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Test Pattern posted:I spend hours in my office Best part about this is we could do a word-for-word swap replacing Ackbar for Washington in 'Right Hand Man' and it would be perfect. WE ARE OUTGUNNED. OUTMANNED. OUTNUMBERED. OUTPLANNED. WE GOTTA MAKE AN ALL-OUT STAND. AND I'M GONNA NEED A RIGHT HAND MAN.
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Feb 25, 2016 18:56
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Any advice for designing a boss battle? I'm trying to cap off the next adventure with a fight against a Trandoshan heavy that will require the whole party working together to take out. The setting is aboard a the command center of a drifting space station. A good number of the players are bounty hunters but we have a slicer, a outlaw tech and a doctor too. I am curious on how to encourage the less combat oriented players to participate in the battle but none of us have much experience doing actions outside of shooting at each other for the previous battles.
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Feb 26, 2016 22:17
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When it comes to boss battles, I usually crib a video game, 2-3 stages to the fight, maybe a change of location or a enrage mode or something similar. Big Trandoshans always end up breaking everything around them in my games, using debris as a projectile or breaking through poo poo to escape. Is he a Heavy in the melee style or does he favor a nice heavy blaster rifle?
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Feb 26, 2016 22:23
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Sushi in Yiddish posted:I am curious on how to encourage the less combat oriented players to participate in the battle This is me, because only one of my four players is a combat class
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Feb 26, 2016 22:25
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Sushi in Yiddish posted:Any advice for designing a boss battle? I'm trying to cap off the next adventure with a fight against a Trandoshan heavy that will require the whole party working together to take out. Clearly the boss battle needs to take place while the space station is on a collision course with something, with automated defenses that need to be activated (or de-activated) and perhaps somebody who has vital coordinates is injured already. homullus fucked around with this message at 22:32 on Feb 26, 2016 |
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Feb 26, 2016 22:27
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Throw a bomb in for good measure that the slicer has to stop while also stopping the collision course
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Feb 26, 2016 22:28
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The station's stabilizers are disabled and it's drifting into the plasma nebula nearby. A bomb's a good idea too. TheTofuShop posted:When it comes to boss battles, I usually crib a video game, 2-3 stages to the fight, maybe a change of location or a enrage mode or something similar. The pirate faction he's part of are kind of a cargo cult built out of Clone War era salvage so he's hefting a light repeating laser cannon  Maybe he's firing a cannon that requires a refrigerator unit to keep from overheating. If the players can disable that then he has to drop the blaster and fight melee
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Feb 26, 2016 22:33
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Or he could have automated (but not overwhelming) sentry turrets in the command center that the slicer could disable by slicing into the ship computer. With a Triumph, he or she could, instead of disabling them, reprogram their target.
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Feb 27, 2016 00:31
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Had an interesting third session today. One of my members flaked on us 45 minutes after we "started" the session. We waited on him for that long until he contacted me saying he had effectively forgot the starting time twice, even though the previous day I had reminded him of it. He was too busy with PhD work to play. So, fine, I told him next time tell me in advance so I don't spend hours trying to plan a session to include your character. Once again my LOM Droid Doctor was roleplaying like mad, trying to develop his character more. Once again, the Pilot actually came out of his shell and tried to roleplay a bit, albeit kind of feebly (no, you can't make demands of the ISB who are holding you at gunpoint, and no you can't "ask them for your gear back" after you have been taken prisoner). But hey - progress. And, once again, with the two driving forces of the party having an inquisitive nature and doing a lot of dialogue and flying, my Assassin Droid sat around and said a sum total of three or four words for the whole session. I get that all he wants to do is combat, or an assassination plot, but it is not my job entirely to make the game interesting for him. I get the feeling I have poor session planning because I fail to include everyone's backgrounds into the story, but it's maddening that he won't even roleplay to give me an inch of something to work off of. His Obligation is almost impossible to manipulate, so I bit the bullet and the next two or three sessions are going to have an "assassinate the political target" theme. Maybe then he'll get engaged.
