/gengen/ - Genesys General

And what do you plan on throwing at them for their first adventure?

Sky Pirates stealing a museum exhibit's worth of Egyptian Artifacts. This will of course set up for the second adventure.

youtube.com/watch?v=KFREs4GaJVU

Sounds thrilling. Can't way for the playback.

Hurrah someone read it! Cheers user. My concern is that Celerity, resilience and Vigor are all passive abilities. Celerity can be activated by suffering strain to go fast, you can activate Vigor to throw and weild items with a silhouette equal to half your Vigor rounded up, meaning at 5 you can throw tractors and lorries. Resilience though is boring. It's a level of Soak per point, and resilience alone can reduce damage from sunlight, fire or silver. But there's nothing actively flashy to it.

My other thought is: in WoD, everyone has 3 levels of health, bashing, lethal and aggravated. Bashing knocks you out, lethal bleeds you out and aggravated kills you. Vampires take bashing damage from guns and baseball bats because they're tough cookies. I dunno how to do that in Genesys, unless I say that mortals don't get Soak against gunfire while vampires do?

Not all powers need to be flashy.

As for representing the three types of damage while keeping the system easy, I'd do it like three levels of soak that is innate and natural to vampires. You can list it underneath each vampire archetype, or just list it as a global rule so you only have to put it down once.
>Vampiric Toughness (passive)
>Vampires in the World of Darkess are just naturally built tougher than humans, but they have their own unique vulnerabilities. Not counting the soak and defenses they get from armor and equipment like everyone else, vampires have the following conditions.
>Against conventional weapons and armaments up to and including standard-issue guns, a vampire has 1.5x their normal innate Soak, rounded up.
>Against sunlight, fire and silver weapons, a vampire has 0.5x their normal innate Soak, rounded up.
>Against all other forms and sources of damage, a vampire uses their normal Soak.

>Also, against those sources of damage a Vampire is weak to, all such sources of damage count as minimum Vicious 1. If a weapon or equivalent is already Vicious, add an additional rank to it.

I wasn't necessarily trying to imitate the health system, just the bit that vampires are tougher that mortals. I probably will just give them an extra Soak or two.

Well, good. Trying to translate mechanics directly rarely ends well.

Ooh that's a good idea. I hadn't thought to give sunlight or silver qualities, just high damage.

Yeah, when I first copied out the rules from VtR to get what I wanted thematically, celerity gave 1 Soak per level and resilience gave health. The VtR rules are a fucking mess anyway, making this Genesys hack is doing the world a favour if they never have to touch VtR again because of it. Fuck I hate these rules

I'm new to genesys, is it literally just the fantasyflight star wars games with rules for custom settings?

Not precisely the Star Wars system, because it's a lot cleaner and more refined. But at its core, yes, it's a generic version of the Star Wars RPGs designed for use with any genre.

>hating nwod this badly
>being this retarded
Unless you're talking 2e in which case I completely agree with you, that shit's for the birds

He did mention the "2e is dildoes" sentiment in the last thread.

That may have been me too.
1e nWoD at least worked, albeit a little jankily. The new approach to combat fucking sucks.

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Yep, I'm abandoning 2nd edition. I can't put my fingers on what about it kills my soul, but I'm trying not to port that bit over.

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One last bump before bed, hang in there gengen

I have the dice from the star wars system, are the dice the same or did the revisions to the system change the dice?

They're the same in their meaning, just the symbols are rebranded.

They are the same dice with the same distribution. The symbols are different, that's all.

Also, no Force dice are used in this system.

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I noticed there was a similar weakness for the Occult Commando enemy as dictated in the weird war section of the settings chapter.
>Arcane Weakness
>Silver, blessed or holy weapons and ammunition count their Crit rating as 1 when used against this character

Oooh, that also really works. There's so much stuff I overlook in the book because I see the title and think "I don't need occult Commandos"

You would look at the revenant in the steampunk chapter and not think anything of it, but then you read it and realize it's a fucking lycanthrope.

