/gengen/ - Genesys General

Look What I Found Edition

>What is Genesys?
Released in November 2017, Genesys is a pen-and-paper generic system and toolkit by Fantasy Flight Games, using a refined version of the system presented by their Star Wars RPGs (Edge of the Empire, Age of Rebellion, Force and Destiny). Its central mechanic is the Narrative Dice System, using pools made of specialized dice to create more narrative results.
fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/genesys/

>Realms of Terrinoth to be released Q2 2018
fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2018/1/9/realms-of-terrinoth/

>Player-made Genesys settings
pastebin.com/7knE7KSv

>Online Exstras
cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/329635601945067522/392866714544766976/genesys_character_sheet_fillable.pdf - Fillable Character Sheet
cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/329635601945067522/386612561115611137/genesys_setting_worksheet_fillable.pdf - Fillable Setting sheet
genesys.skyjedi.com/ - Online Dice Roller
cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/329635601945067522/392867516583510017/0.9.5.pdf - Cheat sheet
sendspace.com/file/6b6bat - A PDF of something
docs.google.com/document/d/1K0BVQxmZTMn8XFovHPCjubK7H-qZDWRSC9QR_2E683I - Special Rules (From StarWars to Genesys)
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Qy33uMm1FqQJPD8W-p5aXM5XHNwsU4126JgJ91LsIfE/edit#gid=644202127 - Some new spells
community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/265863-genesys-talents-expanded/ - Talent Super Repo

>Discord Server
discord.gg/3vNJa6t

>FFG Community Forums
community.fantasyflightgames.com/forum/527-genesys/

Previous Thread

Reposting from last thread, now hopefully with clearer description. Should be useful for anybody running their own games who need some ideas since Equipment is very bare bones right now.

>>javascript:quote('57781736');

I havn't committed anything to paper yet just some heady ideas but almost gave up on it entirely thinking there wasn't any strong interest. The parts i'm struggling with is how to stat out the various races and what to do with weapons otherwise the rough idea is such.

Your grenades, melee, and class ability are spells that use either some light and regen very fast or don't use light at all (like the class jumping skills) Your Super moves would also be in the magic category would require a massive amount of light and regens much slower.

Ressurecting someone on the fly takes light to do unless you have time to just let your ghost take it slow when you're not engaged in combat.

That said, should you fall in combat your ghost is exposed and can be targeted and if it's killed you lose your ressurection ability and self healing.

Going back to the supers all of the supers you know are accessible to you but subclass talents would things you'd have to purchase individually and you can choose to focus on one subclass or branch out and try to get skills from multiple subclasses.

As for the ghost, it's role is mostly narrative so when you do skill checks it's implied that the ghost is helping you do things rather than having a stat line entirely of its own (which is still up in the air I suppose)

Not him, but for point of reference since he fucked his link, he's talking about a Genesys conversion for Destiny.

Yeah I was trying to link back to a commit in the old thread and fucked it up

Maybe the presence of the Ghost could upgrade a die or two? Then the players gain a more tangible benefit rather than a boost die or " the robot that always follows you about is doing this".

But the Ghost doesn't really leave your side, does it? Without it, you would literally be dead. The path of least resistance would just be to include the Ghost as part of the character when statting them out.

It doesn't no, but in areas with high darkness its effects are diminished greatly. I was thinking that the events of the game are naturally limited and you can't lose your Ghost because the game wouldn't progress, but an RPG is a lot less limited and so those sorts of things could happen. And I wouldn't be surprised if players tried to send their Ghost to trigger a diversion while the players sprung an ambush or something.

It's tricky because in the game it's seen doing everything for you which I imagine is not always the case. We know Guardians can make shit so perhaps there are some tasks that can't be done without the presence of a ghost in lieu of certain tools for example (i.e. able to quickly modify smart matter or something)

So without overloading the system with crunch i think it's safe to say most tasks you do with your ghosts unless it makes narrative sense one way or the other for either you to only do it or the ghost to only do it

>And I wouldn't be surprised if players tried to send their Ghost to trigger a diversion while the players sprung an ambush or something.

Seems like a good way to lose your ghost in a hurry

...

Any rumours about next releases?

So far it's just the Terrinoth Supplement. I reckon they'll do one for Android and Twilight Imperium also though but I have nothing to back that up.

What said. Realms of Terrinoth is soon, and the Android and Twilight Imperioum books were put on the docket as future projects.

Personally I suspect the next announcement will be Android, and given the timing of the Terrinoth announcement and it's release window, the Android book will likely hit shelves near the end of the year. October or November.

