Btw, peeps, I changed everyone's embedded images to links. I like to keep embedded images out of the game thread so it's more pleasurable to scroll on smaller devices.
So yes, if you have accompanying artworks, visual aids, even soundtracks, feel free to create links to them in your post.
I take it you all believe in the Force to some extent, considering you'll have witnessed Force-users training at Resistance base on Ajan Kloss.
So does anyone not believe in it? Most of you are Force users, except for Amos, Jix and 2BB-2 (obviously). Consider the Force as just 'magic' in D&D. It's used in lots of ways. Just because you're a wizard, doesn't mean you believe in the cleric's god, even though you both cast spells, frex.
Out of curiosity, Winta and Preach, what colour are your lightsabers? Preach's has a cracked Jedha crystal, so it's a bit fiery like the visual effect on Kylo Ren's. (Of course, no-one trained by the Resistance will have a red Sith crystal.)
The Force... yes. She can feel it- Maz started her on that path even though it has been something like a feeling, a tickle since she was young. But...
The Jedi? the Sith? Sure Rey is very strong. Some people who know her or have seen her say so. Stories spread quickly. Leia is close-mouthed about her own background with it... and there are oldtimers telling stories they remember or heard from someone even older than them,,, Some bad emperor who had troopers hunt down a lot of people and wipe them out, like 60 years ago... so there are stories about things and people from a long time ago in a part of the Galaxy that seems far, far away. Not much influence over the life of slave girl whose homeworld is at the ass end of the Corellian Run, and has lived almost all her life in Hutt Space or on the outer rim.
She believes. She has possibly been in the presence of Kylo before. Her parents were high enough for that. Obviously the stuff exists.yet outside of Snoke and Kylo, and some influences from the “Knights of Ren” not that much day to day influence. Apart from her own little abilities. But she rarely thinks of those and most of the time wouldn’t even think of the things she is doing in terms of ‘being at one with the force’ or some such. It’s just ‘things she does’
The Jedi have certainly gone through phases, from warrior-monks to knights errant to outright crusaders. They've been around for a long time so are most commonly associated with the Force. But you have the Guardians of the Whills, the Church of the Force, the Nightsisters and many other groups in the canon for whom the Force is integral to their faith.
Next question.
Lore and accessibility.
I'm trying to find a level that's right for everyone. Everyone has some exposure to Star Wars, but even if you've watched all the movies you might not know your YT-1250 from your Quadjumper, etc.
Have I lost anyone so far? Does anyone need more description or linkage? Or are you happy to read and Google anything you aren't sure about?
I'll try to be much more specific when it comes to combat and hazards, so you know where your characters are, what's happening to them and what they can do about it.
2BB-2 was on the Raddus, witness at first- or second-hand to General Organa's miraculous survival of the destruction of the bridge. It's not so much a case of belief as the comprehension that there are phenomena explained by the Force that are inexplicable by other means. It's a weird universe, weird things happen, the Force serves as a blanket explanation for the time being.
I am fine with the lore. I didn't look up the ship, but I have enough of a mind's eye, that I didn't need the specifics. Perfectly understandable the way you are writing the scenes.
As an introduction to the full game system, the Beginner Games starts us with this combat encounter.
Behind the curtain, conflict with these Strus Clan Gangsters cannot be avoided---well, presumably unless the PCs give them what they want but I don't think that's on the cards---but what the Beginner Game does is require the PCs to describe how they're handling the stand-off and make skill checks based on that. Successes and Advantages from these skill checks determine the order of combat and recupe Strain.
(All the PCs start the game with 2 Strain, to represent the demands of the mission up to now.)
This is instead of rolling for initiative normally, which is a mechanic the Beginner Game introduces later.
In short, by playing your character you have given me an idea of what skill checks they are making.
By succeeding in these skill checks, they will not avoid combat but gain the initiative over the Strus Clan Gangsters, and in this game system gaining initiative is vital. Han definitely shoots first.
Note, when you gain initiative you do not gain initiative for your specific PC. It is a PC slot that you can give to someone else, if it makes sense in the fiction.
So, for example, Amos might win initiative but if he would wait for Winta's signal then Winta can take his slot and Amos take a PC slot further down the order.
This avoids having to ready actions like in D&D.
Since the initiative order stays the same for the entire combat encounter, the PCs can keep shuffling around in their slots as befits the narrative.
The Beginner Game only requires four PCs to make skill checks here (it was only written for four), so to make this work I will have some PCs' checks effectively assisted by others. I think this makes sense in the fiction, where it seems some of the same skills are being used. In this system, assistance can drastically increase chances of success.
So, based on what your characters have done so far, not on what you've written they will do if/when combat starts, what skill checks am I making?
Amos = Coercion w/ Blue dice from unskilled assistance from Sirra Jelly Bean = Cool w/ Blue dice from unskilled assistance from 2BB-2 Jix = Skulduggery w/ Blue dice from being at the back Winta = Negotiation w/ Blue dice from unskilled assistance from Preach
The Beginner Game sets the difficulty for the check at Easy, aka 1 Purple dice.
For Amos and Sirra, I would annotate their Coercion skill check as YGGB¬P, or Yellow Green Green Blue versus Purple, or 1 Yellow dice, 2 Green dice, 1 Blue dice and 1 Purple dice. At the table you would roll them all together, and Purple's result goes head to head against the others.
Gypsy. Since you know the system, I'll just mention that Destiny Points aren't introduced until later in the Beginner Game so can't be spent yet. I'll get rolling those dice!!
Jix rolled a Failure, so the less favourable initiative order is used.
Bear in mind this is not the normal initiative mechanic, it's just the Beginner Game getting us straight into the action.
