/gengen/ - Genesys General

It's a generic system inspired by the Star Wars games done by FFG. The signature gimmick is the special proprietary dice that help guide the narrative with their results; it helps standardize the "You pass/fail, AND/BUT..." that higher-caliber GMs normally do. It splits the difference evenly between fluff and crunch; it's neither as rules-lite as FATE nor as arcane and crunchy as GURPS. Most everyone exposed to the system seems to love it.

I have missed you, /gengen/, for I have questions and you are the least autistic source of info I've found.

Has anyone poked at Talent based casting? I'm wanting to port over the Psionics system from Stars Without Number, and just turning it into skills would be painful.

I'm not familiar with that.

>Talent based casting?
As in Talents supply powers, or Talents supply your ability/proficiency?

The system I'm trying to port / emulate:

6 types of Psionics. Taking the first rank gets you the Core Power. This improves as the rank increases.

Additionally, each school has powers that you pick from as the rank increases. Then, there are modifier powers you can choose from each additional rank to supplement the core power.

Admittedly, this is a kneejerk reaction to wanting to give my players unique-ish systems to play with for character differentiation.

>The signature gimmick is the special proprietary dice

That's awfully quick to discount.

Yeah, that's a pretty typical reaction to anything of the sort. Never mind that this was introduced way back in WHFRP 3E, never mind the fact that there's already a good free dice roller out there, or that you can spend $20 on Amazon to get enough Blank Chessex dice to create a full gameplay set(5 of every dice), never mind the fact that the system is actually designed to work with the dice, and it isn't just DRM for RPGs, If it requires dice outside of conventional dice, it's considered trash by outsiders.
It also doesn't help that the system is better shown than explained. I have listened to every podcaster and forum poser and user try to explain the system, and people just don't "get" it until you put the dice roll into practice and show people what the hell you mean by spending 2 advantage to activate a weapon's auto-fire quality.

There's something awfully smug about using a proprietary dice that is just your usual dice but instead of numbers there are weird symbols that no one on this earth or otherwise can get the logic behind them, it's not even a meaningful pictograph, I just can't trust designers who fucked up something as simple and fundamental as a die.

Success and Failure are the core pass/fail symbols. They cancel each other out. Get at least one success, and the check is successful.
Advantage and Threat are symbols that represent additonal bonuses and maluses that are strictly incidental to the check itself. They also cancel each other out. Gaining a net advantage means that even if you fail the check, the GM gives you an "On the bright side..."
Triumph and Despair are the rarest symbols, found only on the Proficiency and Challenge dice. They are effective super-Advantages and super-Threats, in that they represent a major windfall or setback as a part of the check. They also count as Success/Failure symbols when determing a check's success, but their additional effects do NOT cancel each other out. You can pass a check, but the Despair symbol you roll means the GM gives you a "You made it, but you're still gonna have a bad day..."

That's the dice notation in, what, thirty to forty-five seconds.

Success: A shining sunburst for your shining success.
Failure: An X. As in, wrong, incorrect, crossing out the success.
Advantage: Arrows, for imparting momentum and progress.
Disadvantage: An unwelcoming three-pronged shape, to associate with the emboldening three-pointed Advantage. Like a coil of barbed wire.
Triumph: bigger, more resilient success.
Despair: a big "fuck you" X.

>Success and Failure are the core pass/fail symbols. They cancel each other out. Get at least one success, and the check is successful.
Of course, the greater your net one way or the other, the more significant the victory or defeat.

Don't try to shill for this nonsensical decision, a failure could be a broken heart, a sad face, electricity or a sad cloud, a success can be a happy face, V or anything positive, a threat can be a skull, an advantage can be a fist, a disadvantage can be a broken bone.
We already have meaningful symbols used for decades, what we have here isn't natural, stylish nor cool, only the success gets a pass, the rest is random crap, that X isn't even an X, it looks like a shiny star, if a kid can't make sense of it, it's bad.

But I have to admit doing the "You get X but also Y and maybe Z" is better than the usual result table, although I want the probability of every combo and how modifiers are handled, you can't have good narration with swingy results.

