/swg/ Star Wars General: Pulp edition

Star Wars, anyway.
>Previous Thread: → →
>Fantasy Flight Games’ X-Wing and Star Wars: Armada Miniatures Games
>>pastebin.com/Wca6HvBB
>Fantasy Flight Games’ Star Wars RPG System (EotE/AoR/FaD)
>>pastebin.com/wCRBdus6
>>mega.nz/#!DkNTDTyZ!PUupCOep4RmRcsgI3rNhU_Pk_xcyFbYWnhrq8gwrVv0
>Other Fantasy Flight Games Star Wars Tabletop (Imperial Assault, Star Wars: Destiny and the Star Wars LCG)
>>pastebin.com/ZE4gn0yN
>Fantasy Flight Games Dice App (Works with X-Wing, Armada, the Star Wars RPG system and Imperial Assault)
>>mediafire.com/download/64xy3uy6vepll8v/com.fantasyflightgames.swdice.ver.1.1.4.build.9.apk
>Older Star Wars Tabletop (d6, d20/Saga, etc.)
>>pastebin.com/wXP0LdyJ
>Reference Materials & Misc. Resources
>>pastebin.com/AGFFkSin
>All Canon Novels and Comics (via /co/)
>>mega.co.nz/#F!2R5kDTqQ!WfrDla-jvDIn05U57T9hhQ
>Just What IS Canon Anyways?
>>starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Canon#2014_reboot
>>starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_canon_media
>The Clone Wars Viewing Guide
>>img.4plebs.org/boards/tg/image/1442/36/1442364889994.png
>Writefaggotry
>>pastebin.com/cJY5FK9T
>Shipfag's hangar
>>drive.google.com/folderview?id=0ByhAdnTlOKOeQnA4SFByUC1aQWM&usp=sharing
>HoTAC
>>dockingbay416.com/campaign

Mobile may have fucked the formatting

Other urls found in this thread:

game2.ca/eote/?montecarlo=100000#ability=2&difficulty=2
game2.ca/eote/?montecarlo=100000#proficiency=1&ability=1&difficulty=2
youtube.com/watch?v=Hh8sTR2b4zI
starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Dubrillion_superlaser_facility
twitter.com/AnonBabble

I just finished the Lando trilogy and it was really grand.

I forgot how fucking HUGE Vuufi'Raa's species was. An entire race of sapient spheroids each nearly half the size of the first deathstar.

I really like how D&D 5e plays.

Which SW game would I like most?

> it requires a hivemind team of ultraspecialized autists to actually succeed at 'average' difficulty checks.

Wat?

2 green vs 2 blue (untrained skill and average stat vs average difficulty) is 43% chance to succeed, which is about on par for something you're completely untrained in with no natural aptitude for: game2.ca/eote/?montecarlo=100000#ability=2&difficulty=2

Want to do better? Spend 5 fucking XP to get a rank in that skill. Congrats, you're up to 50% already: game2.ca/eote/?montecarlo=100000#proficiency=1&ability=1&difficulty=2

Decently trained with no aptitude? 56%. Untrained, but slight aptitude? 60%.

The numbers only go up from there. You're talking out your fucking ass.

What's decently trained with aptitude?

Try out FFG, if not go d6 or Saga

I'm new to this system, but it looks pretty awful.

Can't we just have a SW system more similar to 5e?

well Saga is d20, so if d20 is your flavor of choice it will be pretty comfy and there are a metric shit ton of splats and setting books. However the balance, especially between jedi and non-jedi classes is really wonky. Force powers are ridiculously effective and with the right talents a jedi master can basically use use the force for both that and to skill monkey on tons of checks.

I have no doubt you will probably enjoy Saga since I got a lot of fun out of it, but I'd definitely suggest at least taking a look at the Fantasy Flight games. The balance is light years better, there's tons of stuff for combat and noncombat people to do and feel relevant, and the dice while at first seeming like a way to just take your money actually provide a ton of interesting ways to make checks more complex than just win or lose. Once I started I've been loving it and never looked back for a second

tl;dr: Saga is d20, so if you like d20 you will probably like Saga, but it has a ton of balance problems. Give FFG a chance

2 ranks in a skill and 3 in an attribute give you 70%.