Also, for each Advantage, the characters who rolled it recupe 1 Strain. For each Threat, the characters who rolled it gain 1 Strain.
Thus, Winta and Preach gain 1 Strain and have 3 Strain total. They are making prime targets of themselves by stepping forward and representing the team, so I think gaining stress is understandable!
Amos and Sirra, Jelly Bean and 2BB-2 recupe all their Strain. Jix recupes 1 Strain, so now has 1 Strain.
Strain is not hit points per se, that's Wounds. Strain is more like a currency you spend to gain extra manoeuvres on your turn and activate certain Talents, but technically if you surpass your Strain Threshold you are exhausted.
As for the less favourable initiative order, this also seems reasonably explained in the fiction to me. The team are not bloodthirsty slythmongers, they have tried everything in their repertoire to avoid a fight.
What is the initiative order then?
1st PC Strus Clan Gangsters 2nd PC 3rd PC 4th PC 5th PC 6th PC 7th PC
I think Winta will take the first PC slot, kicking us off. Since the other PCs will follow after the Strus Clan Gangsters, I can freestyle the rest.
So are we other than Winta waiting for your post with the baddies then posting our intended actions, or posting our intended actions and then you resolve the whole set?
Art. Yes, what I do is resolve as far as I can, using what you've posted so far but at some point the situation will have changed so much that I'll come back to you for more posts.
Angrboða. Indeed. The important thing is that your negotiations didn't fail. The Strus Clan have made a trip out to the scavengers to rip them off. There's just no way they'd leave empty handed. You've given them a fair shake of the dice. The very covert nature of your team makes you less overtly threatening, so scaring them off isn't likely either.
In fact, given it's now over 50 years since the Jedi Order roamed the Galaxy, even threatening with lightsabers would probably just give the Strus one more thing they wanted to take from you. (They wouldn't understand the significance.)
OK, I started things slightly differently, giving Winta an action before combat starts to trigger the Treadable, thus allowing Jelly Bean to take the 1st PC slot.
Out of the PCs, the worst offensive luck has been Jelly Bean, though her roll was still pretty good.
The worst defensive luck has been Jix, who somehow managed to get hit twice even though the Strus have three black dice from his armour and being prone. I don't know what the odds of that are! Still, they didn't do much harm.
In fact, none of the PCs have accrued much harm, mostly stippling and light burns. Nothing that would even need a bandage.
So does Sirra have an angle on the one trying to get an angle on her. Alternately, if she doesn’t does she have an angle on the one pinning down jelly bean?
I think, since this is the introductory combat encounter and intentionally doesn't incorporate the full ruleset, we'll just say yes, Sirra can see the bugger trying to get an angle on her.
As for the Jelly Bean attackers (an unusual statement), Sirra can see those too, though I'll add a black dice (officially called a Setback dice) for all the clutter in between.
Jakku was quite scenic. Then again I've actually visited Matmata and the Atlas Mountains in Tunisia, where Tatooine was filmed in A New Hope, and it was also incredibly scenic for a desert. I think Jakku was filmed in Abu Dhabi.
***
So the first combat encounter is resolved.
There were some non-standard things about it, as per The Beginner Game. I've talked about the initiative order previously, so here I will talk about the adversaries.
Adversaries are divided into three classes. Minions, Rivals and Nemeses.
Nemeses function exactly like PCs. They have Wounds and Critical Injuries. They have their own skill ranks and Strain, which they can spend to power more manoeuvres and Talents. So they are dangerous offensively too, whether you're in a shootout or negotiation.
Nemeses always have a name and backstory, like Darth Vader, and will probably be reoccurring, or in the case of monsters will be a major set-piece, like the Rancor.
Rivals are streamlined PCs. They have Wounds and Critical Injuries, yes, but no Strain. They can spend Wounds on extra manoeuvres and Talents instead though, and they do have their own skill ranks.
Because Rivals often pepper an encounter, they are dangerous and are often priority targets. A Rival might be that Sandtrooper with the heavy blaster rifle. Or they could be named characters, just not essential to the story, like Dengar and Bossk and other background bounty hunters. In our game, the Sunstrider's crew are Rivals.
Minions are cannon-fodder. They only have Wounds, they do not have Critical Injuries. So if you crit a Minion, instant kill. Minions have no Strain either, so no extra manoeuvres or activation Talents.
Minions do not have skill ranks unless they're grouped into Minion Group. A Minion Group has skill ranks based on the number of Minions in the group, so the bigger the Minion Group the more skill it has. The Minion Group's Wounds are all merged into one. So if a Stormtrooper with a Wound Threshold of 5 is merged into a Minion Group of 3 Stormtroopers, that group has a Wound Threshold of 15. For every 6 Wounds it receives, another Stormtrooper is killed. When you damage a Minion Group, the damage accumulates for the group as a whole, so by inflicting 16 damage to the Stormtroopers in one attack, you could kill them all.
Likewise, even though the Minion Group has 3 Stormtroopers, it attacks as a group so it attacks once. A group with lots of Minions in it will have a high skill rank though, be very likely to hit and damage whoever it's attacking.
As written, in this first combat encounter the Strus Clan Gangsters were nine stand-alone Minions, rather than a Minion Group of nine.
This results in eight more attacks against the PCs, but each attack is less likely to hit. It also means one attack can't mow through the entire group.
This was obviously done to allow all the PCs a chance to make an attack. Important if learning a new game. It also meant the damage done by the Minions was spread out amongst all the PCs and fairly mild, compared to one PC taking a big hit in the first round.
Notable was Jelly Bean's slightly underwhelming first attack compared tothe ludicrous overkill of her second. In the first attack, she dished out 7 damage. In the second round, she could have dished out 21!! The poor Strus Clan Gangster only had 3 Wounds left!