I'm considering doing a world my players jump into where it's kind of like Redwall or Mouse Guard. Animals are sized as they usually are, and my players will start sized with them. I'm considering doing a "sub-silhouette," scale where one point in the sub-scale relates to our own as we do to vehicles.

It'll also help if I have a druid player who want to turn into a weasel or some such.

Thoughts?

You can make the scale relative, so long as you make that point clear to the players. It could work, I think.

That was my though. If it was all a relative thing none of their stats would change, just how we interpret those stats as effecting the world around them. And compared to a mouse, a human is absolutely working on the vehicular scale in terms of damage and whatnot.

Do you like the talent "pyramid" system they use? I heard it's a bit more freeform than what's used in the Star Wars games.

...

...

It’s vastly better than Star Wars’ weird class trees.

How did those work?

Hey experienced GM/ player but new to Genesys. I was mainly wondering what are good ways to narrate different levels of success/ failure, threat/ advantage and so on. What should the difference between 1-2 success feel like. What about a failure with 3 advantages.tried listening to other starwars- genesys games on podcast but didn't really help.

It's all about magnitude. Success/Failure pertains to the check itself, while Advantage/Threat are about incidental windfalls. Failing to open a locked door but getting an advantage or two could mean that they didn't get the door open, but at least they didn't attract extra attention in the first place.

Your career choice gave you three sub-choices of specialty, and those sub-choices gave you some more career skills and a tree of talents you could take. But you were basically stuck with whatever was on that tree, and had to take the talents in an order determined by the tree, which would more often than not branch off in the most nonsensical ways. It was a mess and they should have done it like Genesys from the get-go honestly.

In fact, let's use an example provided by the book.
>Two characters having a street race
>One guy succeeds but rolls a few threat or a Despair
>The other girl fails but scores a few advantage or even a Triumph
>The guy who won the race got profiled by the cops, and now there's a BOLO out for him and his car
>The girl who lost got noticed by a racing gang who were impressed by her performance and wants her to join

Success with advantage/triumph is “Yes, and...”
Success with threat/dispare is “Yes, but...”
Failure with advantage/triumph is “No, but...”
Failure with thread/dispare is “No, and...”

The number of a given symbol should give you an idea of the magnitude of the ands and buts.

Oh, and since triumph and despair don’t cancel each other out like all the other symbols a success or failure with both is “Yes/No, and... but...”

...

>Unless your weapon has the Limited Ammo quality or you roll a Despair, there is no such thing as ammo tracking
I can dig it.

It's fine, makes more sense for a generic system and lets you pick and choose the talents you want and intend to use. It's not without its caveats though.

Without Specializations, you get fewer career skills and fewer free ranks when you first build a character, which combined with the lack of a built-in Obligation/Duty/Morality feature to take more XP at the beginning means all characters will seem more generic and less unique, and they'll feel that way longer than a Star Wars character. You can help counteract it by giving more XP though, possibly giving them an option of some XP/credits for as during creation (so XP can be used for a Characteristic if they really wanted), and a larger chunk as post-creation (so it can't be used on Characteristics) while still enforcing no Skills above Rank 2 for it.

Added onto that, it can be more expensive to get talents in Genesys if your desire for talents are more heavily geared towards ranking up talents a lot, or just getting the very unique/powerful talents. This is going to depend on a LOT of factors, but as an example, in Genesys you're spending 175xp to get to your first Tier 5 and 75xp more for each additional Tier 5; in Star Wars it can (depending on the tree) cost 75xp to get to, what may be considered as a Tier 5, then 75xp to grab another 3 talents that might be Tier 5, and then 20-30xp more to just grab the first next talent tree (though progressively more the more trees you buy). Flip side though is that while you've got ~4 really fancy talents in Star Wars (plus 4 more probably less fancy talents), for an equivalent price in Genesys you've got only 1 really fancy talent, but you've handpicked every one of the 15 total talents you get.

So, I wouldn't necessarily call one outright better or worse overall, but they've got their strengths and weaknesses, and some players will like one more than the other depending on them, but for Genesys, the Pyramid makes more sense and works better.

I wish it was less a pyramid and more a pillar. Instead of needing to have one more of the tier below than of the tier you want, I think it would be easier to keep track of--and allow for more customization--if you just couldn't have more of any tier than the tier below it has.

The pyramid forces you to diversify your talents. You can't just pick a do-nothing talent at each lower tier to get the T5 you want. You have to commit to several, so you may as well make the most of your choices.

