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Foxtrot1138
2016-12-25, 08:56 PM
I'm an inexperienced GM. Lifelong Star Wars nerd, but never played any of the Star Wars systems. I think my friends would be receptive to trying it but can't decide which to get and learn. From what I read I think I'd enjoy each type for different reasons so I'm not even looking for "which is more fun". Instead I have two parts to my question: Which system is SIMPLER to run and play, and which systems are easier to GET STARTED(buying necessary rules, accessories, etc)?
I've heard great things about West End Games using D6, Saga d20, and Edge of the Empire. I'm interested to know which of these makes for simpler game play since in the past my groups have gotten very bogged down with rules for D&D 3.5/Pathfinder. I like making campaigns and stories but get stuck reading through rules way too much as I don't have enough experience to house-rule things on the fly. Saga sounds very similar to D&D systems but will I have the same problems trudging through rules the whole time?
Edge of the Empire sounds like a fun scoundrels and criminals centered game but did I read you need to buy 3 base games to get all the class? Any of these systems cheaper/require less money to play effectively?
Others said WEG with "D6" was their favorite but does that require modifying rules and more complex stuff I'd like to avoid?
Thanks for any assistance or experience with these.

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-25, 10:27 PM
For simplicity and speed, WEGd6. But, you'd have to do some digging for products.

For availability of products, FFG's new line. But, not at all intuitive or smooth.

The Glyphstone
2016-12-25, 11:01 PM
From what I understand of FFG's line, you only 'need' to buy the book for the game you want to play, because they're more like 3 separate games with a single unified core mechanic system.

Edge of the Empire is about being smugglers, renegades, and general misfits on the fringes of society.

Age of Rebellion is about being a soldier or pilot for the Rebel Alliance, directly battling the Empire.

Force and Destiny is about being a force-sensitive and inheriting the legacy of the Jedi while the Empire tries to hunt and kill you.

Since they share a core system, you can import races/careers from one game into the others, but it's not at all mandatory, and sometimes needs some adjustments to fit properly.

CharonsHelper
2016-12-26, 12:14 AM
I can't weigh in on the other two - but Saga Edition is good. It's obviously derived from 3.5 so that might be an issue, but it's a good bit simpler and smoother. They streamlined skills, force use is far simpler than spell-casting, and it probably has the best balance of any d20 system I've ever seen.

(d6 & Revised d20 very obviously have Jedi be more powerful than characters who aren't force sensitive. Saga Edition resolved Jedi being potent in the fluff where you aren't a full Jedi knight until level 8ish - before that someone with the Jedi class is just a padawan. So basically all Jedi are high level in a PC class while that's very rare for non-Jedi.)

Mechalich
2016-12-26, 12:23 AM
SAGA is similar to D&D in many ways, but it is simplified to a degree - it is absolutely much less complicated than Star Wars d20 - and highly accessible to those experienced with D&D. In terms of expense, the FFG license is the one currently in print, so it's probably going to be the cheapest, ultimately.

One thing to keep in mind with Star Wars games is that they related to the source material in different ways, which matters for what you wish to run. WEG is old, and doesn't interact well with the Prequel or KOTOR timelines and such things. SAGA is newer, but it integrated a whole lot of material that is now Legends continuity into its system, so if you aren't big into the EU its probably not as good of a fit.

Anonymouswizard
2016-12-26, 03:50 AM
One thing to note about EotE/AoE/F&D is that you also have to buy the special dice of you want the game to run smoothly (you don't strictly need them, but you'd be comparing each die to a chart otherwise, massively slowing down the game). I should also mention that this isn't like Fate's '£13 for more dice than you need', depending on characters you might have to buy two to three packs just to generate a PC's starting pool (is very easy for a droid to begin with a 5 in their most important stat).

That isn't too say the FFG games can't be fun or run smoothly, it's just an extra barrier to entry.

JAL_1138
2016-12-26, 09:08 AM
WEG d6 is hard to find legally, although there's a well-known fan-site that shall remain nameless here hosting pdfs of the whole thing (which I'm required to say should never be used because piracy is bad, even for out-of-print systems with inactive licenses that are only available otherwise as used books). WEG currently has a generic system called D6 Space available on DriveThruRPG that's basically the same rules with the Star Wars names redacted after they lost the license, that could easily be converted to run a Star Wars game.

If you can get ahold of the actual WEG Star Wars (rather than trying to convert D6 Space, which is good but as a generic system doesn't have the amazing Star Wars content WEG produced), I'd definitely recommend it. It's a fantastically versatile, streamlined, quick system that has some truly great writing and supplements.

Foxtrot1138
2016-12-26, 11:09 AM
So, Edge of the Empire is excellent but has custom dice. Saga is similar to 3.5 but streamlined. And WEG is a simple system also really loved.

If I find WEG, Star Wars second edition for example, that's all I need for it?

Thrudd
2016-12-26, 11:31 AM
So, Edge of the Empire is excellent but has custom dice. Saga is similar to 3.5 but streamlined. And WEG is a simple system also really loved.

If I find WEG, Star Wars second edition for example, that's all I need for it?
Yes, that's all you need. If you manage to find the Pirates and Privateers supplement, that's great stuff for a smuggler/outlaws style game with lots of extra ships and weapons. Also Alien Encounters was a late book they put out that is basically every alien race you can think of or would ever want (before prequels, remember).

Hopeless
2016-12-26, 01:12 PM
Right;
1) d6 Star Wars
There's a downloadable version of the d6 rules which was free the last time I checked, but the Star wars version was released in at least two separate editions I'd recommend the revised as that's just one book the other required two eventually as long as you don't mind making up your own games you shouldn't have any problems!
2) Star Wars d20 if you could find a copy they're OK I'd recommend checking out the Order 66 podcast archive although when I found out about them they were dealing with Saga Edition.
3) Saga Edition was expensive when it first come out probably even more so now!
4) The FFG has 3 core books one for the underworld (edge of the empire), the rebellion (Age of Rebellion) or Force User (Force & Destiny) the major plus is that each has a beginner game set ideal to teach you the basics, pre-generated characters, a set of those dice they mentioned, downloadable extra adventure and characters along with a forum that's just itching to answer any questions you have!

I'd recommend picking up the beginner set for the book you fancy running and even if you end up picking up the Age of Rebellion core book that game will still prove useful!

Also be careful about the various supplements as they tend to go out of stock often and occasionally you find them being sold for inflated prices!

The real question is what would you like to run?

Mando Knight
2016-12-26, 01:25 PM
SAGA is newer, but it integrated a whole lot of material that is now Legends continuity into its system, so if you aren't big into the EU its probably not as good of a fit.

All of them did that. WEG practically laid the foundations for Legends by adding in a lot of details not covered by the films.

Mutazoia
2016-12-26, 01:49 PM
D6holocron.com has all the old WEG Star Wars stuff archived. Mod's have posted that info, so it shouldn't be a problem to list it here. It's a fast system, east to learn, easy to play, and has a ton of material available. There were 3 versions...I recommend either the original (1st) edition, or the Revised and Expanded (3rd) editions.

The original edition didn't have things like specializations or the wild dice (exploding dice), and honestly, the game functioned quite well with out them. Third edition took the stuff introduced in the 2nd edition (such as the above mentioned wild dice and specializations) and cleaned it up and patched some holes.

Basically, if you are looking to run a game with the cinematic feel of the movies, head over to the the above mentioned website and fun the WEG D6 version.

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-26, 07:46 PM
All of them did that. WEG practically laid the foundations for Legends by adding in a lot of details not covered by the films.

No doubt. Many of the species whose names we take for granted were never named by Lucas, that wasn't his style*. WEG named those species.


( * Lucas really only ever cared about what looked the most impressive on screen at that moment, he really wasn't much of a worldbuilder. )

RedWarlock
2016-12-26, 09:18 PM
Having been in a couple of the FFG games (one after the other), I have to say.. they're alright. We did an Edge EotE game for about 6-8 months, then reset from start as a F&D game that is just hitting the power-crescendo (I've now killed a couple rancor almost single-handedly, though I'm the beast-slaying pseudo-ranger force-user class.)

There are a couple of factors I really like, and a few that are less well-thought out. Destiny points (light side/dark side tokens that flip back and forth, your standard Hero/Fate/Action points) serving as a visual bar was an interesting mechanic, though their usage could have been a little more pushed. IMO, they felt underutilized by non-jedi, it was too easy to just forget they existed. The spec trees feel semi-random, would've preferred a more organized prerequisite set or something, though it wasn't the end of the world. Some of the force powers in F&D chain upward into seemingly-broken pretty quick. (I happened to pick up the Sense power, because we were each going for a different powerset, and somehow happened into the tree that makes you a mega-tank with the same dice-boosts as the big boss-monster creatures/NPCs get. Between that and the endurance boosts from the ranger-like paths, I'm a tank, now.)

I owned the d20 Star Wars (pre-Saga Edition), and while I liked the look of it, I was never able to get anyone to play, and the 3.5-equivalent update was poorly handled, IMO. SE is as much proto-4e as post-3e. I know the condition tracks are something a LOT of people loved at the time, but weren't translated into 4e in any way. Would have to go back over them some time.

JAL_1138
2016-12-26, 09:52 PM
No doubt. Many of the species whose names we take for granted were never named by Lucas, that wasn't his style*. WEG named those species.


( * Lucas really only ever cared about what looked the most impressive on screen at that moment, he really wasn't much of a worldbuilder. )

It goes even further than that--Lucasarts sent a bunch of WEG supplements to Timothy Zahn to use as (required) reference material; while Zahn wasn't the first EU writer (Alan Dean Foster and a few others beat him to it by decades, before all the films had even released), his Thrawn Trilogy in the early '90s was what really made it popular, and a huge amount of the worldbuilding in it (and in subsequent EU novels by other authors) is literally drawn straight from WEG D6 splatbooks.

