Fantasy Flight Games Genesys RPG

So, FFG, the people who brought you the Star Wars: Edge of the Empire, SW: Age of Rebellion and SW: Force and Destiny games have decided to take the system that runs them and strip out the Star Wars attribute from it and make a game from it that can be used to run anything from Space Opera to Steampunk, Fantasy to "Weird Wars".

For those who do not know, the FFG Star Wars games use a system of "Narrative Dice" that are rolled in pools. There are positive and negative dice and negative dice cancel out positive ones based (a failure cancels a success and a threat cancels an advantage). Any successes remaining mean your character succeeded. Advantages give you secondary effects the GM or the players can figure out and threats do similar but are not good for players. There are two other symbols, the Triumph and Despair which cannot be canceled out under almost any circumstance. Triumphs are akin to critical successes (they count as both an advantage and success) and even if the overall check failed the players can still use the Triumph to get a benefit from the task. Despairs are akin to critical fails (count as both a failure and threat).

Anyone else excited about this as I am? I only learned about it about an hour ago and as someone who loved their Star Wars games I am super stoked!

Looking forward to it. Been looking for system to support roleplay in FFG's Android setting and the announcement article even name dropped it.

I'll give it a read.

I for one have two approaches. Either make character concept or go full random generation. Also it is fun when you go full random and can make a functional concept around it. It gives interesting concepts you didn't even plan around playing. It just helps with creative output.

With that being said I don't know how it will be on paper but dice that give some basic narration sounds like something that will make creative juices flowing.

I've never played an FFG game and I'm sure anything can be learned, but those symbols don't look very intuitive.

The resolution system they're used in isn't, either. You've got like twelve different possible outcomes which are differentiated in extremely vague ways.

Most tables I've been at houserule the shit out of it because it's so clunky. You might as well not buy any of their fancy special mandatory dice.

They explicitly confirmed they're doing an Android sourcebook for Genesys, was at Gencon.

It's pretty easy actually. You start with your attributes (Brawn, Agility, etc.) and whatever number you have for that ability is the number of green dice you roll. If you're rolling an actual skill such as Stealth (Agility), you pick out a number of green dice equal to your Attribute (let's say yours is 3). If you have any ranks in Stealth you upgrade that number of green dice to the yellow dice. Then, depending on how difficult the task is you add a certain number of purple Difficulty dice (1 for easy, 2 for average, 3 for hard, etc). If you have any advantages (like it's foggy out) you add some boost dice (allotted by your GM of course) but if there are any problems (like guards are actively searching for things) your GM has you add black Setback dice. Roll all of these. For every failure you remove a success and for every threat your remove an advantage. Any successes left you succeed. Any advantages left you get a boon (maybe the guards stop to tie their shoe or some shit). If there are any failures left you fail and any threats left something bad happens (someone snaps a spotlight on you maybe). Triumphs are basically critical successes and despairs are critical fails but since this is a narrative system the players and GM come up with the results (except for when it comes to actually attacking, any success deals damage set by your weapon and any extra success makes you deal more damage (+1 per success).

Classes are pretty straightforward and tend to do something akin to D&D 5e where you have a base class and then a specialization based on that (Smuggler Class, Thief Specialization for instance) that you can buy your abilities from but you can also buy from other classes and such at a slight extra cost (you buy these talents using your XP).

First sessions will always be a learning experience but unlike almost every other game I've played me and my fellow players picked it up in that first session pretty quickly.

Your tables must be pretty shit. It's a very basic system.

Success = Success
Failure = Failure
Advantage = Something good happens not directly related to success or failure. More symbols = more effect.
Triumph = Same as above, but much more potent effect. You don't see these often.
Threat = Something bad happens not directly related to success or failure. More symbols = more effect.
Despair = Same as above, but much more potent effect. You don't see these often.

These are incredibly simple.

There's multiple charts provided to give suggestions on how to spend them. But it's meant to promote improvisational gameplay; if you're stuck in rote D&D type mindsets it's never going to work because the players and GM are meant to be inventive and proactive in trying to come up with cool results. If you use the dice as intended, it drives the narrative really nicely in unexpected directions.