>I want the probability of every combo
Depends on your dicepool, but this might help.
anydice.com/program/dd67

And here's a table taken straight from the book breaking down the symbol distribution.

I think I might just make it part of a custom Archetype. Or, perhaps shift or clone the Species special feature into Careers. Let his super-gadgetry character hook be Story Point fueled sometimes, and in turn let it be even more high-flying.

That could work, but it might be a bit too rewarding if a single point for investment gets you more powers, more accuracy with them, and somewhat better scaling of them.

Alright, first time posting here, so I'll give you guys some goodstuffs.
I've just finished a spell points system for Genesys, an alternative method instead of Strain.

Your starting Spell Points are equal to 15 plus your casting characteristic. Spell Points only replenish after a full night's rest or equivalent. Any spell you cast costs 2 spell points, unless stated otherwise. When you cast a spell using spell points, you may apply additional modifiers by spending 1 additional spell point for each difficulty dice that would have been added to the dice roll instead.
You may spend 1 disadvantage to lose 1 spell point in a spell casting roll, and on Despair, you lose the ability to cast spells until you complete a full night's rest or equivalent.

Additionally, here's a ranked talent:

**Mana Reserve**
**Tier:** 1
**Ranked:** Yes
For each rank of Mana Reserve, the number of spell points you have increases by the tier of the rank you purchased it at.(1 for tier 1, 5 for tier 5)

>Can cast, at most, seven spells a day of varying difficulty
Even cantrips?
>Threat weakens your spell
>Despair breaks all your casting for the day

Ah, I guess it wasn't clear. You would lose 1 spell point the same way you would lose strain in a spell roll.
And the upside is that while you spend more resources to cast a spell, difficulty doesn't change from the base level of the spell being cast. Which means you can cast your Deadly Explosive Fire Lightning Ice Attack spell at a Two difficulty.
Plus with the talent, you eventually get 15 more spell points total.

>difficulty doesn't change from the base level of the spell being cast
Isn't that what you're supposed to do in the first place? Use difficulty dice to set the core difficulty of the spell, then any additional handicaps are reflected either by more Setback dice or potentially upgrading a Difficulty to a Challenge.

Any good fantasy modules that have come out? Something to build on what's already in the book?

Also if this thread can stay up for another five or six hours I can put up a Tribes: Ascend armory I have been working on for the past few days. Gotta get off mobile to make it work.

They're putting out a fantasy supplement soon for their Terrinoth setting, and we know that will also have additional rules to play around with.
And that armory sounds like it'd be rad, hopefully we'll get enough activity to keep the thread around.

No, spellcasting has spell modifiers that add difficulty dice if you choose to add them. Adding the burn quality to the attack spell adds 1 difficulty die, etc.

>Blue Plate Special a motherfucker

As and the first link in the OP both say, FFG is soon releasing a dedicated setting supplement called Realms of Terrinoth, their in-house fantasy setting.

Let me know if this link works. I'm trying to make this work over mobile.

cdn.fbsbx.com/v/t59.2708-21/26914410_10157171589336110_8579127423491112960_n.pdf/Tribes-Ascend-Armory.pdf?oh=313473c79b8c4fab6db002615a63577d&oe=5A71DAB2&dl=1

Link works, though it's just a direct download. Can't view it in my browser.

Balls. I think that's the best I can manage until I get home.

>tfw I am the shazbot

Buy blank dice, and some colored permanent markers.You can save a ton of money on FFG dice that way.

Alternatively if you have sticker sheets and a lot of ink, or want to spend a couple more bucks at a print shop, you can use this PDF. It'd look nicer but be more of a pain in the ass to actually have to pen-knife these all off the page and apply them to your dice.

Personally I think the dice set is priced normally. About $15 for 15 dice, whereas the going price for not-glittery/not-transparent Chessex at brick-and-mortar shops is about $7 for 7 dice. And you can do pretty well with just one set of dice in this system, so it's ultimately cheaper.

Shit, didn't attach the file.

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Bump. Anyone playing anything multiverse-esque, or are your games in their individual settings?