Knaight
2016-12-26, 10:10 PM
It goes even further than that--Lucasarts sent a bunch of WEG supplements to Timothy Zahn to use as (required) reference material; while Zahn wasn't the first EU writer (Alan Dean Foster and a few others beat him to it by decades, before all the films had even released), his Thrawn Trilogy in the early '90s was what really made it popular, and a huge amount of the worldbuilding in it (and in subsequent EU novels by other authors) is literally drawn straight from WEG D6 splatbooks.

I realize that Alan Dean Foster is technically an EU writer, but that's kind of an unfair label - it's a tiny part of a bigger career. He also wrote original novels that weren't glorified fanfiction.

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-26, 10:37 PM
Having been in a couple of the FFG games (one after the other), I have to say.. they're alright. We did an Edge EotE game for about 6-8 months, then reset from start as a F&D game that is just hitting the power-crescendo (I've now killed a couple rancor almost single-handedly, though I'm the beast-slaying pseudo-ranger force-user class.)

There are a couple of factors I really like, and a few that are less well-thought out. Destiny points (light side/dark side tokens that flip back and forth, your standard Hero/Fate/Action points) serving as a visual bar was an interesting mechanic, though their usage could have been a little more pushed. IMO, they felt underutilized by non-jedi, it was too easy to just forget they existed. The spec trees feel semi-random, would've preferred a more organized prerequisite set or something, though it wasn't the end of the world. Some of the force powers in F&D chain upward into seemingly-broken pretty quick. (I happened to pick up the Sense power, because we were each going for a different powerset, and somehow happened into the tree that makes you a mega-tank with the same dice-boosts as the big boss-monster creatures/NPCs get. Between that and the endurance boosts from the ranger-like paths, I'm a tank, now.)


Well, FFG's SW game is an odd combination of narrative assumption -- with each set of rolls controlling large chunks of the action and a lot of what I'd call "inane haggling" between the GM and players before and after each roll -- and piling on a plethora of "cool" abilities that interact with the "narrative" focus.

Major villain NPCs, for example, get a "cool talent" that turns their underlings into ablative armor. Without special PC "cool talents" to counteract that, you literally can't injure the major villain before you go through most of his minions, because it just wouldn't be "genre appropriate" to do so. :smallconfused:

The "cool abilities" get so convoluted that their designers have to issue official rulings about how the different "cool abilities" stack or interact or counter each other.


The deeper one digs, the more contrived and ridiculous the whole thing gets.





It goes even further than that--Lucasarts sent a bunch of WEG supplements to Timothy Zahn to use as (required) reference material; while Zahn wasn't the first EU writer ... his Thrawn Trilogy in the early '90s was what really made it popular, and a huge amount of the worldbuilding in it (and in subsequent EU novels by other authors) is literally drawn straight from WEG D6 splatbooks.


Yeap.

RedWarlock
2016-12-26, 10:45 PM
Well, FFG's SW game is an odd combination of narrative assumption -- with each set of rolls controlling large chunks of the action and a lot of what I'd call "inane haggling" between the GM and players before and after each roll -- and piling on a plethora of "cool" abilities that interact with the "narrative" focus.
Really? Maybe it's because I never really sat down and read the book, but our game doesn't do much if any haggling before/after rolls. At most it's "what's the difficulty?", "I've got this ability that negates black dice on X checks, if you want to throw those in...", and "oh, you got three advantages, do you want to link or critical?"

Edit: But then, we play combats pretty much by the numbers, not exactly descriptively.


Major villain NPCs, for example, get a "cool talent" that turns their underlings into ablative armor. Without special PC "cool talents" to counteract that, you literally can't injure the major villain before you go through most of his minions, because it just wouldn't be "genre appropriate" to do so. :smallconfused:

The "cool abilities" get so convoluted that their designers have to issue official rulings about how the different "cool abilities" stack or interact or counter each other.
Never ran into that, but maybe our GM isn't running those kinds of abilities on his boss NPCs. Most of the time it's just the upgrades on the difficulty dice for checks and sometimes some armor, giving black dice.

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-26, 10:54 PM
Really? Maybe it's because I never really sat down and read the book, but our game doesn't do much if any haggling before/after rolls. At most it's "what's the difficulty?", "I've got this ability that negates black dice on X checks, if you want to throw those in...", and "oh, you got three advantages, do you want to link or critical?"

Edit: But then, we play combats pretty much by the numbers, not exactly descriptively.


Never ran into that, but maybe our GM isn't running those kinds of abilities on his boss NPCs. Most of the time it's just the upgrades on the difficulty dice for checks and sometimes some armor, giving black dice.


I've skimmed F&D, but a lot of this comes from reading their official forums, and goodness those players and GMs seem to get up to a lot of pre-roll and post-roll "haggling" based on what's going on in the scene, and from everything they're saying, the rolls don't represent single actions, but rather whole chunks of the scene.

These are all people who seem to adore the game. And they describe a game that's full of narrative and mechanical haggling.

Another example would be the "cool talent" that lets a character of a certain career tree pull an item out of their backside. Literally, if they have this talent, they can pull whatever they could be "justifiably" be carrying in their tools and stuff, out of what amounts to thin air. Because hey, of course it's "genre appropriate" for the character to just happen to have that tool along. It's a rules-encoded arse-pull.

RedWarlock
2016-12-26, 11:21 PM
I've skimmed F&D, but a lot of this comes from reading their official forums, and goodness those players and GMs seem to get up to a lot of pre-roll and post-roll "haggling" based on what's going on in the scene, and from everything they're saying, the rolls don't represent single actions, but rather whole chunks of the scene.

These are all people who seem to adore the game. And they describe a game that's full of narrative and mechanical haggling.

Another example would be the "cool talent" that lets a character of a certain career tree pull an item out of their backside. Literally, if they have this talent, they can pull whatever they could be "justifiably" be carrying in their tools and stuff, out of what amounts to thin air. Because hey, of course it's "genre appropriate" for the character to just happen to have that tool along. It's a rules-encoded arse-pull.

Well, I can see some item-dependence built into it. It's something I don't agree with (kind of like how some of the Hunter or Rogue's abilities in WoW are special ammunition or not-physically-existing thrown daggers) but that's more from a D&D standpoint where we're used to having en extensive equipment list to do those kind of tricks. Integrating them into a specific skill tree feels off, but it's just different from what we're used to.

The part of it that really bugged me was that for EotE, the divisions were prioritized wrong, IMO. 'Smuggler' is a base class, with 'scoundrel' as a path under it. That's what I had to use for a character I wanted to play that was a Dug mobster-in-exile, because there wasn't anything else even remotely close, and it kept throwing in, like you say, item-based features that throw me off, like smuggler's holds in the ship, when I have no interest in smuggling anything, I'm trying to be a sneaky gunner, dangit!

JAL_1138
2016-12-27, 12:07 AM
I realize that Alan Dean Foster is technically an EU writer, but that's kind of an unfair label - it's a tiny part of a bigger career. He also wrote original novels that weren't glorified fanfiction.

I intended "EU writer" in my post to mean "author who wrote at least one work of fiction for the EU," with no other connotation, not "writer whose body of work consists solely, primarily, or most-noteworthily* of EU material." There's a considerable difference in meaning there, and I hadn't even thought of the second interpretation when I posted.

*(Is "noteworthily" even a word? I dunno.)

Fri
2016-12-27, 04:24 AM
What you call "inane haggling" is just the standard of more narrative based system though, which I guess feels weird for people who are used to crunchier and adversarial type of gaming? Like I'm pretty sure most if not all narativish system enable you to mention that you always have an item in your backpack or a certain fact about the surrounding is true, whether its by certain talent, once per encounter, or using fate point. Like, its just standard use in Fate Core to use Fate point to declare a fact you just made out is true, which of course must be reasonable and agreed by the gm (aka inane haggling).

Mutazoia
2016-12-27, 05:03 AM
What you call "inane haggling" is just the standard of more narrative based system though, which I guess feels weird for people who are used to crunchier and adversarial type of gaming? Like I'm pretty sure most if not all narativish system enable you to mention that you always have an item in your backpack or a certain fact about the surrounding is true, whether its by certain talent, once per encounter, or using fate point. Like, its just standard use in Fate Core to use Fate point to declare a fact you just made out is true, which of course must be reasonable and agreed by the gm (aka inane haggling).

I've played many a narrative based system, and haven't had to deal with "inane haggling". I've played Amber Diceless for years, and never was an inane haggle to be seen.

Fri
2016-12-27, 06:08 AM
I've played many a narrative based system, and haven't had to deal with "inane haggling". I've played Amber Diceless for years, and never was an inane haggle to be seen.

Exactly my point.

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-27, 09:10 AM
What you call "inane haggling" is just the standard of more narrative based system though, which I guess feels weird for people who are used to crunchier and adversarial type of gaming? Like I'm pretty sure most if not all narativish system enable you to mention that you always have an item in your backpack or a certain fact about the surrounding is true, whether its by certain talent, once per encounter, or using fate point. Like, its just standard use in Fate Core to use Fate point to declare a fact you just made out is true, which of course must be reasonable and agreed by the gm (aka inane haggling).

I find it interesting that the presumptive "opposite" of a narrative system is "adversarial" and "crunchy".

Once you start digging FFG SW is pretty damn crunchy, and they're trying very hard to be narrative. "Adversarial" is about the group dynamic far more than it's about the specific system.



