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What makes a decision big or small? Why don't we see the same complaints about a social encounter where the Entrepreneur character is doing all the negotiating?
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Aug 17, 2015 19:57
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I imagine ground combat with air assets is the only real satisfying answer. This can take the form of being on an asteroid base with space suits for the ground combat or the ground being a large star destroyer with a fighter/freighter outside. Of course, you could always abstract it to a single group dice roll but everyone will know the pilot gets to make the decisions.
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Aug 17, 2015 19:59
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Kai Tave posted:There's nothing wrong about the pilot getting to do cool pilot-y stuff and I don't think anyone here is saying that, but "everyone stuck aboard a spaceship for a spaceship encounter" is one of those things that many RPGs have yet to find a satisfactory method of handling that doesn't boil down to "the pilot makes the big decisions, everyone else rolls an appropriate skill over and over until the encounter ends." It's not a unique failing to Star Wars, but it's not unreasonable for someone to look at the prospect of another "thrilling" space chase where they get to roll Shoot Space Guns repeatedly with no other real options until things come to an end or the GM decides enough is enough and shuffles things along. I get what you're saying Kai and I agree. That is not the most thrilling situation for the other PCs to be in. But I don't see why that's any different then when the face character has a back and forth debate in a social encounter or a sneaky PC does a stealth segment. Everyone's got their strengths. If you're a GM and you want to have a game with a lot of space battles then give your PCs fighters or split the party. Do a "Han Solo and Crew on Endor while Landos fighting in space" kinda thing. This system does split party stuff really well and I try to take advantage of it when I can.
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Aug 17, 2015 20:13
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So a rogue Sith lord was reanimated (accidentally) by my players, and now they're scrambling to put together a coalition of forces not already consumed in the galactic civil war to fight this self-styled "returned god" Things they have done in the past three sessions:
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Aug 17, 2015 20:27
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The difference between the face or negotiator having their time in the spotlight is that it's typically a short encounter. I assume the same thing for a stealth portion unless you've got a real splinter cell sub game going on. Space combat is a much more involved process and is usually much longer.
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Aug 17, 2015 20:34
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Elendil004 posted:What makes a decision big or small? I don't know, why don't you? Because I've heard that criticism come up a lot in the context of other games where one person is playing a diplomancer and the GM has decided that negotiating with the king should be a group effort, so you wind up with the diplomatic bard doing all the talking while everyone awkwardly clusters near him and goes "yeah, you tell'im, what he said." The frequent solution to that is splitting the party, giving the talky character a chance to shine while the sneaky rogue sneaks and the fighters go get into a fight or something. Guess what you can't do when everyone's stuck on a tramp freighter in the middle of space?
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Aug 17, 2015 20:38
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Also a spaceship is a much more constrained environment, especially if you are doing the 'everyone in the corellian freighter' type thing. When we had a mission for our group that wasn't in space we did loads of task: the negotiator went and talked to space control, the stealth guy accessed the mainframe, the soldiers scoped out a good sniper nest etc. Since the snippets it was relatively easy to switch between the characters and then have them group together once everyone had their poo poo done and the big confrontation was going to happen. As mentioned, in any sort of system there are going to be issues with doing ship-based combats. I think the best idea is the ground support thing mentioned earlier actually.
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Aug 17, 2015 20:40
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Elendil004 posted:What makes a decision big or small? I don't want to lay out a case for "do I, the gunner sitting in the gunshooting seat, fire my ship's guns at the attacking TIE fighters, or just sit here and let them destroy us?" being a non-big decision. I believe you should admit that is a trivial and binary decision, or no decision at all, and smaller than such decisions as "do I, the pilot, take the entire party into this dangerous asteroid belt, or stay out here and try to use our superior skills against these TIE fighters?" Why don't we see the same complaints about the social encounter or the stealth one? Because those other kinds have a lot more flexibility for the input (and even location) of the other party members and because they are also very likely to be shorter. I am sure you can imagine a very short space combat or a very long stealth/social encounter -- and I am sure they happen! -- but I suggest that social and stealth encounters are typically resolved with fewer die rolls than you need to establish initiative, let alone run a whole space combat.
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Aug 17, 2015 20:42
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I mean, it's a choice right? As a GM you can choose to make your space combats into giant 20 vs 20 ship encounters but I don't know why you would want to do that unless your players are for it. If you have a long boring "escape the tie fighters" segment every gaming session then that's your fault as a GM more than anything.
