Matt Wilson Okay, if you want to hear why you should be “sold” on FFG’s take on Star Wars, I have some thoughts on that:

* If you want a game that offers tactically interesting fighty pew pew, FFG’s got you covered in all three core books. Crunchy but not map-level bonkers-crunchy. Lots of economic and positioning decisions. Honestly it’s pretty fun. And there’s a lot to get your head wrapped around, so if you also enjoy at least some system mastery, also a good choice for that.

* If you like systems that organically generate yes/no and/but results, the FFG dice have got you covered there, too. Now, I’m a little iffy on just what all to do with the gradient of and/but results the system can generate — I have the feeling my players feel a little screwed when they get, you know, five Advantage and I’m like “uhhh…take an extra blue die on the next roll” — but fundamentally it’s nice. And it happens every time you touch the dice.

* The speed of character advancement is trivially addressed, as long as you’re comfortable bridging the gap that FFG has left. Their XP scheme is so underexplained as to be basically “give as much or as little as you want,” which TBH is also pretty close to Stars Without Number. I think it’s broadly assumed in mainstream roleplaying that advancement is the facilitator’s primary cookie, and everyone who’s gonna play will modify to suit anyway.

* I think there actually is a decent advancement system built into the specialization trees, especially if you drop another $30ish per class and buy the additional book. More trees and they also have uh…Signature Abilities, that basically extend your tree downward even further. But, yeah, the baseline game is full-throated bildungsroman. Because Campbell and D&D.

And I think that’s it.