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"Pew-Pew:" The Star Wars RPG
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For our first episode, we're taking a look at one of our favorite RPG systems, the Fantasy Flight Games/Edge Studio Star Wars RPG.
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Transcript
Introduction to How We Roll Gaming
00:00:01
Speaker
How We Roll Gaming is dedicated to spreading enjoyment of great role-playing games. We hope to bring you insights into games you may not have played, tips to be a better game master of player and share stories of momentous events at our tables. Every game is a new story
Meet the Hosts and Podcast Launch
00:00:14
Speaker
to tell. I'm Daryl. I'm Nick. And here's Robert. And this is How We Roll.
00:00:24
Speaker
Happy New Year! We're kicking off the new year with something we've been planning for a while. the launch of the
Why Start a Podcast?
00:00:30
Speaker
How We Roll gaming podcast. Yes. How long have we been talking about doing this? Roughly about a year. At least. at least per year And it really became a thing after we went to Gamer Nation Con earlier this year. And every, how many times were you guys asked, so what's your podcast about?
00:00:54
Speaker
i is remain Three times for me, and i was I was absent for two days, so that was a thing. So I i think that was kind of you know kind of telling. we We needed to do this.
Passion for Role-Playing Games
00:01:10
Speaker
ah we We had a debut, a soft debut. Yes. um So I'm Darryl.
00:01:19
Speaker
I'm Nick. And I'm Robert. And our our mission statement here, you know, it was kind of in the intro, but we just, you know, we love role playing games and we want to give everybody some insight into the games that we love, the games that somebody may not have heard of, some tips and tricks, how to be a better player, how to be a better GM, how to just have fun playing role-playing games. That's one of the biggest
Standing Out in the RPG Podcast World
00:01:53
Speaker
things that I always and emphasize. Fun. Yeah, fun's the reason that you play these things. And there's there's plenty of RPG podcasts out there. We hope we stick out
00:02:06
Speaker
among the rest of them as a piece of advice from a a friend of ours who runs Gamer Nation Con gave us was, a don't suck. So hopefully we won't.
Listener Interaction and Contributions
00:02:20
Speaker
but The main idea is like, we're not like being like, some of us know more about one system or another, but we're here like bring people who may have not have gotten that like experience before to come in and have fun as well. And as we go along,
00:02:44
Speaker
as we go along we would absolutely love to hear any ideas for what you guys think that we might want to cover, what you would want to hear us cover.
00:02:54
Speaker
So feel free to shoot us an email at podcast at HowWeRollGaming.com and we can take a look at that. One of the
RPG Glory Stories vs. Horror Stories
00:03:04
Speaker
features that we have planned in the future, we didn't put one together for this episode, but it might happen organically, is there's lots of podcasts and YouTube channels out there that have RPG horror stories. So There's plenty of those, and they're fun to watch. They're fun. Very very entertaining. But we're going to kind of flip that script on its head, and we plan to tell some RPG glory stories. When things went super
Spotlight on Star Wars RPG
00:03:33
Speaker
right or when something happened that you never expected, you didn't expect the players really impressed you, the GM really impressed you, or just when everything was all said and done,
00:03:47
Speaker
You sat back as a player or a GM and thought, wow, that was awesome. And you just remember that for a long time to come. Yep. The the stories that make you want to keep coming back and playing RPGs and more. You want to tell your friend that's like, I don't know if I want to play. It's like, oh, this happened. Yeah. Or yeah you're at work. And people who don't even play RPGs, you're like,
00:04:17
Speaker
You got to hear what happened this weekend at my game. Horror stories are good
Overview of the System
00:04:23
Speaker
for those who know how RPGs are and that that's not every game. though That's a minority. These horror stories are better for those who want to see kind of the entrance of getting into these games. like there's more there There's more glory than than horror in the genre. Exactly.
00:04:43
Speaker
So kicking off our first episode here, Nick, what are we going to be talking about today? Well, on our inaugural episode, we're going to be taking a look at the system that honestly introduced a great deal of us together as a role-playing game group and started this years of collaboration that we had. The Star Wars RPG by Fantasy Flight Games, now currently known as Ed Studios. Right. and This isn't going to be an exhaustive deep dive into the ink intricacies of the system. it is the third This is the third Star Wars, um RBD. Right. And there is, on the D20 radio network, their flagship show, the Order 66 podcast, has nearly 200 episodes and counting doing the deep dive. And they are well worth listening to. We listen to it.
00:05:40
Speaker
No, I never listened to the Order 66 podcast. i yeah to talk about But, ah you know, we, we don't want to, we couldn't even scratch the surface of everything that they have covered in those 200 plus episodes. But ah we just want to give an overview of the system, what we really like and occasionally what we think might be done better.
00:06:06
Speaker
and And some anecdotes and moments that we've, again, has some glory stories. Right. and know In the future, what you're going to talk about should have been done better, Daryl. Well, I mean, everybody talks about that should have been done better. But today, even though our group has expanded out to other systems for campaigns and one shots, the Star Wars RPG is still the backbone of it all. It's where
Diverse Campaigns and System Exploration
00:06:37
Speaker
it started. It's where it started and we still currently have what, four or five campaigns? At least. currently other games we have Yeah, in addition to the others, we've got four or five Star Wars RPG campaigns going on. I was talking to somebody at work today and was saying, he was asking about the group and I was like, yeah, we have a campaign in this, you know, we have a D and&D. We have a Delta Green, we have a GI Joe Transformers, we have this, we have that, and we have like four or five Star Wars campaigns. Some of them are coming to a close and we are sort of transitioning more to other campaigns, but that's mainly because we're looking at like really transformative, like bigger campaigns than we did before with Star Wars. like
00:07:31
Speaker
But i i I think it's safe to say that no matter what happens, we're always going to have at least one Star Wars campaign running. Honestly, if I'm going to be honest, it's from this one to two to three. well I said at least. yeah just Just me. I have way too many campaign ideas. Don't we all? so Very much so. Stuff on games I haven't even touched yet.
00:07:59
Speaker
But yes, ah let's talk about the
Narrative Dice System Explained
00:08:04
Speaker
FFG Edge and Star Wars game. So the system itself uses the FFG Edge narrative dice system that has special proprietary dice that represent both the positive and negative sides of the dice pool that you roll for a check. Positive dice represent the character's ability to complete the task The negative dice represent the difficulty in completing the task. They're all color coded. And so how many times, we do this all the time. You'll often hear players describe the dice or the dice pool by their colors rather than their proper names. Which is is easier, but let's go for them and actually like, like educate them. Yeah. um And what are they Robert? Fill us in. Well, we've got the,
00:08:58
Speaker
regular ability die, which is your greens. We've got the skilled die, like what you have your rolls in, which would be yellow. We have what we like to call boost die, which are blue. Those are your positive dice. Then on the opposite end, we have our difficulty dice, which is purple, which can be upgraded or just given as a challenge, which are red die. And then of course we have our setbacks, which are black. and then But there's one dice above them all.
00:09:26
Speaker
of course the horse dye which is white and has light side and dark side on it and the interesting thing is on the white one there's more there's more dark than light and rather than numbers the dice have special symbols on them that indicate positive results success and advantage are negative results failure or threat that cancel each other out success and failure cancel and um advantage and threat cancel, except for two symbols. And we'll we'll get into those in a little bit as they get more advanced. But the most important factor is that success isn't a binary. Yes. Or the failure. Every success can come with complications caused by threat, just as every failure can come with something advantageous.
00:10:25
Speaker
Exactly. And my go-to example is always um you're in a room. Stormtroopers are coming in. You shoot at them. You roll your positive and negative dice. You cancel everything out.