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Feb 29, 2016 03:54
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Zodack posted:(no, you can't make demands of the ISB who are holding you at gunpoint, and no you can't "ask them for your gear back" after you have been taken prisoner). "You ask the ISB for your gear back. They respond by looking at you as if you took too many hits to the head." nelson fucked around with this message at 04:11 on Feb 29, 2016 |
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Feb 29, 2016 04:09
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nelson posted:"You ask the ISB for your gear back. They respond by looking at you as if you took too many hits to the head." It was along the lines of "[the ISB officer] tells you that as a prisoner you are absolutely in no position to make demands and should think wisely in your choice of words in the future" The whole idea was that the ISB had the captured as a "cover up" to get them to work for them, but the alternative is very obviously going to be prison or something worse, so just because the ISB commanding officer asks you if you have any questions about the assignment he is offering you, while you are still their prisoner, doesn't mean you get free reign. What is with PC's attachments to mundane items? If it were a special modded blaster I'd understand I guess but it's some trash regular blaster pistol. This is the same pilot who decided to land on the blasted, warren outskirts of a massive city just so he didn't have to pay the landing fee.
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Feb 29, 2016 04:19
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My players continue to surprise me; we had our third session today (a new record) and it did not go as expected. I've been running Long Arm Of The Hutt to continue from the Beginner's Box. This session they arrived at the mining settlement to try and take care of Angu and his mercenaries who are harassing the settlement so they can take over the ryll mine. Our Bothan doctor, who has learned a lot the last few days, is doing her best not to murder everyone. But when some of the mercenaries drunkenly crashed a construction vehicle into the settlement then attacked the PCs and lost, she was not afraid to interrogate one of the two living guys. She used Deception to convince him that she had poisoned the guy and he spilled everything he knew about his boss. The next morning, they snuck into the compound, stole all the info from his computer, planted bombs in their (empty) apartment building, and jacked a Z-95. They used it to destroy the OTHER Z, blew up the rest of the construction vehicles, and hightailed it out of there. The Trandoshan pilot attempted to spell his name in the sand with the ship lasers but hosed it up so the mercs had no idea who just blew them up but decided it was probably the mining settlement. The PCs used their time wisely while waiting for the mercs to trek the couple miles across the desert to meet them. Angu points a gun at the leader and demands reparations and the deed to the mining settlement. The pilot hovers the Z above the sand pile it was hidden behind and the hired gun points out the buried explosives underneath the mercenaries. They promptly surrendered, signed over THEIR deed to the land nearby and got shuttled off to the spaceport. What they don't know is that the assassin droid PC (who couldn't make it) has been remotely controlled by someone using a hidden restraining bolt to gather information about the PCs. And this person is under the command of an Inquisitor who specializes in wiping out force sensitives and their families. Who has been tracking down the relatives of a force sensitive Bothan she killed. We haven't hashed it out yet but this Inquisitor will be instrumental in the Bothan doctor realizing she has a connection to the force. Exciting times in the Edge!
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Feb 29, 2016 05:12
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Hey can we trade players? Just asking.
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Feb 29, 2016 05:16
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Zodack posted:Hey can we trade players? Just asking. Look when I saw that our third session was a new record, I meant it. We have literally, as a group of friends, for the last 15 years that we've known about RPGs, never gotten more than two sessions of any campaign or system. Something *always* goes wrong and it peters out. I'm going to force this gravy train through the station as long as I can.
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Feb 29, 2016 05:20
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Zodack posted:I get the feeling I have poor session planning because I fail to include everyone's backgrounds into the story, but it's maddening that he won't even roleplay to give me an inch of something to work off of. You need to stop blaming the victim here.
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Feb 29, 2016 06:32
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Drone posted:You need to stop blaming the victim here.  Yeah, I just don't want to admit that some of my closest friends are inconsiderate or bad players
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Feb 29, 2016 06:33
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You can still be friends with bad players. It's not like, a requirement to be friends with people. If people aren't having fun gaming, maybe gaming isn't for you. This includes when the gaming is giving diminishing returns vis-a-vis effort and stress for the GM.
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Feb 29, 2016 08:28
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By the same token, you might be able to find a local (or online) group with which you can participate in RPG, but not necessarily be friends with them outside that.
