Star Wars, Force and Destiny: Beginner Box Impressions and Play Report

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Advice, FFG, Force and Destiny, Review, Roleplaying, Star Wars, Star Wars RPG, Tabletop

After what seemed like an eternity upon the slowest boat ever conceived of*, I was absolutely beyond myself with excitement to pick up Force and Destiny’s Beginner Box. With a rollicking good time in Edge of the Empire and the Age of Rebellion beginner boxes, I had high expectations for Force and Destiny. I can alleviate any worry you might have immediately and say it definitely met them, but it did have a few issues that I ran into I would solve with the benefit of hindsight. In any event, just like Force and Destiny’s predecessors it comes with more dice, a well thought out adventure, a mini-rule book, more tokens and another gorgeous fold out map. As I’ve mentioned before, this is an excellent start for anyone wanting to get into the Star Wars RPG or even roleplaying in general.

I’ve repeatedly praised Fantasy Flight Games terrific support of their products and they again come through with Force and Destiny. Like the other boxed sets, there are two additional characters and an adventure, which expands on the scenario from the book online. Just like before these are all entirely free to download and that is simply terrific to see, with Force and Destiny also showing Age of Rebellions foresight with suitable tokens for the extra characters already in the box (should you choose to use them). Honestly, we don’t need me to go and say “This is truly terrific and if you want to get a start in RPGs buy this” again, do we?

So in terms of the play report for this, I actually did something a little different this time compared to the others. I actually didn’t use either of the extra online characters and I also didn’t choose to use Edge of the Empire/Age of Rebellion elements. This box was pretty much run straight as it comes off the shelf, which I think is actually a really good idea even if you do have the other boxed sets. This adventure does seem to lean very heavily on the party being force sensitive, or at least having access to the force. Naturally enough given the title, but there is a specific moment where they game clearly railroads the players into the “This is how the Force works tutorial of the adventure!”. Non-force sensitive characters are going to find this a bit confusing and difficult to deal with as a result.

Because I ended up just using what was in the box, I ran the adventure with just the four players and so here is my account of the game. Did I mention this was really good and if you want to try getting into the Star Wars RPG you should buy it? I can’t remember if I said that yet.

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

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

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.

Star Wars RPG: Edge of the Empire Impressions and Play Report

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Edge of the Empire, Play Report, Review, Roleplaying, Star Wars

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away….

STAR WARS

EDGE OF THE EMPIRE

It is the 100th Post on the Roleplayer’s Guild and I can think of no better way to do it than by talking about the first of the games Fantasy Flight Games released, Edge of the Empire. With the beginner boxed set in tow and several players keen for some Star Wars action, I decided to run the starter adventure. The question was, would the force be with us and the roleplaying experience be up to our expectations? Would these strange dice covered in odd symbols instead of numbers aid or hinder the experience? How does the advice in the book stack up and allow for some freedom for an experienced DM?

Read on to find out!

Star Wars Beginner Boxes!

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

My most recent pair of roleplaying acquisitions:

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!

Guildmaster’s Review: Hoard of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat (Part 1)

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5th Edition DnD, Advice, Dungeons and Dragons, Review, Roleplaying

Even though they have been out for a while now, I wanted to give a bit of a wait before I wrote anything about these two adventures from Wizards of the Coast for the 5th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons. Firstly, I have had a few opportunities to run a fair amount of Hoard of the Dragon Queen, seen much of it being played and have a good grasp of how some of it works out in play. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen a lot of how Rise of Tiamat actually works in play, but it does have some truly great ideas even if you don’t intend to run it. The core of that adventure, the wonderfully thought out Factions system and how it ties into the players decisions, is actually being actively used in my current Dungeons and Dragons game, Curse of the Black Pearls.

When doing this review I debated if I would split the two books up into separate reviews alone or if I would simply consider it as one large “adventure”, then review the entire thing as a whole. Obviously from the title of this post, I decided that I would go with reviewing both adventures as one entity and give my overall opinion on the campaign it ultimately produces. The way this review will work is that I shall consider how both books stack up individually, talk about some of the individual strengths and weaknesses, then recommend if I feel it is worth running the entire campaign, or just going with one or the other.

In part one of this review, we’ll talk about Hoard of the Dragon Queen. In part two, we’ll consider the follow up adventure Rise of Tiamat. Finally in the final part I’ll give my overall judgement and then recommendation of what I feel is worth your hard earned gold.