#RPGaDay2015 Day 4 - Most Surprising Game

Uh, we had a slight weapons malfunction, but uh... everything's perfectly all right now. We're fine. We're all fine here now, thank you. How are you?
- Han Solo


Well this one could be interpreted in two ways. One could go negative with "I thought it'd be awesome and it is a total turd!" But that seems mean. So I'm going to go with something better, way better, than I thought it'd be.

My most surprising game would at this point be Fantasy Flight Games' Star Wars series of RPGs (Edge of the Empire, Age of Rebellion, and Force and Destiny). I'd had Edge of Empire for a while but at first glance the dice mechanic really threw me. Especially given the fact that I primarily game online nowadays I didn't see how I'd get much use out of it.

However I recently began a Star Wars Edge of the Empire game online and much to my surprise I'm beginning to grok the rules. Add to this the fact that some kind soul made a full dice roller for roll20 and you've got yourself a winner. I might do a review of the game at some point - this certainly isn't one.

I know a lot of people aren't fans of the campaign-specific core book, preferring one main core book. I was a fan of the old Last Unicorn Games Star Trek RPGs and its a model I rather liked and also liked it in the original World of Darkness.

In any case, I'm finding the innovation of interpreting the dice to get advantages, successes, failures, etc. all from one roll to be rather clever and very cinematic in style. It manages to get a lot of Star Wars feeling into it. I'm fighting GMADD like crazy (Cthulhu always calls me) but I have a blast with our sessions and with the 7th Star Wars movie coming this December, I might be able to stave it off a bit longer. (Wait, what's that? OOOH, SHINY!!!!)

One big negative with the game is the lack of the books available online. As I understand things, the license with Lucasfilm prohibits the creation of digital books as that would somehow require a video game license. I could be mistaken, but I know that's the essentials of what Wizards of the Coast dealt with. It's a frustrating situation, especially since as I wrote this I did a quick Google search and was able to find pirate copies of the game online in seconds.

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