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Feb 29, 2016 08:30
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Oh, for sure those are options. It's just that I didn't railroad any of them into this and they all excitedly agreed to play and, at least at the onset, really were into making characters and playing the game, so I want them to have fun and will try my damnedest to keep what might be a sinking boat from capsizing.
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Feb 29, 2016 08:32
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Zodack posted:Oh, for sure those are options. It's just that I didn't railroad any of them into this and they all excitedly agreed to play and, at least at the onset, really were into making characters and playing the game, so I want them to have fun and will try my damnedest to keep what might be a sinking boat from capsizing. Then, you've got to communicate to them what they need to contribute to make it a successful and fun endeavor for you, as well.
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Feb 29, 2016 08:34
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Really from the latest update, it sounds like it's only the one guy (assassin droid) who needs poking. The others seem either really into it (other droid) or into it but maybe uncomfortable with the level of roleplay...? But maybe there are other reasons that he's seemingly not engaged besides "doesn't want to be playing this." Maybe he doesn't know how to RP his character, maybe he feels like his voice gets drowned out by others, or maybe he just isn't a huge fan of a narrative system and would prefer something more combat-heavy. The only way to really find out is to talk to him about the game, what he gets out of it and what he wants to get out of it. Then you need to explain to him that he's going to have to meet you halfway if you do your part.
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Feb 29, 2016 08:58
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So I ran the EotE starter adventure the other day and it went about exactly the way I thought it would. The gamorean thugs were easily evaded, then just as easily defeated. Afterwards the group came dangerously close to murdering the bartender who (reasonably) asked them to leave after blasting up his cantina. It might have been the barrage of information he gave them completely unsolicited that ended up staying their hands. They proceeded to the junk shop, where Vorn's droid-racism promptly got him un-alived. After rummaging through the shop, they reprogrammed the R5 droid to speak Galactic Basic, stole the HMRI and a bunch of other junk, then burned the building down. A short jaunt over to the spaceport later and they found their way barred by two security droids. The droids (also reasonably) didn't believe that the group was there to relieve them for guard duty, so the group just turned them into scrap. Overseer Brynn tried to help her poor security droids, but they nearly killed her with one blast. She retreated into the security center, locking herself in and radioing to the nearby Imperials for help. The group promised not to slaughter her if she did what they asked, so she unlocked the Krayt Fang... after the Imperial shuttle landed. A squad of Stormtroopers tried to apprehend the murderous criminals (because let's be honest, that's exactly what they were) and were cut down for their troubles. Once the soldiers were dead, the perps fled to the site the Krayt Fang was docked. As luck would have it the owner of the Fang, a bounty hunter named Trex, suspected foul play. He arrived at Vorn's junk shop to pick up the part he was going to purchase only to find it locked with a "closed" sign. Moments later he saw smoke, and moments later still he saw fire. The bartender from the cantina had also tipped him off that a bunch of jerks shot up his bar, then went to find a way to steal a ship to get off-planet. Trex was ready with two security droids in the event that the criminals wreaking havok throughout Mos Shuuta were coming for his freighter. They used laser-diplomacy, but were overwhelmed by the superior numbers of their attackers. Trex escaped (to become a nemesis later) and the group got into their new freighter and launched. Pursued by two pairs of TIE fighters, the group fought them off while installing their new HMRI and jumping to lightspeed at the very last minute. Of course, because they were such jerks, I had their hyperdrive engine crap out mid-flight so they ended up stranded. And since they didn't bother to plot a course, they have no idea where they are. Observations: -I really like the core mechanics. I love the dice but sharing dice kinda blows. -Successes seem REALLY easy to get. Does anyone else find this? Is this intentional? -Some players are hilariously indignant whenever they commit a crime and someone wants them to stop. Or, even worse, when someone tries to hold them responsible for their criminal actions. -The dice pool can get pretty big, huh? If advantage dice don't cancel out disadvantage dice, and those dice stack, you could in theory have one player aided by all of his teammates to get 3 blue advantage dice, while also being hindered by the enemy side and getting 4 disadvantage dice, right? Or am I completely misunderstanding that rule? -Was this adventure significantly easier than other adventures due to its instructional nature? Are other missions not such cakewalks from one massacre to the next?
