Star Wars Roleplaying by Fantasy Flight Games

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Tekopo: Oct 24, 2008; When you see it, you'll shit yourself.

I'd be up for taking part in a PbP having just bought AoR and read the rules. Y-Wings sound cool as well and it's nice that they are two-seaters in terms of giving variety to the squad.

# ¿ Dec 1, 2014 11:02

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 07:26

Tekopo: Oct 24, 2008; When you see it, you'll shit yourself.

Advantages aren't successes, no. Only actual successes and triumphs count as successes. Threat and Advantage operate on their own totally different scale.

# ¿ Dec 23, 2014 23:39

Tekopo: Oct 24, 2008; When you see it, you'll shit yourself.

Just finished Onslaught at Arda I and holy loving poo poo, this premade is bad. Granted, I've never played in a premade before but gently caress, it's so loving bad.

# ¿ Feb 15, 2015 19:21

Tekopo: Oct 24, 2008; When you see it, you'll shit yourself.

Multiple dice rolls to do stuff that has no affect on the mission whatsoever (which we eventually skipped, but there is a section where there are 12 completely unecessary dice-rolls), books assumes successes for certain rolls and doesn't have much guidance for what to do if they fail, there are some forced failure sections where you are meant to lose, the ending is loving awful beyond belief (and we completely skipped it as well).

I haven't had much experience with pre-mades before and I know that ideally you should change stuff to suit you, but the level of stuff that you have to change in order to make the module workable is incredible.

# ¿ Feb 15, 2015 19:44

Tekopo: Oct 24, 2008; When you see it, you'll shit yourself.

TheTofuShop posted:

Yeah... my original EotE group had a blast with the Jewel of Yavin, but when we ran Arda I a while back it was baaad. It's now the subject of all jokes at Rebel Command for that group. "We don't want another Arda I on our hands..."

Yeah, also the fact that it's a starter level campaign apparently, but it only really works for mid-level characters if that. Some of the fight balancing doesn't feel balanced at all and although it was entertaining to be the most inept group of rebel operatives ever it felt weird that people were still relying on us after several repeated fuckups: this eventually became our joke in the group.

# ¿ Feb 15, 2015 19:53

Tekopo: Oct 24, 2008; When you see it, you'll shit yourself.

This gives me hope about the gunboat being in X-Wing now :v:

# ¿ Feb 19, 2015 23:32

Tekopo: Oct 24, 2008; When you see it, you'll shit yourself.

Be warned that Onslaught at Arda I is actually a really bad adventure book.

# ¿ May 17, 2015 07:15

Tekopo: Oct 24, 2008; When you see it, you'll shit yourself.

Yggdrassil posted:

I'm trying to find a Star Wars game here at London, to no avail. Do you guys know of any games currently running in the city? I'll have to join in to roll20 if I don't get lucky…

Have you checked meetup/orcs nest/leisure games to see if they have anything there? My group formed to play SWRPG but we moved on now to other systems :shrug:

# ¿ Jun 25, 2015 16:49

Tekopo: Oct 24, 2008; When you see it, you'll shit yourself.

I bought the system and I've played it but there were a few things (for example, the extremely high lethality and how it is an extremely GM intensive game) that put me off it and made our group move on to other things. I think there is some criticism that can be leveled at the game but in the end it just wasn't right for our group, although the above might not be a problem for other groups.

# ¿ Aug 17, 2015 14:12

Tekopo: Oct 24, 2008; When you see it, you'll shit yourself.

Because of the high damage of guns and low HP it seemed to take only a couple of shots to take out characters, which made every fight seem like we would have people going down, getting stimpacked back up and repeat. Also Onslaught at Arda was an awful adventure.

# ¿ Aug 17, 2015 14:32

Tekopo: Oct 24, 2008; When you see it, you'll shit yourself.

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.

# ¿ Aug 17, 2015 20:40

Tekopo: Oct 24, 2008; When you see it, you'll shit yourself.

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.

# ¿ Aug 17, 2015 21:06

Tekopo: Oct 24, 2008; When you see it, you'll shit yourself.

Because most of the stuff that I listed is stuff that is done in order to prevent combat?

# ¿ Aug 17, 2015 21:15

Tekopo: Oct 24, 2008; When you see it, you'll shit yourself.

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.

# ¿ Aug 17, 2015 21:33

Tekopo: Oct 24, 2008; When you see it, you'll shit yourself.

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.

