/swg/ Hardware Wars edition

starwars.com/news/star-wars-from-a-certain-point-of-view-anthology-book-celebrates-40-years-of-a-galaxy-far-far-away

Looks like we're about to have the Canon equivalent to Legends' "Tales of" series.

Thoughts? I thought none of the stories in "Tales of" really were that interesting, but some of them were entertaining and I like the idea that every background character had a story.

>inb4 bitching about Chuck Wendig
Just don't read his chapter.

>No Zahn
>No Stackpole
>No Stover
Darn. Christie Golden's piece will probably be decent, though. And Paul Dini? As in DCAU Paul Dini? Color me interested.

>Wendig
Fingers crossed for him not getting the X-wing pilot story or anything involving Wedge.

I wanted to argue this but it's 100% true.

I count 28 authors and they're going for 40 stories, so there's about a dozen authors they haven't announced yet. I don't know about Stackpole and Stover, but Zahn wouldn't be a surprise since Thrawn is releasing soon.

Also really agree on Dini. Apparently not his first Star Wars gig, as he has written three TCW episodes.

Dini's story had better involve a Jedi vigilante and a deranged Luke clone clown.

What episodes?

It's also blatantly useless BSing when you're looking at a free 120,000 spaceship. looks cool, tho.

Which area of Star Wars lore do you prefer (canon be damned)?
>The Old Republic Era
>Height of the Republic Era
>The Clone Wars Era
>Galactic Civil War Era
>New Republic Era

Information about the X-wing System Open winners is up, as well as how the drafting will work for the 77 point invitational.
fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2017/4/7/system-open-status-report/
>4/8 Opens were won with Fenn/Asajj/Manaroo
>2/8 were won by Miranda/Biggs/Stress Y
>1 win each for Palp Defenders and triple jumpmasters
>Draft order is just a straight rotation starting with who's Open had the most participants so the guys at the bottom just get completely fucked by draft order instead of getting compensated with back to back picks or other common methods to even orders out

Oh wait I read it wrong, that system is just for the last phase of the draft, they aren't announcing how the first two phases work yet so it could still be balanced out.

Galactic Civil War with an honorable mention to NR versus Imperial warlords

Early New Republic/warlord era

OT is fav, probably followed by Old Republic and clone wars. Honorable mention specifically for the Legacy comics

What's the best build for a character who uses a lot of dirty tricks and underhanded tactics in combat?

Using the FFG system, by the way.

Really depends on your group. Technically it does form part of their starting Obligation and is a relatively easy way to herd all the cats into one area when beginning.
However, if you've got a small group, a little scout ship or something like a Firespray is pretty good for them as everyone will (hopefully) have some kind of skill to use in it. Very large groups where I've got 5-6 regular players, 2-3 irregulars and 3-4 ring-ins that sometimes pop by, give them something much larger (Sil 5) where at least characters who are 'out of game' are the ones maintaining it, looking after it while its in port and with any luck not drawing space dicks on every available flat surface.

Plus adventures on a big ship are fun filler-games where people have hoojibs loose in engineering, stow-aways with a mysterious past, gotta make bucks to maintain a big ship, that nexu kitten you haven't seen for a few months is a bit bigger and inter-group fights over refresher usage.

Sort of end up in Empire era a lot, I have a personal interest in the NR era as its comparatively 'open' to new things, but I'd also happily run around in the Clone Wars.

Smuggler Scoundrel and Soldier Trailblazer

This.

>Has a movie character ever made an appearance in one of your RPG campaigns?

Oh god yes. One PC nearly beat Chewie in an arm wrestling contest out of sheer stubbornness, they've met pretty much all the main characters at least once, and thanks to them utterly changing history they ended up having to give Leia a ride off Hoth's surface after she made it to her transport only for it to be attacked by bounty hunters.