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Feb 29, 2016 17:08
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FuriousAngle posted:So I ran the EotE starter adventure the other day and it went about exactly the way I thought it would. -There's the official dice roller app that people seem to like (iOS and Android), but it's $5 which seems a bit much. Still cheaper than the real dice though. -Now that you mention it, they do feel somewhat easy to get, but this is also highly dependent on the skill check and the difficulty. As the GM you can (and should!) regularly use destiny points to upgrade a difficulty die to one of the red dice, and understand when to use setback/boost dice to modify the difficulty as well. It all ties in with the cinematic design. -To me that just sounds like your party would make great employees of a Hutt. Hired muscle with no morals? Sounds perfect. Hopefully you don't have any force sensitives. -I don't have my rulebook handy at the moment but I'm reasonably certain that only one player can assist another, thus granting only one boost die. -Yes, and yes. The EotE starter adventure is very much a tutorial, while the AoR starter adventure is something more akin to something bigger. All in all it sounds like your session went fine assuming your party (and you) are angling for really being no-morality shithead thugs. Which can work really well in Star Wars. That being said I can understand if you're disappointed by their behavior, since it's typical of people who play more granular combat-with-a-dash-of-RP games like D&D or what have you, or people who treat it like a video game where you don't face the consequences of your actions. Drone fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Feb 29, 2016 |
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Feb 29, 2016 17:33
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Drone posted:-Now that you mention it, they do feel somewhat easy to get, but this is also highly dependent on the skill check and the difficulty. As the GM you can (and should!) regularly use destiny points to upgrade a difficulty die to one of the red dice, and understand when to use setback/boost dice to modify the difficulty as well. It all ties in with the cinematic design. So the question I have about this is that when Force points are used, doesn't the other side get to respond by deciding to spend a Force point of their own? Like if the GM says "The Stormtrooper squad uses a Force point to up one of their dice" can't the player say "Okay, I use a Force point to up the difficulty of the attack?" Wouldn't that essentially balance everything out and keep the Force pool static? Drone posted:-I don't have my rulebook handy at the moment but I'm reasonably certain that only one player can assist another, thus granting only one boost die. I was talking about using advantages. I'm still not 100% on the terminology, really. For example, a player uses 2 rolled advantage points to give Player A a boost die. The next player uses 2 rolled advantage points to give Player A a boost die. Do those two boosts get added, or can you only have one boost die at at time? Similarly, can you only have one disadvantage die? Or can you have multiple disadvantages added to your pool? Drone posted:-To me that just sounds like your party would make great employees of a Hutt. Hired muscle with no morals? Sounds perfect. Hopefully you don't have any force sensitives. I was pretty happy with the way it went, really. I'm used to players acting like they've done nothing wrong even though they've straight-up murdered multiple people and committed theft and arson. I'm thinking this is already a set-up for "It's Always Sunny In The Outter Rim". My only real gripe was the one player who got too drunk and kept talking over my narration. Me: "You enter the tavern and see..." Player: "Wow this music is hilarious! It's like we've entered a strip club! Okay how do we get out of here? Is there a back door or something? Anyone on the stage?" Me: "...You see that there was no back door and that there is a twi'lek girl dancing on the stage. I was literally just about to answer your questions." That's a different hurdle for me to overcome, though.
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Feb 29, 2016 18:01
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FuriousAngle posted:So I ran the EotE starter adventure the other day and it went about exactly the way I thought it would. Regarding successes, the game is as hard as you want it to be. You can always add situational challenges (setback dice), and once they start trying harder things, throw challenge (red) dice at them. When there are multiple red dice and lives may hang in the balance, ask them what the worst possible outcome would be, before you roll. If they net Despair, that happens. Some players are shits about plot immunity. Maybe it doesn't bother you. For me, it's very fun in small doses but the basis for outright ending the campaign if they're too selfish. I do recommend using the app or the free Google Hangout thingy. Time spent puzzling out a large dice pool is time not spent doing the fun parts of the game.