Since she also rolled 4 Advantages though, she could spend 3 on a crit and instakill him, and still have 1 left over to recover some Strain.
With both lightsabers, the big standout was the Breach 1 quality. This means a lightsaber can negate 1 Vehicle Armour or 10 Soak.
Soak is damage reduction. Your PCs have between 3 and 4 Soak. Stormtroopers have 5. Lightsabers don't care about your Soak either way! Don't get hit by one.
Finally, 2BB-2. I never knew a fire extinguisher could be so dangerous, but despite its low damage it has a crit rating 2, so only needs 2 Advantages to activate a crit. Against Rivals or Nemeses, that's not so bad but against Minions it's nasty!
No-one has received a Critical Injury. Until you receive a Critical Injury, the Wounds you acquire are minor injuries, cuts, grazes, scrapes, bruises, or tweaked muscles, lingaments, etc. They equate to a general feeling of being battered. If you go beyond your Wound Threshold, you're knocked out and need to be revived, and will probably take Critical Injuries too.
Jix is your Medic, and because he/she (Verpine are hermaphroditic) has Stimpack Specialisation Talent, she can heal 6 Wounds with one stimpack application.
A stimpack is crammed full of drugs, including adrenaline, Bacta and Spice, that promotes rapid healing.
Jix has received the most Wounds, 4, but some of the stimpack would be wasted. Another way of looking at it, that I might include in future, is if this was D&D, she'd be on 69% hit points.
Strain. Remember that Strain is the currency you use to power extra manoeuvres (allowing you to do more stuff on your turn) and some of your Talents. If you go beyond your Strain Threshold, you are exhausted. You're pretty much done for the day.
You don't heal Strain like Wounds, but you do get a chance to recover Strain at the end of combat and every time you make a skill check (by rolling Advantages).
OK, so here we are already at the Encounter 3 in the Beginner Game. I know, surely this is only the second encounter, right?
In the Beginner Game booklet the preceding stand-off and fight are labelled as two Encounters 1 and 2. I think this is simply because each encounter introduces a new mechanic.
Encounter 1, the stand-off, introduces the basic skill check.
Encounter 2, the combat, introduces the combat system.
Encounter 3, the negotiation, introduces opposed skill checks.
For this encounter, I'm going to parse you out to your own threads. Although the plot tells us you're trying to win over the scavenger tribe, I want us to focus more on your characters for this next section.
So far the game has had a fast-paced intro with Alistair Maclean-style plotting, but we've reached our first breathing space and now it's time to get to know this team of Awakened Resistance fighters.
If you're in a thread with another player, enjoy playing off each other, ask a question about the other player's character at least once in every post. It doesn't have to be your character asking, but it's you the player showing that you're interested in the other player's character.
If you're in a thread with an NPC only, don't worry I'll still engage and try to bring out more about you character.
As it stands, Winta has lined up the following:
Winta and J.Bean speak to Vontoba, the tribe's Zabrak headwoman
Amos and Preach speak to Torani, the tribe's Arcona junk dealer, driver of the Treadable
2BB-2, Jix and Sirra, mingling with the scavengers to win over hearts and minds.
Yep, I'll open new threads. Was just waiting in case anyone wanted a shuffle around, but it looks like you're all doing what your team leader told you to do.
Now then. There is a process for recovering Strain at the end of a combat encounter in the FFG rules, but in the Beginner Game it gives us a simplified version to start with.
Each character can recover Strain equal to their Cool skill (or Presence if they have no skill ranks in Cool).
So I'll apply that now, standing you in good stead for the next encounter, hazards.
Strain going up and down in this way is supposed to reflect the ongoing stress and fatigue on a mission, and those things that can reinvigorate you.
Even in combat, you can sometimes recover Strain, it might be having a moment to catch you breath whilst under fire, or nailing a headshot that inspires confidence, etc.
Although dealing with the scavengers has had its stresses---you're against the clock and the fate of the Galaxy rests on your shoulders. No pressure---you have also been able to stretch your legs in the fresh air and rehydrate, if only for a few minutes.
I'm locking threads ready to fold you all back the main thread. If your thread is locked, don't worry, it simply reached a good point to wrap up. You should be back in play very soon.
In the meantime, enjoy the Boonta's Eve Classic podrace....
OK, I have applied the Strain recovery and totted it up in the game notes at the bottom of the new thread.
Sticking with the theme of fast desert traversal, I thought a nice accompaniment to the new thread would one an extract from Ludwig Göransson's superb score for The Mandalorian.
In this scene, Mando and his new partner shoot across the Judland Wastes of Tatooine on speederbikes. Evocative stuff and rather apt for the action in game. Enjoy!
You'll notice I've moved us on a pace. Sticking with the cinematic style of the Star Wars game, we won't play out every transition, we don't need to see every second of the story to follow it.
A few interesting mechanical points about that last obstacle.
According to the printed hardbacks like Force & Destiny, you would use Survival skill to ride a mount. But according to The Force Awakens Beginner Game, you would probably use Piloting.
Checking your characters it was favourable to use Piloting-Planetary, so that's what I did.
I think in a situation more about a mount's welfare, capabilities and prevailing conditions, like riding a Tauntaun on Hoth, I'd go with Survival.
In the game notes you have an example of Sirra spending her two Advantages to give a Blue dice to Winta, since Winta had the worst dice pool for this check.
Then, 2BB-2 was able to give skilled assistance. He could lend Winta his 1 skill rank in Piloting-Planetary, this improving her dice pool too (upgrading a Green dice to a Yellow dice).
Thus, when Winta made the check she succeeded, but with Threat. I narrated the Threat and inflicted some Strain on Winta, but nothing more serious than a moment of peril.