So far, this thread isn't really selling me on the system.

The biggest problem with this system is that GMs who are good at narrative are few and far between, and worse, their players have to be a lot more flexible than people are willing to be nowadays.

You might be able to use this with Amber diceless or Lords of Gossamer and Shadow, but face it, you're basically saying "GM's have to make shit up on the fly and players have to cope".

Maybe I'm just autistic, but I'm not sure why they'd use symbols instead of positive and negative numbers.

Numbers are existing symbols we've all learned in elementary school. They're functional.

If you replace them with proprietary symbols, it feels like you're valuing style over substance.

Any system's going to be shit with a bad GM though, this system just exacerbates those flaws.

How would you get the same resolution mechanic with numbers?

Ever played FATE?

That wouldn't work, the scale of dice results isn't linear.

You can get a roll which is a success, but has multiple threat symbols. Or a failure with multiple advantages. And triumphs/despairs shake this up further.

There probably is SOME way you could do the same sort of mechanic with dice pools of numeric dice but it'd be a fucking mess to interpret. Some kind of shittier Shadowrun.

How would you represent a Successful roll with five Threat and a Triumph using Fudge Dice?

+1 cancels out -1 and vice versa, +2 cancels out two -1s, and so on.

Isn't that just giving you a flat number by the end?

How is 'larger number = more effect' functionally different from 'more symbols = more effect'?

How do you account for advantages/threats as well as triumphs/despairs?

What I don't like about the system is that fail/success and advantage/disadvantage are on separate axis i.e. whether you fail or succeed has no relation whether you gain advantage or not, which is whack. Succeeding with advantage should be a critical success and failing with disadvantage critical fail, both at the extreme ends of the same scale.

Because the symbols act on two different axis (four, if you count Despair and Triumph).

A flat number doesn't allow for a really successful roll that generates some undesirable side effects, or vice versa.

Dude, I can tell what Threat, Despair and the rest mean.

But I can't tell, at a glance, the difference between all these outcomes:
>Success with Advantage and Despair
>Success with Advantage and Despair and Triumph
>Success with Threat and Triumph and Despair
>Success with Advantage and Threat and Triumph
>Success with Advantage and Threat and Triumph and Despair
>Failure with Advantage and Despair
>Failure with Advantage and Despair and Triumph
>Failure with Threat and Triumph and Despair
>Failure with Advantage and Threat and Triumph
>Failure with Advantage and Threat and Triumph and Despair

Can you?

Oh sure, if I sit down for a few minutes, I can probably figure out the difference between outcome number 4 and outcome number 7. But if solving a perfectly normal action (including normal actions with high stakes) takes more than five seconds then it's a really awful action resolution system IMO.
Or I could disregard the subtle differences between X and Y, but then what's the point of having all those different symbols and potential outcomes if you're going to ignore and handwave them?

But being able to succeed with negative side effects or vice versa is half the appeal of the system. It'd just be a plain old DoS system otherwise.

I sorta like the separate axes. You slip into the compound, but the guards are now alerted to something. The suspect gets away, but in tearing away, he's left an odd signet ring on the ground. It's the kind of "yes, and/no, but" that comes with good improv, and good improv is 90% of what makes a game good.

Up or down arrows? Checkmarks and crosses?

Actually it makes sense. They give several examples but one I like is that you're shooting at some enemies in a back alley and get more fails than successes so you fail to hit any of them but you do get some successes the GM could say you blew up a container behind the targets that forces them out from any cover they may have been behind.

It's things like that that I like those being on separate axis.

Sweet

Don't Triumph and Despair cancel out?

Nah, those particular symbols don't cancel.

Then shouldn't Advantages and Threats?

The idea behind Triumphs and Despairs is that they're rare and exceptional, able to shake up results of a roll massively. Threat and Advantage is much more mundane and common, so it cancels to keep interpreting dice pools from getting too complex.