>more similar to 5e
>specifically 5e

ok before you just seemed like an innocent user who likes DND but this has got to be bait

What? Why? 5e is so streamlined and smooth.

According to posts like:
it seems like success is based on percentages anyway. Just use a d20.

The moron I initially quoted was talking about base chance of success. You also have triumphs, despairs, threat, and advantage.

Almost every RPG game ever is based on percentages

For a while I was working on a homebrew for 5E to turn it into star wars. Never got around to testing anything and some of the stuff I'd made I was a bit unsure of, but it actually translates really fucking well.

Stuff like the Monk's missile deflection translates well into blaster deflecting, you can represent different lightsaber styles and force abilities with the Warlock's Invocation sort of mechanics.

Although I will admit one of my favourite mechanics I made for it was for the Bounty Hunter subclass that warriors could get. It worked like a combination of Hunter Mark and Maneuver dice to give the bounty hunter a bit of versatility, but if they were focusing only on a single target they could do incredibly effective things.

Sounds like you can just replace those with advantage and disadvantage like 5e

What?

What?

Sounds like you can keep talking out of your ass.

Do- Do you understand how the FFG game works?

It's absolutely nothing alike.

In FFG star wars you get a pool of dice and roll them, compare results and cancel out opposing factors. From this you have different outcomes rather than simple success/fail which is what 5E's dice rolling system provides.

For example, nothing in 5E allows for a dice roll where the player has dramatically achieved (lots of success, and a triumphant success) but at the same time suffered a pretty dramatic setback (two or more setback outcomes). In 5E you either succeed or fail, maybe to different degrees depending on how well you rolled, but in this it's possible to succeed in interrogating the captive you're talking to, but at the same time slip up and give them a piece of information about who you really work for.

Sounds like a complicated process.
>I roll to attack
>Okay, let's add up your dice...roll..add up results...add opponents dice...subtract results... consult this table to find out what happens...

Where as in 5e:
>I attack
>Okay I rolled a 15
>You hit

Well yeah, it is more complicated. It's a trade off between the scope of a roll and the time taken for it. FFG's star wars dice rolling system is more complex but encompasses a larger 'chunk' of the dramatic event. For example when using it for combat you don't then roll for damage, you roll once which determines if you hit and if so how much damage.

All RPGs have to choose how large of a scope your individial actions are and from there allocate time taken to resolve it. It's personal choice what you prefer, but D&D's system is far from the only option.

Two can play this game user.

>I attack
>I roll a 15
>Okay, let me just see how much AC this character has, compare results...

FFG:
>I roll to attack.
>Okay, roll.
>I got 1 Sucess, 2 disadvantage, 1 Advantage.
>Okay, you pass, but I'm going to spend a a disadvantage to give you a setback die on your next roll.

If my experience with D&D doesn't fail me, it's more akin to:

>I attack
>I roll a 15
>With my STR giving a +2, that's 17
>But Cleric buff adds another+1
>Wait, is the Wizard buff still active?
>What do you mean the enemy's flanking me and has high ground advantage?
>What do you mean last fight's poison still affects me?
>Did I hit anyway? Oh, good.
>I try and grapple this time

Not that user but to be far 5E simplifies most of that shit out. Either something gives one side advantage or it doesn't, far less granular.

But having said that the strength of FF-SW's dice system is its granular results. There's more scope for outcomes when it's not just pass/fail, but instead triumphant success/success/success with threat/failure with advantage/failure/dramatic failure.

Clearly you're talking about 3e, not 5e.

And then when you roll a 15 and it misses, fucking nothing happens.