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Aug 17, 2015 20:56
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But that's what people are saying. When people think Star Wars, part of it are the chase sequences in space as well: it's an iconic part of the movies. And the rules are too clunky to deal with that well, leading to the situations described by other people in this thread. And it's also a problem when it comes to having a dedicated pilot in your group, especially when you are playing something like AoS: you want to give a chance for the pilot to shine and save the group and be productive, but there are a lot of scenarios in which if he gets the chance to shine and you are going RAW, the other players are going to be somewhat constricted in what they can do. With the level of granularity that this system tries to accomplish, you are always going to run into these problems. The problem mostly centers around combat as well: you can do interesting stuff on a freighter when in non-combat scenarios: the pilot flies, someone else gets to use the comm to spoof the Imp outpost in letting them past, the hacker desperately attempts to get the codes right before they get scanned, maybe the engineer tries to change the engine output in time in order to hide the illegal modifications you did. But when you get into combat, it kind of breaks down because the only one really being allowed to move is the pilot. Contrast that to ground combat in which everyone gets to chip in somehow and be more inventive that 'I fire the quad-laser at the approaching TIEs' or 'I attempt to repair the ship' over and over.
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Aug 17, 2015 21:06
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Tekopo posted:But that's what people are saying. When people think Star Wars, part of it are the chase sequences in space as well: it's an iconic part of the movies. And the rules are too clunky to deal with that well, leading to the situations described by other people in this thread. And it's also a problem when it comes to having a dedicated pilot in your group, especially when you are playing something like AoS: you want to give a chance for the pilot to shine and save the group and be productive, but there are a lot of scenarios in which if he gets the chance to shine and you are going RAW, the other players are going to be somewhat constricted in what they can do. Wait, why can't you do those things in combat?
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Aug 17, 2015 21:12
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Because most of the stuff that I listed is stuff that is done in order to prevent combat?
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Aug 17, 2015 21:15
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Tekopo posted:Because most of the stuff that I listed is stuff that is done in order to prevent combat? I feel like you're trying really hard to say that people can only shoot lasers in space. I don't see why though. Have your face character try and persuade the tie-fighters to break off, have your hacker hack the tie-fighters, have your engineer drop a makeshift bomb out the back of the ship. Nobody is stopping you from doing this stuff in combat.
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Aug 17, 2015 21:19
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There is a difference between what characters can do narratively outside of combat and the constraint that are present in combat in terms of rules as given. If the face can, in the middle of combat, ace a roll and the TIEs just turn back, you both shortcutted the fight and also potentially left the pilot without his moment in the spotlight. If the hacker just completely shuts down an enemy fighter completely, a similar thing occurs. So yes, they can potentially do that, but you have to weigh the results in order to prevent them from trivializing the fight in a single roll and thus, for example, you have the hacker give penalties to the TIE thanks to the hack, and even potentially the face doing the same thing. But in the end, they aren't hurting the enemy, merely giving it penalties. And what if, for example, the face fails to persuade the TIE pilots? In a non-combat situation, the success of the roll drives the narrative forward: he manages to talk his way past the imperials, or he fails and combat occurs (or alternatives in between). Combat is different in this regard, because you have to have much more mechanical results. I do feel there is a difference in terms of having players have freedom of movement in a ground combat scenario as opposed to being restricted when doing something within a freighter.
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Aug 17, 2015 21:33
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This game is the king of Ok a thing happens...but... If your fight is trivialized, throw a ...but... in there. Especially if that but comes later. So the pilot misses his moment because the hacker one shot the TIE fighters. Sure. The crew lands, does their stuff and takes off right into an Imperial salvage and rescue operation. Time to fly casual.
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Aug 17, 2015 21:53
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But sometimes you just want a fight to happen because fights can be exciting: hacking the TIEs or talking them away is still something that is essentially a non-combat move that avoids the fight. In ground combat, everything we have outlined can be done by the characters, but they also have freedom of movement and a much wider field of possible decisions that they can make. In a freighter, this is reduced and non-pilot characters, although they have similar tools as in a ground fight (hacking/talking/whatever), they have restricted movements and all of the important choices are in the hands of one particular character. EDIT: The issue is actually removed when the players each control their own ship.
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Aug 17, 2015 21:57
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Depending on the type of ship, damage control can be an adventure (well, an encounter) all in itself.
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Aug 17, 2015 22:20
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On a big enough ship, it's an indoor encounter. On individual ships, it's an outdoor encounter. On a single ship (or vehicle, really) with everyone at a battle station, it's really just not as good. I think starting with a freighter is the least good option for the game.