They're going to encounter another recognisable face real soon once they come out the other side of Friends like These; I sure as fuck didn't miss that hinting of the Tarkin superlaser's existence at the end

You guys seen this?
>m.youtube.com/watch?v=Sv_hGITmNuo

I've heard that in AoR, the DM should award 0-10 Duty per session. I want a codified system that is consistent, but flexible. These are the Duties of my players and I wanted to see if /swg/ thinks my system works or needs tweaking.

Enemy Demoralization: From the Fear guidelines table, gain 1 Duty for each point of difficulty Imperial survivors fail.
Space Superiority: Duty equals Silhouette of largest ship destroyed, plus one for each additional ship.
Support: Gain 1 Duty for each point of Duty you helped an ally earn.
Loss Prevention: From the Mass Combat table, gain 1 Duty for each level of force that survives under your command. On a personal scale, gain Duty for successfully protecting allied NPCs based on their tier (1 for Minion, 2 for Rival, 3 for Nemesis). Extra bonus for doing so at personal expense.
High Risk (Obligation): From the Fear guidelines table, gain 1 Duty for each point of difficulty that you surmount.

These are both good choices.

Also anything using quick draw + grenades, nets, bolas, etc. to remove opponents from the fight is pretty good.

Do kyber crystals generate power? Could you wire one up as a makeshift generator? or are they just a focus, like some lens?

Focus

People always complain about jury rig autofire being op but nothing comes close to Gambler's second chance and double or nothing

No one wants to have this argument again.

Gambler requires more upgrades to use effectively and requires you to purchase all over the tree. Jury-Rig Autofire requires 15 XP and 1.5K credits.

That means that Chumbalaya still has a chance to draft that Interceptor or the TIEs, and not get stuck with the stupid shit like that A-wing.

He only gets kinda fucked (draft 7th) on one of those.

NR era up to the hand of Thrawn duology is goat. Cut everything off at Vision of the Future and you have the perfect ending for the OT cast.

All things told, though, I prefer nucanon's 30 years later status over the 40k rejects from 1999

Please give me a break. Autofire can be neutured by simply increasing soak or just having multiple minion groups

Well, at least we got a few nice gems out of the Vong shitpile. The robot Lando army and Mercy Kill were great.

If only we got more TIE Pilot-focused books. Fuck X-Wings and their Mary Sue pilots, sometimes.

Not particularly as double or nothing is negatively affected by the same, it renders combat unfun for other party members, and few things can match the repeat hits besides certain blast weapons or crit weapons.

Also by the same logic, Double or Nothing is largely gimped both inside and out of combat by the Adversary talent.

>Mary Sue pilots
>Wedge explicitly states that 50% casualty rates are generous for Rogue Squadron
>Both the Rogue and Wraith series ended with a pile of dead X pilots
>Both Rogue and Wraith squadrons rely heavily on allied support to survive
You wot m8

This desu. X-wing pilot """"aces"""" with shields, hyperdrive, much better weapons, etc.

Fuck the Empire for treating their pilots like cannon fodder and giving them shit ships, but a TIE pilot had to be a fuckload better to become an ace than a X-wing pilot.

This.

I mean fuck, how many in Wraith Squadron actually fucking managed to survive to the end of the EU?

Hey /swg, I may be joining a EotE/AoR/FaD game in a week or so. Figured I'd ask here what I ought to look at, since the Referee's going to be in a meeting for ~4 hours I can't ask them.

Should I just snag all the core books and skim them, or would I be better served looking at several of the extra books too? As far as I'm aware the Ref has them all.
I guess what I'm asking is, what should someone read of the Star Wars RPG books if they're going to run in a game and don't know which, specifically?

>TIE pilots
>Always academy-trained with access to the lessons learned from the Clone Wars, as well as Clone-era veterans
>Never short on spare parts
>Always have numerical advantage
>Always have agility advantage
>Almost always have carrier support
>Eat Ys and Zs for breakfast
>TIE Interceptor explicitly stated to be equal to an X
>TIE/LN laser cannon rate of fire in the OT
>Black Squadron going up against both Red and Gold at Yavin
>Holy fuck those movement dials
>Defenders
>Advanced
>Hunters
>Experimentals with fucking turbolasers
The TIE series is not and never was shit, and Rebel pilots aren't the only ones with crutches.