Well, I can see some item-dependence built into it. It's something I don't agree with (kind of like how some of the Hunter or Rogue's abilities in WoW are special ammunition or not-physically-existing thrown daggers) but that's more from a D&D standpoint where we're used to having en extensive equipment list to do those kind of tricks. Integrating them into a specific skill tree feels off, but it's just different from what we're used to.

The part of it that really bugged me was that for EotE, the divisions were prioritized wrong, IMO. 'Smuggler' is a base class, with 'scoundrel' as a path under it. That's what I had to use for a character I wanted to play that was a Dug mobster-in-exile, because there wasn't anything else even remotely close, and it kept throwing in, like you say, item-based features that throw me off, like smuggler's holds in the ship, when I have no interest in smuggling anything, I'm trying to be a sneaky gunner, dangit!

Well, FFG is trying to have everything at once -- they're trying to "emulate genre", pile on the "cool talents", and maintain a strict notion of balance. Their "solution" is character classes highly structured career trees and significant costs for trying to go outside those predefined archetypes.

Fri
2016-12-27, 09:38 AM
I find it interesting that the presumptive "opposite" of a narrative system is "adversarial" and "crunchy".

Once you start digging FFG SW is pretty damn crunchy, and they're trying very hard to be narrative. "Adversarial" is about the group dynamic far more than it's about the specific system.


Point. Might need to confirm that I didn't meant to be condescending to those term at all. And I already know that star wars ffg is pretty crunchy, which is also why I really like it. It's still kinda narrative and not bogged in numbers, but also still scratch my itch to shop for effective equipments and feats. I mainly use "adversarial" because I assume adversarial group would be the one who get more bogged in debating about what can and can not be in a utility belt and such. A more narrative dm and player would be just. "Sure, makes sense you have a lockpick in your utility belt." or "nah, it doesn't makes sense if you have grenade in your utility belt." and the player wouldn't debate too much.


By the way, pretty sure it can be made less narrative and much less confusing for new group by just using the provided table of advantage and disadvantage provided in the book. And also actually all "advanced classes" specialization for later are branched exactly into crunchy and narrative. Like, engineer could pick between two specialization: once per session ability to attempt to macgyver any item that that have 5 or less rarity with 2 destiny point that will last one encounter, and once per session ability to reroll any 2 dice with 2 destiny point. They specifically mention "first ability if you feel like a more storytelling ability, second ability if you want a more straightforward mechanical ability."

KillingAScarab
2016-12-27, 10:22 AM
D6holocron.com has all the old WEG Star Wars stuff archived. Mod's have posted that info, so it shouldn't be a problem to list it here. It's a fast system, east to learn, easy to play, and has a ton of material available. There were 3 versions...I recommend either the original (1st) edition, or the Revised and Expanded (3rd) editions."Revised and Expanded" was used to note a rules update to a given edition was included. I own a copy of 2nd edtion Revised and Expanded; the introduction notes that the rules update would have also been made available through sending a SASE and 0.64 USD or through the Official Star Wars Adventure Journal.

On that note, I think it is worth mentioning that Star Wars d20 had two magazines in which supplemental material was published for it. Wizards of the Coast published it in Star Wars Gamer, but also in Polyhedron. There was some good adaptations of later EU content in those, such as the Jensaarai prestige class (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/I,_Jensaarai).

If you like some of the older EU material, West End Games did sourcebooks for the Jedi Praxeum and the Dark Empire. However, I had the impression that those materials assume you're playing a human character. d20 seemed more open to playing alien species to me, since it had a species guide (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Ultimate_Alien_Anthology).

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-27, 10:40 AM
"Revised and Expanded" was used to note a rules update to a given edition was included. I own a copy of 2nd edtion Revised and Expanded; the introduction notes that the rules update would have also been made available through sending a SASE and 0.64 USD or through the Official Star Wars Adventure Journal.

On that note, I think it is worth mentioning that Star Wars d20 had two magazines in which supplemental material was published for it. Wizards of the Coast published it in Star Wars Gamer, but also in Polyhedron. There was some good adaptations of later EU content in those, such as the Jensaarai prestige class (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/I,_Jensaarai).

If you like some of the older EU material, West End Games did sourcebooks for the Jedi Praxeum and the Dark Empire. However, I had the impression that those materials assume you're playing a human character. d20 seemed more open to playing alien species to me, since it had a species guide (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Ultimate_Alien_Anthology).


Looking at the bookshelf behind me... I'm pretty sure that WEG published plenty of non-human species.

Mutazoia
2016-12-27, 11:08 AM
Looking at the bookshelf behind me... I'm pretty sure that WEG published plenty of non-human species.

You would be right (you know you are). Most notably Galaxy Guides 4 (Alien Races) and 12 (Aliens, Enemies and Allies). And then there were the the 3 "Planets of the Galaxy" splats that included stats for races native to the new planets introduced within (that were not already covered by the Galaxy Guides).

Anyway you look at it, the D6 version has the most support (splats) out of any version to date.

Knaight
2016-12-27, 12:20 PM
Another example would be the "cool talent" that lets a character of a certain career tree pull an item out of their backside. Literally, if they have this talent, they can pull whatever they could be "justifiably" be carrying in their tools and stuff, out of what amounts to thin air. Because hey, of course it's "genre appropriate" for the character to just happen to have that tool along. It's a rules-encoded arse-pull.

This is pretty standard - precise lists that track every single item a character is carrying are pretty rare, and even if they are in play implicit items are usually a thing. For instance, say that a player wants to have their character do something with a shoe lace - they probably don't have "shoe lace" written down anywhere on their sheet. It's pretty implicit in "boots" though*, and those are often implicit in something like "set of traveling clothing" or "military uniform", and those are often implicit in that one assumes the characters are wearing something even if clothes aren't explicitly listed on the sheet. This just extends the concept a bit further for one character. It's hardly an arse-pull.

*For some settings, depends on the boot. Fantasy is a borderline case, western is straight up unlikely.

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-27, 12:46 PM
This is pretty standard - precise lists that track every single item a character is carrying are pretty rare, and even if they are in play implicit items are usually a thing. For instance, say that a player wants to have their character do something with a shoe lace - they probably don't have "shoe lace" written down anywhere on their sheet. It's pretty implicit in "boots" though*, and those are often implicit in something like "set of traveling clothing" or "military uniform", and those are often implicit in that one assumes the characters are wearing something even if clothes aren't explicitly listed on the sheet. This just extends the concept a bit further for one character. It's hardly an arse-pull.

*For some settings, depends on the boot. Fantasy is a borderline case, western is straight up unlikely.

Many of the examples people give of using it go far beyond "of course my character has a shoe-lace, they're wearing shoes".

Here's another example -- the "cool talent" that lets you cause malfunctions in technological devices around you. It says "Once a session, make a check and cause one targeted device to fail." It could literally be the door that you just ran through, jams and doesn't let the minions chasing you get through, at least long enough to escape. Why? Because it's "dramatically appropriate". And the explanation of why the device failed? Well, it's usually some retconned nonsense that the player gets to invoke happening in the past because it's convenient now, or that the GM has to come up with on the fly to cover for the gaping hole that's been opened in causality.

The character doesn't even have to do anything active to the device itself -- the entire talent is based on invoking "narrative convention".

If the GM did that to a PC -- say, made their weapon "randomly" fail at the exact moment that they had the big-bad dead to rights, because "dramatically appropriate", and then invoked "you forgot to clean it" or "you forget to recharge it" or some nonsense -- I bet most players would be mad enough to eat their own hat.

Knaight
2016-12-27, 01:00 PM
Many of the examples people give of using it go far beyond "of course my character has a shoe-lace, they're wearing shoes".

Well, yeah. That was an example of pretty much the minimum of that concept, the same way that finding a stick in the forest is an example of the outright minimum of interacting with things in the environment that haven't been explicitly denoted as being there. In the context of a character who is supposed to be more prepared, the actual item that they're known to have is "a collection of miscellaneous small stuff", with the talent being invoked to note that said collection happens to include a gas grenade or a magnetic door locking strip or whatever. The point is, what a character has is always defined with a certain level of abstraction, and this is just using a higher level of abstraction than is common. Again, it's hardly an arse-pull.

Fri
2016-12-27, 01:06 PM
If the GM did that to a PC -- say, made their weapon "randomly" fail at the exact moment that they had the big-bad dead to rights, because "dramatically appropriate", and then invoked "you forgot to clean it" or "you forget to recharge it" or some nonsense -- I bet most players would be mad enough to eat their own hat.

Surprisingly, it's in the game. The GM can specifically make the pc's weapon jam because they forgot to clean it using darkside point and for rolling disadvantage and such. (Like, there are specific weapon or armor or something that's much cheaper than comparable equipment with similar price range, but with disadvantage of "if you roll disadvantage the weapon jam because it's very fragile/have shoddy quality" or something)

Once again, it's a common thing in games with more abstraction and such. Like, pc's weapon fail to give villain chance to escape? That's extremely common

It's a specific rule in this game, and many other. Like in Fate Core, it's even one of its basic premise.

If this bugs you so much, Leverage would give you a stroke (It's a Cortex-based system about heists, where one of the specific mechanic is that you can pull a flashback anytime, as expected of heist fiction. Like when you're cornered by guards, you can basically say "this is just as planned" and detail a mini encounter in the past where you prepare stuff so everything that happened is actually "just as planned" and you only pretend to be cornered)

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-27, 01:35 PM
Surprisingly, it's in the game. The GM can specifically make the pc's weapon jam because they forgot to clean it using darkside point and for rolling disadvantage and such. (Like, there are specific weapon or armor or something that's much cheaper than comparable equipment with similar price range, but with disadvantage of "if you roll disadvantage the weapon jam because it's very fragile/have shoddy quality" or something)

Once again, it's a common thing in games with more abstraction and such. Like, pc's weapon fail to give villain chance to escape? That's extremely common

It's a specific rule in this game, and many other. Like in Fate Core, it's even one of its basic premise.