Jelly Bean actually rolled some Advantage, so I narrated that as her recovering Strain, enjoying her natural desert climate. Whereas Jix and Preach rolled Threat so I narrated the opposite, that the heat was wearing them down and inflicted Strain.
The checks all had 1 Black (Setback) dice added due to the fierce sun but Jelly Bean removed it due to her Twi'lek species, and others removed it due to their Adverse Environment Clothing.
OK, so that is the Force Move power. Winta has the first tier of Force Move, which is about equivalent to pulling your lightsaber out of a snow drift.
None of the characters are at a Jedi Knight level.
Your starter characters have 30 XP spent on them (after initial character creation), which is what you'd expect after playing through one short adventure.
The guidelines in the book state Jedi Knight level is about 150 XP, but the concesus seems to be to create a Jedi like one of the film heroes (who have a much wider array of powers), Obi-Wan, Anakin, Rey, you need about 1200 XP.
In FFG's Star Wars system, more XP doesn't make you greatly more powerful as such---you can start the game with a Wookiee Marauder with a vibro-axe and be almost unstoppable in melee combat---instead it gives you more diverse capability.
OK, more skills checks complete. These ones had a Red dice involved (aka Challenge dice). Red dice have a symbol of them called Despair, it's not a critical fumble because it's not linked to Succeeding the check. Similarly to Threat, it's more like critical 's*** just went sideways'.
In this case, if also tied to a Failed check it would result in a very nasty fall, arrested by a jagged piece of metal for an astonishing 10 Wounds and 10 Strain! Ouch! The writer of the adventure must've written that column before his morning coffee!
Despair with a Successful check would result in a big collapse and more complications for the team.
Fortunately, on a single Red dice there's only an 8% chance of rolling a Despair.
In this latest check we finally saw the opposite of a Despair result, called a Triumph result. The Triumph symbol is only on a Yellow dice with about an 8% of being rolled.
This is a critical 'tide just turned in our favour' result, though like Despair it can occur whether you Succeed or Fail your check.
In this case, it means that 2BB-2 has done more than extract the astronavigation data, he's already found your next destination, the nearest Ghidrah node, before even handing it over to Lieutenant Bek.
ooc clarification- are you saying that bb2 got everything we needed? until BB shares this info, Jelly Bean would still believe that Sirra has to come down now that she has the computer powered and running to do the slicing... am I wrong? Can JB tell that we have all we need? or am i misreading things altogether?
2BB-2 is a custom-modified slicing machine and he rolled a Triumph. So he has everything you came for, and more, he's already decyphered it.
Although, yes, technically everyone is waiting on 2BB-2's reaction his windfall/awesomeness, it can be assumed he declares success and it's time to go, since there's no benefit not to.
And that's really the main benefit of the Yellow dice.
As you might have noticed, it's a funny system because your characteristics, Brawn, Agility, et al, do most of the work.
If you have a 4 Brawn, you'll have 4 Green in all Brawn skills, which right there is very good if all you aiming for is Success and a few Advantages. Athletics, for example.
But without a Yellow dice, you will never have a Triumph in that skill. Because Triumphs often have a bigger, broader impact in the fiction than "I succeed at what I was trying to do", they often result in quite memorable moments.
So it's worth buying a rank or two (that upgrade your Green dice to Yellow) in those skills you want to be remembered for.
1 Yellow =8% of Triumph 2 Yellow =16% of Triumph 3 Yellow =23% of Triumph 4 Yellow =30% of Triumph
The biggest step of course is having 1 Yellow as opposed to none.
Thanks Gypsy. I like to think of it as the DVD commentary.
So yes. Yellow dice aren't vital, and that might lead a player to think that skill ranks aren't vital.
But where skill ranks become very useful is if you have a skill linked to a low characteristic, that you want to improve but can't afford, or don't want to buff, its linked characteristic.
For example, I'm creating Chewbacca. I want him to have a high Brawn, but his trademark Bowcaster requires the Ranged-Heavy skill and that's linked to Agility.
Well I don't want him to have a high Agility. Chewie isn't portrayed as an agile character and if I increase Agility I won't be able to increase Intelligence or Willpower, which is more like Chewie.
So let's say Chewie has a 2 Agility, giving him a Ranged-Heavy of 2 Green. OK, so I'll buy skill ranks in Ranged-Heavy until I'm satisfied it's at the right level. 2 Yellow, 2 Green should do it (4 skill ranks).*
*As a lark, I'll check out how FFG statted Chewie officially. Bear with...
...OK, they give Chewie a 3 Agility and Ranged-Heavy at 3 Yellow, 2 Green. Which with a 2 Agility would take 5 skill ranks. Same principle, a lot more XP. The designers are using the '4 dice of any colour' guideline. i.e., If you want your character to be an expert at a skill, ensure they have at least 4 dice of any colour in it.
i play it as jb has to think it through when she hears the binary. a bit of translation has to happen in her head. but her skills and force ability made it a reasonable she could manage some semblance of understanding.- maybe by the third movie she will be quite conversant.
I think at best, Winta would have a rudimentary understanding for simple slow conversations in set-piece situations, such as dealing with administration
Only other Verpine. But it's something a good Mechanics might be able to do, modify a comlink to communicate with Verpine, but there's no pressing reason to in-game at the moment.
Well it's your choice to make, it's your character and there are no languages in this system.
What is speaking Binary? You might ask.
OK, so in the films, when Artoo beeps and bleeps, Luke can understand exactly what he says. Han Solo can't. Thus, Luke can speak Binary. Han can't.
If we do this with Wookiee. In the films, when Chewie growls and barks, Han can understand exactly what he says. Lando can't. Thus, Han can speak Wookiee, Lando can't.