>Without Specializations, you get fewer career skills and fewer free ranks when you first build a character, which combined with the lack of a built-in Obligation/Duty/Morality feature to take more XP at the beginning means all characters will seem more generic and less unique, and they'll feel that way longer than a Star Wars character.
Genesys by default also has a way smaller skill list than Star Wars. Characters in SW got more free skills not because of some BS sense of uniqueness or whatever you’re going on about, but because it was necessary with the sheer number of skills necessary for a career.
With Genesys’s smaller skill list, they don’t NEED those extra freebies to start with the skills necessary to be effective at their chosen career.

Except it the pyramid totally forces you to pick do-nothing talents to get to the ones you want.

...

Not really. Depending on your setting, Genesys has up to ~35 skills (depending on the Melee and Ranged splits), with 21 "all setting" skills. Age Of Rebellion (which adds Know [Warfare]) has 34 skills, and this is including all the different knowledge skills which in Genesys a GM might be adding. If you cut out knowledge skills, AoR would have 28, very comperable to say, a Modern Day or Near-Future set game.

Another important thing to note is that if Genesys did talent trees the same way Star Wars does it would be VASTLY more work for the GM. As it is now if you want to introduce a new talent for your game (which, being a toolkit system, is highly encouraged), you merely have to make it and put it in a tier, and if you want to make a career, you just give it eight skills and you’re done. If they did careers like how Star Wars does, if you wanted to make a new talent you’d have to go through every single career and rewrite their trees to fit it in the ones it works for, and if you wanted a new career you’d have to write out an entire talent tree in addition to skill selection.

The Genesys method is far, far easier for game customizing. And thanks to the whole toolkit thing, if you actually did want it to work like Star Wars careers there is literally nothing stopping you from porting them in straight.

>At the beginning of the session, you and your group add one Story Point to the player pool for each player. Then, your GM adds one Story Point to the Game Master pool.

So the GM only gets 1 story point per session?

No. The GM gets one to start. When the players spend one that they have in the pool, the GM receives that point and can spend later. And vice versa.

Only at the beginning of the session. When the PCs use a point, it goes in the GM's pool, and vice versa. That's how the Story Point economy works.

Ah, okay.

The game also encourages not cheesing the system by hoarding Story Points to deny the GM a chance to fuck you over, for a few reasons.
>It goes against the spirit of the game
>You're denying yourself bonuses and the chance to more deeply influence the narrative

>Story Point economy
While I appreciate the idea of these stupid meta currency “economies” in narrative games, as a forever GM nothing pisses me off more than a game that limits what I can make happen in my fucking campaign because of some bullshit point economy.

I’m the GM, if I want infinity points I have infinity points. Fuck you.

Fair play is a thing, my nigga.

What makes the story more exciting and fun for the players trumps the dev’s idea of fair play, my nigga.
Imma make shit problems for my players to have fun solving regardless of any BS meta point that may or may not be in the GM pool.

Story points are used mechanically for things like upgrading ability dice, upgrading difficulty dice, and popping certain talents. Players can also use them to influence the narrative by introducing their own details. Giving yourself as the GM infinite points means you can just arbitrarily make a player's check harder any time you want, which isn't very fair.

Being a GM means I can make judgement calls on the difficulty of a check regarding the current circumstances, points be damned.
If you are seriously concerned with the GM being “fair” with their calls on difficulty then maybe you should not play with assholes.

So then how do players get their points back when they spend them? Don't just say "I give them when I see fit."

That’s a underlying problem with this type of metacurrency economy they use in Genesys and to some extent Fate. The GM’s side of the pool exists solely to be able to give points back to the players and adds nothing to the game otherwise.
Actually speaking of Fate their Compel idea could be adapted pretty easily to Genesys, it’s almost like how it works now anyway but without the artificial limit. When something bad happens relevant to a character’s flaws, they gain points, and you can even give players even more agency in the story by letting them self-compel, effectively saying “I have this flaw and it made me I fuck up just now, give me a point.” Or something like that.

The players' Story Point pool is communal, though. There's no individual pools, and the group as a whole can only spend one point per action.

What's a good way to price miscellaneous objects? I'm starting up a Genesys campaign for the first time, and one of my players wants to buy bottles of alcohol and various potions to sell as a merchant instead of the small list of equipment listed in the core book.

For that matter, is there a more thorough list of various fantasy-setting equipment/items anywhere, even fan-made? I'm not experienced enough with the system to confidently eyeball the price of an entire list of goods. Please and thank you.

There's a small section on item trading in the first section of the book. Consider the rarity of the item, both where you're buying it and where you're selling it.