Exploring Star Wars RPG Themes
00:10:41
Speaker
And you fail, but you have advantages. So you miss the stormtroopers because you failed your attack. But but you still filed your blaster. Right. You still filed your fired your blaster.
00:10:54
Speaker
You've got advantages, so as the player rolling that pool, you're the one that gets to decide how those advantages are used. Now, there's suggestions in the system. Of course, we won't get into the weeds with all of that, but you can look at the game. A lot of it is GM acceptance. Right. And you go for what is narratively exciting.
00:11:20
Speaker
So okay GM I missed the stormtroopers but with those advantages that I have left over can I hit the door controls so the door closes and no more stormtroopers can come in.
00:11:36
Speaker
And that as a GM myself I would say that is a perfectly reasonable expenditure of advantages. It changes the and changes the encounter counter that you're having by reducing the enemies that are coming in. And it's also something that is unprecedented from, again, always look to the films and your classic Star Wars. How many times have they done that before? Exactly. Many times. Many, many times. Now, the game itself, I guess we technically we should really say games? Technically.
00:12:18
Speaker
Yeah, and has different properties. Yeah, and and and what are those? We're describing, but we're describing the system. It goes across all three of them. Yes, they' they're interchangeable. But what are those? What are those games, Robert? The first game that came out by it studios was what we called Star Wars Edge of the Empire, this is your basic, you're the smuggler, or you're the soldier, the mercenary, just getting by on the galaxy like this, Great War- Bounty Hunter, there's uh, colonists. Scum and villainy. The people you see in the background of the cantina that get like five minutes of airtime and then you never- Your Han Solo's, your Boba Fett's.
00:13:05
Speaker
Or more you're the smugglers that always have to look up to those people because they yeah get everything. And then, of course, we've got Edge McDonough. What if you didn't want to be a criminal or a smuggler? Well, then we've got the rebellion book.
00:13:22
Speaker
which is A's of Rebellion. A's of Rebellion, where you're the soldier, you're the spy, you're the commander, you're the pilot, zooming through, shooting firefighters and blowing up ships left and right, trying not to get shy out of the sky by a lucky firefighter pilot. You're fighting the good fight. you you're You're the classical hero. You're in the war movie.
00:13:48
Speaker
you're the boffins that die to get the beat. You're hopefully not the cast of Rogue One. Hopefully not. It could be an interesting story, but hopefully not. Unless you want that. Unless as the players you want that noble sacrifice at the end. And then we've got the people who are like, that's fun and all.
00:14:11
Speaker
We know what we love to watch. Lightsaber duels. I want to swing your fingertips. I want to swing a glow stick. I want to be the lightsaber-wielding badass. And that is? Then we've got Force and watch some Destiny, where it's like, OK, you can be a Force sensitive, but you're not going to be... It's in the topics in the dark times. You're not going to be Master Yoda at the get go. You're going to have to earn that through like you have to find a master, or you have to grow your force powers, which there are lots. I will say Edge Studio has really thought about those force powers, and there's some you wouldn't exactly think about. Of course you got your move, you got your heal harm, but what if you wanted to like manipulate the earth around you? Or what if you wanted to manipulate droids? Well, you got those. What if you wanted to create
00:15:03
Speaker
an illusionary double of yourself. That's in there too. What if you just want to be the mind trickery person? Just make everyone forget you ever saw them. And it's also the case of like, this is where, where things like, what if you don't want to be the good guy? Yeah, what if you want to be a dark side user or you want to kill Darth Vader and try to be the new apprentice damper Palpatine? That could be a story. You can definitely do that because Force and Destiny introduced something called morality. Well, all three of them have a sort of a back and forth sort of system. But Force and Destiny has one that's more binary. At least in terms of light and dark. Yeah.
Destiny Pool Mechanic
00:15:49
Speaker
Yeah, each of them has their own specific flavor subrule. ah Edge of the Empire has obligation. You owe someone something. It could be yourself. It could be your family.
00:16:01
Speaker
It could be a bounty that's on on your head. It could be the fact that you were a bit, have have ah been a bit too flirtatious for someone and they're they're not too happy with you. Or you could be the guy that has the score to settle and you'll stop at nothing to get that guy or girl who or woman who screwed you over. and And that mechanic, that of the three of them, that one,
00:16:30
Speaker
And we haven't talked about the other two yet, obviously, but of the three of them as a GM, obligation is my favorite. Oh, it's the amount of like options that you can use. It's definitely a story creator.
00:16:45
Speaker
and adds more tension because, especially if like you're the high-allogated player in the group, you become like the least favorite of them, but also the storyteller of them. That's the big point of these games. It's not, you're trying to follow the Kamen time, Star Wars story. No, this is your player character's story. This isn't about them. It's, the galaxy is large. Up on the stage.
00:17:12
Speaker
It's about them in the background just trying to do their own thing. The way I have put it to people is, yeah, the movies are there. This is your movie. You're the main characters of this movie. And you let let you know let Luke blow up his Death Star. You're more concerned with whatever the plot and story is.
00:17:41
Speaker
It's a bigger galaxy than you. Well, you're looking for that great score that'll set you for life. And, you know. Let the movies be the backdrop of your story. It's how I was a... As a GM, we can use that story to influence what's happening in your story, but we'll never put that above your story.
00:18:10
Speaker
Right. it The way the way I run games,
Flexibility in Storytelling
00:18:15
Speaker
and you've both seen this, you might cross over into the main story or cross paths with one of those named characters at some point, but it's gonna be brief. And it's gonna be for a fun like, hey,
00:18:33
Speaker
I know you. you can go And if at most your story will then bounce off of that encounter and go off in its own direction, more than likely it's just going to cross over that moment like, oh, hey, I know that. As a player, I recognize the moment that I just crossed over.
00:18:58
Speaker
And that's what kind of mates this game. So since Star Wars is a huge property that everyone knows, it's easy to do that and engage people as a GM to be like, Oh, even if they don't know, like the intricate lore of Star Wars, they'll be like, have them cross over, like hear a bit about this one guy. They'll recognize where they are and feel more connected.
00:19:29
Speaker
Now, for Age of Rebellion, its personalized subsystem is one that I'm not terribly partial to. You two have used it more successfully than I have. I very much like it. And it's good as an addition to the obligation. It's basically an i in my, how I use it usually is that it helps me personalize a mission
00:20:00
Speaker
rather than de define the mission because duty usually deals like your personal obligation to the rebellion your specialty like sabotage attack or like recruitment it defines how your character is going to approach the mission rather than defining the mission that you're on exactly you have an objective and through this you have multiple ways to get to that objective But if you with duty, and if it's specifically a triggered duty, it would allow a character to be... Okay, maybe I don't want to process aggressively. Maybe if they have the duty of like recruitment or rescue, they want to take it a lot more cautiously. Yes, it is. Age of Rebellion made duty, like Nick said. And that is their subset that they made. And that is all being you could be. You're looking to sabotage, or you're looking to...
00:21:00
Speaker
and raise the morale of your troops. So you're looking to get that information or kill that officer or that high value. What works is one of them is one of them where it's like ah completely like some some behind the scenes Jason Bourne stuff. What what works is one of them. Mm hmm. I've never heard of this.
00:21:25
Speaker
All the stories you could tell. Yeah, the way like probably get probably will at one point. The way I like to think about duty is like the game hitman. You have a gun, and you need to kill the target. But as we all know, there are plenty of ways you can go about killing that target. And there's plenty of ways to handle the situation. And it's and rather than obligation changing the mission. Duty means that like your character can do the mission differently.
