No need to worry about languages when they can just read the subtitles. Oops, metagaming again.

I wonder if and when we'll see some character species that start with a Force rating of 1. I think there are SW species predisposed to Force sensitivity.

I wonder if Jedi Padawan, Jedi Knight, and Jedi Master could all be separate spec trees. Maybe since Luke becomes a Jedi Knight by ROTJ, that might be a spec tree we'll see.

If Duty starts at 0 and PCs work to increase it, I wonder how starting PCs get extra XP. Do they go into negative numbers? Hmm, it says 'most PCs', so maybe there's an option to buy more Duty at chargen for additional XP.

-Gardens -Historical site -University/college/school

One challenge I've run into in the past with other games (notably D&D 4e) is in encounter preparation. That game had a lot of stat blocks for monsters, and it wasn't really easy to throw an encounter at the party on the fly, because the GM had to go digging for stat blocks they might not have prepared ahead of time. I see the same issue for EotE, though somewhat lessened since the stat blocks aren't as detailed as those from 4e were. I know some folks have created stat blocks for EotE adversaries, and I'm developing my own for use in my adventures, but I'd love to see more. Anything that makes it easier for me and other GMs to put together encounters quickly.

I found the character portfolios in the beginner box to be super helpful in learning the basics of the system. The extra set of dice, the token, and the map are all nice to use as well.

I tend to plan my adventures with a clear beginning to hook the players or otherwise get them involved quickly. I've run a few sandbox games where the first hour or so of game time was along the lines of "You're at XYZ spaceport; what do you want to do?" and the players sort of dinking around and hemming and hawing. None of that has the SW feel, so I've gravitated more toward adventure openings the drop them right in the middle of some sort of action or conflict. It gets easier once the campaign grows some legs, of course. I also come up with a lot of subplot hooks and potential side missions, and sneak those into sessions where it makes sense for them to fit and see which ones the heroes latch onto (or miss). The adventure grows organically from there. Sometimes I just wing it too--I use a voice recorder during all my games, so I can keep track of what happened during a session. If something crazy got introduced during the session, I can build on it in the next session or otherwise refresh my memory on what we came up with on the fly so that the next session follows logically.

Time to pull out my copy of this bad boy and start making conversions to this system*. * Does the game engine for EotE / AoR / F&D have a name unto itself?

Just as long as you're angry at the Empire, soldier! Well, this is the game line about playing insurgents and terrorists heroes and freedom fighters. Fixed that for you.

I have to believe so, since AoR and EotE are different games... Thoughts?

Army troops might include the guys piloting the AT-ATs and AT-STs. General Veers wore a uniform essentially identical to the Navy officers... I wonder if the talent trees in AoR will be free of bias toward one affiliation or another. We know we're getting an Ace Pilot specialization; that could apply to either Empire or Alliance. I'm willing to bet it wouldn't be too hard to reskin the game if it comes out Alliance-focused. There would have to be a special rule for player character stormtroopers, though. Maybe 2x Challenge dice automatically added to their ranged attack pools with blasters when attacking anything other than sandcrawlers, jawas, and old human couples.

We're definitely picking up the beta and we'll see what's in there before using it. I suspect my co-GM and I will cherry-pick the good stuff and leave the rest of it alone unless a player wants to use something.

Besides, almost everyone you shoot will likely have some Soak.

I use the GM screen, and it's usually just easier, table space wise, to roll behind the screen and make all the rolls hidden. Also, hidden rolls make it super-easy to fudge things if something goes horribly wrong. I'm fine with a dice-driven narrative game most of the time, but sometimes I want a little more control.

Assuming Duty is something that has to be rolled on. It's not clear to me from the preview that it is. Either way, I have a feeling that characters will be able to have both Obligation and Duty.

Yeah, I imagine it'd be as easy as buying into a new FS specialization tree.

Clearly I need to start listening to Order 66 podcasts...