So wouldn't that make greentext complaint bit absurd since you can't have Success or Failure with simultaneous Threat and Advantage?

It's a narrative system. You rule arbitrarily, following a few rules. There's no need for "subtle distinctions" because all that matters is your interpretation of the result.

It's a shitty engine.
you can get the same non-binary-ness with a much less convoluted system.
The writers themselves don't understand what the system is supposed to do at times and there are lots of logical contradictions or just arbitrary rulings that contradict the internal logic you would assume from the rest of the book. It's as if someone made DnD 3.5 but everything is as arbitrary and retarded like grappling.

>you can get the same non-binary-ness with a much less convoluted system.
How?

>You slip into the compound, but the guards are now alerted to something
that 'bad condition' is very much related to the success of your action though, contrary t what the game wants you to think. And that's the problem with the system, the two-axis system is retarded for 95% of all cases and where it's actually usable you could achieve the same result with two (or more) separate checks.

>how am i supposed to figure out the difference between [Success + Advantage + Threat + Triumph] and [Failure + Advantage + Despair + Triumph]?
>"who cares, go with your gut feeling"
See, when I say the system is overcomplicated and people end up ignoring the rules, this is what I mean.

Numerical scale:

Critical fail, everything goes to shit
Massive fail, get disadvantages
Fail
Slightly fail but with advantage for something
Slightly succeed but with disadvantage
Succeed
Greatly succeed with advantage
Critical Success

this.
people who like and advocate this system end up ignoring half the rules. rolling a check in this mess is more like a tarot reading than a dice roll, which incidentally would make for a much more interesting resolution mechanic.

That's just a binary resolution mechanic.

The rules explicitly state that the suggested tables for how to spend advantages, triumphs and etc are just a jumping off point, not a definitive list.

>more than two possible results
>binary
?

The rules for DnD 3.5 explicitly state to ignore or modify anything you don't like, does that make it less of a convoluted mess?

Binary can also mean binary scale. People who like Genesys enjoy two axis approach. You failed to create it.

>Binary can also mean binary scale
wtf is a binary scale?

It exists on one axis of resolution. Doesn't allow for any of the more exciting and interesting rolls that FFG's system produces, like a highly successful shot that still manages to generate a Despair or two.

A scale with two obvious ends. In yours Everything Goes To Shit to Critical Success.

>Doesn't allow for any of the more exciting and interesting rolls that FFG's system produces, like a highly successful shot that still manages to generate a Despair or two.
that's just that shitty 'I rolled a 20 on my jump check, escaped the stratosphere and suffocated' meme though.

Maybe this system is for people who like memes?

You're pretty unimaginative if you can't think of any result that isn't a dumb joke.

If the extremely specific, nuanced and complex (in the sense of "has a lot of potential outcomes") resolution mechanic requires you to trust your gut feelings, to the point of ignoring the difference between outcome 2-5-8-0 and outcome 2-5-3-9, then maybe the complexity isn't a good fit? You're telling me to saw the edges off the square peg so I can fit it in the round hole, here.

Honestly if you're going to think in such autistic levels of numerical analysis the system obviously isn't your style.

That's not quite how it works. Whichever number (attribute or skill rank) is higher becomes green dice, the lower number converts green dice into yellow. Someone who only has average reaction speed (2 Agility) can train a lot with his pistol (3 Ranged Light) and end up with a dice pool of GYY.

>I'm not sold on this system. It's incredibly difficult to distinguish between two supposedly separate outcome. The mechanic is full of meaninglessly complex nonsense and groups I know houserule it to death.
>"Well, if you're an autistic number-cruncher of course you won't like it"

Don’t challenge their perceptions of their pet system, user. They don’t want to admit that a game that has openly rolling ten different basic results from dice that are left up to GM interpretation without any sort of guidelines from the rules that are not explicit combat instructions might be flawed.

And if you say you GMed the game and it plays out like a bad PbtA resolution you just get called a bad GM, even though 90% of the posting about this game is from players that like it.

