Star Wars RPG by Fantasy Flight Games

There are three main Star Wars RPG books, which loosely define the setting, tone, and era of the game. Edge of the Empire is for playing scoundrels, smugglers and bounty hunters; Age of Rebellion is for playing rebel pilots and other freedom fighters resisting the Galactic Empire; and Force and Destiny is for playing Jedi fleeing from or fighting back against the Empire’s reach. Fantasy Flight has also released a number of supplementary books to support play in other settings, such as around the time of the most recent “sequel trilogy” of Star Wars films.

Typically a one-shot will consist of a self-contained adventure that will take place all in one session, which will usually take a few hours to complete. They are meant to be completed in one sitting, and will usually have a very focused plot or objective. A campaign on the other hand, is a longer adventure that takes place over multiple sessions. Short campaigns may be only 2-3 sessions, while longer ones may be played over months, or even years!

Obviously this will vary from table to table, but here are some good places to start! If your game is played in person, most likely you will want to get a set of dice, something to write with, and paper to take notes. If your game is hosted online instead, you will probably need to make accounts on a few sites for things like character sheets, access to the Virtual Tabletop for maps and tokens, and sites like Discord or Zoom for video/voice calls during the session. You won't always need to have the rulebooks to start, but if you want to read through them to make sure you know all the rules, this might also be a good option.

Knowing every rule of the game may be helpful to some, but many players will learn the game as they play! If you want to read the rules ahead of time you absolutely can, but if you are a hands-on learner you can also just start playing, and if there is something you don’t understand never be afraid to ask questions, because everyone starts somewhere!

While the Star Wars RPG by Fantasy Flight Games will involve some level of basic math, particularly if you are totaling up dice rolls or skill modifiers on your character sheet, you don’t need to be a mathematician to enjoy the game. The books provide tables and simple tools to make the math as simple as possible, and if you are playing online, many Virtual Table Tops will take care of all the math for you, so you can focus on playing!

Fantasy Flight's Star Wars Roleplaying games all use a set of what are called "narrative dice," which have special symbols that determine success, failure, advantage, and threat. While it's possible to use normal d6s, d8s, and d12s and translate their results to narrative dice, it's recommended to use the special dice in these games. If you can't find the Star Wars version, Fantasy Flight games also has generic narrative dice for the Genesys system which are functionally the same.

The system uses six types of dice marked with different combinations of symbols. Ability dice represent a character's skill, and are marked with Success and Advantage symbols. Difficulty dice represent the challenge an obstacle or opposition presents and are marked with Failure and Threat symbols. When a player makes a roll, they roll all their dice at once and compare the symbols: if there are more Success symbols than Failure, the action succeeds! But Advantage and Threat throw in a twist: more Advantage symbols mean an additional bonus, even if you failed. More Threat symbols mean a negative side effect or complication arises, even if you succeeded. This way, the result of a roll is rarely binary. You might fail, but find something useful. You might succeed, but learn an unwelcome truth. The other dice types modify these rolls; Boost dice offer extra Advantage and Successes, and represent favorable circumstances that tilt the odds in your favor, while Setback dice have additional Failures and Threats for situations where conditions are against you. Finally, when things are extreme, either your character is completely in their wheelhouse or way out of their depth, their Ability dice might upgrade to Proficiency dice or your Difficulty dice might become dreaded Challenge dice. These dice introduce the Triumph and Despair symbols respectively. A success with a Triumph represents going above and beyond the challenge. A failure with Despair is the worst possible outcome; not only do you not get what you want, things get worse. Last but not least, the Star Wars RPG includes the Force die, which represents the influence of the light side and dark side of the Force, which gives resources to the GM or the players depending on how it rolls.