Some dice are covered in symbols that indicate success while others sport the symbol for failure. The various shapes and sizes all have different ratios of these symbols giving you a better or worse chance of racking up success or failures. When you need to make a skill check you grab a handful of the “good” dice. What you grab is determined by your rank in the skill. For example a droid trying to make a mechanics check might grab two green dice (some success on each side) and one yellow die (this thing is covered with fucking success). Now as the GM I start adding the bad dice to the pool. I might toss in one purple die (a few failures) because it’s a simple lock to pick. But maybe the droid is trying to pick it while being shot at by Stormtroopers so I add a red die (a.k.a the fuck orb) which is bristling with failures. Now the player has a handful of good dice representing their skill and some bad dice representing the circumstances of the check. They roll the entire pool and each failure rolled cancels out a success. If there are any success left over then the skill check succeeded. That right there is the core mechanic of Edge of the Empire.