If this bugs you so much, Leverage would give you a stroke (It's a Cortex-based system about heists, where one of the specific mechanic is that you can pull a flashback anytime, as expected of heist fiction. Like when you're cornered by guards, you can basically say "this is just as planned" and detail a mini encounter in the past where you prepare stuff so everything that happened is actually "just as planned" and you only pretend to be cornered)

Which strikes me as nothing more or less than kids playing some variation of ye olde "cops and robbers" or "cowboys and Indians"...

"I got you!"
"Nuh uh, your gun jammed!"

"You're captured!"
"Nuh uh, I had a hidden knife and cut the rope!"

"You're cornered!"
"Nuh uh, I had my ninjas waiting here to capture YOU!"

Fri
2016-12-27, 01:42 PM
And isn't that what rpg is actually, if reduced to basic term? Cowboy and indians is our first role playing game after all. Surprising for some people, there are many games for different premises, for different tastes, some might like one, some might like the others. There are more threat and stakes other than bodily damage or death, more prize than gold or kills. Some rpg might have belief as stakes as part of the premise, some might revolve around duel of mental and wits as its basic combat. Some people might play game where failure mean death, some people might play game where death is cheap and failure mean their kingdom crumble.

And as you mentioned, some people might not actually play game to defeat each others, where the GM tries to kill the players and the player try to ruin the GM's plan.

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-27, 02:33 PM
And isn't that what rpg is actually, if reduced to basic term? Cowboy and indians is our first role playing game after all. Surprising for some people, there are many games for different premises, for different tastes, some might like one, some might like the others. There are more threat and stakes other than bodily damage or death, more prize than gold or kills. Some rpg might have belief as stakes as part of the premise, some might revolve around duel of mental and wits as its basic combat. Some people might play game where failure mean death, some people might play game where death is cheap and failure mean their kingdom crumble.

And as you mentioned, some people might not actually play game to defeat each others, where the GM tries to kill the players and the player try to ruin the GM's plan.


It's not supposed to be the GM's plan, it's supposed to be the plan(s) of one or more NPCs. (Yes, the GM has to come up with it as part of controlling those NPCs, but a GM who makes it his goal to beat the players is missing the point, IMO... that just makes me think of the stereotypical bad D&D DM from certain comics and stories.)


One of the comments from before:



Like, pc's weapon fail to give villain chance to escape? That's extremely common


I think every group I've been in would consider that an utter screwjob by the GM -- unless the game happened to have fumble/critical failure rules built in and the weapon failure was being used as an explanation/consequence of the PLAYER rolling a critical failure.

A GM manually invoking a weapon failure out of the blue to let his villain escape would have caused a serious loss of player-GM trust.


E: you know, I've derailed this enough trying to defend my negative review of FFG's game. We can start a new thread if the tangent needs to continue, but I think I've made my opinion of the game clear.

Anonymouswizard
2016-12-27, 03:18 PM
I think every group I've been in would consider that an utter screwjob by the GM -- unless the game happened to have fumble/critical failure rules built in and the weapon failure was being used as an explanation/consequence of the PLAYER rolling a critical failure.

A GM manually invoking a weapon failure out of the blue to let his villain escape would have caused a serious loss of player-GM trust.

Let's look at how this would work in Fate. Because I like Fate.

First we need a reason for this to happen. Maybe the PC is neglectful, as stated or implied by one of his aspects. Maybe the fight is happening in a zone with a muddy field Aspect that could mess up your gun's fitting mechanism. Maybe the bad guy uses his turn to give you a jammed gun Aspect.

Now, this could just be a case of you lose your permission to shoot the bad guy, especially in the case of a jammed gun Aspect, but it's more likely to be a Compel. This means that a player has two options: he can accept the Compel and gain a Fate Point, or he can refuse it and spend a Fate Point.

Now we were playing GURPS and I hadn't rolled high enough to malfunction, I'd agree with you. But Fate is built on a different set of assumptions that says 'if it makes sense in the narrative make it a Compel and let the player decide to accept or refuse it', which is a valid way to play.

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-27, 03:29 PM
Let's look at how this would work in Fate. Because I like Fate.

First we need a reason for this to happen. Maybe the PC is neglectful, as stated or implied by one of his aspects. Maybe the fight is happening in a zone with a muddy field Aspect that could mess up your gun's fitting mechanism. Maybe the bad guy uses his turn to give you a jammed gun Aspect.

Now, this could just be a case of you lose your permission to shoot the bad guy, especially in the case of a jammed gun Aspect, but it's more likely to be a Compel. This means that a player has two options: he can accept the Compel and gain a Fate Point, or he can refuse it and spend a Fate Point.

Now we were playing GURPS and I hadn't rolled high enough to malfunction, I'd agree with you. But Fate is built on a different set of assumptions that says 'if it makes sense in the narrative make it a Compel and let the player decide to accept or refuse it', which is a valid way to play.

Do you mind if I move this to a new thread so we can stop derailing the OP's actual question?

Anonymouswizard
2016-12-27, 03:46 PM
Do you mind if I move this to a new thread so we can stop derailing the OP's actual question?

No, I only posted it because I was on my phone and so I was unable to see if there had been any new posts before I hit submit.

I personally recommend against the FFG Star Wars RPGs because of the special dice you need, as I mentioned earlier in the thread.

Max_Killjoy
2016-12-27, 04:22 PM
Narrative causality thread. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?510294-Narrative-Causality&p=21535061#post21535061)

Corsair14
2017-01-03, 10:07 AM
To the original topic, I was on vaca and didn't get back until now for my favorite universe and RPG. I prefer the WEG d6 system out of the two I have played.

The new FFG system, I am not a fan of. Its overly complicated since they effectively have three different games in the same universe instead of one common core game with supplements. Yeah they are all related but you have the different duty and obligation and motivation crap which makes it more difficult to properly incorporate them together for a cohesive campaign as they should be. Its very oriented towards being alliance good guy related. In order to come up with adventures the simplicity of writing requires the books, ie I could only do a broad outline of and adventure then have to get hold of the books to stat it out vs the d6 system where literally I detailed out an entire campaign over the course of several weeks from the turret of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle in the field in my notebook without a single rule or source book. Next the dice situation is frikkin stupid. Why the hell do you have proprietary dice you have to buy multiple expensive packs of if you can find them? The dice thing alone almost turned me off to it but I gave it a try. I found it to be just annoyingly slow and complicated to play. Not as bad as 4th edition DnD and unlike 4e I would play it if it was the only thing available but.... it would be played begrudgingly.

Never played the middle editions so I cant comment on them.

WEG d6 system was a beautifully designed system for both playing and GMing. Character creation is simplicity in itself while still having complete customizability and speed. I made a series of fully statted and storied characters I later(after training) played while sitting in the keep busy classes of Army basic training(the early ones where they are "teaching" things in a classroom setting but really is more of a sleep deprivation exercise in between smoke sessions before the real training starts.) Everything is based off of d6. No various dice to figure out obscure symbols on or figuring stuff out. 4d+1, roll four dice and add 1, simple. The system allows for everything goes. Want to be Imperials? Nothing has to be converted. Want to have a party consisting of a bounty hunter, an alliance pilot, and a jedi? Same system with no changes. The new stuff is easy to stat out. Rogue One materials, Inquisitors, Rebels, all super easy to use and put into the game if wanted. All the old source books are free online or you can find them on ebay if you want physical copies(still mad my parents threw all mine out when I was overseas. Did they really need that cabinet space that bad?) Oh and certain current SW writers I wont name still play the d6 system and use campaign characters in their writings.

LibraryOgre
2017-01-03, 05:19 PM
I am also a fan of the d6 version, and would point out that d6 Space, which is largely the same as 2nd edition Star Wars, is free from Drivethru RPG. As others have said, it's a simple and direct game, with a lot of fun to be had.

Ninjaxenomorph
2017-01-03, 06:56 PM
Also, while there are thing you may want to convert, it's extremely easy to do so.

obryn
2017-01-03, 07:34 PM
I've played SW d6 and Saga Edition. Saga Edition, I don't think I'll play again. SW d6 is a solid, time-tested game; I would find the RE-UP version and check out the d6 holocron for anything you may need. FFG's version looks fun, but also heftier than I think I would normally expect in a narrative-ish game.

I'd start with WEG's d6 because it's all publicly available, and will probably play the closest to Rogue One if that's what you're aiming for right now. :smallsmile:

willoftheway
2017-01-03, 09:21 PM
I know I'm in the minority in this thread, but I have a fierce love for saga edition. I honestly felt it did an excellent job of translating the feel of the star wars universe into the d20 system and I honestly feel like there's more than enough content in the more limited selection of books (compared to the west end d6 star wars) to tell literally any kind of Star Wars story you want.

If you are familiar with d20 rules I would strongly consider saga. The changes between something like 3.5 or d20 modern to saga are intuitive and not very complicated. Force powers are a skill based "magic" system that works fairly well. Though there are a couple rough edges(nothing comparable to say true name magic from 3.5 though), and it does carry a little hint of caster/mundane disparity (again nothing nearly as extreme as 3.5). Classes are flavorful and can be tailored very easily. If 4th had been more like saga and less like 4E I probably would have actually enjoyed it.