Unless you're willing to dig, there's not quite a comprehensive list of fantasy items out for Genesys, at least not until Realms of Terrinoth releases soon. If it's any consolation, you can look at and find the Star Wars equivalent and work from there. There's an entire section for drugs and consumeable, and whaddya know, here's an entry for booze:
>Corellian Whiskey (Popular alcohol from Corellia)
>Price: 25 (500 for 25 bottles)
>Rariry: 2
>Encumberance: 1 (20 for 25 bottles)

A shared pool just makes the Fate idea a little less easy to adapt. Or just give players individual pools and the ability to pass off points.
But like I said earlier I appreciate the idea, like I get that it puts the players in a position where they have to weigh the risk vs reward of using their story points, but the trade off is you’re putting artificial limitations on the GM. The GM shouldn’t have to be in that position, ever. The spirit of Rule Zero is “fuck the rules when this is more fun” and the GM pool only serves to hinder that ability.
It’s his campaign and it’s on him to make that decision, not the points pool. But there’s ways you can keep the spirit of the player application of Story Points without the unnecessary GMing restrictions the GM pool comes with.

For what it's worth, the Story Point pools are designed to be out in the open so that the players and GM can keep track of both pools, so it's not like you can overtly cheat the points unless you're a chess hustler or something.

But I see where you're coming fom.

Nothing's stopping you as GM from just having those story point effects happen sans story point and it's always in the GM's purview to augment difficulty. Point use and difficulty ratings are, like all of the rules, hard-and-fast things for players but ultimately just guidelines for GMs. Another tool in the toolbox, not unlike the dice themselves.

And if you ask me it's a useful tool. They serve as a way to introduce dramatic turns in a more palpable way as the players see the tokens move around or flip. And they reaffirm the PC's presence in the story, or the stakes of a task, within the framework of random rolling. When the GM has more story points there's tension. When players have more they're willing to push their luck in daring or novel ways.

Warcraft Genesys.
Y/N

Only if you make it pre-WoW based.

How flexible is Genesys's default magic system? Warcraft kinda shits magic all over the place.

You select effects which set the difficulty of the skill roll. The only thing restricting what you can do is the end difficulty of the roll and sometimes your strain threshold.

Help! One of my players wants their race to be able to turn invisible, and I'm completely lost on how to stat/price it. The closest comparison to invisibility is the Personal Stealth Field (◆◆◆◆◆ difficulty to see you) from the SW setting, but that seems far too powerful regardless of how much XP it would cost.

Any help?

A race with innate invisibility? How does he justify it?

Fox people with innate illusory magic. Originally he wanted to start with just a simple disguise ability (I was going to stat it as the equivalent of the SW Holographic Disguise Matrix for 10 XP), but it evolved from there. Any suggestions?

Once per scene, the foxman can turn invisible without outside assistance. It'd be a Perception or Vigilance check of difficulty ◆◆◆◆ to find him. Anything more complex that walking or running breaks the invisibility.

I dunno, maybe.

I'm feeling something like the Clawdite (shapechangers) ability in SW. It's an action, takes two strain and requires a ◆◆ check (Discipline makes sense in this case) to become invisible. While invisible, give him like +◆◆ to opposing Perception checks to detect. I think this is like a 15-20 XP ability? They get 95 starting XP and have 9s for WT and ST base I don't remember Genesys' species math off the top of my head.

That's way more balanced than what I thought of. It has an action cost, a strain cost and a skill check required to activate it, and the bonus is modest but noticeable. It would be +◆◆ to opposing Perception (active) or Vigilance (passive) checks to find him.

Thanks for these suggestions! The Clawdite is definitely the best solution to that conundrum I've found so far, but the player has been dissuaded from taking the invisibility option entirely at this point after I explained that it would cost more of his racial starting XP, on top of the several other racial abilities he'd already bought. In any case, it's still good to know about that interpretation of invisibility.

Guess that problem solves itself.

>wants inherently powerful racial ability
>doesn't want to pay for it
>on a fox person
Sounds like you dodged a bullet that they caved.

...

It's been pretty difficult trying to help him build a character; kinda fighting me every step of the way here. He wanted to spend all of his money on counterfeit coins to double his starting wealth, and argued that merchants wouldn't be able to tell the difference because of some stats he pulled up about tungsten being a perfect counterfeiting material for gold. He eventually ditched that idea too after I put my foot down that he had a chance to get caught if he spent too much in one place, or with savvy merchants. Asked me to homebrew special gauntlet claws for him, wouldn't take no for an answer, and then ditched those because they weighed too much as he was tallying up his encumbrance. Starting to chip at my enthusiasm to GM.