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Aug 17, 2015 22:26
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Tekopo posted:But sometimes you just want a fight to happen because fights can be exciting: hacking the TIEs or talking them away is still something that is essentially a non-combat move that avoids the fight. In ground combat, everything we have outlined can be done by the characters, but they also have freedom of movement and a much wider field of possible decisions that they can make. In a freighter, this is reduced and non-pilot characters, although they have similar tools as in a ground fight (hacking/talking/whatever), they have restricted movements and all of the important choices are in the hands of one particular character. Out of interest, if we are looking at something like say, the starter adventure encounter, 2 ties versus a YT1300, how long would you guys expect that to take?
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Aug 17, 2015 23:03
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I'd say that's a pretty easy encounter, because each enemy ship only has 2 actions, his move and his standard (or attack or whatever this system calls it). It'd take no more time than it would take on the ground to defeat two enemies. From the GM perspective, and also somewhat from the players perspective, combat is boring/exhaustive when each "enemy" has 10 or 15 actions each round. The number of NPC actions overwhelm the PC actions, and that's just boring for the PCs, and exhausting for the GM.
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Aug 17, 2015 23:06
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FISHMANPET posted:From the GM perspective, and also somewhat from the players perspective, combat is boring/exhaustive when each "enemy" has 10 or 15 actions each round. The number of NPC actions overwhelm the PC actions, and that's just boring for the PCs, and exhausting for the GM. You could just make the crew of the enemy starship into a minion pool.
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Aug 18, 2015 10:13
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As I understand it sorta comes down to the Decker Problem. If the pilot were making a cool decision that's one thing, but these scenes drag out across multiple rounds. Like, how many times does the Han Solo of the group roll the same dice when trying to convince someone of something? Most of the time, you roll once. When you're leaping across the roofs to escape the hunter-droid on your tail, does your GM make you roll for every single roof? As was already mentioned, setting up the astrogate is likewise a single roll RPGs in general lean towards combat being way more crunchy then everything else; one roll will convince a duder to back down, but you have a full combat scene when that fails. That's all well and good, as everyone in Star Wars can handle a weapon except the goddamn droids, and the "action" is sorta meant to be somewhat the meat of the game, but carrying that granularity to ship combat suddenly turns that full combat scene into a single players' minigame. And that's not even touching if the actual mechanics beyond that are a hot mess.
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Aug 18, 2015 11:06
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echopapa posted:You could just make the crew of the enemy starship into a minion pool. See, this seems like a pretty reasonable solution, and one I'll be trying in the future if I need it (or some other way to reduce an enemy ship to one move and one standard action) but it's kind of annoying that the rule book makes no mention of any this, or really much of anything for making vehicle combat better. So it's kind of a let down to plan this great encounter and it quickly devolves into a mess of die rolling. I mean, I don't think any game system is going to be perfect and it's always going to need some little house rules for little things here and there depending on the disposition of players, but this just seems like a glaring oversight where we're left out in the cold on our own.
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Aug 18, 2015 16:56
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Everblight posted:So a rogue Sith lord was reanimated (accidentally) by my players, and now they're scrambling to put together a coalition of forces not already consumed in the galactic civil war to fight this self-styled "returned god" Bloody hell your players seem like the dark mirror version of the group i play with. 1.We unfroze a Jedi Knight who was doing an carbanite infiltration when order 66 hit (we are 6 months after Endor) 2. Helped the local resistance of Cominor gain independence and to join the Alliance 3. Keep on throwing a spanner into the Dark Brotherhood's (non-Baneite sith faction) plan to create an airborn version of the rakghoul virus 4. Helped liberate Mandalore 5. Extracted the Imperial governor/representative of Correlia We also have had moral quandaries about the treatment of the captured clones that the Dark Brotherhood uses as shock troops, run-ins and the slow dismantling of the Inquisition and all round trying to find the Imperial moles in the Alliance.
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Aug 18, 2015 17:53
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You two ought to compare notes and have a version of each other's parties show up in your respective games.
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Aug 18, 2015 18:02
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Everblight posted:So a rogue Sith lord was reanimated (accidentally) by my players, and now they're scrambling to put together a coalition of forces not already consumed in the galactic civil war to fight this self-styled "returned god" Thank god my players are not the only phsyco's out there! The game I'm running is based off the concept that R2 and C-3P0 never made it to tatooine. They players are supposed to be saving the galaxy in their place. So far they have
Next I'm sending them into Hutt space, because at least there no one will notice the chaos....
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Aug 19, 2015 14:49
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I wanna run a Roll 20 game with mixed rules on Tuesday evenings. Thinking about setting it during the Mandalorian Wars or the Clone Wars with the players being a squad of troopers with a few Jedi as their COs, kinda in a Dirty Dozen style. Anyone interested?