But flat canceled rolls are uncommon in FFG, so perhaps you failed, but with advantages showing, so you can miss, but maybe you make an opening for an ally, or you set back the opponent, or you can get a maneuver action from it. Or maybe you failed with Threat or Despair showing, so you fail really badly in a way that means you might expose yourself to danger or generate some new unforeseen complication you must deal with.

It is initially but after you and your players know how to quickly analyze and interpret the dice it picks up pretty quick.

5e still has a lot of modifiers though. Like your 15 is going to have at least 1 number added to it, which can change. Plus you have damage which is a separate roll with its own modifiers. DND is heavier on mental math, while FFG is heavier on interpreting results.

That seems a pretty fair interpretation. 5E's numbers are usually pretty easy though, generally just "1d20 + applicable stat bonus + proficiency (sometimes) + occasional spell bonus'".

I'll admit I've looked at the FFGSW games but never properly played one. It always reads awkwardly to me having not yet memorised the dice value. I kind of wish it was something other than abstract symbols, like just a stylised S for success and a T for threat, rather than whatever the fuck those symbols are. I am keen to give it a go at some point though.

Vuffi Raa crew card when?

Reading behind Enemy lines because at least it's Allston even if it's Vong. Goddamn I forgot how OP dovin Basals and rockplasma bushit was.

I remember that duology being my favorite part of the entire Vong series. Something about Wedge bringing back old styles of warfare to beat ass was so enjoyable.

Its not that bad really

1. Has anyone read Catalyst yet?
2. Is it worth the 20-30 dollars?

I just grabbed the epub off of the MEGA. Only read one chapter so I can't really say. Usually if I like the book I'll buy it later on.

Is the catalyst audiobook out yet?

So I'm new to tabletop wargames but my friend has a little experience from Warhammer. We both enjoy X-Wing but he rocks the most wanted pack and switches between missile headhunters and a scum Y-Wing. With either TIE FOs or the the T-70 I get peppered or blasted to bits. Share some tactics or low point T70 or FO builds please... Or at least some sympathy. I don't get my Defenders for another 10 days at min.

It's entirely likely that thst user was talking about what his mongoloid GM thinks is the right amountvof difficulty for "average"

I'm 8 chapters in and I really like it! Galen and Krennic are really cool characters so far. Also nice continuity digging Luceno is known for.

Omega Leader with Juke and a Comm Relay is an amazing 1v1 ship.

Can someone explain me, how players should deal with 10 soak, listed in nemesis stats? It looks like you need rifles or heavy blasters to kill.

If your PCs aren't rucking enough firepower to level a city block, they're doing it wrong.

>It always reads awkwardly to me having not yet memorised the dice value.

A lot of my group use the dice-app, (some of them use the dice) but at least the app gives you a reference of your total, cancels out ad-dis, success-failure, adds in any Triumph or Despair etc.
Handy if you just need a quick result and some of the more dim/hungover amongst us don't spend ages buggering around trying to figure out what does what.

There's a lot to like about the FFG system in my opinion, mostly in that it does have some great (vital!) roles for technical and medical careers, you really do need someone that can talk to other people and the talky careers are quite a lot of fun in that you can verbally beat up people for 'poor life choices' and make them cry.
Its a good, decently rounded and modern rpg mechanic that for all the quirks of special dice, actually has provision for "roleplaying" and ad-lib with the dice results seems to add just that little bit more interest rather than being complicated. Players like it because they can build up complex characters over time, as a GM I love it because I can offload a lot onto players to push the game in directions they want to look at and the characters themselves are still very much street-level, for lack of a better description. 20 stormies getting shooty are still scary at 1000xp as they where at 100xp, so I can ad hoc in more random events without it feeling staged or too forced.

With D20 systems, characters end up super powerful by around the 8-10th level, so you end up with all kinds of problems actually trying to challenge them. Literally can spend days in prep making encounters, statting shit up and I simply do not have the time or inclination to do that. Instead I can spend that time thinking up interesting twists to stories, someone can email me 'what I want to do...' and I'll work on that. Prep is literally a couple of hours now and not just making up another tough as fuck set of opponents

"We gave them New Republic tactics, didn't work. We gave them Rebel Alliance tactics with similar results. I'm thinking the Vong are ready for the Empire."