I genuinely did read it a few days back but slipped the weird war chapter. I debated using its rules for vampire frenzying

Right, I've solidified my rules for Frenzy in VtR.
Frenzy occurs when specific Discipline tests made to resist Frenzy (similar to a fear check). The difficulty of the test scales. For every quarter (rounding up) of your strain suffered, add a difficulty die. For every quarter of your wounds missing, upgrade a die.

When frenzied, decide if you will fight or flee. If some upstart flicks a cigarette at the back of your head, you might want to rip his head off. If you stumble into the sun, you'll want to flee. Take any sensible action to accomplish this. The Beast isn't dumb, but it is an instinctive creature. You upgrade any Brawn and Agility rolls twice, but reduce your intelligence and willpower by one while frenzied. Your unarmed attacks deal +2 damage and have Crit 2.

You leave Frenzy when your wound threshold is filled, you recover all of your strain, or you accomplish your original intent upon Frenzying (until there's nobody else to fight). You are not knocked unconscious at max strain. You recover one strain per turn. Allies can attempt social rolls to calm you, with setback equal to your current strain. Successes recover one strain per success. Touchstones take 2 boost to calm a frenzied vampire.

The idea is that a freshly frenzied vampire isn't immediately able to be talked down. The more fighting a frenzied vampire does, the more strain they accrue, so the longer they Frenzy and fight. A gm us encouraged to spend enemy advantage to inflict strain for maximum fun.

When do these checks happen?

On VtR you can be made to resist Frenzy when: you are physically threatened, insulted, attacked and when set on fire. VtR uses a flat 30% success chance per die, and adds more dice to boost success chances making some easier to resist than others.

I'm going for: anything that takes you below half health, being in sunlight, being of fire, direct specific threats and hitting the strain threshold. Not a frequent occurrence, but being reckless can mean you end up with a lot of strain spent, increasing your chances of Frenzying at a critical moment.

Makes sense. You wouldn't trigger frenzy during a social encounter, would you? Maxing strain in a social encounter is just the guy saying "fine, I agree to your terms."

Typically quite a lot of a vampire game is social, they're cast as very political creatures. Stabbing one another in the back and dicking each other over. Watching someone lose their shit and Frenzy in a social environment would throw a lot of shit on their good name. It's a bit odd, but it works in game to enforce manipulation and schemes instead of fighting in the lobby.

That sounds silly, though. I get that vampire politics are a big thing, but getting out-debated at a conference should not be grounds for flipping out and getting summarily executed for making a scene, at least not every time it happens.

Not necessarily every time. It's less debates that get you mad, more obvious moves on territory, character assassination and threats that'll do it. Another thing is that you should be able to control yourself, or at least play the politics game better. I won't be checking Frenzy every social check, but when it's thematic to do so. Like using the social encounter rules, they're not necessarily there for every charm roll to get backstage. They're for dramatic moments

As long as it makes sense.

Pulp Adventurer user here. Knocked together the first ship profile at lunch, one half eyeballing the aerospace fighter, one half filing serial numbers off of star wars vehicles. Criticisms and critiques welcome.

Dominion Motors - Light Reconnaissance Craft Type 2
Armor - 01
HT - 05
SS - 07

Silhouette - 2
Speed - 4
Handling - +1

Control Skill - Piloting
Complement - 1 pilot
Passenger Capacity - None
Consumables - 1 day
Encumbrance Capacity - 5 (still fiddling with this)
Price/Rarity - 3,000 / 5
Weapons - Twin Machine Gun ( Fire Arc: Forward; Damage: 2; Critical: 4; Range [ close]; linked 1)

A serviceable (albeit puny) light aircraft from Canadian manufacturer Dominion Motors. Due to the availability of parts and the ease of fabrication, this ship became a favorite of private militias, pirates, etc.

Yes, yes I do like the Gregor. Sue me.

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I'd add a hardpoint, maybe up machine gun damage by 1? Possibly as a note add a setback or upgrade difficulty once on landing and takeoff to represent the wing placement giving the pilot problems?

Plane design, as ridiculous as it is, typically doesn't get in the way of pilot performance in games like this.

