I purchased the Beginner Box game for Force and Destiny (Fantasy Flights newest Star Wars offering) today to play with my two sons (ages 12 & 11). We have played each of the other two Fantasy Flight Beginner Box sets and enjoyed them both. So far we are about half-way through the adventure, at the point where we get to level the characters before continuing.
For myself, I think that the Age of Rebellion adventure is better. It had a lot more options and allowed for mare variety in play. I played with the kids and my regular group and both enjoyed it. This adventure is much more on the rails through the first part. Reading through the second half of the adventure there isn’t much variation allowed or introduced.
I do like how the PCs are presented (exceptional job on the quality of the handouts – both physically and art/layout). There is a variety of types and races. Everyone is a Force user, but in different ways including non-lightsaber using non-combat monkeys (which of course my boys did not pick, but now see that they might like).
The rules seem very similar to my Edge of the Empire book. Makes me question why I would ever buy another $50 core book ($150 for all three). After three box sets everyone now has a complete set of dice. Especially nice when you are not given enough dice to cover many of the basic skills for one players roll.
Overall it is a good box set, but does not stand up to the more interesting adventures in the other two box sets.
I keep buying for two reasons. First, it’s Star Wars and I do love me some Star Wars. And second, the boys really like the rules. The dice pools make it very dramatic for them, letting their imaginations run wild.
Update:
The boys and I completed the adventure this afternoon (a great activity for a Geek Dad like me), and had a good time. They are definitely interested in doing more – success on that front for FFG’s Beginner Set. A couple of more comments on the box set.
It didn’t scale well to just two PCs. I didn’t feel that there was any good way to get the challenge level down in the last few combats outlined in the adventure book. In the end I ended up just reducing the number of badguys, and giving the PCs more chances to work around the combat encounters. A beginning GM may have trouble with this and I think more help should have been provided.
The map was a terrible scale to the counters presented. Because of the scale issue it was hard to present the environmental issues that were described in the adventure guide.
I did like the counters – will be using then for other games and if I decide to run more Force and Destiny for the boys.
Here is a link to the product on the FFG site:
https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/star-wars-force-and-destiny-beginner-game/products/star-wars-force-and-destiny-beginner-game/