Aside from Luke, the vast majority of Rebel rookies don't get X-wing duty anyway. Y-wings are more common as newbie Reb craft in Legends, and Johnny Reb most definitely is at a disadvantage in those.

Each of the Core books has all the rules you need to play. Of the three, EotE and FnD have the most divergence. From a player standpoint the biggest draw of the splats are the new specializations and gear so do your research on whether you would be interested in a certain book or not.

I assume since you're posting on /swg/ you don't need to read the lore bits... Focus on the dice system, skills, combat system. Maybe the vehicle parts if you feel like playing a pilot. If you already know what career the other PCs are, maybe take a look at the career options.

Forgot to add, all the core rulebooks have the parts I was talking about (except the careers, they're different in every game, and splat books add new options).

Thereby fucking over the rest of the group, good job dickwipe.

Makes sense, are Force Talents even covered in any but the Force and Destiny book?
Will make sure I look into the options before diving too heavily into the splats.
I think one of the others is a pilot, the rest I believe all tpk'd themselves last week.
That or they retired. Not sure.

One of them (not Ref) mentioned using the system as a generic one. Anyone done that with any success?

In a one-shot I ran my players met Luke 20 minutes after his fight with Vader in ESB. He asked them to infiltrate Cloud City to wipe the navigational data from his X-Wing he left there, so that the imps wouldn't know about Dagobah.
They blew it up

Don't forget, certain environments make for harder times on the rock and roll.
>Confined spaces
>Cover and reduced range
>Darkness and smoke
>Delicate and or explosive objects
>Blowing a hole through a pressure seal

All that will wind back the volume of fire a player can bring to bear and impose difficulties on them, which in turn reduces their ability to trigger more hits or hit more often. The other trick is that when someone brings the BFG 9000 out is when allied people are in melee, on the bridge of a spaceship or any other compromising locale.
Drop that fucking darkside point and give em an upgrade to red- when it comes up with some sweet ass Despair, punish them! At the very least, you knock some adv/success off their top.

Essentially, if you're going to have a serious combat. Put it somewhere cinematic, a wide open street full of goons is going to get blasted to hell and back, there's little to no cover, usually very few penalties and aside from capping the odd civilian or putting a hole through someone's livelihood, usually no consequences. If the enemy is not wanting to play that shit, they'll hole up, dump fire back from an entrenched position and have fun getting the cunts out of there because a gunfight in someone's bedroom is an entirely different affair to just lighting up suckers across open ground.

Consequences
If you're not in some bumfuck hellhole where automatic weapons fire is common, send in "the cops"
Lighting the hood with military grade weapons, you can't hide that shit! People take it seriously in any civilised area and will reply with commensurate force.
They will scope it out with a droid+camera, then realise what they need, gather forces and neutralise that shit with extreme prejudice.

Nice. That's still a solution. Aftermath? Was Luke pissed about losing his x wing?

>Makes sense, are Force Talents even covered in any but the Force and Destiny book?
only in a limited amount.

>using the system as a generic one. Anyone done that with any success?
I've never myself, but have seen people discussing it. It seems to work if the GM rebalances or renames races and careers properly.

I was under the impression they were space magic energy amplification crystals. IE energy goes in and much more energy comes out.

Cool, I think there were references to a Low-Fantasy game using the ruleset they'd previously played in.

>Low-Fantasy
There's actually an in-setting world that is basically DnD called Weik.

Haven't gotten there yet, but what's the opinion on flying, piloting, dogfighting in the EotE system?

Yupp, that's what they were talking about. Thanks!

Different user here. How much Dark Souls flavoring can a campaign get on Weik?

