Suns of Fortune review: Star Wars Edge of the Empire

This one is for the GMs. Edge of the Empire’s latest sourcebook is Suns of Fortune, detailing the planet Corellia, all the major planets in the system, and the planets beyond in the Corellian sector. Corellia is home to Han Solo and Wedge Antilles; as such, Corellians are known for their piloting skills. Unlike the previous source book for explorer characters Enter the Unknown, this book has only 16 pages of its 144 dedicated to player options, ships, species, and equipment. The majority of the book details planets and points of interest on those planets, as well as dangerous local fauna that will likely try and eat the party.

For those Star Wars fans familiar with the galactic geography of the Star Wars universe, Corellia seems like an odd system to expand upon for EDGE of the Empire, as it sits squarely in the core worlds. However, Corellia has always blazed it’s own trail and was aptly described in a recent Order 66 podcast as “Space-Texas.” (If you’ve got a spare 2-4 hours, or are going on a roadtrip, it makes for a fun listen.)

Somewhat surprisingly, there is not a full-length adventure included in the book. Instead, this book provides several “modular encounters” which are set pieces that can be dropped in to a lot of different adventures, but definitely have a Corellian feel. Some of the more versatile encounters include a Sabacc game with some crafty card-sharks, a merchant transaction that gets spicy when a very unhappy customer shows up with the PCs caught in the middle, an encounter with local customs authorities while smuggling etc. Throughout the book there are lots of stats for adversaries in all sorts of situations, and lots of adventure seeds from descriptions of planets just off the beaten path.

The new species are the Selonians, the Drall, and the Corellian human. The Corellian starts with a skill in piloting (space or planetary) and interestingly can train up to rank 3 during character generation which breaks the typical limit of two. The Drall seem like highly intelligent, note-taking Ewoks. The Selonians are like tall battle ferrets with a tail attack. I’m a bit underwhelmed by the few character options that are in the book.

For a system known for building some of the best and fastest ships in the galaxy, there are precious few pages dedicated to them. There are a few airspeeders, landspeeders, and some stats for some mining vehicles, and a good mix of fighters, patrol boats, light freighters and one small capitol ship (the assassin corvette). I had imagined there would be more focus on the ships as that is what Corellia is known for.

Overall, I think the focus and audience of this book is a lot more narrow than Enter the Unknown. Maybe my expectations were set higher from being so pleasantly surprised with the Explorer’s sourcebook. Unless you are a GM looking to please a group of PCs who want to play pilots and extensively explore one sector, this is probably a pass. The material is all here to build an entire Corellian campaign, but with the rest of the galaxy just a few parsecs away, why limit yourself?