But that isn’t binary by any definition of bianary, and genesys gets translated into that same “binary” scale anyways.

>whether you fail or succeed has no relation whether you gain advantage or not, which is whack.
a good appeal of the system to many is that you can fail with advantage (you miss your target but cause him to flinch and take 1 strain)

or succeed with disadvantage (you successfully pry open a difficult safe but it makes a terribly loud grinding noise when it opens)

adds a bit more variance and fun to the game

Failing upwards and succeeding with disadvantage are ancient ideas in gaming. And you example of failure with disadvantage would knock out most of the enemies you face so it might as well be a success.

That choice of sysmbols is still terrible. Especially on the black/purple/red dice.

Yes, but success with disadvantage should happen when you don't roll high enough for a full success and vice versa for failure, not completely independent of each other because that's just bizarre.

Genesys has two main scales, which are independent, ignoring Despair and Triumph entirely.

>And you example of failure with disadvantage would knock out most of the enemies you face so it might as well be a success.
What fucking enemy has 1 soak threshold?

Why's it bizarre? Advantages aren't "You succeed but better", they're ancillary effects unrelated to your success or failure.

This I agree with. I'm a big fan of the FFG system, but the Star Wars symbols are 10x better. This has no clear design language to it.

assuming these are just the end results and I dont have to reduce them down more (as the case in 1 and 9)
>You succeed at the task with a minor benefit but also a major setback
>Same but also with a major benefit
>Success with a major benefit and also a major setback, can have a bigger setback since the threat can be combined with the despair or can have one minor setback added
>Success with a major benefit, the advantage and threat cancel each other
>same but with a major setback as well
>Failure with a minor benefit and a major set back
>same with a major benefit as well
>Failure with a major benefit, and either a major setback and minor setback or an even bigger setback
>Failure with major benefit
>same with major setback

setbacks and benefits can be either mechanical bonuses, like gaining back strain, activating item properties, or even scoring critical hits, or they can be narrative driven, such as losing your target in a chase, being discovered by enemies, destroying cover, or creating new cover or distractions.

It is all pretty simple.

>Success with Advantage and Threat and Triumph
>Success with Advantage and Threat and Triumph and Despair
>Failure with Advantage and Threat and Triumph
>Failure with Advantage and Threat and Triumph and Despair

None of these options are possible, Advantage and Threat cancel each other.

>But if solving a perfectly normal action (including normal actions with high stakes) takes more than five seconds then it's a really awful action resolution system IMO.
You don't like narrativist systems. You could've just said that.

Yea i think they should choose two symbol which could be combined easily for triumph and despair

right? what a fag.

I kinda hate how lots of people are "game designers" now so whatever preference they have makes all other preferences somehow obsolete or bad.

This. Rolls end up either being sucess or failure (with good or bad side effects). Very simple in practice.

I like them, I just prefer them to be clearer and not bogged down by 18 different degrees of "moderate X with something vaguely Y, but also something slightly better than Z". Complications are fun to come up with. This is just bloat.

Thank you for the clarification.

Rad. This may be my go to cyberpunk game.

The problem, imho, is not just the amount of roll results.
In any of the given results the amount of symbols may vary. And how do i tell the difference between a roll with success and two advantages, a roll with two successes and two advantages and a roll with one success and five advantages, for example?
While there are at least some guidelines for combat situations,non-combat ones are a mess.
And to worsen the situation the system is a task-resolution one, but most applications of advantages/disadvantages are much more suitable for conflict-resolution.

Yes, but in a roll with Despair and no Triumphs you'll cancel only the failure part of the Despair, but not the disadvantage part of it.

>Very simple in practice.
Not remotely close.

I mean, honestly speaking, the reason they're using this system is so they can sell their fancy proprietary dice. They are a for-profit company, after all.

You just repeated yourself, but you are still wrong. There are a few set results:

Success, advantage
Success, disadvantage
Failure, advantage
Failure, disadvantage

Triumph and Dispair are literally the only non-“binary” results in this made up “binary” scale, and they are not very interesting.