00:22:00
Speaker
And it it just occurred to me, as we're kind of wrapping up our overview of how everything works, we forgot an important aspect. We did, it didn't we? We did. And since we're going into force and destiny, we might as well go into that important aspect. Yes. And that would be the destiny pool.
00:22:27
Speaker
I asked the destiny for a player and a GM's favorite little fool. Yes, it's a wonderful addition. I can't recall having seen any system quite like this in an RPG until I started playing this system. And I've seen some systems like we've recently played the Fallout system. We've seen that in the Transformers and My Little Pony systems.
Influence on Other RPGs
00:22:57
Speaker
And they're good. but Of like different like relative like tools similar to this. But I feel that as of right now, I would definitely say that this was more like the most simplistic but better implemented. And to to put it simply, at the beginning of each session, all of the players, whether they're force sensitive or not, roll a force die, which comes up with one or two light or dark force pips on it. This represents the ebb and flow of light and dark in the story. And so when you buy a dice set for Star Wars, it comes with little tokens for the Destiny points, a light side and a dark side, and you lay out those tokens according to ah to the role that the players got.
00:23:55
Speaker
And throughout the game, throughout the session, the players and the GM alike can spend light side points for the players, dark side points for the GMs, kind of as currency to influence what's going on in the game. But most importantly is When you spend a light side, it becomes a dark side point. You spend a dark side point, it becomes a light side point. At no point does the pool change its amount. It just shifts back and forth. It's leaning one way. And it's all up to how
Genesis vs. Star Wars Systems
00:24:33
Speaker
it started. You could have a Destiny pool of four, or I remember one time we had a Destiny pool of like 11 or 12. Yep. It just all depends on how many players and what roles they get on the dice.
00:24:48
Speaker
And it's a great way to have that flow and that influence. ah as a player narrative flow As a player, I can use a light side point simply to upgrade one of my rolls, change one of those green dice that we mentioned to a yellow to increase my my chances of success or getting a triumph, which we haven't talked about those two symbols yet. We'll hit those next. Or in verse 3, a GM could take the difficulty dice and make it a challenge dice if he decides to flip. Exactly. And
00:25:36
Speaker
That's the simplest use of the destiny points. You can also use them to influence the scene. A simple example is you're about to go as a group into a dark space. Oh, do I have a glow rod with me? it's It's not in my inventory.
00:26:04
Speaker
but it's a reasonable minor ask. For a light side point, the GM may allow you to have a glow rot. You can introduce it that way or say if you were in a fight in a warehouse and you're like, okay, we're in a warehouse. So is there like a hanging container anywhere? And Darryl and I always know, we always say there can be, if you've let the destiny point,
00:26:32
Speaker
and thank you that is it it and like And as a GM, you can always decide where said hanging can take it. Like they could want it over where they think the bad guys are going to be, or it could be over them. Exactly. But it's a reasonable ask to put a reasonable object in the scene that has not been introduced. And GMs can spend the dark side points in similar ways.
00:27:00
Speaker
um you you have a big bad that's meant to be the recurring big bad of the campaign and it's session two and the the players have him on his back foot ah flip a dark side point and he escapes i'll be by i'll get you next time gadget basically or just as simile it's like the most easy one it's like uh you you have like the uh you wanted this uh
00:27:31
Speaker
monsters that they're fighting to be a little bit more dangerous flip a destiny point to make it harder to hit them yeah and we briefly touched on those last two symbols on the on the proficiency dice or the challenge dice there's an extra symbol on the proficiency called a triumph on the challenge called a despair now that only unlike the other symbols cannot be canceled. Now they they bring with them a built in success and failure that can be canceled. But the triumph and despair effects aren't. And
Initiative and Homebrew Rules
00:28:13
Speaker
basically for them are like critical, critical success or critical failure. Something really awesome happens or something really terrible happens. And then
00:28:26
Speaker
Say you get a triumph, but you failed to check. That introduces what we call a narrative triumph, where you can fail, but introduce something critical into the story. or but again This is all, this is, there's plenty of examples in the book, along with different like examples for specific checks. But ultimately it's like, I think like, uh, one of our players, uh, Stephanie said it the best way.
00:28:57
Speaker
It doesn't hurt to ask. Yep. Where the GM can do is say, no, that wouldn't work here. Yeah. And I've done that myself before. As the GM, I've said, no, that that's not how this works. Same here. its like Sometimes they ask for someone that's like, would be helpful, but just doesn't fit for the scene. Yeah.
00:29:21
Speaker
or it's just it It's not quite a we win button, but it gets awfully close. And we will say, it's those triumphs and despairs that make the best stories. And we definitely got some glory stories in the future related to those triumphs. i A single triumph and a single despair can change certain entire sessions from like like a like So it was like a bad event until like, no, this is this is a moment of of glory. And all of this is a quick, quick overview of how the system works. Because again, we're not trying to do a deep dive. Hopefully it all makes sense, enough sense to follow.
00:30:18
Speaker
The main thing is it's a narrative story telling device. And that's what I love about this system. Yes. That is. Combat is quick and snappy.
00:30:31
Speaker
Combat is a quick, snappy narrative and the focus is on the story. Yes, there are dice rolls because it's an RPG, but those dice rolls are meant to forward the story and meant to help the players and the GM both contribute to and feed that story. And the beauty about putting this system in Star Wars is that There's a lot of lore in Star Wars. You could both, what we call canon and legends, and you don't have to set your story in during the Galactic Civil War. You could go to the Clone Wars. You could go before that, you could go after that. It's almost- You can do however you want. You could be hard canon, just legends or free form.
00:31:29
Speaker
it's It's your Star Wars. You could be the smuggler criminals looking to plan and do that big high. So you could just be a bunch of colonists trying to survive on an outer rim planet while the forces around you try to beat you down. And what one of my favorite short hands that I saw a lot when I first started playing this system was Edge of the Empire.
00:31:59
Speaker
he was saying Yeah, we're playing Star Wars Firefly. Yeah, pretty much. I mean, yeah. And I'm not going to lie, the first campaign that I ran in this system unintentionally kind of was Star Wars Firefly. What you described, yeah. to To the point that one of my players created his character and said, yeah, this is River.
00:32:29
Speaker
and And another one of my players, my my wife, Stephanie, ah said, Oh, yeah, I'm making I'm making saffron. I'm making yo saffbridge from the our Mrs. Reynolds episode. I figured on that we're, we're currently playing a system that you're a game that you're running a rebel yell, where you're wife is playing a hot rock star yes because she based off of the base off of the star wars season did one visions episode yeah and it it's a fun campaign i she she saw that episode of visions and said i want to play a hot rock star and i'm like man howard nick or robert or i gonna come up with a scenario where you play a hot rock star
00:33:21
Speaker
And then honestly, inspiration, as you both know, as GMs comes from anywhere. Oh, it does. I know so much. We have a story for that, but we can't tell that yet. That's not over. But I was reading Bono's memoir. And he was talking about, especially after the success of the Joshua Tree,
00:33:49
Speaker
the international travel that he was able to do for humanitarian purposes. He was you know leveraging his fame and his his wealth for humanitarian purposes. And all of a sudden, the the light bulb, I won't say it snapped on over my head, it flickered on. And of I like, wait a second.
00:34:17
Speaker
If you have like the equivalent of a local band that's trying to make it big, here on earth, they go from town to town trying to you trying to play, trying to make it big, trying to score that record deal. um In Star Wars, the equivalent from going of going from town to town is going from world to world. And what if just tour but your tour bus is a starship yeah your your tour bus is well you're at the level the that the band is at you're you're you're broken down tour van yeah this is a starship and what if you know to fit in with star more star wars flavor the rebel alliance comes to you and says hey
00:35:11
Speaker
Nobody's paying attention to you going all over the galaxy because you're this little band that's trying to make it big.
