After years of playing TTRPGs I find myself … frustrated.

All the games I played for longer periods had one thing in common: They were rules heavy traditional TTRPGs (Shadowrun, Das Schwarze Auge, Edge of the Empire, Arcane Codex). One thing that I enjoy a lot about these games is creating chatacters, figuring out new and exiting ways to build something extreme, powerful, strange, or intruiging. Strangely, I do enjoy character play more than the puzzle of optimizing encounters. For a long time I did bend and mod the rules to fit my style better, because I did not know of any games that had a different approach. – well, I did know Paranoia, but again: Not my type of puzzle.

Fantasy Flight Games

Too many, the Fantasy Flight Games (FFG) Star Wars Games (Edge of the Empire, Age of Rebellion, and Force and Destiny) are the ultimate Star Wars game. So did I for a decate, after my friend introduced me to it. I did have an absolute blast playing a force sensitive pilot hunted by the demons of her past.

The Upsides

There are many things to fall in love with:

  • The nerrative (aka Genesis) dice can bring interesting spice to the table beyond a simple success/failure.
  • The artwork is phenomenal and really pulls you into the universe, its aesthetics, and the heroic theme
  • It provides piles and piles of species, starships, planets,and gear to loose yourself in
  • It comes with a great many careers and interesting possibilities to progress – especially when you have a force sensitive character
  • It is an attribute based system with very flexible character generation, which I came to love (coming primarily from Das Schwarze Auge 2 and Shadowrun 3) from games like Vampire:The Masquerade and Shadowrun 4
  • Most importantly: It provides great insights into and inspirations for playing a Jedi, their different styles, their philosophy, the force powes, …

Especially, if you are not that deep into the Star Wars universe, these books are absolutly brilliant. They make it really easy to play lesser known species and even droids.

The Downsides

Yet, there many things where I clashed with the system over the years. Some registered as minor inconveniences, others pissed me off. Fortunatly, I always had great people to play with, so a work around was usually possible.

  • It requires special dice. Which in it of itself would be ok if not for:
  • It is easy to create characters that need more dice than one kit provides
  • There are only two states: Either you can fight without impairment or you are dead
  • The temptation of the darkside is none existent since the mechanic pulls you to the lightside save for if you portrait an absolute monster
  • Careers a stuffed full that abilities that feel off and like intended to slow meaningful progression
  • Changing careers is impossible. Careers represent who the character is not what he does. If the character undergoes major changes, i.e. she discovers that she is force sensitive, you are still stuck with the original career. So, should you pick something that represents who the character is at the start of the game (aka do good roleplay) or should you choose a career that reflects who you character shall become?
  • Space flight and space battles are… difficult. There are a great many rules, some clearly designed in a way that everybody can participate (i.e. make emergency fixes to keep the ship together for a little longer). But with space fights being farely rare, the amount of rules and options are more of a burden and fights feel unrewarding.
  • The Genesys Dice can be quite slow, adding positive and negative dice from multiple sources, removing dice from others, changing dice, … Yes, it is nice to have a visual representation. Yet, I feel, the burden of many process steps way too heavy to justify this benefit.
  • Success chances feel very obscure. With six different dice, each with its own distribution, and dice pools that can contain all of them, the success chances of a pool are hidden to but the few math nerds.
  • Attributes and abilities weigh equally when building dice pools, making high attributes insanely strong and low attributes a real burden. With this, it is possible, just because of your attribute, to be excellent at something that you narratively should be bad at.
  • The characteristics, abilities, and disadvantages for some species represent the average, not the species itself – in hinesight a clear indicator of the issues at the core of the system

I do not think, this game is the pinical of Star Wars games that so many think it is. There must be a better way.

New inspiration on what to change

I recently stumbled across Peter, lead designer of Tales from Elsewhere, who introduced me to the idea of wounds as an alternative to hitpoints. which intruiged me. For weeks I tried to bake wounds into the Star Wars game Edge of the Empire, struggling every turn as my ideas caused ripples of new problems. It became clear that modding was a fools errant. I was trying to adjust something to a paradigm that was totally alien to it.

So, designing my own Star Wars TTRPG it would have to be.

Here is my rough, high level goal of what my game should be:

  1. Focus on roleplay – since me and my friends enjoy portraying characters

  2. Allowing for long running campaigns – since deep character development often requires years of actual play (at least the way we play)

  3. Minimize the tactical rules and focus on pivotal character decisions – since I dislike hours of play for seconds or minutes of fight

  4. Set in the Star Wars universe – what can I say? We just love it :D