Do RPGs need intro prose?

It's something you don't really question after you handle enough roleplaying game books. In many RPG publications, preceding the often clunky "What is a Roleplaying Game?" section, you're greeted with a few pages of prose fiction. Sometimes it's a single page, sometimes it drags on interminably. The idea is obvious enough: giving players a taste of the game, its setting, its tone, and the kinds of stories it "should" tell.

But is that opening barrage of prose fiction really necessary? Is it even counterintuitive?

For a start, it's hard to generalize. The Call of Cthulhu 6th edition core book reprints the titular H.P. Lovecraft story before delving into mechanics for the author's stable of otherworldly creatures and how players interact with them.

Floor It - A Star Wars: Starships and Speeders Review

 

Edge/Lucasfilm

Released two months into 2020, the compilation book Starships and Speeders is currently the last supplement published for Fantasy Flight Games' Star Wars roleplaying game system, which includes Edge of the Empire and Age of Rebellion. It's at least the last one FFG will publish, as Edge Studios now has the license, while fans await further reprints and hold out hope for new books.

In the mean time, we're left with Starships and Speeders. It's more or less what's on the tin: a collection of vehicle profiles for Game Masters to deploy and players to purchase in their games. For the most part, it collects existing stat blocks, though a few new additions have been made, mainly vehicles that showed up in Solo. 

It's an exhaustive selection, including nearly every ship from FFG's X-Wing wargame and a few new ones, like a luxury cruise liner. It's a decent mix of military and civilian vehicles, along with the vessels used by less savory elements. I would have liked some more Legends additions but I understand the further we get into the Disney era, the less likely that is. Starships and Speeders does leave a few nods here and there, like a reference to the Droids cartoon in the A-Wing background.

Edge Studios/Lucasfilm

Starships and Speeders isn't entirely a copy/paste job though, as iconic ships are given unique profiles. For example, there's the YT-1300 entry and then one specifically for the Millennium Falcon.