Accessibility and Community Engagement
00:35:20
Speaker
Could we prevail upon you to do some work for us occasionally? And that's total punk rock style. And everything just kind of fell into place from there. And yeah of course, music themed and with the rebellion connection, it's got to be called Rebel Yell. Yeah.
00:35:41
Speaker
And I remember when I when i got first introduced to this system, it was on a game that was actually based off an actual video game, Dark Forces. The Dark Forces campaign. I still remember our Dark Forces. Basically, hey, we're doing the Dark Forces story, we're just taking out Kyle Katarn and putting your characters in there. Because i need it is' like the only way to replace Kyle Katarn is like a group of players.
00:36:07
Speaker
And yeah, we just went in it and it was fun. We definitely have a glory story in there. But we don't say that just yet. But there's like, I basically ran them through it and like, it was some tough enemies and tough situations. But they but it's like, I was like, yeah, I just loved it. I grew up playing the Dark Forces game as a kid. And it was like, yeah, I just want to,
00:36:36
Speaker
I'll just run them through it with a little bit of like extra flair. Or I remember what I did for my second Star Wars campaign idea is that we were actually just ah talking around your living room one time, Nick. We were just talking about Batman and DC and just talking about how cool it would be to think of them as like Star Wars characters and just kept talking and talking until I was like. Yeah, we just kind of just like throw like, how would we make that? And I was just like, you know what?
00:37:06
Speaker
Challenge accepted. And I made what I called Dark Knight's Arise, or Dark Knight's Rising. And it was just, hey, get your DC character that you like, make it into a Star Wars character, and I'm going to throw you on Corellia, because it's basically Star Wars Gotham. Yep. and And it was fun. It was really fun. It was fun. And and then what did he do in session too, Nick? Oh, we're not getting into stories.
00:37:35
Speaker
Not the time for that. But I will say, like, ah really put the fear of Condiment Man into me. Condiment King. Condiment King. But one of those is Nick's fault, OK? Fair. OK, both of those are my fault.
00:37:57
Speaker
But yeah, I i just i love the narrative nature of the system. The way the way I found it is, um i had I was actually in the process. I had thought, hey, you know what? i It's been too long since I've played a role-playing game. I want to play one again. I want to play Star Wars. The the first system, the West End game system. D6, yeah. The D6 system is ah super easy, super intuitive.
00:38:29
Speaker
I know it like the back of my hand, cause that was, I had a long running campaign that I was part of, of that years ago. It's like, okay, it's a nice little system. It's easy to play. So I started planning out that Star Wars Firefly, or what, you know, that one. It would become your Star Wars Firefly-esque. In that West End system. And then some friends of ours who were players of yours at the time, Nick.
00:38:59
Speaker
Yep. I know this. I know this story. Well, they, they were over at our house and they said, Hey, the guy that runs the Star Wars RPG for us is launching a new campaign. You should join. I was like, okay. Yeah, sure. And I remember that day very, very much. You came in with, with your son, Sander. Yeah. He came the second time. Oh, the second time you're right. Yeah. He came the second time. Um, but.
00:39:30
Speaker
The the introduces me to you is like you sat down i was like you were interested had that that first session i was like okay the system is is interesting. It's really interesting. And I was still planning on on running my game in the D6 system.
00:39:51
Speaker
i think I think that's when we first really talked for the first time about like, and I saw like, oh, you know, you know, cyborg stuff. Cool. yeah And part of why I was going to run the D six system for my campaign is my son that you mentioned who was 1314 at the time was interested in playing it. And I knew that the D six system was simple. And I was like,
00:40:15
Speaker
rather than trying to teach him two systems at once or whatever, let me just teach the D6 because I know that one. And it's it's so easy to teach. Well, he did come along with me to set for the second game. And that's when I saw that you really dialed in and well, you can tell that story. Yeah. And he was originally just going to sit in the corner. He had like a like He had his 3DS with him, yeah. Yeah. He was going to sit in the corner and just play, but he kept getting interested in what was going on. Because we were doing a lot of stuff at the time. like It was like a heist. It was like someone snuck a grenade out of someone. There was a heist. There was a race. The ice the the the cake making baking plan. Yeah.
00:41:07
Speaker
and
00:41:09
Speaker
he slowly was migrating from the corner of your game room over towards the table. And there's like the sort of and he he kept migrating closer and closer and was leaning in and started contributing ideas to us in the group. And you invited him, hey, if you're interested, come back with your dad again next time and bring a character. sheet And the rest, as they say, is history. I i scrapped plans for my campaign being in D6, changed it over to this one, and never looked back. I would say this is my sort of story about this system and how fun and easy it is to get into. I had some some friends of mine from high school, like, okay, Nick, you talk about these role-playing games and stuff like that.
00:42:10
Speaker
that you do on the weekends. It's like, can we try that one time? It's like, yeah sir, awesome. They came over and so what's your first question? What's a role playing game?
00:42:25
Speaker
but but And no joke within
00:42:35
Speaker
30 to they had completed their own character seats and were rolling dice.
00:42:46
Speaker
yeah And honestly, I think I've, I don't wanna, I think people probably have probably done it faster, but I think I've, for, if someone knows Star Wars, I can get them, there's character seat done within at least 45 minutes.
00:43:06
Speaker
If they haven't seen this system before and rolling dies within the hour. Yeah, that sounds about right. It's, it's a simple system to learn and start to master. It takes like probably two, two sessions. Yes. And then for me, it was actually gotten involved with mixed group online through discord.
00:43:34
Speaker
Like I had this was during the, uh, during the pandemic times, during the dark times, during the dark time, the lockup. So I think for a good two or three months, I didn't even met Nick in person. I was, I only knew him as the GM over the discord call. And this was, then I was, I was learned. I was learn was like, okay. I wanted to keep the group going. It was like, luckily there was other people that made a very comprehensive like dice bots for discord yes those those are great people level but like and that's what kept this group alive during those times was like definitely a lot of tactical difficulties but i i made it work somehow yes and when i joined i had never played the edge star wars game before i'd even played the d6 before so i had to learn it on the fly in the middle of a campaign that i just joined
00:44:35
Speaker
And it was so appealing, so easy to learn, so much fun doing it, that I stayed throughout that entire quarantine, playing games over Discord. And finally when it lifted, we were like, okay, Nick was like, okay, I think we're safe to go into my house. And I'm like, bet, I'll be there. I remember that moment, it was like, I remember being like, you're Robert. And like, you're Nick, okay. It was kind of surreal being like,
00:45:06
Speaker
Yeah, I know your voice and I've been talking to you for like a literal months. Yeah, it's one of those, you hear the voice and you just get a picture in your head. And then when you meet a person, you're like, okay, now I have a face to put the voice to. Yeah, we had quite a few games going over Discord during these times. yeah certainly some of them yeah Some of them more successful than others.
00:45:33
Speaker
Obviously, but again, they would say none of us were ready for that. I think literally like we were starting Dark Forces had its first session just like a week before the lockdown happened.
00:45:54
Speaker
because i remember Because I remember I saw Betsy for the first time at Dark Forces.
00:46:03
Speaker
And then everything changed. And then it was like, okay, we're going to be, we're going to go exclusively Discord. It's like, and we'll see how that works. Honestly, I felt the whole system, the whole like a meetup group was going to fall apart at that point. It's like, because it was all in person up to that point.