Anything with breach will make it gone completely, vehicle weapons will turn anything living into atomised particles and high explosives will sort most shit out.

Even just an ordinary heavy blaster pistol Dam8 or blaster rifle Dam9, get 3-4 success and it'll be getting through.

This has to be bait.

Ffg star wars is incredibly easy to play. Anyone who has problems with it is probably legitimately retarded.

My main beef with FFG's RPGs is how they've more or less completely balanced their equipment and ESPECIALLY modification rules around cash cost and nothing else, which is a fucking terrible idea

>they've more or less completely balanced their equipment and ESPECIALLY modification rules around cash cost and nothing else

have you forgotten about rarity?

what the hell has 10 soak? a rancor?

The problem being that there are some cheap talents that let you effectively ignore rarity for more money, and a lot of the cheesiest shit isn't really that rare anyhow

And weight. A lot around weight. Also the "Swarm ed by the police" effect of disruptors.

He piloted more than crewed. "Cannot fire main arc unless there is at least one crew"

Okay, to reconcile Rogue Squadron being impressed by the Doomgiver and the size of the drop pods would it be fair to assume that each of the external pods is more like a drop-pod cluster bomb?

And people say the OLD EU gave shit too much backstory.

Old EU Nerf herders were people that herded foul smelling animals from Alderaan, thus the culturally relevant insult from Leia.

New EU HAN LITERALLY HERDED NERFS

youtube.com/watch?v=Hh8sTR2b4zI

Anyone know how soon this game releases?

That's not a game. Some studios have been putting together 3d trailers for movies you can look around in. Apparently Rogue One got one.

I remember that Firefly episode.

>That's not a game.
I don't know how to feel about this. On the one hand, I should feel cock-blocked. On the other, I'm glad that I don't have to see DICE or Bioware tainting the concept of a next-gen Star Wars flight sim.

>That's not a game

I mean, if there was a way to convince Disney that Project Aces was the right developer for the job, I'd sign that petition.

on one hand, that certainly is retarded, but on the other, it's funny as shit

starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Dubrillion_superlaser_facility

"Build superlaser upgrade to planetary defense turbolaser on possible extragalactic invasion route and then decide to use it to trap the rebels"

Yup, Sheev SURE had his shit in order about being ready for the Vong to crash his party. Perfect priorities that man.

EA has a decade-long exclusivity contract with Disney. If profits remain positive, we may also see a contract extension. Shame, since the only people in the industry who can be trusted to do it well are Project Aces and Chris Roberts. And so far, I don't think Star Citizen looks too promising.

look on the bright side. That's meant to showcase and get people excited for Rogue One, and that trailer was pretty dark. Its got a decent tone to it as well. The more advertising I see for the movie that seems well put together and focused on a dark tone, the more exciting it gets.

Probably, the doomgiver is about as long as an ISD, that puts those pods on order of 20-50 meters wide

So how do I go about doing xwm flight school with a friend? He's new and I'm a pretty shit teacher. He didn't really take to the rule book either. I'm planning on starting with spreading a bunch of asteroids out and practicing flying through them with him, followed by chasing an interceptor I'll fly around.

If he won't read a rulebook like a fucking normal human being try getting him to watch it being played on YouTube, he'll pick it up there.

The rule books have a few introductory missions involving a single X-wing and two TIE fighters. Play those. Flying an obstacle course might turn him off the game for life.

Right, got it.

My guys learned pretty quick, all your eggs into the magic problem solver gun (or armour) usually just means at some point, they're going to get broken and in some cases destroyed.
>They will pout of course
But the same rule applies to the enemy who can have their stuff busted too

(if they have too much stuff- remove some of it!)

