringing it up casually one day and see how your players react. In my case, I started talking about it while everyone was around a bit early before we started playing for the day. I got some enthusiastic supporters immediately from those who were fans of Star Wars, but also got some more skeptical views as well. So here is the second and most important tip: Give them a chance to try the game out first (including yourself).

I invited them all to play the Edge of the Empire Beginner Box, which back then was a new acquisition for me as well, with even the couple of players who were more skeptical being firmly won over. This made the decision to ask “Would people like to play Star Wars after Trail of Cthulhu?” a much easier proposition for me. The enthusiasm my players have for moving from my gritty, tension filled horror game to something that I described as more “Action Adventure in Space” has been great to see. It’s also something I’m looking forward to, as Night’s Black Agents, Shadowrun and the new Trail of Cthulhu game one of my other groups will be starting are pretty dark in tone. Having a game that runs very contrary to those in style, even if there will be moments of darkness or despair, will be good for my writing and plotting in general.

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Star Wars, Age of Rebellion: Beginner Box Impressions and Play Report

07 Friday Aug 2015

Posted by Aegeri in Advice, Age of Rebellion, Reviews, Star Wars

≈ 4 Comments

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Advice, Age of Rebellion, FFG, Review, Roleplaying, Star Wars, Star Wars RPG, Tabletop

Age of Rebellion

Having taken a group of players through the Edge of the Empire Beginner Box for the Star Wars RPG, I was very keen to go through Age of Rebellions equivalent. Age of Rebellion continues the excellent tradition of Edge of the Empire by providing more of the funky dice this system loves, several excellent full color character portfolios, an adventure, high quality color maps of whisper base and some more tokens of various antagonists like stormtoopers, AT-STs and speeder bikes. Basically stuff that is going to be useful to anyone running a long term game and not just specialized for this boxed set in particular.

Once again it just has to be mentioned how terrific the support for this product is from Fantasy Flight Games. There are two additional free characters on their website if you want a little more variety and an extension of the main adventure a well. The best thing about both of these is that they are also entirely free, so go download them and have a look! Really, before I even get into the actual play report and my general thoughts let me just say that you should definitely get into this. It doesn’t matter if you start with Edge of the Empire or Age of Rebellion, as they are both incredibly high quality products, which are a perfect introduction to roleplaying games as well.

One thing that I will note with some interest is that Age of Rebellion has clearly considered the extra characters being released on the website. Unlike Edge of the Empire, both of the extra characters actually have their own tokens on the sheet that comes with the game. This is pretty good and really helps to integrate the extra characters into the product as a whole, while they felt like more of a bonus with Edge of the Empire. It’s worth noting that this is an incredibly minor point here, as both beginner boxes give you four full color portfolios in the box, but it is nice to see them do this.

In any event, I had four players initially for this and sadly lost one a little into the game due to another commitment – but overall had more than enough to get a good impression of what was going on.

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Star Wars Beginner Boxes!

06 Wednesday May 2015

Posted by Aegeri in Age of Rebellion, Edge of the Empire, Reviews, Star Wars

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Age of Rebellion, Beginner Boxes, Edge of the Empire, Roleplaying, Star Wars

My most recent pair of roleplaying acquisitions:

Edge of the Empire and Age of Rebellion

Very keen to give these two games a try in future and give some thoughts on the guild! With some luck I will hopefully be able to acquire Force and Destiny’s boxed set and then somehow turn all three into some larger campaign. My initial impression of both boxes is that it seems to be very good and well thought out. I actually really love the presentation of the initial books and especially the wonderfully simple to follow pregenerated characters (which is a real relief given some others I have seen).

Possibly the oddest feeling that the game gives me is the unusual new dice it comes with. Both EotE and AoR use six, eight and twelve sided dice, but they have some unusual symbols and such on them instead of numbers. The symbols, once you’re familiar with what they are, seem easy enough to quickly determine what is going on and I will be interested to see how it goes with actual players. It seems that the dice aspect is one of the more controversial decisions with these boxed sets after doing some reading around. One really good thing I will say is the support from Fantasy Flight Games is fantastic. Both Age of Rebellion and Edge of the Empire have an extra free adventure to continue the basic one, plus some extra characters to download to add (if you have more than 4 players especially).

This is fantastic and is exactly what roleplaying games need. Anyway, more to come once I have tried out the adventures and system for myself!

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