00:46:29
Speaker
no But nope, you you got new players and most of us who were there before stuck with you. And again, mostly due to the fact that there was a cohesive dice bot done by the, there's an official discord for, well, semi-official discord that has a dice bot that you can add to your discord channels. And now you just, you can't get rid of us, Nick.
00:46:59
Speaker
No, not
Teaching and Entry Points for New Players
00:47:01
Speaker
that I would want to do now. You guys are part of my family. yeah And all because of a super awesome system, a system that's. Just and again, we can probably get it done into another time when we get into the fact that this system actually spun off a spinoff system.
00:47:29
Speaker
Yes. That's similar but open. Which kind of you takes us on to that next point. we We have been waxing nostalgic and poetic about everything that we love about this system. And Robert hinted at this earlier. It's not a perfect system. No, system's perfect.
00:47:56
Speaker
No system is perfect. I don't expect any system to be perfect, but you what what's another big component of Star Wars? The wars in the stars, the space combat ships, fighters and freighters and art destroyers. I, when initially came out, how they handled it was pretty good.
00:48:26
Speaker
Not is perfect. it Honestly, it's what's more freeform that I liked, but definitely not as mechanically. There are a lot of fiddly bits to space combat. Yes.
00:48:44
Speaker
in the system. And those fiddly bits can be really difficult to keep track of. um Unless, especially in like multi types of ships like fighters versus freighters versus big cruisers and stuff like that. Yeah, it can it can be really tough to keep track of. And, and i but I
Challenges in Combat Mechanics
00:49:07
Speaker
do admire how they tried to do that. They they still tried to keep the narrative components. But yeah the larger the larger larger it goes, the more stressed the narrative becomes. Because I know I've never tried it myself. I usually use space battles as kind of background scenes. But I know you, Nick, you've done a few space battles yourself. How did you kind of feel about that? Honestly, like I do try to keep larger space battles are like
00:49:41
Speaker
in the background and keep it closer to like freighter starfighter stuff. Yeah. Same. That way it's more like close in because like once we get to like starships with like 120 cannons, that's like, even if you dispersed it around like sir certain mechanics with bigger shows like Order 66 could go into.
00:50:07
Speaker
It becomes a bit cumbersome. yeah because like you know in returning to the jedi where the aw wing smashes into the executiveors' flagship and the whole thing just goes down and blows up You can't make that happen mechanically. like that That is a narrative moment.
00:50:27
Speaker
and To Fantasy Flight Games Edge Studios credit, when they did create that spin-off game Genesis, they took everything that works about the Star Wars system. And let's let's be frank, one of the universal complaints among most players of the system is the ship combat system.
00:50:54
Speaker
the vehicle combat system. yeah I will also say that I personally don't have as many complaints, but I can understand a lot of the complaints, especially as it goes bigger. And for that spin-off game, Genesis, they streamlined ship and vehicle combat tremendously.
00:51:17
Speaker
um And it does it from what you shared of that and from what I've read of it, It actually made me more interested in doing my my dream Starfighter campaign. yeah And the the previously mentioned and and recommended Order 66 podcast did a fantastic episode about converting Star Wars ship combat to Genesis ship combat. Now I listened to it and since I hadn't done any ship combat, vehicle combat in Genesis before,
00:51:56
Speaker
I was kind of getting it, and I was like, that sounds easier, but I'm not sure. And I had the good fortune um in 2023 at Gamer Nation Con of playing a a game run by one of the hosts of Order 66, GM Chris, of playing in a Genesis Last Starfighter game that he ran that was all vehicle combat, all starship combat.
00:52:27
Speaker
you were in Gun Stars through the whole game. And and it sounds like it it really works. It really works. It was a lot of fun. It streamlines things rather than having the two different range systems for ground and space. It
Community Growth and Creativity
00:52:49
Speaker
just borrows the same terminology. You're just looking at it from a different scale. Actions are a bit more or define. Yeah, everything is was just more streamlined. And I was like, OK, yes, one of these days I need to sit down and make this conversion. I don't really have any plans in the near future to have like I probably work with you because I would like to do like a short campaign that it's just like a all the space combat.
00:53:19
Speaker
Well, you know, that, that one can't without saying anything since we haven't announced it to the players, that one campaign that I was telling you about that I asked about you co GMing with me, that sound, it would be natural to include some ship combat in that. heat that's all like And in the words of Forrest Gump, that's all I have to say about that. Yeah, I can't get spoiled on it.
00:53:48
Speaker
No, nope, nope, nope. But that's really the biggest hurdle that I've encountered with this system. Honestly, like again, like I took people that literally had their first question to me like, what is a role-playing game? And they were making checks within an hour. They didn't say around because, well, they were big Star Wars fans. But they said like they had a fun time. And like if it was something that they were like into, they would would do.
00:54:18
Speaker
Yeah, which and like someone who grew up knowing Dungeons and Dragons kind of their system like, yeah, go with this number to succeed. Getting introduced to this game where it's like everything has a narrative flair to it. It was like, oh, this is this is refreshing. Just have something that isn't just you didn't reach the number. so yeah It is a binary system. Yeah. Failures can be successful.
00:54:46
Speaker
a or advantageous and sometimes have like a have a consequence. Sometimes it's like you would want to fail, so you fail or try to fail, and it's just a dice to decide whether you do or not. Yeah. it's it It is one of my favorite systems to play. ah Again, I feel like that really helped with me this group that eventually became our greater group that became what we are now it's because of how quick and easy it is like get into it like swashbuckling adventures like quick comp that uh that uh just uh no like hard fails but like
00:55:36
Speaker
the the excitement whenever someone rolls a dice around the table is what I always love about role-playing games and this every single like role in this game is like everyone wants to lean in for it like what what did it get what did it get how how did did you do did did you did did you get a triumph did you get oh you got a triumph oh you got a despair oh no oh no wait why was that the role why did you do that Everyone's like, oh, wait, du that that that does that cancel out? Does that not cancel it out? is's like It's like, each role feels like everyone's like invested. And I'll say as a player, there's nothing more foreboding than you rolling in despair and and your GM saying, I'll hold on to that. Oh, yeah. Which I'm going to be honest, peek behind the GM screen here.
00:56:31
Speaker
A lot of times when you guys roll a despair, unless I have something immediately in mind, I'll hold on to it because I can't think of anything right then. And as the session goes on, oh, this is going to be good. This is where I can use my pocket to spare. Yes.
00:56:52
Speaker
yeah you did
00:56:55
Speaker
Again, there's also a lot of homebrew, a lot of ideas that we do. Yep. And a semi-regular segment that we're probably going, that we hope to do on the podcast when we're talking about a specific system is we're going to include a little bit of homebrew or house rules that we use. And I have some to add to this and I think Robert has some to add. Robert has a big one. And so. Do you have one as well? No, I'll go first. Yeah, you go ahead, Nick. I mean, mine's probably the most ah simple one. If there's a tie between during during an initiative, you've rolled for cool or visions based on whether or not you're being actively attacked or you're attacking someone.
00:57:51
Speaker
I normally do it dude is like if a player and an NPC have the same same initiative role, I defer the PC. You're the player characters. This is your movie. so Not not to to interrupt or interject here. That's something we forgot to mention in describing the system.
00:58:14
Speaker
it has It has one of my favorite initiative systems. Oh, you're right. oh one is we forget Same here. Oh, I i mean, you're right. So really quickly, when you roll your initiative, you just roll a positive dice unless there are extenuating circumstances and count the numbers of successes and advantages. um You know, two success, three advantage, what have you. And The adversaries do that too. That determines the initiative order. But instead of, okay, Robert rolled two success and three advantages and Nick rolled one success and five advantages. So Robert has that two, three slot and Nick has that one four slot. They are PC and NPC slots.
