/swg/- May the 4th Edition

Best way to GM is to keep notes of various details, important events and environments. That way, things never actually get derailed.

thanks man. Its stressful as hell thinking about actually running a game that isn't one of the adventure modules

Come up with a campaign game plan from the beginning.

Step 1
Get the gang together, run some sessions so they get to know each other, you get to know them, pick out some ambitions they may have and then suddenly- bad shit happens!

Step 2
The basis of the campaign- fighting against the bad shit, work out who the bad guys are, why they're pissed at the PC's and give the PC's enough reasons to hate them.
This is where you through in the other random stuff that PC ambitions happen and tie them into the baddies so they can act as a foil and other activities to constantly make life difficult

Step 3
End Game, shorter series of sessions that work towards vanquishing the bad guys

That's generally how I've run games in any system, but it works just fine for SWRPG's, think of classical plays, movies and other such media which tend to follow this kind of method to some greater or lesser degree.
Its important to be both confident and accommodating, don't try to say 'no' to stuff the PC's come up with, rather "yes... and" then make it as difficult as it needs to be. (Unless its really out-of the scope of the campaign)

No prob.

One tip that I've come up with is to basically have a bunch of ideas for each session but keep them nebulous. Don't over plan and improvising is perfectly fine. And open multiple tabs of pdfs of the rulebooks so you have a quick reference.

So what would the galactic empire under the Confederacy look like?

The majority of the Confederacy never intended to conquer the Republic, just successfully secede.

For some reason they decided that they want the republic to fall and suddenly now bankers and corps control the republic and through shrewd political manuvering, it becomes the galactic empire.

Compared to the GE, what kind of shit does the average civie suffer through? Shadowrun style wageslavery?

That and outright Sith shenanigans.
So PENTAX/Umbrella corp. in space

Well, the stubborn planetary self-governence feelings that were such a huge part of the CIS movement would prevent them from really going big central government

The whims of whatever despot governs them, and extermination by droids if they think of leaving the CIS or speak out.

Well, you'd be looking at the GAR and navy waging a fullbore insurrection with a naval strength exceeding the end-of-war confederate navy, so they'd be in a lot of fucking trouble, not to mention the forces involved in the canon rebellion would be moving AS WELL.
They'd be a collapsing corporate junta, very haphazard, very fractured and localized

I smell ASOIAF style corporate lords, each a feudal kingdom of their own, only marked by corporate banners as the peasants toil day and night under the Corporate Courtmaster Palpatine and the Corporate Lords of the CIS

Some of my best campaigns have been when the wacky player decisions took things in a direction I was completely unprepared for and I had to roll with it.

One of the biggest advantages of a tabletop RPG over a video game is that it doesn't have to follow a script.

So I just learned today that Ezra in an Attack Shuttle with Push the Limit and Jan Ors (crew) can turtle like mad.

Take an evade action, PTL for a focus that Jan turns into another evade.

Yeah, the attack shuttle is by far my favorite ship to fly out of the new wave. Sabine+Kyle+PtL+TLT isn't a fantastic ship, but it's so fucking fun to fly that I find myself putting it on the table a lot.

How do Advanced Homing Missiles work in X-Wing? Do they do damage if I roll a single hit, or do I need to roll more damage than the defenders evasion? And what does it mean by cancel all dice results?

Here's the sequence
>Roll red dice
>get any nonzero number of hits
>Opponent rolls green dice
>gets less than your number of hits
>That's all you needed the red dice for, put em all away
>instead of dealing with your dice results just give the target a faceup damage card.

Thanks. Sadly I missed though.

Been Star Wars day for 18 hours now... And most Koreans I meet think it's a gorilla on my shirt instead of Chewie. Running a game tonight and
It's all just a loose list of ideas and threads in my head that when pulled upon will trigger different encounters and events. Nothing is planned beyond a list of random names and rough ideas.

And eventually an imperial agent I've been waiting to drop.

Today was a damn good day.

How was your May 4th, Veeky Forums?

