Wednesday 2 July 2014

Game Review - Star Wars Age of Rebellion Beginners Game


They never had beginners sets when I was starting out, it was back in a time when if you were a beginner, you found someone else to teach you things and from that, you got the general idea.  Then you picked up a book or two, the Players Handbook or the GM’s guide, and you took your role and made it work.  Along the way, you made mistakes, you learned from them, and eventually, you didn’t need the help any more.



So the idea of a beginners game, an introduction to things, was a little intriguing, always liked star wars, always liked the rebellion, figured what the hell, give it a go.

It’s a Fantasy Flight product, so it goes without saying that you’ve got phenomenal production values, everything’s full colour, you get maps, counters, full set of the special dice that are used for the game (and I’ll come to those later), and four multi page character folios so you can get straight into the action.



There are clear instructions on what to do with the books that are included, all the way down to what to read first, then second, then last.  They’ve left no stone unturned when it comes to the enforcement of the order of things.  So first you’re told to read the explanation of what an RPG is and brief example of how things play, then you’re straight into the scenario without any other explanations.  In fact, you’re specifically told not to read the main rule book until you’ve played through the scenario.


A brief word on the scenario...

Sneak in, have a fight, talk to something, go deeper into the base, have a bigger fight, break into the control room, hunt down escaping imperials.



Rocket science it is not, but it is easy to follow, the character folio’s are nicely detailed and have all the rules that the players are going to need, together with the details of the dice used and why they’re used.  




There is very little variance in the way the game can be played, and the various parts of the system that govern things such as initiative and skills are not touched on at all, if the players choose to have a fight with something, the book tells them what order they go in, regardless of whatever other arrangements they may have come up with or sneaky plans, they go in that order.  If the players come up with something that isn’t on the list of available options, there isn’t anything in the book to show the beginning GM what to do about it and considering the way the information is literally spoon-fed to all parties, that’s a problem.



So I had a few problems with the scenario, but that was more to do with the way the options (or lack thereof) were presented.  The assumption given is that the players, being beginners, wouldn’t consider the really complex options or plan traps and ambushes, and if they did, the GM, being a beginner, wouldn’t know how to assign modifiers or change things around to make them work.

That might be correct, to be fair it’s been that long since I was a beginner that I don’t remember ever having that level of clueless.  I’d like to think that the memories I have aren’t all rose tinted and that we had problems and worked through them because the system was simple enough that we could figure it out.



And that brings me to the main rule book, and herein lies the largest problem I have, there’s nothing in here that would allow you to do anything except take the characters that were provided with the scenario and run them around something else for a while.  There are upgraded explanations of the various skills (which would have been more useful in the scenario), a list of weapons, equipment, even starships, but it’s just that...

Lists...

Beginners don’t need lists of things except when they’re generating characters, and even then, only so they can buy all the things they think they’ll need (which they really don’t) and feel better about having all the equipment in the world, what they need is something that lets them get on with playing the game, and these books just don’t have that.

Which brings me to the dice...



Pretty to be sure, all manner of interesting symbols on them, but when you’ve been playing for any length of time, you get to recognise when something is a D4 or a D3 in disguise, and if I’m honest, that’s all most of these are.   On the one hand, it gives a new player something easy to pick up because you’re looking for symbols, not numbers, so as a result, you can immediately see what you have to work with and using the handy guide on the three different pages of your character folio, you can make informed decisions based on the cunning symbols in front of you...

And you’re spared the terrible trauma of having to do basic maths...

I understand how icons and symbols can be very useful and they appeal to the video game crowd quite a bit because they’re already familiar with how these things work, which in turn may get more people turning from video games to real roleplaying, but I do think that if we’re setting people up so that they need this level of hand holding, the only thing they’re ever going to play will be the systems that have these symbols and use these special dice.

Wait a minute! The cunning marketing plan is revealed...

And indeed, it does seem to be well executed marketing plan, from the release of the Beta rules at cost to the release of a beginners box, dice that you need to play the game with any sort of alacrity, and I know that any gamer worthy of the title could easily figure out the numbers on each of sides of the various dice (or use two fate dice in the case of one of the dice), but it only really flows when you’ve got the right dice and to be fair to it, it does flow when you’re using all the right products.

It just seems a little Games Workshop in the “You must have all the right things to play this game” approach, and given the size of Fantasy Flight, they’re one of the few companies that have the required level of both finance and influence to make this sort of approach. Some part of me was half expecting that the symbols on the dice would match those found in the X wing miniatures game so if you were doing spaceship combat, you could just buy the miniatures and have it out there and then rather than using the basic spaceship combat system included, but it does look like they resisted (no pun intended) the urge to make everything the same.

In all, it’s a well put together product that does what it says it will, lets you play a game straight out of the box, and for the purpose of getting people into the hobby, it may do just that.  What said new players do when they find out that they have to buy another book to keep going, or that not everything is as colourful and occasionally maths may be required, or even that no dice or maps or counters may be needed is another thing altogether...


It’s priced at around half the cost of a regular gamebook, but the only thing that’s going to be of any use in the long term are the counters and the dice, and both of those are available for less. While it’s an interesting premise, it doesn't have enough in it to properly hook players in and it certainly doesn't have enough to get GM's moving on making their own adventures, which puts it in the same category as a regular games module for any other system, and with the cost difference between the two, the rebellion is coming off badly every time.