Star Wars
"Rogues Legacy" - One Gamer's Experience
Star Wars fans will know that there's been a bit of a revival lately, what with "The Force Awakens" and "Rogue One" being released. One of the chaps from my regular gaming group, Tim, decided to lay on a Star Wars - Edge of the Empire (EoE) tabletop game for us to play, to get ourselves immersed in the Star Wars universe. There was a small twist - we were to play on Roll20, the popular table-top emulation system.
EoE uses a unique dice system including success, threat, triumph and advantage, as well as allowing for Force use for those characters who choose to have Force sensitivity. Boost die are also rolled if a character has a special ability bonus, for example Wookies get a boost in Brawn, and Twi'Lek get an advantage in Charm. Character generation is complicated and can take a while, but there are apps online to help with this. The data from that imports directly into Roll20 character sheets, including any descriptive text you make for background, obligations and flaws, etc.
Characters start out with set Characteristic Ratings dependent upon the chosen race. These ratings are Brawn, Cunning, Presence, Agility, Intellect and Willpower. Each is rated 0 to 3 and can be improved as more XP points are gained. Brawn, for example measures your toughness and strength, how good you are at fighting and taking hits, whereas Intellect shows how clearly you can think, solve problems and use technologies. When involved in an encounter, be it a blaster duel or a puzzle to solve, your abilities can be pushed to the limits and this will result in a level of Strain being applied, which can be removed once you are rested and restored.
Equipment can range from daggers and swords to light sabres, blasters, vibro-axes, hacking rigs and comm links. Armour can be from from common clothes, leather suits, Stormtrooper outfitting to pressure suits for EVAs. As starting characters, you only have a small credit fund and thus can't really buy a lot of super gear. Damage can be mitigated by the "soak" capacity of the armour but once that's through, actual body damage is quite nasty and hard to heal in the field.
Into the nitty gritty of the game. As our GM Tim reminded us many times, we need not worry too much about dice rolls and number, the game is a narrative one. The RP tells the story and the GM ultimately decides how it pans out for the characters depending on how they play it. GM Tim guided us through various smuggling missions, tavern fights, space chases and encounters with Sith. We fought and flew and drank like normal smuggling crews do and we had great times doing that. Here's an example of how an encounter panned out for us. The crew of the Nehamora included the human Captain Janos Somak, Noavik (a Zabrak mercenary), Xenu (a Verpine techie), IG-88 (a bounty hunter droid) and Thula, the Twi'Lek co-pilot and liaison officer. We had to infiltrate Jabba's Palace on Tatooine to recover an R3 droid unit that contained some sensitive data. Not being known for our skills of bluff or negotiation, we decide to sneak in and steal it. The palace is guarded by Gamorians in thick armour with blasters and clubs. First job was to get the damn door open!
To try to break the security of the door, Xenu had to roll skill dice equivalent to its level of tech skill, plus difficulty dice to offset that skill, plus any boosts given by other players or advantages. If there are more successes than failures, the code is cracked and the door opens, but depending on other dice results, the door may only open a little way, or it may spark and crash noisily as it grinds open. We also had to clear the Gamorian guard from the door and that was a simple sneak up and stab action, again rolling dice for fighting skills, offset by the strength of the guard, with other successes for stealth and quietness. Once in the palace, the party divided to search and again, our computer expert Xenu came into its own, skillfully hacking into the palace computer controls to locate the droid.
Meanwhile Thula has located Jabba's slave girl in the boudoir and stealthily releases her, sneaking her back out into the desert to make their escape. Inevitably, the party was discovered and Jabba ordered his guards to eliminate the thieves (who us?), so again, we had to fight our way out and barely managed to get outside and to our vehicles, along with the stolen driod and the rescued dancer. Speeding away, we are pursued but manage to shoot the chasers down. Arriving back at our ship, we see the landing platform lowered and waiting for us in the shade of the ship is a woman dressed in flowing black, brandishing a glowing red light sabre...
In this game I played the Twi'Lek character. These are a cunning, intellectual people, known for their skills at reading others and for their close-knit families and clans. The females are prized as slaves, since their dancing is known to be the most graceful and enticing. I played her like a high elf fallen on hard times. Thula Tarkona was of a noble house who disowned her when she was found to be using Force powers. She took up with a smuggling crew of various races and types and had been flying with them for a few years when the adventure started. Thula found herself drawn to the Dark Side more and more often as her use of that power was easier and yielded better results, in skills such as healing, concealment and locating items. Her purpose, her drive, was to become a powerful Jedi and to earn this, she had to learn to construct her own light sabre - she didn't own one yet. She was however, a mean fighter with her twinned Corellian cutlasses and was also pretty handy with her blaster, should she be called upon to actually get into a brawl. Her main talent was for persuasion and charm, getting info from people before they even spoke in some cases. She showed a great deal of potential as a Force user.
With few referrals to rule books or SW lore and canon, we managed to play our way through many scenes quite happily and even when the dice were against us, we muddled through. Thula's Force senses grew as time went along and she used her powers many times to influence the outcome of a fight or to persuade a foe, and once to hide the party from guards as we swept into our ship to escape a star port. "You saw nothing...". However, each activation of Force powers has a chance to be in the power of Dark or Light and the player must decide to continue with the power or not. Thula used what she was given, no matter if it was Dark or Light, and this brought her to the attention of a mysterious Sith who kept popping up wherever the crew landed. Sadly, our Roll20 game had to end on a cliffhanger as the GM was unable to continue, so we never got to meet Han Solo or Darth Vader...
I did enjoy this game very much and it didn't take long to get used to the dice and how they affected the actions we wanted to take, be it firing a blaster or persuading a rogue to tell us what he knew... I would recommend this to any table top players who fancy a bit of sci-fi action, who appreciate the Star Wars universe and want to get immersed into it fully. Don't be put off by the heavy Players Guides and the plethora of additional tomes - it's all totally worth it to get into that Star Wars world and play your part.