If you think your character chats with Astromech droids, then they can speak Binary.
I think I will go the Obi-Wan route and "no" Preach doesn't understand binary well. He might gather enough to get obvious things, but he certainly doesn't speak it.
Sanity is somewhat overrated. 2BB-2 is generally happy assuming Organics can't, and using show-and-tell via holoprojector to get the message across to the greatest number in the shortest time.
Sorry for the delay folks, a busy end to the working week here as we prepare for a major Covid response policy change that may or may not come from Gov. Alas, in these times it's not business keeping us busy, but administration and emergency meetings!
So, question ... where are we coming up to in relation to the camp, what is in front of us if we keep going straight et al. Just trying to cement the picture in my mind of where we are coming up from.
Yes - I was wondering what was in front of us too - bare plain? rocky ground with cover? A nd how far do we have to run to reach the others - a turn, couple of turns, or far enough that we will never get there before combat is over?
The camp is in amongst dunes, so there is undulating ground all around, that counts as difficult terrain if you try to cross it on foot, but that also provides high ground and some cover against blaster fire vs anyone down in the camp.
Obviously that doesn't include the swoop bikes, but trying to shoot a junk blaster, one-handed from the back of a flying machine doing 150 mph isn't condusive to accuracy anyway.
Jelly Bean is up in the dunes. The rest of the team are approaching the dunes from the flats.
Here is where the cinematic style comes into play.
Jelly Bean is in the combat zone, at Extreme range from the shooting, she can advance on foot to get into (Medium) range with her blaster pistol. Sand dunes are difficult terrain, so she can either:
1. Take 4 whole rounds to move to Medium range,
Or 2., mount up again and move out in 1 round. Mounted on the Varactyl, she can move to anywhere in the combat zone in 1 round.
The rest of the team aren't in the combat zone at all. So their first round would be spent entering the combat zone. After that, they can move anywhere in the combat zone in 1 round if they stay mounted.
Whilst riding, you can generally move and shoot, or move and take some other action, etc.
Sirra has a blaster with Extreme range, so she could dismount on the edge of the combat zone and snipe.
Jix has a blaster with Long range, so could dismount closer and provide supporting fire. Bear in mind that Auto-fire in particular, is less effective at Long range because she'd be rolling YYGG¬PPPP. But she can snipe instead, for YYGG¬PPP. Both might have Blue and Black dice (from Aiming, for example).
"Thanks, GM, I didn't understand any of that."
OK, no problem. In summary, we can assume you try to stay mounted until you get within range of whatever it is you're trying to do. So don't worry about the rules, just tell us what your character is doing, I won't let you gimp yourself.
OK, I don't like doing combat-computing, Art, but because I love you, I will.
One of the coolest things about Sirra's hunting blaster is it has integrated teleoptics. This means the range difficulties when Sirra shoots it are:
Short = P Medium = PP Long = PP Extreme = PPP
Medium and Long range are the same. If she spends her manoeuvre getting into a nice shooting position (Aiming), she can add a Blue dice to her roll. No Black dice for the heat, because of her clothing, but targets are mostly in cover so that adds a Black dice. So at Extreme range she would be YGGBB¬PPPB. Chance of successful hit is about 60%.
She could suffer 2 Strain to focus on her Aim more intently, for another Blue dice. YGGBBB¬PPPB, 65% chance of success.
However, given the Strus Clan don't even have long range blasters, she could dismount at Long range instead. YGGBB¬PPB. Chance of successful hit is about 70%.
2 Strain, more Aim, one more Blue dice, YGGBBB¬PPB, 75% chance of success.
In this system, a weapon's range is a hard limit (unless you have fancy Talents that allow you to push that limit).
So Art, to summarise, Sirra is best to dismount at Long range and shoot from there. 70-75% is a reasonable shot, and doesn't risk dangerous return fire. The minor downside is the enemies on foot can close with her faster, though it'd still take them multiple whole rounds, during which time they wouldn't be in cover or shooting accurately.
I don't want you guys to bother with the system unless you want to though. I'll interpret your posts and always assume you wouldn't make a faux pas system-wise. I'll always act as a fan of your characters.
At this point in the adventure, I'm told I am to introduce Destiny Points, which I have explained in Rules Clarifications.
You can also track our group Destiny Points in Game Materials.
In that last round I demonstrated one possible use of Destiny Points. I imagined that one of you players had spent a Light Side Destiny Point to invoke a favourable story effect.
The story effect has to make sense in the established fiction and GM has veto, but for example, if it night we've established that Arconan Night Terrors lurk under the sands and can swallow whole landspeeders.
So the player might have spent the Destiny Point to have a massive Nightwatcher Worm burst from a sand dune and snatch of swoop bike out of the air.
But since it's still day-time, the player spending the Destiny Point suggested that Bormo get the drop on some of the Strus Clan Enforcers as they're trying to enter the wreck, stalling them while they're out in the open. From a previous post, we knew that Bormo was inside somewhere, so it fits perfectly.
As the GM, I interpreted this by having Bormo take out 2 members of the Strus Clan Enforcers 1 Minion group.
If you ever want to spend a Destiny Point in this way, flag it in the OOC comments in your game post, explaining your idea. But remember, the more Light Side Destiny Points you flip, the more Dark Side Destiny Points I will have to increase the stakes of your skill checks.
piggybacking on art's ooc post- I am hoping that they are close enough together that, if the grenade sticks as they pass over, their own momentum will take them away but the blast radius destroys all the bikes at once. at least that was what i was trying to describe anyway!
Ah OK, first thing's first then, J.B. has a shaped thermal grenade. It has no black radius per se, but whatever she attaches it to is going to be fubar for sure.