00:59:12
Speaker
and you can shuffle which player goes in which PC slot and vice versa yeah from round it's more people say like D and&D has the most tactical. like No, this is true. Tactical change. It's like first turn. I could be first. The third turn I could be the fourth PC to go. It's all interchangeable. It's all interchangeable and allow everyone to discuss it. Yeah, it allows you to plan and coordinate and create a strategy with the rest of your player group. So he's oh, I have an idea.
00:59:53
Speaker
And so you go first to set me up for my idea. Yes. And then the next round I'm going to go first because that will then be the payoff for my idea. And again, yeah also it benefits anyone that makes a failed check, like say that they do
Endless Storytelling Possibilities
01:00:11
Speaker
miss their shots. Like, okay, uh, I need to take cover now. Can I take first slot to button to cover?
01:00:22
Speaker
because I miss myself. and then i like a lot of sort tactical on the move and here there And since your homebrew rule is the most exciting of them, Robert, let me jump in really quick. Mine is super simple. I had a player once who didn't want to be force sensitive, but wanted a lightsaber.
01:00:50
Speaker
which there's nothing inherently wrong with that, but I wanted to reflect the difficulty of not being a force user and using a lightsaber because you're not in sync with with the weapon. You haven't attuned to the weapon to borrow a D and&D term. You don't have the force to help you compensate for a massless blade all of that so you don't have the reflexes that the force brings you so for non-force users using a lightsaber with their lightsaber difficulty on a check is automatically upgraded once there's always the possibility of a despair for a non-force user to use a lightsaber because like
01:01:47
Speaker
to to borrow an applicable turn now that we're in December, you poke your eye out. You'll shoot your eye out. And boy does it hurt. Yes. But that that's my quickie homebrew. I have something similar that I just require them to use. If they're trying to use it, they if they have the the melee skill, they can use melee, but it will never be as effective and sort of similar, like an upgrade to trying a lightsaber attack. But Robert, you're homebrews.
01:02:30
Speaker
we both we love and We love and fear your homebrew. Yes, this is the there a little homebrew I've made up and then I love it.
01:02:42
Speaker
And my players both love it and hate it at times. It's like, I see the Destiny pool. You got the light and the dark. And there were some sentence instances where your your player characters, your players that you're GMing for, just keep flipping them. Keep flipping all of the light until suddenly you have an entire Destiny pool of dark. It's like, well, okay. We could go through just where I'm flipping this and trying to get it back over the metal back and forth. Or I was like, what if?
01:03:12
Speaker
I flip all the dark to light and introduce just something completely major in the story. Something just totally out there like that really story changing or really dangerous thing. Like I know the first time I ever used this was in my own home campaign and they were these guys were infiltrating a ah gas refinery on a planet kind of between like three warring factions. So they go in start doing their stuff until suddenly they all have all dark. And then I just one by one in front of them just flip them each to light. And I just watch their face go, wait, wait, wait, what are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing? And then I decided, okay, you're doing your job. You're trying to leave, but you've caused so much damage to this foundry that the other two fractions
01:04:11
Speaker
are moving in to attack this foundry and now you're caught in the middle of a major battle between three boring factions while the third faction you were hitting the refinery against brings in one of their star destroyers overhead because there's this giant major battle going on so yeah you're gonna have to get out in the middle of basically um an official battle so you're gonna have to dodge rockets, grenades, dropships, good luck!
01:04:41
Speaker
That's kind of the first time I did it. And then I just was like, I like this. I'm going to make it a home where I'm going to keep doing it. And then I was surprised how everyone loved it because at Gamer Nation Con, when I did this, or when Nick and Daryl also did this at their tables, they said their players were like, whoa, that is such a good home brew. We're going to adopt that.
01:05:03
Speaker
Yeah, I did not use it at my table, but I mentioned it at my table. And the the crew from from Houston, they were like, oh my god, oh my god, we're going to use that. It's a simple thing for a major effect. And now whenever I GM, there's, well, personally, there's two things my players either are wary of me of or straight out try to ban me to do.
01:05:31
Speaker
it's they have to watch the destiny pull so to get all dark I can do something really horrible or really story-changing and they don't like me rolling the criticals critical injuries yes because you are a beast at crits but yeah we we hate we hate your
Future Prospects and System Enhancements
01:05:51
Speaker
crits yeah and It's like again, that's that's just you. That's just that's That's how he rolls and and though for those of you because we haven't explained is that for critical injuries when you get a critical injury What we do is we roll a percentile which is we just roll a d100 and a d10 And whatever that result is we look it up on a critical entry table and we say okay This is what you get like you could get a minor nick or you could like it or you could break your left arm or something
01:06:20
Speaker
And then. Lose the arm entirely forever. Yes. But that's only if you get multiple critical injuries or your opponents have a certain talent because. Or Robert rolls. Because percentiles only go up to a hundred, but if you get more, we can go all the way up to 150. And if you get over 150, it's instant death. And yes, I'm known to roll really high on that critical injury table. Yes. Yes, you are. that's So won't let me hear the end of it. How I broke her.
01:06:50
Speaker
are broke her leg in the first session of my campaign. But yeah, i me and Robert were code GMing a game currently. yep So I'm allowing him to use his home brew. But ah um sort of the probational idea of like, I roll the critical hits. Yeah, they won't let me roll the criticals.
01:07:19
Speaker
Yeah, i will but I will allow him carplants on how he uses the the whatever we will eventually call this homebrew role. Behind the du GM screen, I love how when I see the players doing stuff and they don't realize they're living that Disney pool until one of them is like, no, no, no, no ha wait, wait, it's almost dark, but we got to be careful because it gives them another thing to think about. it's like Again, it's it's very different from like, yeah it's kind I think it was the natural evolution of my players migrating to you, Robert, and that they would always like be miserly with the destiny pool. They'd like hold on to every single light side point.
01:08:05
Speaker
but yeahy I've given them a reason now. hi Part of that on my end, when I first when i first started playing, I wasn't used to the Destiny Pool concept. So I never thought to use those Destiny Points.
01:08:27
Speaker
and And... Oh, we gotta share the one glory moment that you used the Destiny Pool. And I think you know which one you're gonna... I think you should share, Daryl. Which one? It involves a... a mini.
01:08:45
Speaker
oh Oh, that one. I wasn't here for this, but I forgot about it. Well, unless you want to save that for another time. Well, the the only thing yeah story not to do that in an episode. Yeah, well well, we'll save that one because it wasn't so much using the the destiny point expenditure in that was the price to trigger the signature ability. This is true. Like, the you know, the yeah, the real the real, ah you know, the real price was paid.
01:09:15
Speaker
yes we'll get to that yes we we will come up with a whole uh whole episode for relating stories that just honestly we could bring in like like a probably most of the regulars for at least one oh yeah what story eats though i will say going back to the the edge system what i really like the one thing i really like personally what they did is they explored planets in the Star Wars galaxy board. They wrote out biographies, kind of how it went. They put places of interest. So it's like, I need a place to go to this and I don't want to do the the original Euron Tatooine again for the like 30th time in the series. Congratulations. It's like, no, how about you go all the way out there to Ryloth or you go into Hutt space. What kind of plans do you see there? or
01:10:12
Speaker
but if you want to go the heyon or but if you want what if What if you actually want to go to Kessel and try to do that whole Kessel then? That was part of my by introduction into the larger world of homebrew for this system. I started doing write-ups in the FFG edge yeah format for planets that they hadn't written up.
