/gengen/ - Genesys General

>I know more about your group than you do
I'm not him, but you sound like a pretentious prick who has never had a good experience with any players ever.

You use just plain Melee because splitting the two is stupid. Maybe you even let people punch using the skill too.

>You use just plain Melee because splitting the two is stupid.
If there's more focus on melee combat in your campaign, like in a fantasy setting, you typically split the Melee skill into Melee (Light) and Melee (Heavy) to more finely express your preferences. The same goes for more modern settings and the Ranged skill, since there's a wider variety of firearms and it helps to be specific.

>Maybe you even let people punch using the skill too.
That's Brawl. Melee is armed, Brawl is unarmed.

I mean sure if you want to tax melee fighters across three skills go ahead. Maybe you've stated out extensive talent trees tied to each to make the divisions anything other than meaningless Brawn-based handedness classification too.

Brawn or Agility, you mean. A rapier-spinning duelist has a different skillset from a claymore-swinging heavy weapons specialist.

Yeah it'd almost make sense if it were a Dex vs Str thing but it's not, it's just Brawn for both.

It's a nice to have, but not a key feature, though.
Your story point economy is probably going to be a bit off, but it's nothing you shouldn't be able to handle.

If deciding on the results of narrative dice also is a problem, that's going to be a bit more troublesome. It can still work, but I would probably try to just limit it first instead of removing it completely.

I don't think I really know what your exact issue is, but maybe consider just limiting it to a few narrative action types. By deciding on what is okay beforehand, you should be able to prevent the most egregious problems, I think.

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Looks like a Virtual Adept

A what?

A certain type of Mage from Mage the Ascension.

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Because I'm an indecisive derp, I wrote a little program this morning to help with my worldbuilding. It grabs five random pictures from my various inspirational directories, and I'll be using them to kickstart ideas. Thought I'd share the end result.

So how fine should skills be split?

Did you just script idling through folders of photos? You fool! You've destroyed our excuse to dither!

... I have violated a time-honored tradition. Forgive me.

I guess to redeem myself I'll never share the program.

I'm being unironic when I say this: depends on the setting.

Splitting Melee and Ranged depends on the era or how ubiquitous melee or ranged combat is in your setting. The book recommends splitting Melee in a typical fantasy game and splitting Ranged in a typical anything-else game.

You typically shouldn't have to split Knowledge into other component parts because
a) any equivalent skill can double as its own related Knowledge skill (e.g. why add Knowledge-Underworld when you can just roll Streetwise and gain the same effect?), and
b) the lone Knowledge skill serves as a catchall for general purpose knowledge, although it helps to mention what your specialties are in case something specific comes up.
The universal Knowledge skill serves as a means to introduce information about the setting when prompted and also reflects a level of general knowledge that any character can exhibit. As the book describes it:
>Knowledge 0 means you passed grade school
>Knowledge 1-2 means you got through high school or trade school
>Knowledge 3-4 means you got through college
>Knowledge 5 means you're a prodigy in your specific field or are otherwise especially learned
Just because your character runs a clinic with Doctors Without Borders doesn't mean they can't do some math or recall some history.

Well, let's not be hasty

This is truth. I will note that a couple of the adversaries in the free Terrinoth adventure have Knowledge (Forbidden) as a skill, which is a nice addition (especially since NPCs don’t need to follow the normal chargen rules)

Right. Any supplementary Knowledge skills should only be for knowledge that is both specific and esoteric, anything that can't be covered either by general knowledge or a preexisting skill.

I could see splitting knowledge up if the game was focused on investigation and mystery-solving with minimal combat. The team could each have their expertise in different fields of study that form a multidisciplinary investigation into some unexplained phenomena. And they each compete to see which author will be listed first on the inevitable paper.

Share it so no one will ever make the same mistake. We'll all download it and look at it so we'll know what *not* to do.
You know, just to be safe.

It should also be reiterated from the book that you shouldn't roll a Knowledge skill if your character has acces to the Internet (or equivalent) and can reasonably find their answer on it. The application of said info gained from the Internet might require a Knowledge check itself, though.

Let me clean it up so things aren't hardcoded in and I'll share it so we're safe from ourselves.

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volafileorg/r/gax930pc

Dump this in the root directory you want to traverse through, double click it.

It SHOULD create a directory on your desktop named "Genesys" if one doesn't exist, and dump 5 images in. It's extremely quick and dirty, so probably won't work.

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So by RAW, the only way a PC dies is when they pass a 150 on the Critical Injury table?

Per RAW, yeah, players (and Nemeses characters) only die from Critical Injuries ("The End is Nigh" and waiting, or "Dead") or being in a vehicle that suffers certain Critical Hits ("Breaking Up" and waiting, or "Vaporized").