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Aug 19, 2015 16:52
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Fuzz posted:I wanna run a Roll 20 game with mixed rules on Tuesday evenings. Thinking about setting it during the Mandalorian Wars or the Clone Wars with the players being a squad of troopers with a few Jedi as their COs, kinda in a Dirty Dozen style. Anyone interested? What timezone? I'd be interested. Eastern here.
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Aug 19, 2015 18:33
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Fuzz posted:I wanna run a Roll 20 game with mixed rules on Tuesday evenings. Thinking about setting it during the Mandalorian Wars or the Clone Wars with the players being a squad of troopers with a few Jedi as their COs, kinda in a Dirty Dozen style. Anyone interested? I'd be really interested, as long as you wouldn't mind having a newbie along? I've been wanting to get some experience in the system.
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Aug 19, 2015 18:46
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jivjov posted:Honestly the worst I've seen is some mocking of funny dice symbols..and only from people who never actually tried playing. This is my friend. The grognardiest of the grognards. He refuses to even consider this a valid Star Wars system because some guy he was talking to at a con talked about the weird dice, so therefor the system is bad. d6 starwars or death is his motto (only the original WEG version, mind) He also refuses to play any edition of Shadowrun after 3rd because "wireless is dumb and the index is bad"
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Aug 19, 2015 18:51
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Your friend is really dumb.
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Aug 19, 2015 18:56
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Azhais posted:This is my friend. The grognardiest of the grognards. He refuses to even consider this a valid Star Wars system because some guy he was talking to at a con talked about the weird dice, so therefor the system is bad. I hope he doesn't use cars or Internet or other new technologies. (Ask him if he thinks game design and rules are technologies and see what he says.  )
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Aug 19, 2015 19:04
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I can understand a bit of trepidation. Dice are intuitive, even gaming dice with more than 6 sides. They're a quick and easy way to generate a random number. Replacing numerals with symbols, and having 4 completely different pairs of symbols (including the force dice pips) is adding a layer of abstraction to something that previously was completely intuitive. But just because something is different does not make it bad.
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Aug 19, 2015 19:06
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jivjov posted:I can understand a bit of trepidation. Dice are intuitive, even gaming dice with more than 6 sides. They're a quick and easy way to generate a random number. Replacing numerals with symbols, and having 4 completely different pairs of symbols (including the force dice pips) is adding a layer of abstraction to something that previously was completely intuitive. But just because something is different does not make it bad. He's never even looked at it. It's some guy he talks to every year at the con, and that guy talked poo poo, so he won't even look at it. I've basically learned to ignore his opinions on, well, everything.
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Aug 19, 2015 19:10
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If I recall rightly, d6 Star Wars is death. WEG SW was really lethal.
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Aug 19, 2015 19:34
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Grey Hunter posted:Thank god my players are not the only phsyco's out there! I claim no responsibility for any of this, I wasn't involved! Well... some of those I was there, but a surprising amount of these I was not present. drat we have some serious baddies on our side.
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Aug 19, 2015 23:29
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Fuzz posted:I wanna run a Roll 20 game with mixed rules on Tuesday evenings. Thinking about setting it during the Mandalorian Wars or the Clone Wars with the players being a squad of troopers with a few Jedi as their COs, kinda in a Dirty Dozen style. Anyone interested? Yes. Very interested.
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Aug 19, 2015 23:48
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homullus posted:If I recall rightly, d6 Star Wars is death. WEG SW was really lethal. WEG Star Wars also had that old-school RPG mentality of "the main characters of the franchise are inevitably cooler/stronger/more badass than you even if we have to give them ludicrously high values in their skills that are impossible for you to legitimately achieve in-game to prove it."
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Aug 19, 2015 23:55
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Le Woad posted:I'd be really interested, as long as you wouldn't mind having a newbie along? I've been wanting to get some experience in the system. Newbies welcome. Would be EST.
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Aug 20, 2015 00:51
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Fuzz posted:I wanna run a Roll 20 game with mixed rules on Tuesday evenings. Thinking about setting it during the Mandalorian Wars or the Clone Wars with the players being a squad of troopers with a few Jedi as their COs, kinda in a Dirty Dozen style. Anyone interested? I am down for this. If we get a vote I would say Mandalorian Wars because there's more variety and fewer mindless droid enemies baked into the setting. Not a deal breaker either way though, just my two cents. yronic heroism fucked around with this message at 04:05 on Aug 20, 2015 |
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Aug 20, 2015 03:40
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