01:10:41
Speaker
I meant because the system is so simple, but complex that you can like, respect like all the older stuff, like anything that shows up, you can pretty easily like sort of like, okay, here's how this would work. And here's how this mechanically would look. And I, I apparently.
01:11:02
Speaker
I apparently was making a bigger splash than I thought I was by doing these write-ups and posting them. I think I found it by accident before I even met you. Well, but that you couldn't have because I wouldn't have been doing those write-ups before then. again then but I think I was like in like at least similar forum grounds with you. but Yeah, tell them that you did.
01:11:26
Speaker
Well, that's another- That's a story for it. But on on the official FFG forums when they still existed, I had people coming to me saying, hey, I have this planet that I'm using for my game. Can you do one of those planet pages for me? So yeah, sure. As long as you don't mind that I posted on my website.
01:11:55
Speaker
Yeah, I've only made one planet myself once and I just love like Just making up the story like okay who lives here. How'd they get here? What's the government like? What what places would be well known on this planet? Like what are the players gonna see and hear and interact with? I have a plan that I have that I completely home-brewed that I have like not been able to find a good place to use and yeah i I have completely home brewed some planets and i have I have written up existing planets that just don't have write-ups. You ever seen the Star Wars galaxy map? There are tons of planets or what they call like star objects. There's just nothing about them. They're completely blank. They just say they exist. So you have like thousands of planets that you can just think of.
01:12:48
Speaker
like Anywhere like you just point at a location in Star Wars like there's probably something there because I was like, okay there's this planet on in between like a Two great hyperspace routes and a minor one. So I was like, okay It's definitely gonna be a trade world because it's or trade up. It's just right there Everyone's gonna get to it. I was like, you know what? I'm gonna make this an agro world. It's just full of farmland and it's run by a lot by an oligarchy i was like That's what I'm gonna do for
01:13:19
Speaker
for but that first campaign that I ran in this system, I brought in an entire area of space that I had created way back when I was in that campaign in the West End system. Because I had, as we were we're playing, I was like, okay, you know what? These aren't the main characters of the movies, so they're not going to be the ones to defeat the Empire.
01:13:46
Speaker
So, and we had rotating GM duties in that campaign. And so I was like, you know what? Okay, not for every session that I run, but for some of them, let me create another big, bad space government that they can make a dent against. And so I i created, i I completely stole the name and the leader from the 1980s comic Dread Star. ahh But i I created the Holy Church of the Instrumentality. It's a religious organization that finds true artificial intelligence to be evil and demonic. So there's there's no droids. there's no
01:14:43
Speaker
You know, nothing like that. They feel that it's sacrilegious and is an affront to genuine life and intelligence. And their leader was you know a dark side force user. And so I carved out this whole section of space.
01:15:04
Speaker
And you know the the instrumentality was basically sitting back and watching the Galactic Civil War to take place with their own designs to once there was a winner, that winner was still going to be weakened, and then the instrumentality could make their move to try to take over the galaxy. yeah And going off of that, like We took a, ah you and me, Darrell, are currently running a a game based off of a West End Games campaign, ah the Far Arbor Project as a co-TM group. Right. And you spoiler alert, for my Homebrew website, I'm in the process of doing a conversion of that campaign book to this system.
01:16:00
Speaker
ive been working on it for a while but oh nice so yeah but the good thing about this game is like Daryl said you're not going to be the ones fighting the empire you're not going to face Vader in one-on-one combat but it's like if you do that the system makes certain that like you know that you're a like you will die if you face Vader unless as we now in the later bo story you think up a mcguffins that kind of gets you out of it Right. But and this game but it basically, it's like it's it's very for the stats for Vader, which do exist. And normally in a games like if you get sad, it you can kill it. um Their initial stats for Vader are pretty pretty tough.
Beginner Games and Resources
01:16:49
Speaker
Well, their initial write up for Vader was it's Darth Vader run.
01:16:56
Speaker
yeah if they were Basically, basically he's it's it's hallway it's hallway at the end of Rogue One Vader. And you're the soldiers.
01:17:07
Speaker
But yeah, like I was saying, it's not gonna be that, but you could be fighting one of the many moths in the Empire. You could be fighting a primelord or a pirate gang. A sentient piece of armor that could f throw a soup around. Don't bring that guy up.
01:17:24
Speaker
Carol said, some type of organization. Religious, corporate, it could be anything. If I have a corporation, for all I know, I know that's many people's little dream of just finding a corporation. A bounty hunter hunt has has a beef review. Your ex-lover, whatever. It's like, the story is your story. This is your Star Wars story.
01:17:49
Speaker
I mean, heck, I had my players fight as this spawn wompa once.
01:17:58
Speaker
I threw the zombie stormtroopers from the death troopers novel at my group once. And hey it worked out that my, the player who was playing the pilot of the group at the time, she had, you know, I worked with her and you know, she had like pulled me aside and said like,
01:18:20
Speaker
I'm loving the game. I just don't have time to commit to it any anymore. So can you write me out, please? And so I wrote her out in that session. And the the last they saw of her, she was being swarmed by a group of of zombie stormtroopers. They never saw a body. So it's entirely possible that had she ever decided to come back I mean, that's the rule. That's the rule. So you got to see a body. So you know it was there's so much versatility to this system. I love it so much. And it is it's again, it's it really works off the idea that of all the stuff you love about Star Wars, it's fun. It's campy. It can be silly. It could be serious. It could be scary. It could be exciting. It can be dramatic.
01:19:20
Speaker
Yeah, there's so much to do with it. no There's no wrong Star War.
01:19:28
Speaker
And now that, you know, I'm working on homebrew for the High Republic era because I love that era, reading the books. So I've done some i've done some with like the Old Republic. like I've worked on some ideas for that too. And like currently, ah our Our current campaign, Robert, we're decided to do our own post-sequel era comms. Exactly. And in my own campaign at my place, I decided, because one of the eras I really like is the after and or the whole Imperial Warlord era. I was like, I want to do a campaign in that. You're just a group of people trying to survive this fractured galaxy with these many Imperial Warlords with a pledge of republic trying to get control.
01:20:21
Speaker
There's no, the galaxy of Star Wars is so large, both in terms of scale and time, that you can set it anywhere, any time, any place, anywhere. And there's always a, there's always a one place that you can carve out that that's, that's the story that by players would do. Yeah. And then and the system is, encourages you to explore and These are your, it's a narrative system, so these are these are the big damn heroes. Wrong franchise. I know that. But I'll allow it. I'll allow it because when when Robert was describing his um his dark side flip, I was like, yeah he could throw something interesting at us and define interesting. Oh God, oh God, we're all gonna die. ah
01:21:16
Speaker
And I will say this system, at least for me, it was a great system
Conclusion and Future Episodes
01:21:20
Speaker
to start with, because it helped me get used to it and understand it, to when we moved on to those other game systems. Yeah, honestly, it helped. Honestly, it's, as again, I said that I took people that didn't know what a role-playing game system was, and they were getting into it. And they their only is issue was like, yeah, we're just not big Star Wars fans. it's like But they had a good time for a good couple hours. It was like, yeah, we we can see where this can go and how this could work. And at least for me, it was, this system was a great way to just get creative. I've always had to create a phone enemy and I just love black nigga. It actively asks you, it's like, it's like, it actively says like, when you can't think of something, just again, like the worst like as a GM in the system can say is no.