In other words, Corporate Sectors

Corporate Sectors Eveywhere

It's 8'in the morning here in my part of burger land, we are just getting started.
>I will finish.... What you started

FFG gave us a preview of the Bespin set yesterday, and pic related could very easily find his way into competitive lists, I think. His dice pool doesn't have very high damage on its own, but between taking two attacks as often as not and dealing an automatic damage by moving through an enemy, he should have solid damage output.

He has good speed, excellent health for a unique of his cost (even more than the total of a unit of regular Stormtroopers at the same cost), and being hidden so much of the time is a reasonable defensive ability. Hidden combined with the deflection command card can make it tough for ranged attackers to hit him, and deflection can return some of that damage.

How good Murne Rin will be depends a lot on what your opponent is playing. If they're playing lots of reinforceable troopers, False orders can be great. But there are only three unique figures it can hit, and none of them have a great attack. And field report is great if you have the advantage in command cards, but it's tough to ensure that without putting a lot of resources into it (R2 and Rebel High Command is 5 points out of your 40-point budget). Her saving grace is having decent surges.

I understand fully well that I'm a stupid idiot, but if anything, that should be clear by the fact that I'm still going to ask the question:

I always hear "oh you can just combine all three into one game, it's totally fine" but never any actual specifics as to how that's done. Like, how do you mix players of careers from different versions? Do you just drop them in and act like nothing changed? Doesn't that fuck up the whole balance of encounters or what-have-you?

In fact, I'll be honest, I frankly don't even understand what's different about the three games other than the careers and duty/debt/whatever.

P.S.
any have tips on how to enhance the playing experience? I already have star wars music to play in the background and some classic Star Wars Micro Machines figures to use instead of the shitty tokens.

How would you do a rebel hunt on Courscant, in an Imperial-focused group? FFG systems, if that matters.

Like Dredd- how else?

I.. meant more like, how would you set up such a scenario for players. Though doing it as Dredd in execution is valid I suppose.

The only parts of them that aren't cross-compatible are the obligation/duty/morality narrative elements. I think you should choose either obligation or duty and have everyone use that (you might still include morality for Force-users because it has direct mechanical effects).

Let's say I'm playing in an Age of Rebellion game, where the PCs are a cell of Rebel agents. I could still play a Bounty Hunter with the Survivalist specialization (both from Edge of the Empire), maybe as an actual bounty hunter who got involved with the Rebellion or as a commando with wilderness skills. Later on, my character could discover he is Force sensitive while taking the Hunter specialization from the Seeker career in Force and Destiny.

Mechanically speaking, these are the differences between the three lines;

>Edge of the Empire
Came out first, so many treat it as the "baseline". Its "theme mechanic" is Obligation which acts as a fly in the ointment. Characters are driven by their past-- people they are indebted to, oaths they have sworn, betrayals they committed etc.

>Age of Rebellion
Careers/specializations are notably more combat-centric than Edge of the Empire. Its "theme mechanic" is Duty, which is somewhat of a reversal of Obligation in that players are driven by aspirational goals. Duty tells them what they should consider doing next; ferret out spies, take out an Imperial post, secure goods and material for the Rebellion etc.

>Force & Destiny
All Careers/Specializations have access to a Force rating right out of the gate. Its "theme mechanic" is Morality, which asks players to consider their actions in a balance; how much are they willing to compromise themselves to make their life a little easier, or find a solution a little quicker?

All three books contain advice on mixing between them, and proposes several ideas on handling it;

>Option 1: Pick a theme
You have a Jedi, a Rebel Trooper, and a Smuggler. You decide the campaign's theme, though, will be each of the characters' struggle for personal independence/agency in the Outer Rim, and therefore, each of the players will use the Obligation mechanic.

>Option 2: Theme mechanic per PC
In this, you cohere to the original theme mechanics of a Career/Specialization. The Jedi uses Morality, the Smuggler uses Obligation, the Rebel uses Duty. Each are tracked separately because each character has a different focus in their lives.

>Option 3: Pick and Choose
In this, you simply allow players to choose or decide which "theme mechanic" is most apt to the character.

Encounters are not balanced a la D&D with a CR. And mechanically each Career/Spec is balanced between the lines.