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Feb 29, 2016 18:03
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homullus posted:Regarding successes, the game is as hard as you want it to be. You can always add situational challenges (setback dice), and once they start trying harder things, throw challenge (red) dice at them. When there are multiple red dice and lives may hang in the balance, ask them what the worst possible outcome would be, before you roll. If they net Despair, that happens. Great advice. I'll have to look into it. There were a couple of times in my adventure where I just made up some arbitrary "Enh, 3 purple 1 red sounds about right" difficulty and that seemed to work out fine. But my big concern is in combat. Since my group is a "If at first you don't succeed shoot everything without a second thought" type of group I can see there being a lot of questions of: should I beef up the NPCs since everything is basically an outright slaughter? If the NPCs get wiped out before they have a chance to act then it doesn't matter how likely I am to get successes- everyone on my team is dead. homullus posted:Some players are shits about plot immunity. Maybe it doesn't bother you. For me, it's very fun in small doses but the basis for outright ending the campaign if they're too selfish. It can bother me a LOT, actually. I literally told them at various points that I was starting to root against them. In small doses, sure. But I'm with you- too much can ruin games for me.
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Feb 29, 2016 18:09
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FuriousAngle posted:So the question I have about this is that when Force points are used, doesn't the other side get to respond by deciding to spend a Force point of their own? Like if the GM says "The Stormtrooper squad uses a Force point to up one of their dice" can't the player say "Okay, I use a Force point to up the difficulty of the attack?" Wouldn't that essentially balance everything out and keep the Force pool static? Each group should decide whether WELL I SPEND THAT POINT RIGHT BACK is acceptable. Spend-back does reset the Destiny pool to whatever it was, if players choose to do so. The check the points were spent on does NOT reset to its starting value, just to be clear. FuriousAngle posted:Great advice. I'll have to look into it. There were a couple of times in my adventure where I just made up some arbitrary "Enh, 3 purple 1 red sounds about right" difficulty and that seemed to work out fine. But my big concern is in combat. Since my group is a "If at first you don't succeed shoot everything without a second thought" type of group I can see there being a lot of questions of: should I beef up the NPCs since everything is basically an outright slaughter? If the NPCs get wiped out before they have a chance to act then it doesn't matter how likely I am to get successes- everyone on my team is dead. The usual advice for combat-manic parties applies: give them situations that can't be solved by shooting, interspersed with non-shooting problems that need to be solved WHILE they are shooting. Outgun them sometimes (but beware, since they will also want to take the opponents' weapons, if it was a good gun that was the danger). Let them mow down dudes sometimes. Have bad guys come in waves, from unexpected directions. Use the initiative rules; you have a lot of influence over whether the PCs get to go first (though it's still up to the dice). Take away their stuff and force them to make do with crap weapons (but make sure they can recover their stuff or buy things that are better). Give them hard choices, such as "killing the hated enemy shopkeeper who refused to give a 90% discount, or being able to buy that sweet rifle in a case that will self-destruct if the shopkeeper dies."
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Feb 29, 2016 18:17
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FuriousAngle posted:So the question I have about this is that when Force points are used, doesn't the other side get to respond by deciding to spend a Force point of their own? Like if the GM says "The Stormtrooper squad uses a Force point to up one of their dice" can't the player say "Okay, I use a Force point to up the difficulty of the attack?" Wouldn't that essentially balance everything out and keep the Force pool static? They can't do this. At least, that's what I would rule. The core book is slightly unclear on this, but it does explicitly mention that the Destiny Point is only flipped after the check has been resolved. I would use the design behind the Destiny system as justification for prohibiting this: the system is there to vaguely represent the will of the Force guiding certain actions. The Force can't simultaneously make an action both easier and harder like this, it's got to be one or the other. quote:I was talking about using advantages. I'm still not 100% on the terminology, really. For example, a player uses 2 rolled advantage points to give Player A a boost die. The next player uses 2 rolled advantage points to give Player A a boost die. Do those two boosts get added, or can you only have one boost die at at time? Similarly, can you only have one disadvantage die? Or can you have multiple disadvantages added to your pool? As a GM I'd probably not allow this because it just makes no sense to me (or at least I'd think about capping it), but as far as I can find in the rulebook, there's nothing preventing this. FuriousAngle posted:Great advice. I'll have to look into it. There were a couple of times in my adventure where I just made up some arbitrary "Enh, 3 purple 1 red sounds about right" difficulty and that seemed to work out fine. Red dice are only used in two circumstances: 1.) the GM uses a dark side Destiny Point to upgrade the one of the difficulty dice in a given check from a purple to a red, or 2.) the check is opposed by an NPC who has skill (example would be a coercion check against an NPC who has 1 level of the Coercion skill, so where normally a hard difficulty would be 3 purple dice, it would instead be 2 purples and one red... this mirrors what a player making the same check gets if they have the Coercion 1 skill).