# ¿ Aug 17, 2015 21:57

Tekopo: Oct 24, 2008; When you see it, you'll shit yourself.

Drone posted:

The Jizz-Wailer's Delight

That should have been 'Max ReBone and the Jizz-wailers'

# ¿ Nov 18, 2015 12:26

Tekopo: Oct 24, 2008; When you see it, you'll shit yourself.

Obligatory yuuzhan vong mention.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2016 14:47

Tekopo: Oct 24, 2008; When you see it, you'll shit yourself.

It can be debated that the entire essence of Star Wars for the heroes is things not going exactly to plan. Just having a surprise round because you did X amount of prep work beforehand seems wrong to me. No matter how successful the prep work is, things can still gently caress up and somehow the enemy is alerted at the last minute, but that just makes things more interesting.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2016 16:00

Tekopo: Oct 24, 2008; When you see it, you'll shit yourself.

What's exactly the problem with giving the PC boost dice if they manage to ace that stealth roll? I haven't played in a while but even when I played it was perfectly possible for the GM to just give out boost dice if the PC had a good enough excuse.

EDIT: I don't agree with giving the PCs a free shot, though. The Vigilance opposed roll is meant exactly for these sort of situations.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2016 16:22

Tekopo: Oct 24, 2008; When you see it, you'll shit yourself.

Zodack posted:

I feel like permanently affecting the initiative order for every round instead of for the surprise attack round might not be great. The sniper example, it works alright because the NPCs would be scrambling to figure out what is going on. But in a different example, where the NPCs are in a more immediate position, giving them an upper hand for the entire combat by boosting their Initiative roll seems a little off. That's what Cool and Vigilance being seperated are for - the player's ability to react to a surprise.

I realize this whole dumb thing is a very specific subset of things that can happen to players though, and I think the "Surprise Round" is the best way to handle it. The PCs/NPCs are caught off guard temporarily, but can use their skills to regain their footing for subsequent rounds of combat.

I don't really understand what the issue is with permanently affecting the initiative order: the fact that the PCs surprised the NPCs has an affect on the fight that gives them an advantage throughout the fight because the enemies are caught flat-footed. To me it makes a lot more thematic sense that the entirety of the fight is affected by the ambush rather than having a surprise round and then suddenly normal combat occurs after that.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2016 16:40

Tekopo: Oct 24, 2008; When you see it, you'll shit yourself.

Zodack posted:

I can see it working fine that way, my issue of it was more of... my PCs getting pissy because the NPCs got the drop on them and prevented them from securing a good initiative spot because I boosted the NPCs. For my PC's sake, it just seemed easier to say "okay, you guys are blindsided right now and get hit a bunch for free, but to compensate for that let's see if your Vigilance can beat their Cool and you can regain your footing".

The other issue with boost is, again, in some situations we get these weird problems where there are PCs or NPCs potentially acting before the hidden aggressor as if some kind of silent alarm has tripped. My PCs will know something is up and take action that would probably be considered metagaming, and I'd like to not only prevent that, but also provide a way for PCs to perform the maneuver on NPCs in the same fashion.

I can see what you are saying, but I wouldn't have a problem with someone that is being ambushed acting first. It can be any number of things: they had a small probe droid (a la lady inquisitor from Star Wars Rebels) that picked up the sniper at just the right time, the NPC is scanning the environment and sees the reflection on the scope, the NPC suddenly noticed that there aren't any civilians around (because, as good rebels, you cleared the area to avoid civilian casualties), an informant calls him at the last second, etc

EDIT: And if he rolls a triumph and you roll a tragedy, suddenly the ambush that you setup is actually a trap, and stormtroopers burst in where your team is hiding!

Tekopo fucked around with this message at 17:02 on Feb 16, 2016

# ¿ Feb 16, 2016 16:57

Tekopo: Oct 24, 2008; When you see it, you'll shit yourself.

Zodack posted:

I'm torn on it. Honestly, there is just a massive disconnect between skills and Initiative. Stealth is all about being unseen, so if my PC sniper makes a really nice Stealth roll but yet is beaten on Cool his work goes to waste? My PCs wouldn't like this, and I wouldn't blame them. Especially so if my PC is operating at a realistic extreme range.