Totally getcha

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Glad I looked in on the thread! Was setting up a pulpy/aviation/alternate interwar setting. If there's a PDF and session report coming that's amazing luck for the idea stealer in me! Go aces user.

Last night my players dropped a 7TP light tank from Space, onto Nazi occupied Pearl Harbour. They split into 3 teams to take down a giant coal powered nazi mech, dubbed Metal Gear Reichstag. 3 players infiltrated MGR, made their way to its head and blew it up before parachuting out. Our pilot in his Spitfire was shot down by Zero's and the Tank Ace rammer a Panzer, boarded it and killed the crew with a. 30 calibre machine gun.

One hell of a session, pulp is one hell of a drug.

Forgot the hardpoint, added that in. Might leave damage on the light craft as is, since it's supposed to be the zippy, weaker option for a plane.

Putting together the pdf today and tomorrow. Got pulled into running a week early and unprepared, so there won't be any airplane antics, but I've got a plot in mind. Check out Adamant Entertainment's Pulp Plot generator if you're ever strapped for ideas.. It's less than the cost of a candybar thanks to sales going on.

Solid cross section! Saving this for a game.

That's pretty nutty.

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>"Jesus, less and less survivors every day"
>"Stay sharp, less people out there mean that those fuckers will start sniffing around the walls."

New rule, If your post a pic you add a caption?
BAM! New and improved idea fodder!

I was thinking of doing that anyway while I grind through the book.

I'm making a flintlock setting for my players, a reused for a D&D group I ran some years ago. See how this turns out. Gonna have to make a new magic system though.

What's wrong with the current magic system?

The old setting I had made the arcane magic was infected and using it caused you to mutate. Think chaos from warhammer or the Saidin from Wheel of Time. The only "magic" people could used was blood magic (manipulate their own life force).

To keep it easy and the same I could just reflavor the magic system as blood magic, maybe make 2 strain switch to 1 wound. But otherwise I have to make a blood magic system. I might just heavily modify the current magic system by adding talents or something.

My players enjoyed it at the time, but I'm curious if it'll translate well to the less tactical combat of Genesys from 3.5 D&D.

What else is there about your setting?

Well, that's the main thing that needs to be changed/modified from the base is the addition of blood magic. I'll also be adding a tainted arcane magic addition, but that's easier to do as it's not something the players would normally have access to.

Luckily Genesys lends well enough to firearms so I won't have to use the broken 3.5 firearms I had to use. Basically the firearms can be modified versions of the rulebook's guns to facilitate them being flintlock (e.g. prepare).

The lore of the world was never too expansive since it was only for my players and I. The main thrust of it is that Arcane magic was poisoned in an experiment by Elves in the distant past. This led to an apocalyptic event that nearly wiped out all life sentient life (including extinction of th Elves).

In my 3.5 version the players hunted people tainted by magic and turned into Demons by it. Sadly I lost almost all my material from that time, but while playing EotE the other day a player brought up they'd like to play that sort of campaign again. I think I would be able to refine it a bit since my college days.

Would flintlock pistols really need Prepare 1?

I'm thinking the pistols will have prepare 1 or prepare 2, I'll have to do some balance passes on them.

Rifles/Heavy Guns will be prepare 2 or 3 depending on how important I want prepare lowering talents (e.g. quick draw) to be.

I'm going to run balance test games with my core group as I slowly cobble it together.

Prepare 2 means you need two maneuvers to get it ready, and that's obscene for a personal weapon.

A crossbow is Prepare 1.
An unwieldy steam-powered machine gun that needs a lot of ammo ready ahead of time has Prepare 1.
An oversized revolver you need to brace yourself to use has Prepare 1.
A Stinger missile - a shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile - has Prepare 1.
The only thing in the core book that suggests a Prepare 2 is a fucking TOW launcher.

And you want to put Prepare 2 on a flintlock rifle? Just to incentivize quick-prep talents?

Yeah, way too much prepare.

The quality you're looking for is Slow-Firing. This sets up how many turns it takes before the weapon can be fired again. Combine with Limited Ammo to make sure they also have to actually spend a maneuver to reload and you'll get your slow-ass firing guns.