Foxtrot1138
2017-01-03, 10:04 PM
I think I'll try D6. Free is free is free. I wonder if there are any quick guides for converting things to Star Wars names. My understanding is that the free D6 stuff won't say "sandcrawler", it'll call it a non proprietary name and I have to sort of figure out what's what as I go? Or am I thinking to complicated. Guess I should just dive in and figure it out.

Mutazoia
2017-01-03, 11:36 PM
I think I'll try D6. Free is free is free. I wonder if there are any quick guides for converting things to Star Wars names. My understanding is that the free D6 stuff won't say "sandcrawler", it'll call it a non proprietary name and I have to sort of figure out what's what as I go? Or am I thinking to complicated. Guess I should just dive in and figure it out.

Why re-invent the wheel? Just use the original SWD6 stuff. (http://d6holocron.com/)

Thrudd
2017-01-03, 11:40 PM
I think I'll try D6. Free is free is free. I wonder if there are any quick guides for converting things to Star Wars names. My understanding is that the free D6 stuff won't say "sandcrawler", it'll call it a non proprietary name and I have to sort of figure out what's what as I go? Or am I thinking to complicated. Guess I should just dive in and figure it out.

I'm pretty sure you can find the actual Star Wars D6 stuff somewhere online, as well, if not in rulebook form then as a fan site with stats and equipment lists.

Ninja'd

Corsair14
2017-01-04, 07:45 AM
The real stuff is all out there for free. Disney isn't going to arrest you for looking at it. They are well aware that its there and have better things to do than police 20 year old material that ultimately increases the visibility of their IP. Not to mention they are aware that it was this material and its fans that pretty much kept Star Wars alive for a decade and a half until they decided to make movies again.

LibraryOgre
2017-01-04, 11:34 AM
I know I'm in the minority in this thread, but I have a fierce love for saga edition. I honestly felt it did an excellent job of translating the feel of the star wars universe into the d20 system and I honestly feel like there's more than enough content in the more limited selection of books (compared to the west end d6 star wars) to tell literally any kind of Star Wars story you want.

If you are familiar with d20 rules I would strongly consider saga. The changes between something like 3.5 or d20 modern to saga are intuitive and not very complicated. Force powers are a skill based "magic" system that works fairly well. Though there are a couple rough edges(nothing comparable to say true name magic from 3.5 though), and it does carry a little hint of caster/mundane disparity (again nothing nearly as extreme as 3.5). Classes are flavorful and can be tailored very easily. If 4th had been more like saga and less like 4E I probably would have actually enjoyed it.

I like Saga, as well, but I prefer D6.

One thing Saga does better than D6 is creating characters with fairly unique ability sets. In D6, all non-force users can be pretty much the same... they won't be, because of limited resources, but it's somewhat like playing the first few levels of a Bethesda game... you know, before you start getting every stat and skill to 100, because you can? There's not a ton of unique special abilities to differentiate THIS blaster-focused pilot from THAT blaster-focused pilot, while Saga tends to allow you to build your character in a variety of ways, emphasizing different things. D6 doesn't have any equivalents to feats, talents, class abilities, or much into background beyond race. Which is fine and fun, but it's a design difference that's noticeable.

CharonsHelper
2017-01-04, 11:51 AM
Well - that makes sense that d6 Star Wars didn't have much customization. From what I understand - major character customization didn't become a thing until the 90's, while WEG d6 Star Wars came out in 1987.

Thrudd
2017-01-04, 12:08 PM
Well - that makes sense that d6 Star Wars didn't have much customization. From what I understand - major character customization didn't become a thing until the 90's, while WEG d6 Star Wars came out in 1987.

I don't think that's really true. If you only use the example character templates, maybe. But you can also build your character from the ground up. They will have varying attributes and different levels of different skills and different specializations, you choose how many dice to put where and what skills and specializations to take.

Also, the last revision to WEG was in the 90's. Also, GURPS came out in the 80's, and that is similarly customizable.

obryn
2017-01-04, 01:15 PM
SWd6 is almost purely a stat-and-skill system. There's some small Advantage/Disadvantage stuff you can find if you look for it, and different Species have some different abilities which mostly come into play if you're building your own character, but by and large it's pure stat-and-skill.

Whether you want to call this "total freedom" or "lack of customization" is really in the eye of the beholder. :smallbiggrin:

LibraryOgre
2017-01-04, 02:08 PM
SWd6 is almost purely a stat-and-skill system. There's some small Advantage/Disadvantage stuff you can find if you look for it, and different Species have some different abilities which mostly come into play if you're building your own character, but by and large it's pure stat-and-skill.

Whether you want to call this "total freedom" or "lack of customization" is really in the eye of the beholder. :smallbiggrin:

It's a bit of both, to be sure. Because it's purely stats and skills, there's not much to differentiate two characters of the same stats and skills unlike, say, Saga, where they might have different feat and talent choices, resulting in different characters built on the same chasis.

It's a factor, but I like that you can put together a SWD6 character in just a few minutes, by spending 18 attribute and 7 skill dice and giving them a couple pieces of equipment.

Ceiling_Squid
2017-01-05, 06:26 PM
I personally like FFG Star Wars, "inane haggling" and all. I like collaborative scene-setting between GM and players, with the occasional retroactive twist, sudden development, or plot coupon. It's obviously not a good fit for everyone's taste, apparently, but to each their own. I could do without the nose-turning condecension, though. ("Cowboys and Indians??" Seriously? Have we returned to anti-4e style edition warring again?)

The system simply runs on different base assumptions from typical d20-styled RPGs. There's a lot of unlearning to do for a lot of groups. I strongly recommend checking out a podcast or two, to see how it plays in action. That'll tell you quickly if you might like it or not, far better than just reading the rules.

The beginner boxes are a decent investment if someone wants to try the system. And they include a set of the dice.

Edit: Besides, there's also an app for the dice, if someone's having trouble getting a set.

D+1
2017-01-05, 10:21 PM
Which system is SIMPLER to run and play
I would say the WEG d6 system. Once the GM has some experience in pulling difficulty numbers out of thin air or adjudicating them, the game moves fast, fun, and non-stop.


Which systems are easier to GET STARTED(buying necessary rules, accessories, etc)?
WEG d6 is out of print as has been noted and people like it enough to not want to sell what they have. Getting started with D6 will mean a lot of downloading and using PDF's for GM and players alike, whether you use the SW system itself or the generic d6 Space. I don't know about you, but as a player I get little satisfaction from looking through a PDF. I want a Players book to hold and leaf through and a PDF ain't the same. I don't HAVE to have a nice hardcopy, but I'm happier if I do.

Any of the FFG books are big, heavy, full of cool art and gobs of game to happily drown in - and they're expensive. It does also require special dice at about $15 per set. However, it's not the sort of thing that every player will need their own set. I bought the EotE starter game which comes with a set and then one more set. The players and I all take turns using them and it works just fine. They come out to just over a buck each which makes them CHEAPER than normal RPG dice. You can also buy a dice Star Wars Dice app for $5 which makes it even cheaper still - but I likes rolling a fistful o' dice. Lots of adventures and so forth in print. Use cardboard tokens (buy 'em or make yourself) and battle maps from whatever source you like (online, other rpg's) or keep using the 'ol Chessex battlemat and wet-erase markers for most of your adventures like I do. I also have a bunch of metal Star Wars minis from back when I ran d6 Star Wars so I had an edge there.

I already had a cheap laminating machine and I used it to make several "cheat sheets" for the players so they wouldn't need to all have expensive, fat rulebooks. Altogether it probably works out to be A BIT more expensive than other new RPG games - but expense is ALWAYS something you're going to run into when diving into a completely new RPG - whether it's still on the store shelves or decades out of print. You need rule books, minis, and whatever maps and whatnot you think you may want/need. You'll want/need the SAME stuff for WEG d6 as for FFG.

FFG is a NARRATIVE oriented system. It's a very different approach compared to typical RPG's but I found that made it more fun and interesting. Still, it's THAT aspect of it that I suspect is most likely to get in your way, but for STAR WARS gaming I personally found it works VERY well. When I ran d6 I was flying by the seat of my pants and glossing over rules ALL THE TIME. I find myself doing the same with a lot of the crunchier bits of FFG's system - but if you have players that WANT to get into more crunch and "character BUILDS" then FFG has it all over d6. Just pick which of the 3 variations you want to build a campaign around and buy THAT rule book rather than trying to frankenstein two or all three together (which would also be a MUCH greater expense as well as hassle).

For a lighter, somewhat shorter-term campaign I'd say d6. For a longer, deeper, slightly more serious campaign I'd recommend risking the FFG.

GungHo
2017-01-06, 11:19 AM
I don't think that's really true. If you only use the example character templates, maybe. But you can also build your character from the ground up. They will have varying attributes and different levels of different skills and different specializations, you choose how many dice to put where and what skills and specializations to take.

Also, the last revision to WEG was in the 90's. Also, GURPS came out in the 80's, and that is similarly customizable.

Well, his point was before customization became a thing... an expectation rather than a nice feature. GURPS was bleeding edge. Once 2nd Ed started coming out with the Complete Splatbooks and then Options along with Storyteller doing much the same, that level of customization became an expectation rather than feature.


FFG is a NARRATIVE oriented system. It's a very different approach compared to typical RPG's but I found that made it more fun and interesting. Still, it's THAT aspect of it that I suspect is most likely to get in your way, but for STAR WARS gaming I personally found it works VERY well. When I ran d6 I was flying by the seat of my pants and glossing over rules ALL THE TIME. I find myself doing the same with a lot of the crunchier bits of FFG's system - but if you have players that WANT to get into more crunch and "character BUILDS" then FFG has it all over d6. Just pick which of the 3 variations you want to build a campaign around and buy THAT rule book rather than trying to frankenstein two or all three together (which would also be a MUCH greater expense as well as hassle).