I love your Triumph vs. Despair example, but frankly my PCs would cry foul - I didn't make them roll Perception to notice something was wrong! I didn't hint at the fact that it might be a trap! Why is the fact that they were ambushed by an unrelated group based on Initiative! Why do they now have to roll a different Initiative check for the reverse ambush! And so on and so forth - my PCs might spend days setting this up, only for it all to go to waste on that Initiative roll... but then, your advocacy of boost dice on an ambush makes a lot of sense, because that would give them less cause to complain.

Well yeah, as you mentioned, the Stealth roll would just help a lot with the initiative roll, so it's not wasted in that sense, because the PC does get an actual bonus out of it, and it directly helps them to make the first shot. You can even add boost dice to the actual damage roll, go wild!

Also, knowing from experience, if you hint at an ambush and the PCs even remotely pick up the hint, they will do everything in their power to prevent that reverse ambush (and you don't need to roll separately for the initiative, just make a roll for the stormies as well). And yeah, sometimes things go wrong on the roll of a single dice, but that just makes things more interesting. You can plan obsessively, have everything go right during the prep phase, make sure that everything is accounted for and suddenly a crack stormtrooper battalion appears outside the shield generator.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2016 17:18

Tekopo: Oct 24, 2008; When you see it, you'll shit yourself.

Test Pattern posted:

Geonosis is sterilized sometime between the end of the Clone Wars and 4BBY.

Yeah, but the reason why Geonosis is sterilized make it difficult to have PCs on the planet unless they are specifically there to spy on the Death Star.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2016 13:30

Tekopo: Oct 24, 2008; When you see it, you'll shit yourself.

ImpactVector posted:

It's a pretty open secret that the RPG rules don't really model the movies. Like, at all.

There's no focus in the movies on gun porn or modifications. Ship modifications are mentioned briefly regarding the Millennium Falcon, and the smuggling compartment is used narratively, but that's about it.

You mention combat not being lethal enough, but it's actually pretty rocket tag-y. In the movies the heroes almost never get hit until a big climactic moment. If they were trying to model the movies then a more narrative stakes-setting combat system probably would have been appropriate.

Instead we got Space Shadowrun with funky dice.

Not that that's necessarily a bad thing. But it's not exactly Star Wars.

I think that's pretty much my own problem with the FFG Star Wars RPG. I used to play Shadowrun quite a lot and although I like the feel of Shadowrun, it wasn't something that I wanted replicated within Star Wars.

# ¿ Apr 18, 2016 13:17

Tekopo: Oct 24, 2008; When you see it, you'll shit yourself.

After trying the FFG version of Star Wars, our GM made a FATE-hack for Star Wars which I thought went pretty well, but we didn't continue playing it because the GM didn't like FATE All that much :v:

I agree that to get the Star Wars feel you would need a much more narrative-driven game.

# ¿ Apr 18, 2016 13:29

Tekopo: Oct 24, 2008; When you see it, you'll shit yourself.

Shockeh posted:

Why are you in another thread with me Tekopo. Why.

We were separated at birth?

# ¿ Apr 18, 2016 13:37

Tekopo: Oct 24, 2008; When you see it, you'll shit yourself.

FFGSW has always seemed to me a weird mish-mash of new and old mechanisms that don't entirely work in a satisfactory way (at least not to me). As one of my friends pointed out, it feels weird that you use the special dice for absolutely everything except crits, where you have to fish out your own d10s in order to use the critical hit tables (dice which aren't even provided in the beginner game).

EDIT: Also another issue is that the wound threshold is a really weird barrier for me. You end up with PCs swinging between being unconscious (or unaware of his surroundings), getting stimmed, waking up etc.

Tekopo fucked around with this message at 10:33 on Apr 19, 2016

# ¿ Apr 19, 2016 10:23

Tekopo: Oct 24, 2008; When you see it, you'll shit yourself.

Since this is going out of print and I'm not really keen to pick up the system again, if anyone wants a copy of Age of Rebellion Core Book and Stay on Target for shipping only, let me know (I'm in the UK btw).

# ¿ Jan 12, 2020 20:15

Tekopo: Oct 24, 2008; When you see it, you'll shit yourself.

neaden posted:

i don't think this is going out of print at all, they might slow down production of new books but I see no reason to think they won't keep selling the books they've already made.

Fair. Offer still stands.

# ¿ Jan 12, 2020 21:36

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 07:26

Tekopo: Oct 24, 2008; When you see it, you'll shit yourself.

Technically correct because no one has created a RPG specifically on the Arkham Horror IP

And that�s the best kind of correct

# ¿ Mar 7, 2024 16:09

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