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Feb 29, 2016 18:17
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Drone posted:RE: Boost dice Also in my experience, this game lends itself much more to a "yes, but..." style of GM guidance, but that might just be me. I'm a relatively relaxed GM.
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Feb 29, 2016 19:04
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Destiny points, by design, can't be spent on the same check more than once. If you flip a dark point to upgrade a check, they can't flip a light point to downgrade it. By the same token, spending Advantage doesn't work how you described. Since initiative is on a NPC/PC basis and not by individual character basis, you don't say "I will give X player a boost". Instead, you say "I will give the next PC slot a boost/the next NPC slot a setback". This means there is no way to stack boosts on a PC and you can only stack onto an NPC if there is one NPC only. However Rule 0 exists so you can run it how you like.
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Feb 29, 2016 19:10
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Admiral Joeslop posted:By the same token, spending Advantage doesn't work how you described. Since initiative is on a NPC/PC basis and not by individual character basis, you don't say "I will give X player a boost". Instead, you say "I will give the next PC slot a boost/the next NPC slot a setback". Actually, 1 advantage = a boost die to the next PC, 2 advantage = a boost die to the designated PC.
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Feb 29, 2016 19:16
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Admiral Joeslop posted:Destiny points, by design, can't be spent on the same check more than once. If you flip a dark point to upgrade a check, they can't flip a light point to downgrade it. I believe (rulebook not in front of me) that it is actually that a given Destiny Point cannot be spent twice on the same check, and that the GM and Player may each only spend one Destiny Point on a given check. If the Destiny Pool has only a single point in it, then nobody would be able to flip it back, since it flips after the action is resolved. There is room in the rules for one side to flip a different Destiny Point for their part of the check if there's more than one in the pool, which is why I said that it should be decided on a per-group basis.
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Feb 29, 2016 19:22
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Yeah what those guys said. *scribbles notes furiously*
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Feb 29, 2016 20:05
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FuriousAngle posted:-Successes seem REALLY easy to get. Does anyone else find this? Is this intentional? Statistically, so long as the dice are completely even on both sides, the average roll will give a success with threat, which fits the game's mood. There are more successes on the player-side dice, more threat on the GM-side dice. quote:-Some players are hilariously indignant whenever they commit a crime and someone wants them to stop. Or, even worse, when someone tries to hold them responsible for their criminal actions. Man, welcome to players in general. I've always stated that games don't need some mechanic that tempts them into doing terrible things - they're more then happy to do it themselves, then go into full evil villain justifications when called on it.
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Feb 29, 2016 22:21
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ProfessorCirno posted:Man, welcome to players in general. I've always stated that games don't need some mechanic that tempts them into doing terrible things - they're more then happy to do it themselves, then go into full evil villain justifications when called on it. Oh I never doubt players doing lovely things. I've done my fair share. But it always amazes me how people can get ANGRY at NPCs for defending their lives or livelihoods. "What is this rear end in a top hat doing?! How DARE he try to keep me from murdering him and stealing all his things! Now I'm going to gloat EXTRA hard when I kill him!" That's when I start feeling like I'm not making things difficult enough for the players and the Universe is going to have to start turning up the adversity.
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Feb 29, 2016 23:05
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Players upgrade the triumphs once, badguys upgrade the despairs once, and terrible, wonderful things happen. I always allow each side one upgrade per roll.