Plus depending on where you are in the galaxy, toting around their Megafukka 2000 in powered armour- just isn't allowed. It doesn't mean you can't, but if they insist on being loud and noisy all the time, I'm just gunna tread on them with a scout walker or send in a gunship as an escalation when they kill 50 cops or a platoon of stormtroopers.

Lando grabbed him by the collar of his tunic and dragged him close. The trooper had to be younger than twenty, despite his apparent poise. “Listen to me, bantha fodder,” Lando said. “I blew up a Death Star before you were born. In twenty seconds I can conclude a conversation with General Antilles, who blew up that Death Star with me, and I’ll be General Calrissian again, and and you’ll spend the rest of your military career cleaning refreshers on Kessel. Or you can dig. Which is it?”

Yeah, but EA+Disney is the kind of deal that gets headlines, and bottom lines, but not worth-while results. I mean, we all knew what that was the second it was made public, but still.

That's from behind enemy lines, isn't it? I loved Lando's depiction in that.

Yup, just started reading it. It's okay for the era it's set in.

Or rather, it's excellent for the era that it is set in, making it at LEAST okay.

>“Good.” Wedge sighed and lowered his voice. “Tycho, we’re about to achieve a tremendous victory we don’t want.”
>Tycho gave him a thin smile. “We’ll put that in your biography. General Antilles was so good he couldn’t fail when he tried to.”
>“Thanks.”
God I miss Allston, the man was a treasure.

>"If you continue to map the Unknown Regions, you'll have to call them something else."

Wait a second. Allston invented EXPLODING KNEES SABER ARMOR MAN in Behind Enemy Lines didn't he? The glorious cheeky bugger.

So the Vong took Coruscant by CRASHING SHIPS FULL OF CAPTIVES INTO THE PLANETARY SHIELD till someone got soft hearted and turned off the shields?

God they're so fucking edgy.

I do believe they were able to cram multiple AT-ST's into those pods.

Four each, plus troops and turrets, but the math's been done, if those are not cluster pods that ship is TINY for an imperial capital ship.

Fuckberries, forgot to remove my name from a previous thread. My apologies.

I'm almost certain someone told him he had to put hints about darth knee sabers into the book for later, which is why it almost feels like a parody. Such a weird section of the story.

>Luke set down his backpack. From within it he drew a short-hafted heavy hammer. “Behold,” he told Tahiri, “the favorite weapon of Jedi before the invention of the lightsaber.”
>She frowned at him, green eyes confused beneath her bangs. “You’re kidding.”
>“Of course I’m kidding. C’mon. The Jedi sledgehammer?” Grinning, he turned to his wife. “Mara?”
More Allston goodness.

I thought his whole plotline got resolved in the two Allston books alone?

If you could save one, and only one character from whatever miserable fate they met, nucanon or legends, who would it be?

I dont say FFGs system shit. I get why people like it.

But isnt that a rather more complicated way of how d6 used the exploding die?

On a 1 on your exploding die you get three possibilities:

-you lose exploding die and your hightest die(boring)
-you get a setback(ilke ffg)
-fuck me, i forgot the third one

I made a dice roller for Discord, and it does exactly that, roll what you want, and give you final results. "Ok roll me Cool, average difficulty" "!roll PAADD" "You got 2 successes, 1 threat, 1 triumph"

Haven't tested it in a real game yet though, but results do work (and can even include 'full' results, rather than just the sums at the end)

Wild die system was still kind of a numerical possibility,
On a 1 on the WD, you'd lose the 1+ your highest other roll, on a 6 you'd roll again and +add the result, roll another 6= keep rolling until you no longer roll a 6 and you've got a final number
That's it.

In 2nd ed D6 there was the option for the GM to add a 'Complication', but it was very ad-lib with regards to the depth of shit the player's just managed to find themselves in. Whereas in FFG there's sort of a measuring stick of 'you are this deep'.
So if you get for example, 2 threat; I can just add a boost to the enemies next attack or negotiation check, drop a point of speed off your spaceship or a bit of system strain.
But if you managed to get a Despair and 2 threat, I can add in all the above and maybe the other side has called in reinforcements, you get some info which is patently wrong and will waste time, get sold a lemon or something on your spaceship just stopped working.