I think I'd adjust the obligation so that it only accounted for the characters who showed up, plus any party obligation. For example, if you had four players with 10 pts of obligation each and a party obligation of 5 pts, but only two of the four players showed up, I'd go with a total obligation of 25 and roll on that. It'd require the GM to alter the Obligation chart for that session, but that should be easy enough to fix. So if your full group looked like: Player 1 1-10 Player 2 11-20 Player 3 21-30 Player 4 31-40 Group 41-45 Then the adjusted table for the smaller crew would look like: Player 1 1-10 Player 2 11-20 Group 21-25 That way you don't have to worry about rolling an Obligation result for a player that didn't make the session.

Do keep in mind that the costs in credits and time aren't set in stone. I just reread the section on repairs on p. 245 and it's chock-full of "GM fiat". Maybe too much, honestly. I'm a long-time GM but I can see where some GMs, new ones in particular, might want more hard and fast numbers. I'd lean toward the 'fast and loose, whatever feels right for that moment in the game' sort of approach.

This. I am also not going to leave it up to a roll. Assuming the PCs spend the credits, effort and time then they should be able to restore the necessary HT at the end of that time. If that takes several games sessions with them running missions in between, so be it. But I think adding die rolls to a check after they have spent time and money on it is unnecessary. Thanks to the dice system it is already easy enough as a GM to say something went wrong with those repairs later down the road. That method of doing it makes the repairs completely independent of the characteristics, skills, and talents of the character doing the repairs. I don't like that. Same here. If a PC spends a lot of XP to get a high Mechanics roll, it's disappointing for them if they can't repair their own ship outside of the combat actions. I think in some cases, one could use the 'making passive checks' rules (p. 322) to give a mechanic the means to repair the ship and make use of their high Mechanics score outside of combat. If repairing hull trauma is a Hard difficulty and the mechanic has at least three ranks in the skill, boom, they spend time outside of combat making those repairs successfully, assuming they have the credits for the parts and supplies needed. Making a mechanic roll to repair every hull point of trauma just feels like an unnecessary level of granularity. I think this is a case where a little handwaving is appropriate, rather than a "the book doesn't mention how to do this, so no, you can't do this" situation.

For good or ill, this particular model of game design requires them to reprint chunks of the core rules and concepts over all the core books. They're making three very different games with largely the same rule set, even though they're all in the SW universe and even though there's a lot of crossover. With the three core books, players and GMs have a ton of choices as to what sort of campaign they want to play/run. I think a nWOD approach might have made more sense (one base rulebook for everything and then separate sub-core books for variations on that theme), but then again, I don't work for FFG.

I don't think it'll be called Oath. Oath is currently a subset of Obligation. And, whatever it's called, I can envision where a Force-sensitive character might have an Obligation, a Duty, and a Commitment (or whatever they call the F&D flavor of it). Talk about a lot of roleplaying and gaming potential. In a given adventure, a character could be pulled three different ways--what do they do? Not to mention the potential Obligation, Duty, or Commitment of their allies.

Nice. Also echoed by Kenobi in Episode II: "You have made a commitment to the Jedi order, a commitment not easily broken." Not sure it makes sense to call it Destiny, as there's already a destiny element in the game in the form of Destiny Points. I can foresee some confusion between Destiny and Destiny Points.

Given that the FS Exile's talent tree leans more toward senses and mental-type skills, I wonder if the FS Emergent will focus a bit more on the physical side of things. Thinking of what Luke did in TESB and ROTJ, maybe stuff along the lines of the connection between a Force-user's physical health and the Force, using the Force to help leap great distances quickly (like out of an activated carbon-freezing chamber) or using the Force to help with acrobatics checks (such as Luke tearing apart Jabba's minions in ROTJ). Maybe some sort of Force power(s) or talent(s) that involve using the Force to help recover strain. Oh, and maybe using the Force to look into the future to gain insight. Passively and actively. Maybe some sort of application of Move or a new power tree for Force Grip or the like? Vader used it a lot, sure, but Luke tried his hand at it (so to speak) against the Gamorreans in ROTJ.