For a lighter, somewhat shorter-term campaign I'd say d6. For a longer, deeper, slightly more serious campaign I'd recommend risking the FFG.

The FFG system (which started with their WH40K stuff) falls back on the old "why are a bunch of Jedi hanging out with smugglers?" question we used to ask with the previous D6 and D20/SAGA rules. There's economics involved, too, but the blaster guys are balanced for blaster guys and the force guys are balanced for force guys. Their conceit (again, also reflected in the WH40K games) is that with the exception of the scenario in the movies, these people just don't cross paths, so as you say, "pick one". The problem with that conceit is that people want to run things like the scenarios in the movies with a blended team, and the fact that the games aren't really written or balanced around that does them some disservice with the SW license, whereas no one is really trying to bring a Space Marine along in Rogue Trader.

Back to the D6 vs SAGA vs FFG vs other games, the biggest differences that I've come across (beyond FFGs specialized dice... and I suggest just getting the app for those unless you really need the tactility) are how the Jedi feel, and some of that follows the media that came along, where the Jedi went from light telekinesis and low grade mentalism to being capable of superhuman athletics. Because of the way D6 progression works, if you're putting your points into force capabilities, you're not putting them into other things. With D20/SAGA, you're not really sacrificing to gain more power, as things are tied to what you get for levels. You're trading off with feats and the like. FFG is a closer to the way D6 progression works in that you use the XP to buy power along with standard additions. Ultimately, if you want your Jedi to be basically tricksy humans, you can go with D6s. If you want them to be The Witcher, go with SAGA. FFG is much closer to the D6 model at "standard" XP levels, but once XP becomes very high, you can make up for all your earlier sacrifices.

Ceiling_Squid
2017-01-06, 11:53 AM
What??

No, the FFG games are fairly balanced at similar XP levels accross lines, and they are not very difficult to mix. Starting level Jedi are pretty much Luke at the beginning of ANH, to help balance that curve. At high XP levels, their "normal" compatriots have become fairly legendary themselves.

This is not the power gulf you'd see between Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader and Deathwatch, where the curve is extremely blatant both mechanically and in the lore.

Aside from the "compartmentalized game lines", FFG Star Wars has little-to-nothing to do with the 40kRPG, especially not in a mechanical sense. It's a superficial similarity in the way releases are organized. 40kRPG is a chart-heavy, high-lethality d100 system with a heavy focus on situational modifiers, and a severe power curve between game sub-lines. They inherited that percentile system from the now-defunct Black Industries and continued to develop content for it it, while FFG Star Wars is an in-house creation entirely their own. Having played both systems, there's nothing much in common, so I don't get where people see the 40k -> SWFFG comparison.

In fact, mechanically speaking, you can freely mix character careers from different lines (paying the appropriate XP cost for new specs, naturally). There's a ton of resources (races, gear, ships, new specs) in each splat that are freely useable by all characters.

The only real problem in mixing the lines is deciding what plot-hook mechanic (conflict, duty, obligation) applies to certain characters, and how to roll that. And they've already put out guidelines and suggestions on that.

daniel_ream
2017-01-13, 12:59 AM
I'm going to be a contrarian on this issue.

Disclaimer: I've been running Star Wars games in a variety of systems since the 1980's, including all the licensed variants.

In my personal opinion, none of the licensed games produce results that feel close to Star Wars (by which I'm talking about Episodes IV-VI only). Of the licensed games, FFG's design comes closest in feel, but it's not a simple, tight design. The multiple icons, the many intersecting narrative mechanics - they bog the system down a lot and it doesn't run with the speed that a Star Wars game ought to. Combat in particular feels too much like a grind rather than cinematic action. There doesn't seem to be a good way to simplify the mechanics either.

I'm not even going to mention Saga. D&D is just a bad fit for Star Wars, and you have the 3.5 complexity problems.

WEG D6 runs much faster and gets close to the pace of Star Wars, but it has the zero-to-hero, physics simulation design at its heart and this doesn't jibe well with Star Wars either. Also, once you have a Jedi with any appreciable amount of Force Powers the system grinds to a shrieking halt; the Force Powers system is just bloated, overly complex and produces failed results a lot.

This is the other problem with WEG D6; characters start out bloody useless by comparison to the original trilogy's main characters. They're going to fail at simple things a lot until they have significant XP under their belts. I crunched the numbers once on the "official" character writeups and determined that if you played every single week and got the recommended XP award, it would take you a year to get to Luke Skywalker as of the Battle of Yavin IV. Ten years to get to Han Solo.

Now, a lot of that is a tendency to make the canon characters like unto gods and include everything ever mentioned in any Star Wars novel, comic or bubble gum card up to that point, but even laying that aside standard task difficulties are going to cause a lot of frustration in the early game.

I'm not saying D6 is awful, but we only kept the campaign going by using the D6 Legend mechanics and throwing out the entire Force Powers system in favour of something stripped to its core (also, nothing not seen on screen in episodes IV-VI).

Outside of licensed games, the only campaign I've ever run that actually played and felt like Star Wars was using a fan-created hack of Apocalypse World, but that will (obviously) never see the light of day.

A related problem with any Star Wars game is getting everybody on board with what exactly Star Wars is. No two gamers, GMs, authors, directors, or iterations of George Lucas can agree on exactly what makes Star Wars Star Wars, and one problem all the licensed games suffer from is trying to shoehorn multiple incompatible visions of the property into one rule set. This is why we decided early on to limit our Star Wars to Episodes IV-VI screen canon (plus some specific expectation clarifications like stormtrooper effectiveness and the relative badassery of the Millenium Falcon).

Mutazoia
2017-01-13, 01:31 AM
I'm going to be a contrarian on this issue.

Disclaimer: I've been running Star Wars games in a variety of systems since the 1980's, including all the licensed variants.

In my personal opinion, {snip}

Well, of course your new PC's are not going to be anywhere near th badassery of the movie heroes. Because they are movie heroes. They defy the laws of physics and have +5 masterwork plot armor.

ANY game you play (with a few exceptions) is going to start you out at a level only slightly better than "stupid schmuck", and things are going to be difficult for a while, as you learn your craft.

Remember, you're playing in the Star Wars universe. You're not meant to get to the level of Han Solo or Luke Skywalker. If you were that badass, how come YOU didn't show up in the movies? Besides, as far as movie canon goes, we never see Luke or Han's back stories...they years they spent getting good at what they do. We never see Luke even touch the controls of a starfighter until the last 10 minutes of the movie, and even then, he's not doing a helluva lot of fancy flying. Remember, he hangs back and watches Biggs make his trench run, makes one straifing run on the surface, and then flies straight down a trench. Not a lot of skill involved there. And (in SWD6 terms) he has to blow a Force Point to even have a chance at making that fateful shot.

Yes, D6 got a little clunky when they added a bunch of force powers that were neve in the movies, but there's a lot of that stuff that you shouldn't even be able to learn with out a Jedi Master teaching you. And with out a Master, your Force skills cost double to increase, so there's no rocket progression of ower for Jedi characters. If anything, Jedi are nerfed quite a bit when you consider that it costs them 24 cp to raise a force power from 4D to 5D, and it costs a non-Jedi 12 cp to raise a normal skill from 4D to 5D. This means that if your Jedi focuses all his attention on his Force powers, he's not going to have cp left over to get better at anything else. But I digress.

daniel_ream
2017-01-13, 01:56 AM
Well, of course your new PC's are not going to be anywhere near th badassery of the movie heroes. Because they are movie heroes. They defy the laws of physics and have +5 masterwork plot armor.

I reject the a priori assumption that PCs can't be movie heroes.


ANY game you play (with a few exceptions) is going to start you out at a level only slightly better than "stupid schmuck", and things are going to be difficult for a while, as you learn your craft.

This is demonstrably untrue (trivially so). It's true for D&D and its derivatives, as well as many games that use the zero-to-hero design pattern, but it's neither a universal nor even a majority of tabletop RPGs. At best it's a plurality.


Remember, you're playing in the Star Wars universe. You're not meant to get to the level of Han Solo or Luke Skywalker.

Again, an a priori assumption. Why not? I didn't pick up a Star Wars RPG because I wanted to play the Third Rebel Trooper From the Left in the Tantive IV boarding scene. I picked up Star Wars because I wanted to play Star Wars, and that means doing the things the main characters do.

There's another a priori assumption, that the main characters in EpIV-VI are somehow godlike compared to the other denizens of the setting. This is demonstrably untrue, again.

Mutazoia
2017-01-13, 06:34 AM
I reject the a priori assumption that PCs can't be movie heroes.



This is demonstrably untrue (trivially so). It's true for D&D and its derivatives, as well as many games that use the zero-to-hero design pattern, but it's neither a universal nor even a majority of tabletop RPGs. At best it's a plurality.



Again, an a priori assumption. Why not? I didn't pick up a Star Wars RPG because I wanted to play the Third Rebel Trooper From the Left in the Tantive IV boarding scene. I picked up Star Wars because I wanted to play Star Wars, and that means doing the things the main characters do.

There's another a priori assumption, that the main characters in EpIV-VI are somehow godlike compared to the other denizens of the setting. This is demonstrably untrue, again.

Somebody's getting good use out of their "word a day" calendar ;) Also, "zero-to-hero" must be the forum's new buzz phraze, as it seems to have popped up on multiple threads all at once today.