01:22:10
Speaker
But most often they'll say like, yes, but maybe require a requirement or something. But it's like, it allows you to be like, here's how do you want to want to see the situation go? How do you want this story to progress? isn Isn't it just like, oh, you didn't meet this number. You can't do anything. It's like you failed, but you have this, these advantages, or you got this narrative from him.
01:22:40
Speaker
So you fail, but what would you like to put or introduce into the story? Again, the worst thing the DM can say is no, but most often as it, and maybe we'll get this into a future episodes, but I'm always the opinion as a GM. he Most, so unless you know, it's a hard no, like it just wouldn't work for the story. It's usually a yes, but. Or, a or even a no, but. Yeah.
01:23:09
Speaker
No, you can't do that, but you can do this. Yes, but you also have to do this to accomplish it.
01:23:21
Speaker
or does does I can't believe you've done this to me. oh don The dreaded uh... The dreaded miniature story. I run into a room and scream into a pillow. Yes. That's only happened a few times.
01:23:47
Speaker
But it's happened. More than once, yes. yes More than once. Less times than I had to come down and come down with ah come back up with a bottle of something. Again, stories for another day. Yes. But ah I think that we have waxed on for quite a while about what we love about this system. Is there anything else that we wanted to hit on? ah The system is not over. As we said, that Ed Studio is currently working on reprints of both the dice and the books. Granted, it has been a year and a half since I heard this.
01:24:27
Speaker
But a year and a half ago, Sam Greger Stewart, the RPG manager for Edge Studio, was asked in an interview about new material for Star Wars. He said, it is in development, but because of how Lucasfilm's licensing works, it's very slow going. So it's it's been quite a while since the transition from FFG to Edge. And for those who aren't aware, they're both imprints of the same parent company as Moday. So it was just a corporate restructure. ah But they they haven't produced anything new in quite a while. They haven't announced anything new in quite a while. But they are in the process of bringing stuff back to cells. Yeah. they
01:25:24
Speaker
They're getting reprints back out. Dice are back in production. And so the system is not dead, but it's definitely on sort of it's cup it's working back to working back on coming back. It's on a bit of hiatus. And, ah you know, there there's always rumors about Oh, the system is dead. Oh, the system is, the license is gonna go to somebody else. ah That hasn't happened at this point. Lucasfilm tends to pretty well stay with a licensee if- Especially when the when the content's doing good. Yeah. um But hopefully we'll be seeing something
01:26:17
Speaker
in the near future, um i know the content I know from talking to Sam that they are unable to even announce anything. Yeah, NDAs and stuff like that. Until it reaches a certain point in the development process. And basically, that's the point where they are sending the files to the printer. Yeah. But the main thing is like,
01:26:46
Speaker
If this was like a year ago, you would have a hard time finding ah books and dice at a reasonable price. But now they're coming back into the, into like your friendly local game store. So sort so yeah I feel like this is a good, maybe a bit too late for Christmas lists, but. Well, especially considering we're going to be releasing this episode on New Year's.
01:27:15
Speaker
That's true. But it's more likely that now that you'll be able to find these these books to in engage and dice to engage in this system.
01:27:29
Speaker
Yeah, and I heartily recommend the starter games, the beginner game sets. kind of eye They They come with dice. They come with great adventures. Personally, I'm partial to the edge of the empire beginner game. Oh, that's a great one. That's a great one. That seems to be of the ones that i I've played all of them. I've run Edge of the Empire and I think. I think the only one I haven't I think the only one I haven't run, but I did own was the Force Awakens beginner set. But but that does have a great galaxy map, great galaxy map. I of all of them that I've played or run, I'm really partial to Edge of the Empire.
01:28:20
Speaker
because it's the one that seems to engage people the most. It had it has it it gets them a ship, it gets, it's it's it's a fun one. I've run it at least two times and one of them actually spun out into like a full ass campaign. Yes, the best starter sets usually do. You either play it once or you use it at the base to create your campaign.
01:28:44
Speaker
yeah But they're they're great beginner games. They're some of the best beginner games that I've ever run. Come with dice, great, great character designs. And full maps and stuff like that. And follow-up mini-adventures online at the Edge Studio. For free. Download for free. ah Additional PCs, pre-gen PCs for download on. Character sheets for printable.
01:29:14
Speaker
So the they're great beginner games. um you can get You can get anyone in involved. So like even if you're like completely out of your depth, like you can like start a game with friends yeah instantly. Yeah, ready to go. and Great bargain for the price given the dice that you get in them. ah But it's a great system. Can't say enough about it.
01:29:43
Speaker
and without starting to repeat myself. Same here. I will add one more thing. If you are a little worried about making your characters, there's this beautiful thing that you can find online called. Oh dude, Star Wars character generator. Yes. Age you in making your character and there's even a part of it that we GMs use to make our own enemies and adversaries ourselves. And if you would like to download a little shameless self promotion here,
01:30:13
Speaker
Um, on my Homebrew website, myswrpg.com, I have a link to OgDude's character generator to download. He's got some nice ah entries himself. Yes. i've yeah I've used them for several of my enemies as well, or at least modified them too. You want to know how to use a lightsaber gun? He's got one. Yeah. Yes. I sure do. Um, I think I helped you Homebrew that one a bit. Yeah. Yeah. I think he helped me.
01:30:43
Speaker
helped me with a little bit of the tweaks. I already had most of it done, but then I ran a couple of ideas by you and you're like, oh, try this. And it made perfect sense. But yeah, like I think that and just but the worst you can do is like yeah give it a shot for yourselves. Yeah. The same with any game that we're going to talk about on on this podcast. If it sounds interesting, give it a shot. The worst that happens is you've had a couple of hours of a game that you played and didn't quite work for you. A little pearl wisdom, I'll just say at the end is, if you're on foot, don't try that to fight a vehicle. Yeah. Oh, am I fine? Actually, I have one final on pearl of wisdom. ah Fall damage. Oh, yes, very much. you This is the one antithesis. You see characters fall all the time in the movies, and they're fine. You fall in the game.
01:31:42
Speaker
You're not going to be fine. yeah it's Full damage is kind of unforgiving. Yes. But I think that's that's putting a button on our first episode. Yeah. Sounds like it.
01:31:57
Speaker
So I hope you've all found some useful information. Mostly this first one was just us wanting to share this game that we love that brought us together. yeah Next time, we're going to be examining the topic of making transition from a player to a GM. ah Because it happened, most GMs don't start off as GMs.
01:32:25
Speaker
they start off as a player and they make that transition. And me out I think we all have our origin story. yeah we do Yeah. And it can be a daunting prospect, but it can also be a lot of fun. So we'll be taking a look at that and some tips to hopefully make that transition easier and make it successful for you as a GM.
01:32:51
Speaker
ah In the meantime, feel free to check out our website at howwerollgaming.com. And like I said at the top, if you want to drop us a line at podcast at howwerollgaming.com, we'd be glad to hear feedback from you and suggestions for what you'd like to hear in the future. And be sure to listen to our others, other affiliate in those podcasts that we're doing. So this is Clone Watch.
01:33:19
Speaker
Our sister podcast, Casual Nerdy, the first 10 and counting episodes ah are watching re for Nick and I rewatching and for our group member, Lauren, watching for the first time the Clone Wars animated series. So check it out at Casual Nerdy, the Casual Nerdy podcast,
01:33:47
Speaker
wherever you find your podcasts and I think this is a good point where we will sign out ah this is Nick and this is Robert and this is Daryl and this is how we roll
01:34:05
Speaker
This episode of the How We Roll Gaming podcast is copyright 2025, How We Roll Gaming, LLC. All games and associated intellectual properties are copyright their respective owners, and How We Roll Gaming makes no claim of ownership by discussing them here.