A Report on the Age of Rebellion Beginner Game

A couple of weeks ago I picked up the Age of Rebellion Beginner Game from Fantasy Flight Games. On May the 4th I ran it for some people over at the Fantasy Flight Games Event Center, seeing as it was International Star Wars Day and all. Here are a few reactions.

1. It felt good to run a scenario for Rebel agents. Back in the day I ran a good deal of the West End Games d6 RPG, pretty much one campaign a year in college, and I played in a lot of adventures run by my buddy Shawn in junior high and high school. After 1999, though, we shifted to prequel-era d20 games, with the Living Force campaign, some home games, and then the Dawn of Defiance campaign. I can confidently say that Rebellion-era games are the most fun. It's nice to fight against the Evil Galactic Empire, at least for me as the GM.

2. The adventure provided, "Takeover at Whisper Base," provides a good introduction to the game, but there's much more potential for going "off the rails" than was the case with the Edge of the Empire Beginner Game. Since the scenario involves storming a secret Imperial compound on Onderon, rather than fleeing a Hutt crime boss's enforcers, I think the players are likely to be more methodical and thus more creative in their tactics. Also, there are lots of opportunities to use explosives.

3. On a tangent, it was nice to see Onderon used as the setting for the adventure. I was intrigued by it as the setting for some of the Tales of the Jedi comics back in the mid-nineties, and again with one of the story arcs in the last (full) season of The Clone Wars.

4. All in all, I liked the scenario. It seems a little bit too convenient when run for experienced players, but the GM could always modify it accordingly. Since the downloadable adventure Operation Shadowpoint builds upon "Takeover at Whisper Base," it can make a launching point for many sessions of play. What is more, word on the (virtual) street is that the Age of Rebellion GM Screen will have suggestions for combining its adventure with that from the core rulebook and the aforementioned. I, for one, cannot wait.

-Nate