Start them in the briefing room downtown, with the stern, mustachio'd Captain giving them a rundown as you montage the group gearing up.

>"We're looking for a Rebel astromech droid from a Lothal cell. I want this by the book, you understand? I'm three days from retirement."

Cue the Captain leading the group into a hab-block infamously filled with Rebels and criminals. Everything is going fine until they enter the bottom floor of the hab-block-- that's when the whole place goes into lockdown.

A sniper takes out the Captain, who shows the group a picture of his family before breathing his last.

>"Gentlemen--cough--you need to get to the top floor and extract. You need to--cough cough--you need to get to the Chopper"

Now the PC's have to run a gauntlet of vicious and revenge-driven Rebels, fighting their way to the top. It is raining. Be sure to have lots of people jumping through clouds of space-doves.

>Not sure if the Raid or Hard Boiled
Either way, sounds neato as fuck

To be fair, it is Hard Dredd Raid Boiled, with the Captain being played by Danny Glover.

Who quotes Predator, punning off Rebels. I haven't slept in two days.

Would it make sense for the Empire to develop an AT-AT variant that exchanged its transport capacity for artillery and a CIWS? Or is slapping all that firepower on a slow, highly visible target expecting too much of the AT-AT chassis?

Judge P-raid-ator: Die Hard Boiled Weapon

I think it makes sense. There's the AT-IC... which comes from a toy set... but you could tweak that example to suit your variant.

...I might have to write this up as an actual adventure.

Finally got around to buying the VCX-100 yesterday. What builds do you guys run with it?

I want to run Chopper with Super Dash but I'm 1 point short of fitting Zeb onto Chopper (w/Autoblaster, FCS, Hera). Might be worth downgrading to the Lothal Rebel to fit him in.

>Encounters are not balanced a la D&D with a CR. And mechanically each Career/Spec is balanced between the lines.

Everything you said made sense up to this point. I have no idea what that means.

No worries, I was running out of characters which is why I didn't explain more in depth.

With D&D, encounters are mathematically balanced against the level of the party. A Challenge Rating 5 creature is mechanically meant to balance against a party of 4 level 5 characters.

FFG Star Wars does not have levels and three mechanically impactful metrics of character improvement-- Skill Ranks, Talents, and gear. The first two are bought with XP, while the third by credit or fiat.

Already you might see why FFG doesn't have the rigorous, structured encounter-building mechanics of D&D.

But that is fine, because FFG Star Wars is not D&D-- the breadth of scope of play is often much wider. It is very difficult, for example, to play a low-health character with pure social skills and no combat abilities in a D&D game without significant change to how the game mechanics assume a session works. You don't often have characters built around crafting or the like, as you do in FFG Star Wars.

>Caveat: None of the above is beyond dispute, and none of it is disparaging D&D. They are different games with different aims.

FFG Star Wars, rather than including mechanisms or rules for encounter-building, asks DM's to evaluate the combat capabilities of the PC's and build/pick combatants that seem commiserate. There is a bit more depth to the advice in the "Adversary" section, I believe, but not a lot more. It really comes down to that-- what can your PC's do and how does that stack up against what the enemy can do? Pre-built enemies are generally taken in three varieties; Minions (cannon fodder, made to die in droves), Rivals (who should be roughly par with a single PC) and Nemeses (who should be a tough fight for several PC's at once). Thereafter, you are in the realm of pure fiat and DM tinkering.

I hope that this was useful.

That's what I've been running, though I've left Zeb off since he's a bit of a risk. Kanan Dash and Chopper w/ FCS, autoblaster, Hera.

There's been some cool Kanan/Biggs setups where Kanan makes biggs live a lot longer.

The basic Lothal is a very stat efficient ship. Heragator has been fun, too.

Solid ship overall.

Yeah, the two main lists I've put together are Kanan Dash and Chopper, and Kanan + Biggs with Ezra shuttle.

