ShiKage said:

Given your above criteria, my old "Warlock of Fire Top Mountain"  fighting fantasy book, is a fully fledged role playing game. No, this new SW RPG, I am going to refer to as a "G-QS"

If I had a realised this I would not have purchased it, but hey Caveat Emtor and all that, but by the time I did realise I had already ordered it and felt somewhat obligated to my FLGS to complete the purchase.

All that being said. As far as value for money goes, not bad at all, quite a number of things contained therin, and of a very high production value as well, consdiering the dice set alone will be $15 (IIRC) I am not totally unhappy with my purchase. BUt lets face it, when the "Core" book comes out, this box (dice exepted) will never again see the light of day.

In addition to the above, FFG did release an expansion story and two additional pre-generated charecters for the beginner box set. While the beginner box set may not be all things to all people, it's very good at being an introduction to the FFG mechanics and style (so you can see if you even WANT to try the big book), as well as an introduction to tabletop Role Playing for the absolute noob, be they noob GM or noob PC.

If you buy the beginner box, you're either saving $30 by realizing you don't care for the FFG take on star wars role-playing and therefore not buying the corebook at $60, or you're spending $15 to find out that you do like the FFG take and finding out you do want the corebook(because you're going to need that $15 set of dice anyhow). The beginner box materials are all top notch, from the rulebook to the maps and tokens. It's not like you're wasting your money, if nothing else you've made sure you'll have a set of dice when the core rulebook comes out =D

bobfrankly said:

Don't get me wrong here, I totally agree with you in regards to the value for money aspect of this box, the production values alone are amazing, let alone the sheer volume of material, and the shinyness…………………..so shiny!!!!!!

What I am annoyed about, is getting a Glorified Quick Starter, rather than an actual RPG, but hey. Caveat Emptor.

Rimmer1 said:

You keep saying 'glorified quick-starter', but not going into any detail about what you want. Knowing that the product is a 'Beginner Game', released in advance of the 'Core Rulebook', what, specifically, did you want from the Beginner Game?

Honestly, I'm curious.

I. J. Thompson said:

He wanted a complete roleplaying game.

Rimmer1 said:

You sound like a pretty avid and experienced gamer in the role-playing department … I don't know how large your circle of gamers is, and although the Beginner's Game will not likely make it to the table with them, it might be nice to have on hand when you either want to introduce new people into the hobby, or, somebody gets curious about it (for example, maybe someone who loves Star Wars but hasn't ever been into tabletop role playing games before).

Rimmer1 said:

What were you expecting? I've never seen a "Beginners Box" or "Beginners Rules" that was anything else. WotC and Paizo were this way. GURPS, Shadowrun and Savage Worlds just put out free mini books for their Quickstarters. GURPS and Savage Worlds called them "Lite" versions of the rules. And what you got in the box is exactly as described outside of it.

But he won't say how what he got *isn't* a role playing game.

mouthymerc said:

To be fair, he *may* be harkening back to any number of things.  He just won't say, except that somehow the Beginner Game isn't an RPG, and he wanted one.  There's plenty of room to play for a good long while using just the Beginner Game rules.  It's not as fully fleshed out as the Beta rules were, but no beginner game set has ever claimed to be.

On the other hand, if he *is* harkening back to the D&D blue & red boxes, then he's complaining about the wrong thing, because those *weren't* 'Beginner Games', they were the full set of D&D rules as existed at the time (back when finding those 'funny dice' *outside* of the box sets was a job and a half).  I had a copy of several of the original D&D box sets (and still have a full set of the dice that came with one of them).  Sadly, they and the vast majority of my 1st & 2nd edition AD&D books were lost to water damage in our basement.  :(

The original red box Basic D&D set (which claimed to be a full RPG, not just a beginner set like EotE), was only good for 3 levels of play. Period. You had to purchase the Expert set to continue adventuring. The Expert set wasn't available for 4 years after the first Basic set was released. That being said, the Basic set was a huge success for D&D, introducing countless players to the game who later went on to play Advanced D&D (now referred to as D&D 1.0).

I've devoured the EotE Beginner set and think it is a perfect "Beginner" game, as it was meant to be. It introduces rules in stages. If EotE becomes a big success for FFG, it may be because of the quality of this set introducing the narrative style of play to many new players. Even though I own the Core beta book, I've read through the Beginner rule book and find it an easier read since it is so streamlined. I would suggest anyone who has not played FFG's Warhammer to start (dare I say "begin") with the Beginner set.

Voice said:

I did mention it in the OP, but just for you. Lack of Character Generation. There are others but lets start here.

My group went through the scenario in the Beginners Box last weekend. The GM told me it was a roleplaying game, and we trusted him. The "game" went well, and I thought we all had fun. But now it turns out that we weren't playing a roleplaying game at all. 

How could he lie to us like that? Why did he go to so much trouble to make us think we were roleplaying?

I shot a Stormtrooper! In the head. And then we all laughed … like it was a joke. Why did he make us do those things? WE THOUGHT WE WERE ROLEPLAYING!!! Oh my God! WHAT WERE WE DOING?!?! 

</scene>

Rimmer1 said:

The problem is, in this system, having a "complete" set of rules for character creation (e.g. the ability to pursue any possible course as a character generated with the full rules), would essentially mean they package the full character progression system in the beginners box.

At chargen, a PC is given enough XP to "be dangerous" as far as how far they can go into a class. To provide the full set of options (e.g. "full" character creation), they're actually providing much of the advancement scheme for the careers.

Oh so what he meant is that while it is an RPG, it's only the beginning of an RPG.

What was it that FFG was calling this boxed set?