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Feb 29, 2016 23:33
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FuriousAngle posted:-Successes seem REALLY easy to get. Does anyone else find this? Is this intentional? Yeah the premise of the system is very much that the players are heroic adventurers who will succeed and outperform anything in the galaxy who isnt a special or gifted individual. You can always turn the difficult up but players generally shouldn't have much of a problem taking downs squads of stormtroopers or packs of minion type enemies.
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Feb 29, 2016 23:34
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kingcom posted:Yeah the premise of the system is very much that the players are heroic adventurers who will succeed and outperform anything in the galaxy who isnt a special or gifted individual. You can always turn the difficult up but players generally shouldn't have much of a problem taking downs squads of stormtroopers or packs of minion type enemies. So what I'm trying to figure out is how the tension comes into play. I'm not saying I want to TPK every time, but if nothing is a problem then where does the excitement come from? Does the challenge come from throwing bigger and bigger hordes at them? Or are the rules for nemesis characters powerful enough so that they get taken down before they even get a chance to act? Plus, and I'll be honest here, when players are jerks I REALLY like to knock them down a peg or two using the same rules they like to exploit.
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Feb 29, 2016 23:47
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FuriousAngle posted:So what I'm trying to figure out is how the tension comes into play. I'm not saying I want to TPK every time, but if nothing is a problem then where does the excitement come from? Does the challenge come from throwing bigger and bigger hordes at them? Or are the rules for nemesis characters powerful enough so that they get taken down before they even get a chance to act? If the PCs in Edge of the Empire are not regularly being double-crossed and cheated, you might ask yourself why you're playing that setting at all. The challenge is not necessarily the threat of character death, but the threat of losing the tiny amount of distance they may have put between themselves and Rock Bottom.
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Mar 1, 2016 00:17
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FuriousAngle posted:So what I'm trying to figure out is how the tension comes into play. I'm not saying I want to TPK every time, but if nothing is a problem then where does the excitement come from? Does the challenge come from throwing bigger and bigger hordes at them? Or are the rules for nemesis characters powerful enough so that they get taken down before they even get a chance to act? So Star Wars is definitely a setting that is very comfortable having a bigger fish. Luke, Leia and Han don't really give a poo poo about a pack of stormtroopers but if Vader shows up they know they're in real trouble. Nemesis characters exists exactly for this reason. They can have sacks of hitpoints, tonnes of abilities/gear and even bullshit space magic. An Imperial Security Agent sent to put an end to these horrifying space pirates or Jabba sending Boba Fett to murder this pack of assholes who blew up a bunch of stuff on his turf. Bad guys can have the 'Adversary (x)' special quality which increases the difficulty of any combat check against them by the (x). This means an enemy with Adversary 1 would change standard attack against them of 2 Purple, into 1 Purple and 1 Red. Bad poo poo starts to happen with despair. An enemy like Boba Fett would probably have at least Adversary 3. So the easiest shot with no penalties is going to be 2 Red, 1 Purple (plus any defences). Solo big bads tend to also have the ability to take multiple turns every round (roll their initiative twice and give them two slots in the initiative order). On top of that theres the squad system. The idea of which is to allow hordes of bad guys to slow up without just instantly wiping the party through volume of fire. The players should be seeing 2x5 stormtroopers + 1 stormtrooper sergeant (buffs the troopers + adversary 1) as a default fight. Set up an arc with your players criminal bullshit. Have a Imperial Officer take a personal vendetta against these assholes for some reason. Maybe they probably just gunned downed a relative during a live broadcast of TROOPS (given the way your players seem to run their game you should probably open every session with the COPS theme playing imo). Have the enemy be not a combat character but an Imperial Captain in charge of a big rear end Imperial Star Destroyer, hes got an army of stormtroopers, AT-ST, AT-AT, TIE Fighters and TIE Bombers, an Imperial Agent on board and maybe even a cadre of Bounty Hunters on call. Hes here to bring order to this backwater part of the galaxy and your players seem like the enemy of order. On top of that if the players are all about taking people poo poo, eventually they're going to get their hands on some jedi nonsense and then you can throw an Inquisitor after them. kingcom fucked around with this message at 00:23 on Mar 1, 2016 |
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Mar 1, 2016 00:20
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