I run Kanan + Biggs with

Kanan + FCS + Autoblaster + Recon Specialist + Zeb + TacJammer + Ghost

Biggs + R2-D2 + IA

Ezra + Dorsal + Hera + Adaptability + Phantom

Not sure if running Shuttle + Title is worth it over playing a third ship, but then again not sure what the third ship would even be at the points I have for it.

Double-tapping the autoblaster is pretty strong, plus Ezra can be super annoying late game. His points could go to an A for flanking/blocking, another X-Wing, maybe a stresshog if you can squeeze points elsewhere.

My only change would be R4-D6 on Biggs. R2-D2 is damned good and all, but R4-D6 limits the amount of damage he can receive in a given attack to two. He's Biggs, so you're not taking him with the idea that he'll survive or use actions. And R2-D2 pretty much locks him into green forwards or 1-banks to reclaim a shield. But R4 essentially puts a hard stop on the amount of damage he could get in one attack, and requires at least 3 to 4 full attacks to bring him down. Counting Integrated Astromech.

The only downside is no regeneration, and swarms will still nickle and dime you to death. Plus it comes in the transport ($60). But stopping Soontir and Vader from 2-shotting Biggs in one turn is priceless.

Well, this is interesting.

fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2016/5/4/the-force-is-calling-to-you/

New line of the RPGs or just a grab bag introduction meant to cash in on TFA? One of the Pregens is a Colonist and another is a Soldier.

Is SW GURPS chatter allowed in here?

>fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2016/5/4/the-force-is-calling-to-you/

It might be a little too early to tell-- on first pass I'm seeing a lot meant to draw you in from the movies; one of the pregens is the same species as Ello Asty, and another is carrying the same kind of pistol that Rey uses post-Jakku.

Is it Star Wars? Then yes.

Plus the adventure starting on Jakku just like EotE's starts on Tatooine.

What do people think about Star Wars: Rebellion?

On one hand it seems pretty sweet and captures the "feel" of the old movies pretty well with dudes moving about the galaxy on secret missions and shit, but at the same time jesus fucking christ FFG, why do you make games like this?

I'm just kidding, I love FFG shit, even though I don't have tabletop sim friends who like this kind of thing and there's no way I can play something like this with a rando. I tried teaching FoD to a group of four and it was a nightmare. Still love it.

Where do people like to put the rebel base? I've been thinking a risky play with Endor, right up the emperor's ass. That or brazenly pick Yavin and dare the other guy to blow resources checking the stupidest pick possible.

Yes. And cool, thanks.

Blatant cashgrab. They'll probably end up with a TFA corebook that adds nothing more than a few chapters worth of new stuff and could've been put out as a cheaper supplemental book. They'll repeat the process with episodes 8 and 9

You are one cynical bastard, aren't ya'.

Seeing as nucanon has jack shit in terms of RPG-worthy lore, it's entirely possible unless Disney is based enough to let FFG become this generation's WEG.

>Disney
Considering the shit they've done so far the answer is no.

That this new box is meant to bring in new players through the exposure of Ep 7 is obvious, as Ep 7 brought in a lot of new fans on its own, so that just makes sense. But a new book for each episode? Really? Call me naïve, and you probably already do, but seriously.

I really like it, but it's expensive and I rarely get to play.

I've played 3 games. First time rebel I picked Dantooine and was never found out. Something about it being too remote for a proper demonstration.

Second game I was empire and the rebels set up on Endor. I had no clue, even built the second death star over it but never thought to commit ground troops to check it.

Third time I was rebels and picked a world with production, kessel. It was also a fun nod to my podcast, The Kessel Run. I won barely, getting enough sympathy just before general veers was launching an assault on Kessel. My opponent laughed at my narcissism.

Fun game. Always rush capital ships. The rebellion outproducing the Empire is great.

I saw this and thought of you guys.

There's like zero nucannon lore to draw from, and Disney won't let FFG become the new WEG.

Even if FFG was able to be the new WEG, I'm not sure I'd want them to be with what I've heard about the 40k lore stuff they've done.

Is it a game that lets you make someone as OP as Rey right out the gate?

What is that from, one of the films or the clone wars game?

Well, it's good to see that other people can see how ridiculous Episode 3 was. Include actual creators.