Alright, sorry for the delay, I had to put together a rather length explanation of Minion groups for you before I could proceed.
Whereas the Strus Clan in the first combat were individual Minions, the adventure presents these Strus Clan as Minion groups. Generally speaking that works in everyone's favour, players and GM. The PCs can quickly cut through a Minion group, but grouped Minions stand more chance of doing serious damage than individually.
You can read about them in Rules Clarifications, but basically Minion groups are more cinematic and less D&D.
This can change the way we describe the fiction. If Jelly Bean successfully detonates a Shaped Thermal Grenade on a swoop bike, it might well do sufficient damage to take out two or three. Yet we know it has no Blast radius, so what's happened? Something exciting and cinematic. e.g., The target swoop bike explodes, the one behind it yanks to the side to avoid the explosion and collides with a third, and boom, they mate with a sand dune at 150 mph.
Initiative. You might also have noticed that the adventure asks us to roll for initiative in this combat. There's nothing very interesting about that, but it results in the same form of flexible initiative order as before. With PC slots and NPC slots. If we were sat around a table, you players would decide who takes what PC slot. A nice side effect of this is that lightsaber-wielding Luke Skywalker might roll a top initiative slot but doesn't have to use it himself, if he thinks Han Solo can make better use of it with his heavy blaster pistol. (Han always shoots first, after all.)
A lot of Setback dice in that last couple of rounds!
Hot, desert environment. 1 Setback dice Called shot (to hit the rider on the back of a swoop bike). 1-2 Setback dice Targeting a speeding air target at all. 1 Setback
But you still managed to scratch off 9 Minions and even recoup some Strain. You do tend to accumulate less Strain when mounting a static defence, simply by not moving. Jix and Sirra suffered light wounds, burns, bruises. Be mindful though that they do mount up, and after you exceed your Wound Threshold you gain a Critical Injury and are temporarily incapacitated. If you dip back below your Wound Threshold via healing, get back on your feet and take Wounds over your Threshold again, that's another, more severe Critical Injury. Once you start nudging your Wound Threshold, things can go downhill for you fast.
Finally, despite the Beginner Game coming with battle maps and tokens, so far I've avoided creating a live tactical map. The system is designed for 'theatre of the mind' and that's how I'd like to keep it if at all possible, using maps and other imagery as purely visual aids.
Is everyone fine with that so far? I know combat can be chaotic and hard to dissect, but ask questions as needed---as you have been doing---and I think it'll work out.
Do what skills are needed to use that door gun and who has them? And at a guess would she be as effective aiming at the pilots with her gun, or that one?
i would guess -ranged heavy- since it is a big rifle on a pintel mount. too big to free carry unless your rambo... but not hardmounted on the ship. if it was hardmounted then the skill would probably be gunnery ie the turbolaser. then again, just having the mount might make it gunnery. not my call but i am familiar with them in real life
FFG's Star Wars is remarkably pedantic for a modern RPG. Each weapon is specifically assigned a skill it uses (and sometimes exactly how it uses that skill). It's certainly not a lite or fast system! In this case, we have a Z-6 rotatary blaster cannon that uses Gunnery skill.
Anyone without ranks in Gunnery can still use it at their base Agility. If Gunnery isn't a career skill (has a green tick next to the skill), they'll have a Black dice on their check. But tbh, Black dice are nothing to be scared of. They're like a -1 modifier in a d20 system.
Aiming for the riders adds 2 Black dice, on top of 1 already. Given the high damage output of the Z-6, she might be better manning it and letting rip, aiming for the swoop bikes instead. Her cyber-eye still gives her an automatic Advantage on Gunnery, and she'd negate those 3 Black dice.
Auto-Fire, Blast, Linked are all weapon qualities very very strong against Minion groups, because they allow you to multiply your damage. Since damage to a Minion group rolls over from one Minion in the group to the next (provided they're within range), you can devastate a Minion group with fully automatic blasters, double-barrel balsters, scatter blasters, grenades, and such.
Generally speaking, as a team, Jix and Sirra are most suited to long range. Jelly Bean and Amos to short range. Preach and Winta to engaged/melee range.
after reading your post I certainly felt the confusion that JB might feel- pilot the ship or man the gun or fix something to keep the ship in the air... those are her specialties but she can't do all of them at once... and this scene has a need for all of them at once.
given that she is quite good with her blaster as well, JB is quite the fun character to play in battle... although she'd probably kill herself just turning on a lightsaber so there's that.
EDIT- then i remembered this from the intro chapter...
Quote
"Leia, we should send the Awoken. We've trained them well. They've completed lightsaber construction with Professor Huyang."
Does this mean all of the PCs who are awoken have at the minimum built a saber and held it in their hands? Asking for a friend...
The Beginner Games are all quite generous with starting equipment. In the Force & Destiny Beginner Game, the pre-gens with lightsaber skill all have lightsabers.
However, in the Force & Destiny core rules, no PC could afford to buy a lightsaber at the start and it's described that they should build their own anyway, which would take some adventures to gather the materials.
What about our game here on DreamLyrics? Well, we know only a Force-sensitive can build a lightsaber and that most of the PCs are Force-sensitive.
Maz Kanata says that these Awoken characters have completed lightsaber construction with Professor Huyang, but not all our Force-sensitive PCs have a lightsaber, lightsaber ranks or even it as a career skill.
So in the case of Jelly Bean and Sirra, they must have completed the 'lightsaber construction' class, so to speak, but not built their own lightsaber. They might have constructed a basic hilt and inserted a crystal into it, for a working saber. Then perhaps Professor Huyang dismantled it for the next student.
It's not as if the Resistance has resources aplenty, and you have to remember that the traditional source of Jedi crystals was the planet Ilum. The First Order converted planet Ilum into Starkiller Base, and then the whole thing was destroyed by the Resistance. In fact Preach has his own crystal, a cracked Jedha crystal from his youth.