>but what's the opinion on flying, piloting, dogfighting in the EotE system?
Frankly, it's terrible

It accurately simulates the lethality of onscreen and book fighter combat, and is alot faster than the d20 versions.
However in the case of an rpg, lethality is bad. Someone with maxed out Piloting and all the talents is not that much more difficult to shoot down than a rookie, but will be much better at shooting people down. Basically offense increases while defenses remain for the most part static.
Works well for the party in a light freighter that te system was designed for however.
You really do want to use some kind of house rules to make things work. Top post should have links to a selection.

See
>How much Dark Souls flavoring can a campaign get on Weik?
It'd be possible, and mostly would hinge on the GM delivering good narrative to capture the dark medieval wasteland vibes of the Souls series.

Cool, thanks guize. Will check that out and recommend to Referee.

There's an easy fix to the Autofire problem.

Limit the number of shots you can make with Autofire to whatever your rank in the ranged skill is. If you have two ranks in Light and you're using an Autofire Light weapon, then you can only make a max of two additional hits.

>Apparently not his first Star Wars gig, as he has written three TCW episodes.
Deeper, user. Deeper. He got his start with Filmation and the Ewoks/Droids cartoons.

>to the stormtroopers who never quite could find the droids they were looking for.
His name was Davin Felth, motherfuckers.

A very simple house rule is just to make it always opposed gunnery VS piloting, with the difference in Handling giving advantage or disadvantage

friendly reminder

?

... Now I kinda wish they had more of a space monk vibe going with robes, where you could tell how long someone has been a jedi by how faded their robe is.

>not posting the super secret true canon version

The true timeline

>tfw the Imperial ace boss encounter uses Scathing Tirade over open comms

He was bummed about losing that specific X-Wing, but considering the alternative, he understood.
The PCs did try to get to the X-Wing and retrieve it, or at least leave insults or holopictures of the slicer's ass for whoever opened the ship's systems, but they spectacularly failed all of their social/stealth rolls, so it was entirely a combat adventure, ending with a bang.

Say I'm using the Sense power for its ability to upgrade the difficulty of incoming attacks. Does this require an opposed check (assuming I'm using it on a nemesis)? It requires a committed die to activate, not a check.

No check needed.

So I'm planning a droid mechanic for EotE and creation is underway; somebody recently said that point buy is best spent on attributes so I'm going from 1/2/4/2/1/1 and 4 talents to 1/2/3/3/1/1 and maybe just one or two talents. Is this optimal for a non-combatant character that may be used as an agent of subterfuge?

I would recommend bringing another characteristic up and not getting any talents

Since you seemed confused last thread about it, the reason people say to max out characteristics is that you can raise talents and skills after char gen, but it's next to impossible to raise characteristics.

I consistently add the bounty hunters in doing bounty things and sometimes being adversaries to my more lawbrwaking groups. Also, i like to user jabba as a patron when the players start getting powerful.

My players were hired as backup gunmen for dengar on a job a bit before the clone wars, if that counts

You want your primary at 4. That way when you get dedication you can make it 5. Dump 170 of your 175xp in stats. Period. Unless you end up at 160 or some dumb shit.

On second thought take 5 more obligation and spend 180 on stats.

What's a reasonable size for the first wave of a fully armed and equipped Imperial landing force on a relatively developed planet? Not Core World-grade development, but something that the Mid Rim would consider pretty high-end. Assume that each stormtrooper legion/Imperial Army division consists of 10,000 men, no hostile fleet presence, and that the Empire has deployed for a world war rather than a localized engagement.

What's the population of the planet and how heavily armed are they, also their disposition to the Empire?

shit, since they barely need stormtroopers and IA most of the time, they'd probably dump a couple million cunts on the planet, maybe ten million at the far side.
certainly enough to get 5:1+ numerical superiority over the local army, plus the advantage of orbital superiority, meaning most positions get nuked from orbit for a day or two before any stormies or IA show up

For ease of calculation's sake, let's say Earth-like population (approx. 7 billion), nearly all in open support of the Rebellion. Local Imperial support is negligible at best. Military tech level is Clone-era and the planet has a decent enough arms industry to supply arm and supply the vast majority of the planet's fighting-age males. Assume the worst-case scenario: every able-bodied, fighting-age man has volunteered or been conscripted for the war effort.

