Post by Gilvan Blight on Jun 13, 2006 17:49:00 GMT -5
Okay this ones a bit old now, but was new to me.
Quickly: actually quite a bit of fun, felt like Star Wars, too much combat but a good intro.
Summary: this is a boxed set that was put out by Wizards of the Coast as an introduction to they Star Wars roleplaying game. It contains counters, a fold out map, pre-gens, a simple rule book, dice, and 6 adventures. All you need to play minus the players and pencils. The adventures are set up as a mini campaign set at the begining of Episode I. The caracters are your usual Star Wars range of Jedi, Gungan scouts, Scoundrels, Techies, and a Wookie. It also included an action figure of the Wookie character.
The Good: has everything you need to play in the box, that was pretty cool. I loved the additon of the counters. The action figure was great, not that I still collect them, but it's a great touch. The rulebook actually did more then any intro rulebook I have ever seen. Half of it was about how to make your own adventures, including random mission generators, randome encounter tables and hints on how to write your own module. That is damn awesome to see in an intro box. Most of these have no replay value, and once you have beat the 4-8 included missions you are done with it. The game system was quick enough to learn but had enough depth to not feel like a silly kids game. It definately did it's job making myself and the players want to play the full RPG. After mission 4 we pretty much decided it was a waste of time to keep using these pre-gens since they only had two missions to go and decided on making actual characters for the full game. The missions themselves were well written and actualy challenging, which was a nice change. We actually had one where the party got wiped out. The game even had that covered too, and included a prison break adventure just in case that happened.
The Bad: too simple at times. It was frustrating playing this with even the small knowledge of D20 I have. It must have been worse for my one player who actualy knows the D20 system. This wouldn't be an issue with someone with no knowledge of D20, but it just felt like there should be so much more (and well there is in the full system). The ballance seemed a bit odd. The droids hit very seldom but when they did they did a TON of damage. It just seemed it would have been better to have them hit more for less damage, 3D6 vs a lvl one character seemed too high.
The Ugly: too much combat. Pandora mainly pointed this out. As an intro to a Roleplaying game there wasn't much roleplaying. The first two missions felt more like a miniature battle game system then an rpg. The next couple do through in a couple roleplaying elements but by then the players are used to the combat and it's hard to get them to actually roleplay by then. The counters. I loved them for the concept, but they are put on this really thin card that just seems cheap, plus is near impossible to pick up off of a flat table. Also I hated the fact that they had these great pics on them and then covered them up with dumb techie squigles to make them look high-tech.
Overall: I expected to enjoy this when we decided to break it out Sunday, but I didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did. I was extremely impressed with the replay value in this, it truely gives you a full RPG with all the rules for making your own missions. Of course you can only get to lvl 3, but that would be more then enough for a new gamer to have fun with. The bits included were impressive since you got everything but a pencil and players in one box but I did have a couple issues with the counters. Don't expect much roleplaying in the missions though, it's forced at best.
Quickly: actually quite a bit of fun, felt like Star Wars, too much combat but a good intro.
Summary: this is a boxed set that was put out by Wizards of the Coast as an introduction to they Star Wars roleplaying game. It contains counters, a fold out map, pre-gens, a simple rule book, dice, and 6 adventures. All you need to play minus the players and pencils. The adventures are set up as a mini campaign set at the begining of Episode I. The caracters are your usual Star Wars range of Jedi, Gungan scouts, Scoundrels, Techies, and a Wookie. It also included an action figure of the Wookie character.
The Good: has everything you need to play in the box, that was pretty cool. I loved the additon of the counters. The action figure was great, not that I still collect them, but it's a great touch. The rulebook actually did more then any intro rulebook I have ever seen. Half of it was about how to make your own adventures, including random mission generators, randome encounter tables and hints on how to write your own module. That is damn awesome to see in an intro box. Most of these have no replay value, and once you have beat the 4-8 included missions you are done with it. The game system was quick enough to learn but had enough depth to not feel like a silly kids game. It definately did it's job making myself and the players want to play the full RPG. After mission 4 we pretty much decided it was a waste of time to keep using these pre-gens since they only had two missions to go and decided on making actual characters for the full game. The missions themselves were well written and actualy challenging, which was a nice change. We actually had one where the party got wiped out. The game even had that covered too, and included a prison break adventure just in case that happened.
The Bad: too simple at times. It was frustrating playing this with even the small knowledge of D20 I have. It must have been worse for my one player who actualy knows the D20 system. This wouldn't be an issue with someone with no knowledge of D20, but it just felt like there should be so much more (and well there is in the full system). The ballance seemed a bit odd. The droids hit very seldom but when they did they did a TON of damage. It just seemed it would have been better to have them hit more for less damage, 3D6 vs a lvl one character seemed too high.
The Ugly: too much combat. Pandora mainly pointed this out. As an intro to a Roleplaying game there wasn't much roleplaying. The first two missions felt more like a miniature battle game system then an rpg. The next couple do through in a couple roleplaying elements but by then the players are used to the combat and it's hard to get them to actually roleplay by then. The counters. I loved them for the concept, but they are put on this really thin card that just seems cheap, plus is near impossible to pick up off of a flat table. Also I hated the fact that they had these great pics on them and then covered them up with dumb techie squigles to make them look high-tech.
Overall: I expected to enjoy this when we decided to break it out Sunday, but I didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did. I was extremely impressed with the replay value in this, it truely gives you a full RPG with all the rules for making your own missions. Of course you can only get to lvl 3, but that would be more then enough for a new gamer to have fun with. The bits included were impressive since you got everything but a pencil and players in one box but I did have a couple issues with the counters. Don't expect much roleplaying in the missions though, it's forced at best.