So what happens when you roll a success and despair? How it differs from rolling a failure with advantage? Honest question, this is really unclear to me.

>same mechanical clusterfuck of resolution system
>same proprietary dice
Nah, thanks. I liked flavor of some non-combat classes, which I might still for another space opera game, but I am not going to play it again.

>success and despair
you accomplish the thing you said you were trying to do, whatever it was, but there is a terrible cost or side effect, or because you were so occupied with doing your thing, something bad happened that you had no change to prevent

>failure with advantage
you did not accomplish the thing you set out to do, but in the process you still learned something or managed to throw your opponent off guard or made a good distraction or whatever

"How does success... differ from failure...?"
"How does despair... differ from advantage...?
You already know the answer.

But despair was said to be mega failure? Shouldn't that cancel success? Otherwise it sounds like the same result as succes with threat, 'you got what you wanted but with a bad side effect'.

There is more to it. How much worse is success with despair and two disadvantages than a success with despair?

That too. Is rolling succes with despair equivalent to, say, success with five threat or so? Less? More?

>You lockpick the chest but it's been emptied of treasure. There is note mocking you.
>You lockpick chest, it turns out to be mimic and bites you. You are bleeding and have angry mimic looming over you.

That second one is lacking success element though. To should still end up with an opened chest in both cases.

Fine
>There is literally demon in the chest. It tells you that as gratitude it won't kill you first.

>you can do AAAANYTHING with our special NAAARATIVE DICE
>system still uses classes tho

Nice, however it is equivalently shitty for the player. And sounds horribly inconsistent - does it always take two threats to turn a mockery note to a demon? And does sound like a bad PbtA hack, yeah.
Also, how often there's a demon siting in random chest in your games?

Everybody in this thread seems to be happy with the interpretation despair = five threats, which really raises the question why not just have the dice read "5 threat" to begin with.

>Triumph but also Despair

There's plenty of games that do the same thing without special dice. I'm definitely interested in the system, but you people aren't doing a good job selling it. I wish people would stop treating the first fail-forward system they come across as the most revolutionary thing ever and not something you can do in literally every RPG (Same reason DW players are so fucking obnoxious). What does the game do well outside of that?

It *is* a bad PbtA back. Don’t let anyone fool you.

The SW games have excellent gear and NPC rules.

i mean, if you just want to use the suggested options for threats and advantages then go for it. It is very consistent and all players can easily follow it.

However, I personally like the system for its ability to have a relatively codified mechanic for changing the game in interesting ways. I've just grown tired of DnD's success or fail only mechanic.

Using Deviant to make Loyal Remade and basically roleplaying dark superhero whose horrible horrible creation and existence can help keep humanity safe from the rest of World of Darkness.

Whooos, Wrong thread! Should have paid closer attention to tabs, sorry.

>It is very consistent and all players can easily follow it.
I just don't see where it is consistent. It just says "Well, the threat means bad, but not fail" and that's it. It's not even separated into soft and hard moves like in PbtA!
You can put "success with a cost" mechanics nearly in any game. And i bet you'll do better job, than ffg did.

Success/Failure = Did I do The Thing
Advantage/Disadvantage = Were the circumstances around it favorable or not

Note--and here is where some people get hung up--the Advantage/Disadvantage shouldn't have direct bearing on The Thing.

The Thing = Successfully getting File A out of a computer
Success = You got File A
Failure = You did not get File A
Advantage = You got the account number for a black-ops slush fund you can later drain
Disadvantage = You tripped some electronic countermeasures which locked you out of the computer

Done. Mix and match and you'll get an idea how the dice work.

Success/Disadvantage = You got File A but are now locked out of the computer.
Failure/Advantage = You did not get File A but will be some credits richer when you drain that account

yeah but why suddenly does some crazy random other thing happen because I tried to do A
what guideline is the DM supposed to you to impose these advantages and disadvantages and how do I know for sure how they will effect my future rolls