There's nothing saying that you can't be A great galatic hero...you're just not going to be THE galatic hero when you play in somebody else's universe. Hell, you can say "Remember the scene in ROTJ, when they're all sitting around the holoprojector talking about attacking Endor...that guy sitting just behind Han is MY character!" if you really want to. But your not going to be as good as the movie heroes, because your character is not the movie hero. Besides, as you noted, games based on movies tend to make the movie heroes much larger than any PC's could hope to be, so saying "I'm not fond of {game} because I can't be as good as, if not better than, X! Or "X starts the movie at a much higher power level than a starting PC, so {game} is flawed!" just sounds kind of petty IMHO.

You are also not taking in to account the years between uncle Owen buying R2 and 3PO from the jawas, and the assult on the shield station on Endor. Time moved forward, even if we only got to see a few hours, or days at a time. The movie characters "earned XP" and leveled up. Over the course of years. So naturally your game is going to have to last a long time before you catch up to them. Wanting it all NOW just doesn't make sense to me.

Besides, in any game, source material can be used as is, or adjusted at the GMs discretion. Don't like Luke being so advanced, cut him down to what ever size you want.

Corsair14
2017-01-13, 08:13 AM
It was what 4-4.5 years between ANH and ROTJ? I agree, characters aren't movie heroes and it would be boring if they were. My campaign last over a decade and includes characters who were now canon in the Disneyverse. They were great in the game but obviously never made movie hero level even after so many years of off and on playing. The failed jedi character(guy started the game with that template and never changed characters the entire decade+) got to be pretty decent in force ability but never would have a chance vs Vader or even a good Inquisitor, and all three would be hard pressed to take on Fett in a straight up fight, not that he would fight that way.

D6 definitely promotes a more fluid and simple campaign system that is far easier to come up with stuff on the fly and characters take very little time to even custom create without the template.

obryn
2017-01-13, 09:36 AM
Well, of course your new PC's are not going to be anywhere near th badassery of the movie heroes. Because they are movie heroes. They defy the laws of physics and have +5 masterwork plot armor.
Or maybe ... if you're playing a Star Wars RPG and it's running nothing like the movies, one could argue that it's not a very good Star Wars RPG. At that point you're running - basically - Traveller with lazer-swords and space-wizards. Which is fine, but it's also a different thing.


ANY game you play (with a few exceptions) is going to start you out at a level only slightly better than "stupid schmuck", and things are going to be difficult for a while, as you learn your craft.
How many different RPGs have you played? :smallbiggrin: This is not even close to universal. I'll name Feng Shui 2 and Godbound as two very quick counter-examples off the top of my head.


There's nothing saying that you can't be A great galatic hero...you're just not going to be THE galatic hero when you play in somebody else's universe. Hell, you can say "Remember the scene in ROTJ, when they're all sitting around the holoprojector talking about attacking Endor...that guy sitting just behind Han is MY character!" if you really want to. But your not going to be as good as the movie heroes, because your character is not the movie hero. Besides, as you noted, games based on movies tend to make the movie heroes much larger than any PC's could hope to be, so saying "I'm not fond of {game} because I can't be as good as, if not better than, X! Or "X starts the movie at a much higher power level than a starting PC, so {game} is flawed!" just sounds kind of petty IMHO.
It's not petty - it's matching game design to design goals. If your design goal is, "Star Wars RPG" then presumably people buying the game want to run adventures that are as exciting and in the same vein as the various Star Wars movies and (to a lesser extent) animated series and shows.

If your Star Wars RPG has half the PCs dying due to a critical hit in the first gunfight with stormtroopers ... Well, it's doing a really bad job of genre emulation.


You are also not taking in to account the years between uncle Owen buying R2 and 3PO from the jawas, and the assult on the shield station on Endor. Time moved forward, even if we only got to see a few hours, or days at a time. The movie characters "earned XP" and leveled up. Over the course of years. So naturally your game is going to have to last a long time before you catch up to them. Wanting it all NOW just doesn't make sense to me.

Why do you expect gamers to play out all the less-exciting stuff that is happening between the exciting stuff? That's a level of earn-your-fun that's unappealing to me.

willoftheway
2017-01-13, 10:38 AM
I'm not even going to mention Saga. D&D is just a bad fit for Star Wars, and you have the 3.5 complexity problems.


I have to disagree. Saga edition has much more D20 Modern and even 4E in its DNA than it has 3.5. Sure some parallels could be made to 3.5 systems but I don't think that on its own is enough to say it suffers from 3.5 level complexity (which I personally don't view as suffering either way but that's not the argument).

Saga edition captured the feel of Star wars for me exceptionally well, made you feel like a big damn hero pretty much right away, and definitely felt like a system tuned around space magic, laser guns and plasma swords. But ymmv

Corsair14
2017-01-13, 11:01 AM
Why would they be playing out the movies? That story has already been told. PCs should be doing other things. Yeah maybe they hear about the death star getting blown up and go search the ruins, but their story is what they do in the expansive universe. In 10 years+ we never met a movie character(outside of escaping from Vader once) or did something from the movies. Not even sure if we ever even went to Tatoinne, the planet the galaxy seems to revolve around if you go by the movies. Not to say they didn't do cool and epic things, they once conned their way into controlling an imperial fleet with one of the four Super Star Destroyers built as the flagship, forget what they did with it.

You are playing a role playing game in the star wars universe, not playing a character from the movie.

Max_Killjoy
2017-01-13, 11:11 AM
A galaxy, or even just 1/2 or 1/3 of a galaxy, is a stupendously large place.

While Lusas seems to have absolutely no sense of scale or scope, that doesn't mean we need to fall prey to the same failing.

There's almost endless room for other stories in the same setting as the movies, without the events or the character or the locations from the stories getting in each others' way at all.

obryn
2017-01-13, 11:21 AM
Why would they be playing out the movies? That story has already been told. PCs should be doing other things. Yeah maybe they hear about the death star getting blown up and go search the ruins, but their story is what they do in the expansive universe. In 10 years+ we never met a movie character(outside of escaping from Vader once) or did something from the movies. Not even sure if we ever even went to Tatoinne, the planet the galaxy seems to revolve around if you go by the movies. Not to say they didn't do cool and epic things, they once conned their way into controlling an imperial fleet with one of the four Super Star Destroyers built as the flagship, forget what they did with it.

You are playing a role playing game in the star wars universe, not playing a character from the movie.
Nobody's actually talking about replaying the movie. It's about having adventures that are at the same scale as the movies, but elsewhere in time and/or space. So if the movies are epic space operas featuring capable and important heroes, it's fair to expect the RPG to run like an epic space opera featuring capable and important heroes.

kyoryu
2017-01-13, 11:28 AM
Nobody's actually talking about replaying the movie. It's about having adventures that are at the same scale as the movies, but elsewhere in time and/or space. So if the movies are epic space operas featuring capable and important heroes, it's fair to expect the RPG to run like an epic space opera featuring capable and important heroes.

Which a wide variety of games do *just fine*.

obryn
2017-01-13, 11:33 AM
Which a wide variety of games do *just fine*.
Yes. I am specifically arguing against Mutazoia's points, above. :)

Mutazoia
2017-01-13, 11:43 AM
Or maybe ... if you're playing a Star Wars RPG and it's running nothing like the movies, one could argue that it's not a very good Star Wars RPG. At that point you're running - basically - Traveller with lazer-swords and space-wizards. Which is fine, but it's also a different thing.

Sure, you can run a game like the movies. Nobody's saying you can't. Hell, it's your game, you can say Luke and crew never existed and YOU rescue the princess from the Death Star if you want to.



How many different RPGs have you played? :smallbiggrin: This is not even close to universal. I'll name Feng Shui 2 and Godbound as two very quick counter-examples off the top of my head.

Quite a few, over 30 odd years of gaming. Never tried Fen Shui 2 no Godbound, but then games with characters that start as the the ultimate badass's and have little room for character growth don't appeal to me.



It's not petty - it's matching game design to design goals. If your design goal is, "Star Wars RPG" then presumably people buying the game want to run adventures that are as exciting and in the same vein as the various Star Wars movies and (to a lesser extent) animated series and shows.

IMHO it IS petty. I want to be better than the movie character, and I can't do that right off the bat so screw this game. Pretty petty. Either that or your just too use to games that give your character phenomenal cosmic power the moment he/she crawls out of his momma's cooch. Personally I prefer the build up.


If your Star Wars RPG has half the PCs dying due to a critical hit in the first gunfight with stormtroopers ... Well, it's doing a really bad job of genre emulation.

SWD6 doesn't have a high mortality rate for PC's. I'm having trouble remember if any of our campaigns ever had a character die that wasn't a player leaving the game or just getting tired of his character and wanting to bring in a new one.


Why do you expect gamers to play out all the less-exciting stuff that is happening between the exciting stuff? That's a level of earn-your-fun that's unappealing to me.

Never said I did. My point was that Daniel was upset because the game stats for the movie characters were set to what he feels is too out of reach for a starting PC, and whinges that it would take years of gaming to get a PC to their level. Duh....they took years of living to get to their level, so why should you get to do it in an afternoon (or at character creation). But then, if you want to play at that power level...make characters at that power level. Or play one of your cosmic powered god-character games.

GungHo
2017-01-13, 11:43 AM
Why would they be playing out the movies? That story has already been told. PCs should be doing other things. Yeah maybe they hear about the death star getting blown up and go search the ruins, but their story is what they do in the expansive universe. In 10 years+ we never met a movie character(outside of escaping from Vader once) or did something from the movies. Not even sure if we ever even went to Tatoinne, the planet the galaxy seems to revolve around if you go by the movies. Not to say they didn't do cool and epic things, they once conned their way into controlling an imperial fleet with one of the four Super Star Destroyers built as the flagship, forget what they did with it.