>Trying to double his starting dosh by buying counterfeit dosh
You've just got a very eager player trying to game the system as best he can before the game even starts. Tell him to chill out and insist that you're not out to get him, not intentionally.

Sorry friend, you have a That Guy. Either man up and boot his ass now before it's too late, or man up and tell him to knock it the fuck off or you'll boot his ass.

Either way, you're going to have to man up and get ready to deal with a That Guy.

What setting and campaign are you running, anyway?

It started with a vague invite on a gamefinder thread with the general premise of "lighthearted lewd fantasy adventure," a sparse few folks got interested, and the system ended up being Genesys due to popular demand from a few outspoken players who spoke highly of it.

I'm impressed by the book, if somewhat lost and worried due to my inexperience and a lack of listed equipment and items to price things with. Fox player intensely hates everything to do with it, and I'm genuinely surprised he still wants to play. Might have to put on my big boy pants and boot him out like and said if he starts disrupting the game itself, though. I'm hoping he'll mellow out when the game starts, I just want to write some fantasy fun for people on the internet and not worry about drama.

I'm still reading through the Genesys core book myself, but I'm impressed by what I see. As long as people are aware you're still getting used to the system, they'll cut you some slack.

Sounds like Fox was expecting 3.PF and to have to 'game' the system, and not stepping into the shoes and eyes of another person. Not knocking 3.PF, I enjoy it myself, but it's a different animal- fighting the game system instead of the antagonist.

Listed Equipment and Items to Price Things With before the game even starts are non-things to worry about in a narrative game, des. That's what those things deal with; making characters 'fair and balanced.' Imagine if Star Wars started out with equal and balanced characters, 300gp starting equipment each.

>not worry about drama
>in tabletop games
>2018
Boy have I got sad news for you. Good on you for GMing a new system though. My condolences for your soon-to-be-dead campaign.

I'm not doing a meme or laying bait when I tell you this:

He's an asshole, and a That Guy. If you can afford to boot him from not only your game, but also your life, do it.

>doing the everything is drama because people care about politics nowadays meme
You have to be 18 to post here. Do better next time, yeah?

>tungsten as a counterfeit material for gold
>in a medieval fantasy setting
Motherfucker tungsten wasn't even discovered until 1781, where's he planning to get all that shit let alone someone who knows how to work with it? Since when was tungsten good for counterfeiting anything? What statistics are he pulling out of his ass here? I'm salty just reading this.

...

Just read the Android setting and god damn do I want to play in that world.

Android blended with GITS/Appleseed would be sick. Cyber/security team facing off against terrorists (Pro-Android, Anti-android, State actors, whatever) utilizing the settings tech and tone.

Lucky for you, FFG definitely wants to do an Android setting supplement in the future, just like the one Realms of Terrinoth is getting. They also want to do a Twilight Imperium supplement.

I was expecting Android to be the first setting out of the block seeing as the card game is big. Makes sense to go fantasy off the bat however. Hopefully Android will be next.

What sort of cyberpunk is Android, anyway?

I hope it's next as well, so I can do Shadowrun without the Shadowrun system. Between an Android supplement and this Terrinoth book I should have more than enough to work with.

Im sure there is a working group for Shadowrun. I see rumors here and there for people working on it. One day user, one day.

There's an user rumbling around /gengen/ working on a Shadowrun conversion.

Hope he can bring the thinder

>Between an Android supplement and this Terrinoth book I should have more than enough to work with.
Pretty much what shadow run is. Just some tweaking and you got a good game.

>"The right tool for the job" rule
>Gear (not including weapons or armor) should only do one of two things
>Either it lets you perform a task you can't perform on your own (with no additional bonus)
>Or it provides a small boost to a task you could already perform on your own
Interesting how that has to be spelled out. Any particular reason?

>Interesting how that has to be spelled out. Any particular reason?
To be broad as possible. That rule pretty much covers anything across any setting in a singe stroke.
I do not know ho easy it will be to implement. I think a rule of thumb is it going to add 1 or two boost dice AND NEVER be a MacGuffin.

Examples the book gives of gear that lets you do something you can't perform on your own is binoculars (see long distances), cell phones (communicate long distances), and a camp stove (cook food in the wild). Examples of gear that let you perform a task you can already do on your own a little better are a compass for navigation and a propane lantern for starting a fire. In the latter case, the player and GM both agree that you get +□ (a boost die) when performing that task.

...

>sniper-chan
I miss Titanfall.

An user said he was eventually going to get around to fixing the Titanfall mod listed in the OP, but who knows when that will be?

More fantasy Star Wars for fun.

...

...

Whats missing? The basic Mechs and weapon systems are fleshed out. Is there a to-do list?