In a case like that the empire wouldn't even bother with a ground mission, they'd just glass the place from orbit

What would the solution be for surface-to-orbit ion cannons and missile facilities? Large amounts of sneeki breekis followed by the aforementioned glassing?

Ever play a crossover with another setting?

>What would the solution be for surface-to-orbit ion cannons and missile facilities
five ISDs pouring fire on it. sure they can hit one, but it likely won't die, and the other four will toast the facility
Alternately, torpedo spheres, which just eat surface fire and pour down bombardment

As a third, cheap option, a couple thousand TIE/LNs escorting hundreds of bombers coming from under the gun's horizon, bombing it to shit

if you wish to be punched in the cock for being complete spacebattles cockmongerer, then it's assdisateroids from outsystem accelerated to way too fast and thrown with pinpoint accuracy at every installation before the land invasion, or just one big rock to kill the planet

otherwise, it's the kind of situation for the imperial navy's Dedicated Siege Platforms, which consist of an absurdly strong shield and a bunch of turbolasers on a giant metal square, to be oriented at the planet and shooting nonstop at everything of military value while tanking STO hits

Its going to be ugly
>Interdict the system- nothing gets in
>Bombardment of the planets main population and industrial sectors- your OE is 'kill everything not us'
>Foothold landing area will be a Sector Army Group size- 1.2mil personnel with 60-67,000 repulsorcraft and 14,000 heavy vehicles and artillery

Once they've got a stabilised landing area, start pouring in more and more ancillary units to annex a continent, also at this size they do tend to do combined arms with the navy fairly well. So its fast moving, heavy assaults and then bringing up or dropping in more forces to hold territory captured.
The sheer speed of being able to drop in troops nearly anywhere that doesn't have and enemy presence and starfighter support makes the Imperial presence very nasty, anything they can't crush immediately means they just surround and starve them out. Probably the hardest thing is orbital support where they can just dump fighters and the odd concussion missile on top of resistance and there's not much you can do against that.

Eventually though they'd probably have anywhere between 7-15mil imperial troops on the planet by the time its finally been cowed to the point that large scale, organised resistance isn't possible anymore.
They can and will starve people into the point they can't resist, no rules of war here rebel scum!

>just one big rock to kill the planet
Yeah, but big rocks are just so...inelegant and primitive. The death of a planet demands way more ceremony and importance, a visible symbol that "Hey, we can kill you all and don't you forget it" to star in Imperial propaganda. A star that can kill you. Some kind of...death star...you might say. Yeah, clearly we need a Death Star for this job, because rocks are just so ugly and graceless.

Are there any cheap armour options for 3 hard points? Upgrades?

If you want armor that has 3 hard points for dirt cheap, you want armor crafting from Keeping the Peace, Customizable Armor, 4 hard points for 500 credits, and up to 6 if you roll super duper well. Pity it's kind of crap in every other respect, and you need your GM to A) approve crafting, B) have a group techie willing to make it for you, and optionally C) your GM allows you to cheese Practice Makes Perfect to add a ton of boost to make sure you get your awesome armor.

Huh. Thank you, user.

Fortunately, I am the group techie, so now it's just GM opinion.

>?
Read the filename.
I'm bitching about fags who perpetuate the "PT created the Jedi attire" meme.

>Read the filename
>Implying I didn't

>Mallory Ortberg
Fucking Mallory? Goddamn, I was wondering what she'd been up to.

Well everything before Rogue One came out had them as amplifiers. Then the Visual Dictionary had them talking about things being powered by kyber crystals and the movie calls them the Death Star and the lightsabers' power source.

Just go with the original.