On the flip side, you can also do a 'bit better than average' all the way through to spectacularly well with enough advantage or a triumph

D6 does the job fairly well for an old game system and it captured a bit of the SW feel of the time, I much preferred it over any of the D20 systems but the wheels can fall off with enough xp and stuff gets silly.
FFG has some issues which seem to be fine to work out with some basic house rules, mostly the vehicles. Not perfect, but pretty good.

Yeah if you don't feel like getting the app there's a few others out there that do the job, I don't play online so I've not really looked at them.

Some folks asked for one, and I figured might as well give it a shot. And since getting an IRL campaign is a pain in the ass here, I'll end up using it too so hey

Yeah, gunna be a while before I can run anything again with a dark side child that thinks 3am is a great time to get up and let everyone know about it
They're also expensive little buggers.

I'm not that familiar with the system, so all that sounds rather complicated. But to sum things up you get more tiers of succes/failure and guidelines how that can be fleshed out?

My problem with all this is: how do you come up with all that shit? I see myself running out of creative complications after the first session.

Thats why "add a complication if you like, otherwise take away two dice" seems like a more feasable way to solve this.

Is it true that the FFG system works much better with improvisation and working with the spirit of the dice mechanic as opposed to sticking strictly with the rulebook?

Load share onto the players, they deal with all the good things that can happen on a dice roll- with some arbitration from me if they want a bit too much value for the successes/triumphs
I deal with all the not-great and terrible things that can happen along the way.
Generally if its going to be funny, push the campaign along and not bog things down too much is mostly the best way to arbitrate things unless they're going to go for something high risk and then accordingly that's going to have a much larger impact on any consequences.

As-
>improvisation and working with the spirit of the dice mechanic as opposed to sticking strictly with the rulebook?

Will see you some value, there's rules, they work, but they don't work for everyone. So in that sense you tailor it to what will be entertaining for the group, take a leaf out of the old edition Vampire books and also put yourself in the place of being the story teller who has an overarching set of 3 parts to their adventure.
>Introduce the players to each other, get to know the world they're in
>They will have plans, foiled by the enemy, chase them up a tree and throw rocks at them so they get all personal over it
>Resolution of the campaign, success, failure and hopefully memorable

Along the way if there's a particular set of events (don't hinge everything on a single dice roll) which start derailing things, then you might need to go a bit easy mode until they're back up to strength. Likewise if they're getting off too easy, hit em hard, break guns, steal their ship, people talking shit about them etc so the challenge is set and they get a feeling of earning what they have and achieve.

Tactile' is about the only way of really describing it, you do need to have a feel for your players, what their characters want to do, what those characters are capable of and to some extent what they enjoy: exploring, trading, action, roleplaying, being rebels etc

>As-
Meant to quote that post ref, oops

Anyway, one final thing before I scavenge 2-3 hours sleep... is to break down a mentality of 'Us vs the GM'
That's sort of a traditional perspective that comes from a lot of the older RPG's which came from a background of mini's combat or the like, it doesn't really suit the SW rpg so much as you shouldn't be in competition with your players and vis-versa, them against you to outdo each other as a "way to win"

If you can get them onside to be part of the story, invest themselves in the story, then you'll tend to find it keeps things to a manageable level of chaos

That's how I like to run RPGs anyway, and it's why I'm excited to try the FFG system.

So which EU book or series do you guys enjoy the most? Jedi Academy is what im on right now and im loving it.

the entire X-Wing series is absolute gold.

YJK for dat nostalgia and bad puns

Republic Commando/501/Imperial Commando series because I'm a filthy deviant who likes Traviss' Clone Wars stuff

X wing is aight. Last one i read was Wraith Squadron.

Here's the obligatory /swg/ Jedi Prince recommendation.