I'm not prepared to go multiverse hopping yet. I want to stick to single settings first so I know what I'm doing. Plus, it's consistent.

I am no longer the shazbot.

The guys on the forum are trying that, but Multiverse hopping rarely works, unless you have a specific campaign arc in mind beforehand. It's the same thing with Stargate or Trek campaigns. Infinite planets to explore and infinite scale to work with, and you still tend to consolidate it to "planet of the week/month" So it's still in digestible chunks.

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How well would this system,handle a gritty survival and community building focused game ?

Pretty well

Define pretty well?

By itself, there's no rules for such, but they'd be easy to fabricate.

I'd rip the Ark rules from Mutant: Year Zero and staple them in place.

You can use Talents to gateway the "magic" skills.

Think of the old metamagic feats from D&D.

It adds four entirely different potential outcomes. It's a small investment for a pretty big return in terms of narrative gameplay.

That might be what I do, yeah. It also sort of reflects the magic mechanics from Fantasy Age, which I'm also fond of.

Probably a moot point, I need to sit down and run the damn game for my group so they can decide if they want extra mechanics or not.

What's the difference between psionics and magic in your context? Why not just refluff the magic schools from the GM section and limit how many modifiers a "spell," can use until their skill is higher?

Or, if those schools can't quite do what you want, why not just make your own school instead of trying to make a whole new system for psionics?

They'll want more mechanics. Talent gating the magic skills is essentially what I've done, although I freely admit I only have magic-related talents going to tier 3. Beyond that cost envelope I'm not sure it's justifiable for a bit of extra flexibility in casting.

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Do you agree with the "you cannot improve your core stats after chargen (without talents)" rule? What is progression meant to feel like after chargen, if at all?

I can understand the reasoning behind it. By forcing you to improve Skills instead of Stats, you can slowly grow your die pool for skill tests but still keep your character reasonably limited in what they ought to attempt and what's best left to another player. Career skills let you choose your speciality well enough, while still being able to buy other skills. Not being able to upgrade your stats just serves to softly keep your character relatively true to their original scope.

I guess it's true that if a campaign runs for long enough, a character could inflate their stats to the point where the original design of the character loses all meaning.

I forgot to say, it also seems like it's intentional to reduce the number of die you end up throwing. Most rolls will typically be 4/5 die before you include boost/setback die. It makes sense for a player to refine their skills, and slowly improve their pool. It doesn't make as much sense to improve skills and stats to the point where you're only rolling Proficiency die with boost/setback/challenge die.

And then when you hit critical mass of proficiency dice, your skills overtake your stats, and you start adding regular ability dice to the pool.

Die, singular.
Dice, plural.

Isn't it the other way around? Die is plural. But yeah, I figured it'd be most 'optimal' to aim towards increasing stats and the skill in line to get straight Proficiency die rather than an extra ability die. Though I get that you won't have the XP to get a Statpoint and a skill level at the same time.

The chargen rules outright say that you'll want to spend the vast majority of your chargen XP on characteristics, because that's the only time you can build them up in the game without talents.

And no, it's not. Die is the singular, and dice is the plural.

Holy shit I've been wrong my whole life. I didn't expect to learn that in gengen.

You learn something new every day.

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Finally got my book. FFG is stingy when it comes to the leaf market.

Are they really?

So, how does it compare to Savage Worlds?
I would just give it a try, but I have to import the dice, so that's kind of off putting.

There's free dice rollers out there, like the one in the OP.

In Ottawa, All 3 major game stores are out and no re-stock in site. Also major online .ca retailers are empty.

Yeesh. Do you have the dice to go with it?

>Do you have the dice to go with it?
I have the star wars dice so same difference. My shop will order the dice when they free up. So no idea.

Has anyone run a fantasy game on Genesys? How it do?

Fantasy is one of the stock settings provided by the book, and the OP mentions a dedicated setting supplement for FFG's in-house fantasy setting, Realms of Terrinoth, which will provide additional rules.

I should HOPE the game handles fantasy well.