You are playing a role playing game in the star wars universe, not playing a character from the movie.

I could be wrong, but I don't think that he's saying that he wants to play as Han, Luke, or Leia do what Han, Luke, or Leia do line by line. However, he wants to be as big a character as as Han, Luke, or Leia happen to be in that character's stories. Telling the players "well, you can't save the galaxy and bring down the Empire because you're not as special as Han, Luke, and Leia and you never will be" when the movies are about saving the galaxy and bringing down the Empire is missing the point for him. He doesn't need to play Luke. Maybe Han took the money and ran. Maybe Leia cracked and told the Empire the rebels were on Yavin IV. Maybe Vader cut Luke down on Bespin. Who is going to take up the mantle then? Daniel Reamstar, that's who. Or, maybe Luke and Han still do their thing, but there's some very significant support they got in making sure that the Bothans didn't die in vain, and that story is worth a camera man's time, because no one wants to join the Superfriends and be told that Apache Chief is going to push pencils with their nose because their power is summoning Uggs.

obryn
2017-01-13, 11:59 AM
Sure, you can run a game like the movies. Nobody's saying you can't. Hell, it's your game, you can say Luke and crew never existed and YOU rescue the princess from the Death Star if you want to.

Quite a few, over 30 odd years of gaming. Never tried Fen Shui 2 no Godbound, but then games with characters that start as the the ultimate badass's and have little room for character growth don't appeal to me.
Okay, but 'it doesn't appeal to me' is a dramatically different statement from your above sweeping claims about what RPGs can't do.

You should check them out though - those are two incredibly well-made games. Feng Shui 2 is an action-movie RPG (specifically Hong Kong action movies, but it works for American ones, too). Godbound is basically an OSR Exalted, but much better. It's about demigods, and contains a ton of great DM advice for running a sandbox campaign wherein the PCs can topple a kingdom in a session.


IMHO it IS petty. I want to be better than the movie character, and I can't do that right off the bat so screw this game. Pretty petty. Either that or your just too use to games that give your character phenomenal cosmic power the moment he/she crawls out of his momma's cooch. Personally I prefer the build up.
...
Never said I did. My point was that Daniel was upset because the game stats for the movie characters were set to what he feels is too out of reach for a starting PC, and whinges that it would take years of gaming to get a PC to their level. Duh....they took years of living to get to their level, so why should you get to do it in an afternoon (or at character creation). But then, if you want to play at that power level...make characters at that power level. Or play one of your cosmic powered god-character games.
http://i.imgur.com/O4s0Z7f.jpg


SWD6 doesn't have a high mortality rate for PC's. I'm having trouble remember if any of our campaigns ever had a character die that wasn't a player leaving the game or just getting tired of his character and wanting to bring in a new one.
It was an example; here I was referring to WotC SWd20, with its HP/VP setup - an interesting idea for many games, but not really very starwarsish.

kyoryu
2017-01-13, 12:06 PM
IMHO it IS petty. I want to be better than the movie character, and I can't do that right off the bat so screw this game. Pretty petty. Either that or your just too use to games that give your character phenomenal cosmic power the moment he/she crawls out of his momma's cooch. Personally I prefer the build up.

Strawman, much?

I haven't heard anybody saying that they want to be "better" than movie characters, so why don't we just stick with what the actual point is, eh?

You enjoy a large power buildup. Great! Some people don't care about that. People enjoy different things and that doesn't make them wrong or somehow morally inferior. They just want a different experience than you do, and that experience doesn't include grinding their way through a huge number of minor minions and doing odd jobs.

BTW, *lots* of games make the presumption that characters are fairly competent out of the gate without them being "ultimate badasses". Quite a number of BRP games do. GURPS does. Really, GURPS defaults do a pretty good job of statting out the starting Star Wars characters. And of course many newer games as well do, but I suspect you'd dismiss them out of hand so I'm sticking with the older more traditional games.

Really, the "start at nothing and build huge power" is pretty much a D&D phenomenon.

Mutazoia
2017-01-13, 12:18 PM
Strawman, much?

I haven't heard anybody saying that they want to be "better" than movie characters, so why don't we just stick with what the actual point is, eh?

You enjoy a large power buildup. Great! Some people don't care about that. People enjoy different things and that doesn't make them wrong or somehow morally inferior. They just want a different experience than you do, and that experience doesn't include grinding their way through a huge number of minor minions and doing odd jobs.

BTW, *lots* of games make the presumption that characters are fairly competent out of the gate without them being "ultimate badasses". Quite a number of BRP games do. GURPS does. Really, GURPS defaults do a pretty good job of statting out the starting Star Wars characters. And of course many newer games as well do, but I suspect you'd dismiss them out of hand so I'm sticking with the older more traditional games.

Really, the "start at nothing and build huge power" is pretty much a D&D phenomenon.

I'm not going to bother with a reply, as this is already derailing the thread. We'll just have to leave it as is and you can assume you won, I'll assume I won, and call it a day.

Max_Killjoy
2017-01-13, 01:17 PM
Strawman, much?

I haven't heard anybody saying that they want to be "better" than movie characters, so why don't we just stick with what the actual point is, eh?

You enjoy a large power buildup. Great! Some people don't care about that. People enjoy different things and that doesn't make them wrong or somehow morally inferior. They just want a different experience than you do, and that experience doesn't include grinding their way through a huge number of minor minions and doing odd jobs.

BTW, *lots* of games make the presumption that characters are fairly competent out of the gate without them being "ultimate badasses". Quite a number of BRP games do. GURPS does. Really, GURPS defaults do a pretty good job of statting out the starting Star Wars characters. And of course many newer games as well do, but I suspect you'd dismiss them out of hand so I'm sticking with the older more traditional games.

Really, the "start at nothing and build huge power" is pretty much a D&D phenomenon.

Indeed -- and that's part of why the d20 system and it's level-based derivatives and descendants are as not universal as is often claimed.

That huge, almost exponential scale from "guy who has been in some scrapes and isn't a complete doof" to "cheesy action movie hero" to "demigod" only fits certain settings and certain stories.

Thrudd
2017-01-14, 12:28 AM
I want to point out that D6 is basically a point build system. If you feel like starting characters aren't powerful enough, you can give everyone more dice to create characters. Also, if you're using the version with skill specializations, you can get some pretty high numbers with just the recommended starting dice. It's possible to start out as movie-awesome characters if you really want to. Some of how awesome your characters feel also has to do with how the GM runs the game- D6 is better at OT style, if the players are expecting prequel or tartakovsky animated-series style over-the-top jedi badassery, there would need to be a lot of adjusting.

I would make some tweaks to the system as written, it isn't perfect, but I feel it is the best of the official Star Wars games to simulate the Star Wars universe of the movies.

Mechalich
2017-01-14, 01:53 AM
BTW, *lots* of games make the presumption that characters are fairly competent out of the gate without them being "ultimate badasses". Quite a number of BRP games do. GURPS does. Really, GURPS defaults do a pretty good job of statting out the starting Star Wars characters. And of course many newer games as well do, but I suspect you'd dismiss them out of hand so I'm sticking with the older more traditional games.

Really, the "start at nothing and build huge power" is pretty much a D&D phenomenon.

Star Wars has adapted well to that phenomenon though. There is now an entire generation of Star Wars RPGs, in video game format, that build up that model. You go from not very much to savior of the galaxy in both KOTOR games, SWTOR, and even to some degree in action games like Force Unleashed or Jedi Outcast.

The only real issue with overshadowing the movie characters is if you allow your game to do that directly within the context of the movies - which is very specific. I mean Rogue One just had characters who are functioning at what is at least Han Solo levels of badass separated by minutes from the movie context and it was not a problem at all.

The traditional Star Wars protagonist goes through a very Campellian heroes journey - which fits the D&D style power curve extremely well. However Star Wars is just as well suited to tell stories where that doesn't happen and characters mostly retain their starting levels of ability with only modest improvements. For those stories a different system is probably better. It depends more on what kind of campaign you want to run.

daniel_ream
2017-01-14, 02:21 AM
Maybe Han took the money and ran. Maybe Leia cracked and told the Empire the rebels were on Yavin IV. Maybe Vader cut Luke down on Bespin.

Actually, Solo made his stealth roll when sneaking up on the speeder bike trooper. The chase never happened, so Leia never met the Ewoks, and the Rebel infiltration went exactly as planned - which means they walked right into the Imperial trap at the shield station.

At the exact moment the Emperor was taunting Luke to turn to the Dark Side, he signaled the guards at the shield station to execute Han, Leia and the Rebel troops. Awash in anger, Luke fell fully to the Dark Side and struck down the Emperor where he sat, and was cut down by Vader seconds later.

With the shield still intact, the Rebel fleet was crushed between the hammer of the Imperial armada and the anvil of the second Death Star. The Rebellion ceased to be, and Lord Emperor Vader assumed control of the Galactic Empire. There are rumours he is advised by the dark shade of the dead Emperor.

Campaign start was set five years later.


Who is going to take up the mantle then? Daniel Reamstar, that's who.

:smallbiggrin: :smallbiggrin: :smallbiggrin:

It was a disgraced senator with a serious gambling problem and debts to match, a cynical tramp freighter captain who was NOT a smuggler dammit why does everyone keep keep assuming that I'm just trying to make a living and avoid any trouble and his barely functioning cargo droid, and an Imperial customs corvette captain with a preternatural ability to sniff out hidden cargo. Almost like she was gifted, or something.