But if a guy is covered in a brace of pistols, he should be firing them as fast as he can pull them. Try not to make it literally cheaper for him to throw them away and buy a new set though.

A hand cannon has prepare 1 and limited ammo 1 in the book.

Perhaps making a flintlock pistol limited ammo 1 while keeping prepare 1, limited ammo 1 on the flintlock rifle is a good way to go about it.

I think the key balance on these would be forcing players to spend 1 or 2 maneuvers for the weapon.

Needing two maneuvers to reload a personal weapon should be at the worst. You have to give credit to the fluidity of time and how much narrative leeway you have. None of this "a round is six seconds" bullshit.

Two maneuvers for a powerful weapon seems reasonable from a mechanical perspective. It definitely adds a layer of decision making for the player. I think the balance on that depends on the weapon power.

From a narrative standpoint, the fastest a well-trained soldier can probably reload a smooth bore flintlock/musket is ~15 seconds. Though it would be difficult to maintain that constant level of reload for a lengthy period of time and under fire.

I guess it depends on the alternatives for the players. If the player ONLY has a 2 maneuver weapon, then yea, that would suck from a "fun balance" standpoint. But if they have other options they can take then it adds a layer of meaningful tactical decision making.

It's all relative. If you're in an incredibly fast-paced battle, then yes, a flintlock rifle you have to reload on the spot will hold you back. But if you're having a sniper duel with someone else, rounds last much longer in time, like how a maneuver would be slowly shuffling through the brush and staying at long range with your target to try and get a better angle.

As says, you're looking at it from the wrong angle. The correct answer is to give flintlock weapons the either the Slow-Firing quality, if only to represent the time between shots due to reloading, or the Limited Ammo 1 quality mentioned by to reinforce that you have one shot before you need to reset the gun. Genesys is one of those games that encourages you not to worry about ammo counts unless it's narratively relevant; rolling a Despair on a check typically gives the GM the opportunity to say "your gun's out of ammo," forcing you to take time to reload. Since flintlock weapons have one shot before they reset, it's relevant to give them either of the above features to represent this.

If the core book is to be believed, a weapon is typically Slow-Firing if it balances out the weapon being extraordinarily powerful, like the Gauss rifle in the science fiction (Android) setting: 10 damage, Crit 2, the Pierce 5 quality, and it excels at extreme range, but it's Slow-Firing because the capacitors need to recharge between shots.

Slow-Firing 1, to be clear. That says that after firing the weapon, you must wait an entire round before you can fire it again. Again, the book mentions this is typically reserved for very powerful weapons that have to cool down between shots.

That in mind, if it were me, it would probably be best to give your flintlocks Limited Ammo 1 - that means they get one shot before they must spend a maneuver to reload it. That would best reflect the behavior you probably want to see. A person should be able to immediately draw and fire a weapon that's already primed to go, but then they'd need a maneuver to reset before it's ready to go again. If the weapon had Prepare, that means they'd pull the pistol out of their holster, wait for a maneuver, then fire. That wouldn't make much sense.

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Check out the dark heresy conversion. That has tainted magic you can easily use, while still using basic Genesys magic. Upgrade one difficulty die by default, on despair you have a peril.

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Let me try.

>"That's right, fella. Drinking water, clean, pure, fresh from my home made water purifier. Tastier than pre-war bottle water. I accept trade or Gisnep dollars."
>"You wanna know where to find Gisnep dollars? Well if you follow the line of monorail towers, you come across the sunken ruins of a town called Gisnep. It a place full of riches, if you got the guts."
>"Just watch out for pirates."

>Social Utopia was achieved, Genders where balanced, Racism extinguished, Bigotry to gender identity washed away.
>But they had awaken from along sleep, broken experiments of the 3rd Rich. Mix of man an beast fuelled by an ideology of purity and wielding weapons long since banned.
>Little stood in their way

Yea, I assume the book hand cannon has the prepare quality likely because its one of those large cannons that had a stand you had to set it on to fire accurately due to their relatively high weight.

So maybe a very large flintlock, like, well, a hand cannon would warrant the prepare property. Otherwise I think limited ammo 1 is fine.

