Star Wars Outer Rim in Review

I still count Rune Age as one of the best deckbuilders I've ever played. That's pre-Runewars. I also remain an unabashed fan of Chaos in the Old World when played with experienced players (e.g. the Root problem.) But, yeah, overall I agree that their design efforts became somewhat tighter in the post-Runewars era, when it seemed like they actually drew back on their varied output and decided to focus on fewer but better projects; not to mention an enormous improvement in their editing/playtesting procedures. IIRC, Runewars happened around the same time as the debacle with an expansion for Mansions of Madness, where one of the scenarios was literally unplayable because of a printing error. They finally decided to hire actual editors to smooth some of their production issues and seemingly decided to channel their efforts in some more cohesive forms that produced an overall better body of work. Sometimes, it's not about genius design, so much as making sure that the machine is functioning properly.

To come back to Outer Rim: The rules get a little bulky once the sequence of play has been described, but it's still a pretty impressive accomplishment to compress the rules down to 16 heavily illustrated pages, including probably only about 8-10 pages of actual multiplayer rules. This not only contrasts with the more loquacious Firefly (+ Pirates and Bounty Hunters) but also FFG's verbose rulebook for, say, Arkham Horror 2e.

I've gotten used to them, but am still not a fan of the double rulebook approach that is now standard with FFG games. It works for some games better than others; here it works fairly well I guess.

Going back to RUNEWARS, that was peak coffin box era games from FFG. Granted they were not the most streamlined products, but in some ways it was a portent of what is now widely accepted as standard KS big box o stuff.

Agree with that. The double rulebook thing is something I also find fairly annoying. If it's important enough for me to read, just put it in the same damn booklet. You can always place an elaboration later in the same book, rather than splitting it out to another one. It's called proper indexing. It worked perfectly fine in the rulebook of TI3. Not sure why that's not still the approach.

I'm a fan of The divided rulebook. There have only been a couple of instances in which it wasn't well done (FoD 3) but I generally really like them. No, the stuff not in the Learn To Play book isn't important enough to get you started, so don't waste my time with it.

I rarely read rulebooks anymore to begin with, I hate that process, anything to minimize that time if I do have to is much appreciated. That referencing something is alphabetical in the other book is amazing. I love it and I hope they never stop.

I like the divided rulebook too, overall. It's taken a few tries for them to get it right, but I feel like it's working the way it's supposed to in Outer Rim.

I had forgotten that Fury of Dracula 3e had come out in that space, that's my favorite FFG game of all, not counting straight reprints like Cosmic Encounter and Talisman. Rebellion had some great stuff, but man the combat was just so overwrought. Sometimes it feels like they were trying to create the world's longest die roll.