That said common sense and logic should play a part in the narrative. If a nuke goes off incredibly near a player and they've got no protection, or if the players want to kill a Nemesis they knocked unconscious and there's nothing to oppose them and they're not constrained by time, dying is something that should just happen.

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The social encounter rules are a bit more thought out than I expected. I've not played a system with dedicated "social combat" before.

I think that's a lesson they learned from SW, which added the concept in splats later after they made a shitload of Face classes/specializations without anything more technical than "Uh, roll Charm I guess". Though they always gave them a combat role with the ability to take talents to deal/heal strain through yelling at people.

>Twi'lek just constantly shouting "YER AIM IS SHITE" and "I FUCKED YER NAN" over the din of blaster fire

Since Strain is Wounds for Minions, you can technically kill a Stormtrooper if your bants is good enough.

I mean, that's a little hilarious

Seems legit.

I’m gonna be that guy and point out that the rules explicitly tell you that, no, you can’t kill minions with bantz. They can only be “defeated” in a way that makes sense for how you beat them.

If you defeat someone with bantz, they typically either run away or become so demoralized they stop fighting.

Yes, that’s what I’m saying.

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How many skills is too many skills? 15 or 20?

I wouldn't say 20 is too many, but it depends on the setting and what you can get away with losing (or adding); but SW had like 35 skills, and before possibly splitting Knowledge up, you could run a basic modern-setting using like ~28 of the listed skills in Genesys.

So I've finished reading through the core rules section, and I like what I see. It'll naturally take some time to absorb everything, but I'm feeling good about Genesys. I'll be reading through the settings and GM section as well.

Can vehicle combat work alongside ground fighting? I get the feeling at least one of my players is going to be a fighter pilot and want to dogfight Nazis, possibly while the other players fight on the ground.

Yes, one of the things Genesys did was integrate vehicle and character combat together a bit better.

Check out Lead by Example and the Age of Rebellion GM Kit from the Star Wars game; former is about how to handle big battles where PCs running around doing their things in the fight can force turning points to shift the battle further, and latter has squad/squadron rules which helps survivability if the group is splitting up (player trying to sabotage, player on the front lines, player in skies, player giving commands, etc.).

One of your players wants to enter a joust, and it slipped your mind to come up with rules for it while you were doing GM notes last night. What quick shit do you come up with? Go!

Riding skill check to maintain as straight a line as possible down the pipe.
Melee (Heavy) check for the moment of impact, with a setback die added for attacking from horseback. Scoring enough Advantage or a Triumph on the previous Riding check can grant a boost on this check.
If they lose the combat check, another Riding skill check to stay on their horse.

There's your joust.

Dope shit nigga.

I mean, shit, the Riding skill literally says to use it if "Your character tries to joust at a tournament."

I knew it would take part, I just like throwing scenarios out there to keep conversation going.

Do you find this sheet comprehensive enough when designing a setting, or are there still questions to think about? How does this sheet help fill in the gaps?

There's not enough space to answer all of the questions, but it's certainly enough to do a local area. Maybe a county, small kingdom, or city quarter depending on what scale your game is at.

You wouldn't plan intergalactic-scale stuff on that sheet?

Too few spaces for factions and other movers and shakers. In terms of things like the skill list, main playable races, and a general idea of "what's the main theme," it does the job just fine for an intergalactic game.

But I personally would want more space to go into something that large in scale.

I guess that's what supplementary notes are for.

More or less, yeah. It's a good sheet, all things considered. My biggest complaint can easily be fixed by stapling a piece of paper to the back.

I imagine its meant to build the framework and then flesh it out.

I imagine as well. It could also be used as a quick-reference sheet for players; god knows it's a rare group where everyone pays attention to your entire not-Star Wars scroll.

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I can't tell if these are stupid or cool

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The Pariah is by far the best vampire in the set, but these are all pretty good in my opinion.

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This'll be my last one of these. There's more, but the auto-timer is killing me because I'm shit.

Half of these look like neat MGS villains and that alone makes me want to play. Especially, , gives me a Fortune vibe.

Is there any set that you want to see the rest of? I don't want to keep on cycling through them in a specific order, but if anyone wants to see the rest of a single set I can do the whole thing before doing any others.

He's got a couple of good random ones that aren't a part of a set.

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He's also the dude with that massive set of counter-poachers with animal-oriented drones.

There's also a few random character sets spread out among his facebook, deviantart, and some other image hosting site I forgot. Collecting all these sets has been pretty difficult, but it's pretty worth, I think. I've used a couple of characters in Shadowrun games to rather fun effect.

This is my personal favorite set, but it's also the one with the least amount of lore detail of his major sets, relatively speaking.

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