OUR REVIEW

Save yourself at the speed of light

Star Wars – Am Rande des Imperiums

You will only escape together

Board games come in many different guises and all of them can be fun. All you have to do is try them out. Pen and Paper role playing games are surely included here. As a newcomer you should approach the genre of role playing games carefully and plan your approach.

For our first encounter with such a game we have decided on a simple one and have chosen Star Wars Am Rande des Universum Einsteiger Set. The Einsteiger Set makes the transition from board games to role playing games very easy. Just a little hint at the start: Don’t be frightened away by the 40 pages rules book, because you not really have to read it page by page, especially as there is an instruction sheet for the game master with which you get acquainted with the rules in a learning by doing manner.

In this introductory version of the Star Wars Role playing game you find four different characters. The players can choose between a Droid, specialized in medicine and related subjects, a Wookie who was a slave his whole life long, a Bounty Hunter or a Smuggler. Our group comprised seven people, and we made one of them our Game Master, and the other players divided the characters among themselves, which ended with the situation that two of the characters were played by two people.

All players in our group were beginners in the role playing genre and thus the game got very interesting. After we had chosen one of the characters, we read out the descriptions of the characters to all players. This got all of us acquainted with each other and also with our special abilities and told us who was especially friendly with who.

The characters in this set are acting in direct relation to each other and aim to complete a common goal: They want to get off the desert planet of Tatooine and escape from the clutches of Hutten Teemo. They are all on the run now and this is where the game begins.

One thing that I need to mention immediately: The most difficult role, in my opinion, is that of the game master, as he must embody all the other characters in the story with whom players must interact in the course of the game. Therefore, the game master must have a lot of imagination and be able to interact with and relate to all the players in the group. Our choice of game master turned out to be a good choice because even before he started to read the game introduction to us he picked up his mobile and played the Star Wars Music for us to underline the game play. This pulled all of us directly into the Star Wars Universe and could let our imagination run freely. And imagination is really necessary because one of the deciding factors for a role playing game is that it does not run in a uniform way.

Basically, in a role playing game, the game master describes the starting situation and players then react in the role of their characters; the game master in turn reacts on that for all the other characters involved in the situation, then players react again and so on. In doubtful situations or also on demand of the game master’s handbook some situations are decided by the rolling of dice.

Therefore the course of a role playing game always depends on the chance element of rolling dice and also on the story which the game master creates around the basic facts. The dice decide on the success or failure of an action; for such a decision you roll positive as well as negative dice, success or failure dice, if you want. Depending on which sort prevails positive effects like the success of an action or negative effects like the failure of an action are the result. In case of a tie the action is always deemed to have failed.

The action that you intend to do or that you can do is the choice of the characters in the game. They could maybe decide that they want, due to their agility ability, want to try to jump up onto something so that they could hide. All that is important is to use your imagination, because for instance simply declaring that you want to negotiate without telling with who and about what will not be very helpful for the game. In our group we had a big problem with that, because we did not use our imagination enough and so did not really succeed in getting into our characters. And this in turn resulted in some loss of fun in paying the game.

However, we managed at least one or two situations where we tried to use some imagination: For instance, we encountered the problem that we were in danger to run into storm troopers in the streets of Mos Shuuta and that we were trying to find a way to avoid this. One of the suggestions was to throw money into the road so that a crowd of people would get between us and the storm troopers as an obstacle. This suggestion was vetoed, however, as there is now money in the form of coins or bills in the Star Wars Universe, only digital money. But this showed us that there are many possibilities in a role playing game, the only really important factor is communication and this must be used intensively and promoted at every turn, because this is how you come up with ideas how to resolve situations to your character’s advantage.

All in all I can say one thing: Role playing games can be rather complex and this Star Wars Introductory set helps to clear the fog a bit. An easy access is possible and you can enter a completely new environment with confidence. All members of our group were very taken with the game, even despite the fact that our first game took four hours, with some short breaks. The important factor is communication among players and so sometimes it takes a while till an agreement is reached on how everyone should proceed.

We want to play again, but this time already with the expansion that introduces two more characters so that all of us can play individually. There is also an online scenario for the next stages of the journey when you have mastered the first one. It was difficult despite the easy access, but we succeeded and, what is much more important, the game was thrilling and we look forward to further expansions for our adventures in the Star Wars Universe.

Isabella Prior

Players: 3-5

Age: 10+

Time: 120+

Designer: Daniel Lovat Clark, Chris Gerber

Artist: Andrew Navaro, J. P. Targete, Marina Fahrenbach

Price: ca. 22 Euro

Publisher: Heidelberger Spieleverlag 2013

Web: www.heidelbaer.de

Genre: SciFi, role playing

Users: With friends

Version: de

Rules: de en

In-game text: yes

Comments:

Communication is essential

Offers a good introduction to the role-playing genre

Download scenario is available

Game master is very important

Compares to:

Other role playing games with a SciFi topic

Other editions:

English language edition at Fantasy Flight Games

My rating: 5

Isabella Prior:

The game master of a round has a very important role in the game and should be chosen very carefully.

Chance (pink): 3

Tactic (turquoise): 0

Strategy (blue): 0

Creativity (dark blue): 3

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 3

Interaction (brown): 2

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0