And speaking of May 4th, you know what would be good to create today? Chapter three. Will I? No, because I'm slow and I have other things to do.

Considering the phrasing of the announcement, it seems like it exists to mostly just bring people in to try the actual current Cores and that it won't have its own core. Particularly since the careers you can see on the folios are all from existing books. It's possible they'll dump out a supplement, but with how empty canon is right now for the time period, they've got practically nothing to fill it with; so for now, I'd assume it's just cash grab to bring a new audience into the game.

>What is that from, one of the films or the clone wars game?
The Droid Tales film, found it here:
youtube.com/watch?v=f53TM5ywfvs

After reading through the FFG 40K books, I can honestly say they're far better than anything GW has shat out.

>I'm not sure I'd want them to be with what I've heard about the 40k lore stuff they've done.

It's not like 40k's "fluff" isn't fucked up beyond all recognition to begin with... FFG hasn't really done anything worse than what GW has on it's own.

Questy, how do you feel about Buttstuff? Specifically, stuff happening to YOUR butt in particular.

...

He only allows the Glove of Darth Vader up there

I'm honestly not sure who this is for. People that are new to the franchise are not likely people who would be interested in an RPG as they're likely under the age of 16. And those who would want to play a SW RPG would already be doing so.

...

Well obviously 40k lore is fucked, but there seems to be a decent subsection of the fanbase that really dislikes FFG lore. Is it just 40k autists being autistic about that stuff?

Didn't want to clutter /swg/ so I made a thread but I am definetely looking for input from people who know FFG's system the best.

Heroes of the Resistance. Hope you all like owning 2 YT-1300s.
fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2016/5/4/these-are-your-first-steps/

I wouldn't be surprised if the big thing about this is that they started putting this out in Target/Walmart, similar to what they did with just the X-Wing Cores. Just something neat and different sitting on the shelves of more common stores to draw people who normally wouldn't seek out these types of games.

Pretty much. Apart from Calixis maybe being a bit too inquisition heavy as the official dark heresy sector, they did pretty fun world building. Autists just feel that the books contradict obscure elements of the lore even though 1) the lore contradicts itself all the fucking time and 2) GW has come out as saying that the "lore" is very fluid and a lot of sources are in-universe

I'm having a hard time figuring out why someone would Vehemently hate FFG lore but like normal 40K lore, so probably autism, yeah.

SUCK IT REBEL SCUM
EMPIRE GETS BASED DEFENDERS, REBS GET TFA TRASH
HOW DOES IT FEEL

>Is it just 40k autists being autistic about that stuff?

Do you really need to ask...? These are the same people who liked the original incarnation of Draigo. Bottom line, anyone who takes 40k's seeting pile of shit that it calls "lore" with any shred of seriousness, is indeed too much of an autistic manchild to be taken seriously.

FUCK YEAH, RECTANGULAR SATELITE DISH!!!

Kylo Ren's command shuttle when?

Whoa, Poe's pilot skill changed. Is this the first time we've had a card change in a later release?

This is the day my country was liberated!

>Poe now has pilot skill 9 equal to Wedge

Suck it EU fags!

It's a new version of Poe. First time this has happened but not the rules update you think it is. I suppose FF just regrets that one number difference hidden they had to make Poe without actually seeing the movie.

...

TFA-era Wedge and Luke when?

It's a bit tricky as much of the 'FFG' 40k fluff that people like actually comes from the Black Industries 40kRPGs or from FFG ones that built heavily off of them, which was for the most part pretty good as it was inspired heavily by stuff like Dan Abnett's Eisenhorn and Gaunt's Ghosts series.

FFG's biggest foray into 'original' 40k lore came with Dark Heresy 2e which has pretty meh fluff that's actually far more in line with the grimderp/scale creep stuff GW pumps out.

Pretty much. Ffg includes lots of plot hooks in their writing for things that the players or gm might want to do and why. Eg admech researching such and such that would solve all problems. Since ffg never gives the conclusion it seems people assume that the default is that everything works no problem and the universe gets better, which many 40k fans dislike