For a fantasy setting look at:
>Sky Wars: Edge of the Kingdom RPG
redshirtdown.com/kingdom/

Was made before Genesys so is based on on Star Wars iteration of the system.

What's the difference between the Star Wars systems and Genesys?

Classes, mostly. Genesys got rid of the clunky class system; starting skills are determined by your character's career (though I think creating careers or swapping out skills is really easy for experienced players) and their "class," is determined by a combination of that and what talents the player chooses.

Talents are simplified in GeneSys, they have the pyramid rather than being in specified trees per "Specialization" (which are under careers) as a more strict class system - and so far no capstone "Signature Abilities".

Only other big mechanical difference is they rebuilt vehicle combat. Now it really feels like an extension of personal scale, where as in Star Wars it was it's own thing with seperate range bands and lots of different modifiers and such and clunky aspects of "are you in sensor range" and so on which could make space-focused games need some houserules.

Magic is also way more universal than Force Powers and don't use their own dice.

What kind of tweaks to available social skill options have anons made? I'm all for giving the non-combative characters more diplomatic approaches to solving problems, but I feel like Genesys has the issue that several other systems have where you could really easily condense some of the social skills that are either redundant or might not actually come up that often. I always feel like a character who is a good speaker or a good "face" should naturally be able to tackle multiple kinds of diplomatic challenges without blowing all their XP on just social ranks.

Maybe like folding Charm and Negotiation into just one skill (since they're both Presence based anyway), or merging Coercion and Deception into a universal, social version of the Skullduggery skill?

It depends on how much nuance you want in social skills. There could be a certain divide between Charm and Negotiation: just because you can land a guy in the club doesn't mean you can secure a peace accord between the Bloods and the Crips.

You're not really blowing all your XP, trust me. Nor does a "face" need every single social skill.

The core book does a pretty good job breaking down how different skills are used and what makes them different. You don't necessarily go "Oh gee, why do we need like 4 skills to hurt people?" (Since depending on your setting, you might and should be splitting hairs with Melee or Ranged, not counting also Brawl and Gunnery).

Deception and Coercion have different Attributes linked, and do very different things. Deception can be used to physically disguise for instance, and doesn't make much sense to use to inflict Strain in a social encounter most of the time, but just because somebody lies like a fish swims doesn't mean he can also issue credible threats.

Similarly, Negotiation is about bargaining, not convincing people to listen to you or do a solid. Mostly you see it used in buying and selling. You can be a non-face merchant/procurement guy and not have a drop of any other social skills. Depending on your goal and tactics, you might use both, one or the other, or neither Negotiation and Charm in a social conflict.

>t.ran so fucking much EotE

A bump before bed; stay alive you rare but glorious bastard.

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What unique skills or talents do you have in your games? I'm looking to run an urban fantasy game and wondering what unforseen shortcomings I might run into.

Well, what do you think is missing from this list that you don't feel would be fully accounted for in your setting?

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Gundamfag here, I've been taking a break (read: got bored with trying to make the custom crit table and left it alone) but today it occurred to me perhaps I should add some ranks of Vicious to beam weapons considering how powerful they are in-fluff.

The question is how much should they have?

Well, how powerful was a lightsaber in the Star Wars games?

Depends. EotE and AoR had fully-upgraded murdersabers that dealt 10 damage with Breach and Vicious 2, while F&D had pretty heavily nerfed "basic" sabers that were six damage and lost Vicious but kept the Breach.

The reason I'm thinking about this is because beam weapons were a huge deal in the setting, to the point where by the time of best boy here there was a huge shift from heavy armour to dodge-or-die being the standard doctrine.

Default Lightsaber is Vicious 2, with Crit as low as 1, though some variations could go higher to 3 or so.

If you fully kit an Ilum crystal, it goes back to Vicious 2 and Crit 2, which shouldn't be too hard given the advantages in working on your own saber.

But as a mass produced weapon you should skip that step.

*Crit 1

Oh, right. I ended up with a krayt dragon pearl the only time I played a saber-user who could actually dick around with the crystal.

Anyway. Gendums. I think I will go with the Vicious 2 lightsabers have on most large beam weaponry, and see how that goes.