Can Jelly Bean wield a lightsaber? Sure, anyone can. She only has 1 Green dice in it though, and since it's not a career skill, 1 Black dice too. I'd be tempted to spend a Dark Side Destiny Point to upgrade the difficulty of your check so it has a Red dice, for more potential disaster. But I can only do that if you don't spend a Light Side Destiny Point first to upgrade your Green dice to a Yellow.
OMG this system is complicated to explain!! Thank you all for being patient with me.
all good- even with the complicated nature I think you did pretty well and I have the gist of it.
trust me, JB is not handling an active blade until she has training... and even then, she will need to discover a form of martial combat that isn't reliant upon Brawn... or else she will never be all that effective at it... maybe in this modern age with so few to teach, a style reliant on brawn is what is known but obi wan said the lightsaber is a weapon of finesse
“This is the weapon of a Jedi Knight. Not as clumsy or random as a blaster; an elegant weapon for a more civilized age.” -Obi-Wan Kenobi
since we didn't go down this path as player and GM I am not sure what the game rules permit- if brawn is just a default check stat and there are alternatives. Anyway, the possibilities for development as a force sensitve are quite intriguing to me.
I am not sure how long this game will last, whether it is just for this beginner module or perhaps you have in mind a continuation of the story into a campaign style game- you know... Neil Marsden, back by popular demand!
regardless of what the future holds, i am enjoying the character and the game quite a bit.
Sirra would view seeing herself as a ‘force warrior’ as vaguely ridiculous, so while she may have completed training, I’m sure she still doesn’t view herself that way.
“I know exactly what I’m for.”
From look at the sheets, PP, I’d guess that when untrained lightsaber defaults to brawn, but when trained it’s something else. Looking at preach, for example, his lightsaber skill has intellect listed. And for Winta it’s willpower. So it doesn’t look like it’s always brawn.
One thing about skills in this system. Anyone can have a go at anything, there are just Black dice (aka Setback dice) if it's not a career skill, and if you have no ranks in the skill, you might not be great at it either.
Amos actually could have a good go at Piloting-Space. He has 3 Green dice vs some Purple and 1 Black dice. If he could blag a Blue dice to improve the positive side of the roll, he'd be in a pretty good spot.
How difficult is piloting in the Star Wars setting?
We looked at this in-depth for our ftf campaign. From the cost and availability of starships, and how they're portrayed in the films, we determined that a light freighter costs about the same as a tractor rig, coach or Class-A RV in real life. Expensive, but not crazy money, and tricky to park and fine manoeuvre but fundamentally the same as driving a car.
This seems borne out in the films, where no-one ever hits a mental block piloting any starship or speeder. Either everyone in the Galaxy goes through the equivalent of helicopter/commercial pilot/astronaut training, or it's just not that hard. Like learning to drive a car.
So your character probably does know how to pilot a speeder or starship, even if they have no ranks or career skill. It's just that they might be as competent as your average car driver.
Lightsaber skill. So as you've figured out, this defaults to Brawn but there are lightsaber Specialisations that contain Talents, allowing you to use other base characteristics. Winta has Niman Technique, allowing her to use Willpower. Preach has Soresu Technique, allowing him to use Intellect like Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Jelly Bean has a 4 Agility so it would make most sense for her to learn Ataru Technique (uses Agility).
Sirra has 3 in Brawn, Agility, Intellect and Cunning, so her optimal choice would be to choose a technique that matched her planned stat boost from reaching Dedication Talent. Frex, if she planned to increase Cunning to 4, she might want to choose Shien Technique.
At the same time, the difference between a Lightsaber check with YYYG or YYYY is barely 5% across the board, so as long as you have 3 in the base characteristic, pick whichever style takes your fancy.
Just checking, I know she missed, but there also was ‘veering off’ are there still followers in her line of fire? And second ... can she “aim” a weapon like this: as in, spend a maneuver to make her hitting more likely? First time the maneuver was spent getting out the gun.
[Hmmm ... once 2BB-2 lets us know that wonderful news, either JB flies the ship and Winta goes outside to fix the thing, or JB goes outside to fix it with Winta covering her and Amos flies the ship.]
Sirra is keeping the swoop bikes at bay, discouraging them from getting to Short range and creating further mischief. With the undulating terrain and approaching Carbon Ridge, the Quadjumper will be moving around a lot so the swoop bikers will be targetable at some point.
Or alternately the astromech droid does what an astromech droid does. Neither JB or Winta have the means to secure themselves in place whilst on a rapidly-evading ship, let alone execute repairs whilst doing so.
Gypsy. You will be attempting a Medicine check to heal a 91 point Critical Injury. This has a Hard difficulty, i.e., 3 Purple dice.
Given you're sliding around on the floor of a Quadjumper, I'll add 1 Black dice to that too.
Now then, as the team's medic you are carrying some equipment that can help you. On p4 of your character sheet it lists an Antishock Blanket, using this reduces the difficulty by 1, so only 2 Purple dice.
Jix also carries some Nullcaine, but that's expensive stuff best reserved for keeping PCs in the fight. It allows the recipient to ignore the effects of a Critical Injury by taking 3 Strain. Very potent.
How bad are the effects of a Critical Injury?
Well, Mhar-li has a 91 point Critical Injury. That means everytime she performs an action, she takes another Wound. That's pretty bad, considering if she exceeds her Wound Treshold, she's KO'ed and takes another Crit Injury, modified by the first, making even worse effects possible.
In that last round, I rolled the first double Triumph I have ever seen. The chances of seeing one of those on two Yellow dice is 0.7%!