A dual-barreled gun might have limited ammo 2 as small pistols of that time sometimes had more barrels.

I'll have a look. It might be interesting to still allow a significantly buffed arcane magic but give it a tainted magic where you cannot remove the taint.

In the setting, use of an arcane spell irrevocably corrupts a person. However, it's also incredibly powerful -- promising everlasting life and being able to bend reality to the user's will -- so some people still attempt to tame it. Before it was tainted the sentient races traveled the stars, went between planes, and lived for thousands of years.

There's still some remnants, even thousands of years later, of the old civilization.

>"We have to leave! Get up, damn you!"
> Saria laid on the hot black stone and covered her face with a gauntleted hand. "It doesn't matter anymore. We failed, Thibault. They completed the ritual." She began to weep softly.
> The cultists around Thibault were frozen in place, no longer attacking, no longer cursing or chanting, just frozen. They looked out over the lava pits towards the horizon. Rising up was an abomination of immense size, their god. A single tear rolls down Thibaults cheek.

The writeup for the hand cannon in the steampunk setting:
>Hand Cannon
>Ranged (Light), DAM 9, Crit 3, Medium range, Encum 3, $400, no rarity listed
>Knockdown, Limited Ammo 1, Prepare 1

>A hand cannon is quite literally a breech-loading, largebore pistol that operates much like its larger kin. The weapon is typically used for big-game hunting, and its effects on a human target are predictably devastating. The term is also sometimes applied to oversized revolvers with similar stopping power. While hand cannons of all makes generally take the form of a large pistol, the recoil is such that all but the largest and strongest individuals are advised to place both hands firmly on the grip before pulling the trigger.
>Someone fring a hand cannon probably has to brace themself to deal with the significant recoil, which we’ve represented with the Prepare quality. It has to reload, so characters only get one shot (but that’s usually enough).

Sounds about right for a particularly large musket/flintlock. Not a normal pistol or rifle, but a cannon. Probably all regular flintlocks would have limited ammo 1 but only something like that would have prepare 1.

That definitely sounds appropriate. Check out the corruption rules towards the end of the DH conversion too. You gain mutations and other fun things as the blasphemy of your soul manifests physically. Not sure how arcane magic corrupts in your setting, but the rules are worth checking out for inspiration if nothing else.

I like the sound of the setting also keep us posted user.

Msket, Sarwheel, pistol have limited Ammo X depending on barrels (pistols might have 2)

Arquebus, Blunderbuss, Caviler, all have Prep 1 in addition.

If it's not already been expressed to you, then for sake of clarity:
Depending on your setting, Melee and Ranged skills can be split up into Light and Heavy versions, depending on how prevalent that mode of combat is and if you need to specify the difference. The default suggestion is to split Melee and keep one Ranged skill in fantasy settings, while you split Ranged and keep one Melee skill in every other setting.
The rule-of-thumb difference between them is that the Light skill is for one-handed weapons, while the Heavy skill is for two-handed weapons.

So for your flintlock setting, you would definitely split Ranged into Ranged (Light) and Ranged (Heavy); I'm not sure how prevalent melee is in your setting in comparison to warrant splitting the Melee skill. Your flintlock pistol and one-handed hand cannon would use Light, and your rifle or blunderbuss would use Heavy. Anything bigger than that, like a crew-serviced weapon or any sort of heavy ordnance launcher, would use Gunnery.

Yea, that sounds close to what I want. I definitely want to make it punishing enough that no player would ever want to use arcane magic except in the most dire situations. In the original campaign the players actually hunted people corrupted into demons.

It's gonna be slow going as I'll be working on the mechanical portions and then playtesting them with my group every week or other week. In maybe a month or so I should have the base set up.

So one of my players wants to fly Pic Related, and treat it essentially as a "steerable missile from the Mormon Kingdom, God willing the pilot will make it back to the launching zeppelin."

Not that I'm entirely opposed to this... But I'm at a loss for how to stat it. Handling penalty, I suppose, and middling stats?

That artful description implies a high top speed, poor handling, and surprising durability. I've not gotten to the vehicle rules yet, so I can't speak to anything specific.