And in typical dice gods fashion, it was rolled by a poxy Minion group that couldn't do anything interesting with a double Triumph anyway.* So I had them upgrade the difficulty of Peach's next check (he'll have at least one Red dice) and "do something vital". In this case, I had one of the swoop bikes drop a passenger onto the roof of the Quadjumper.
Conceivable. This n00b is a Strus Clan Gangster, single Minion, like those you first fought. A relatively puny adversary and certainly not vital... until you put a proton grenade in his hand.
Oh, and for anyone cross-referencing stats in the books, I made a mistake with the rotary blaster cannon. I said it was a Z-6 but actually it's the Z-6's big daddy, the TAU-6. No stats for it in the books afaik, but the VX Sidewinder is a perfect stand-in for description and stats.
*Oh man, if you rolled a double Triumph on a Crafting check you could create a mega-weapon!
Slight delay here peeps. Was out Thursday and Friday, and gaming over Zoom today (with Gypsy and my ftf group), but CFH is very much in my mind. Should get our next resolution post up tonight or tomorrow.
Sorry about that. Catching up done. I shoud've taken care of this yesterday but over breakfast I started the *ahem* minor task of updating by phpBB3 board. Yeah, you know the story. Just about finished by afternoon tea! (This is why I put off updating it for so long!!)
I'll keep us moving through this action scene, and providing you don't end up as a crater we'll move into the third and final act of The Force Awakens Beginner Game.
After that we'll have the option of continuing with the free second adventure published by FFG, titled A Call For Heroes.
Now then, here's where it gets interesting. My plan for this second adventure would be to run it in the same forum, and it should take about the same time to complete, say 6-8 months. (The second adventure picks up immediately where the Beginner Game leaves off.)
With the Beginner Game, I made minimum adaptations, mainly to fit our characters (not the pre-gens) and meta plot (Ghidrah). Your characters were roughly on par with the pre-gens in terms of power level and equipment, and the difficulty ratings and enemies were all exactly as in the module.
With the second adventure, I want to adapt it more heavily. I want to bump up your characters to "knight level", which is considered 150 post-creation XP, along with appropriately beefed up equipment.
There will be a story explanation for this, so don't worry about that. What you might worry about is that I want to make the second adventure hard. The Beginner Game as written is pretty easy. Plenty of opportunities to screw up, but screws up aren't so harsh. They don't want new players feeling down because of a dice roll; the whole thing is more about learning the game.
Gypsy and I play FFG's Star Wars with our regular tabletop group. Mechanically, our characters have never come close to dying. Here on DreamLyrics, in the second adventure, I want to push that envelope.
That will mean enemies will be more skilled, better equipped, and whereas critters have so far been scenery, they might just try to eat your face. Story-wise, the stakes will be racheted up.
Does that sound appealing to you?
If it does, and you'd like to continue, I'll need a rough idea of how to spend an extra 120 XP (you've already had 30) on your character. I don't need specifics, more an inkling of what aspect you'd like to develop.
It would helpful to know how much of that increase it would take to improve any of the existing skills or talents are going to cost and what benefit would be gained ...
Pandemonium. Here or PM for ideas is fine. If you post them here, you might inspire someone else too.
Angr. It's beyond the scope of this game to go into all the costs of Skill Rank, Talent and Force Power upgrades, alas. Skill Ranks in particular depend on the base characteristic, whether you have it as a career skill, etc., and how much bang for your buck you want.
You could all answer these questions, frex:
1. Is there an aspect of your character you want to improve? A niche you want to fill out more, become more expert in? Or would you rather have all-round improvements/raise your standard?
2. If you know the system, do you want a specific Force Power (if applicable), Talent or Skill Rank?
3. Art and Phoenix Prime, do you want to get into lightsabers (expensive, will consume most of your upgrade. Sort of like D&D Multiclassing)?
4. Gypsy and KenSeg, do you want to become Force-Sensitive (expensive, will consume most of your upgrade. Sort of like D&D Multiclassing)?
for the other players then: in my pm I have suggested a split for the xp:
about ½ for niman disciple driving down the tree to reach the +1 to a characteristic box about ¼ for each of Winta's starting force powers influence and move
DO NOT WORRY ABOUT LEARNING THE SYSTEM IF YOU DON'T WANT TO.
(I'm not sure I would even have time to now, it's so bizarre.) Just answer those questions in my previous post in whatever way you can, and it will give me some direction.
1: Is there an aspect of your character you want to improve? A niche you want to fill out more, become more expert in? Or would you rather have all-round improvements/raise your standard?
Close in combat.
2. If you know the system, do you want a specific Force Power (if applicable), Talent or Skill Rank?
Force powers would be ones applicable to hr general niche, possibly something acrobatic, like the flipping and such.
3. Art and Phoenix Prime, do you want to get into lightsabers (expensive, will consume most of your upgrade. Sort of like D&D Multiclassing)?
I might, is there room for that and one force power? Otherwise likely the force power and other improvements. Again, it would likely be something acrobatic.in other words, you said ‘most’ - what is left over otherwise? Like up one skill point? Nothing?
Angr. When you buy a Skill Rank, you convert the next Green to Yellow, until you run out of Green (your base characteristic) and then you keep adding Green.
Art. Probably not enough points to do anything useful after implementing lightsaber, so I would probably buff Force Powers, probably Enhance, and Melee Skill Ranks. Sirra already has 1 Skill Rank in it. A good vibroblade is as good at critting as a lightsaber, even if it doesn't have the insane armour penetration. And vibroblades come in all shapes and sizes too.
i am looking at the time passage in terms of character advancement.
when we finish with this mission, as it is synced with the events of the ROS movie- the First Order will be defeated, but not wiped out- plenty of bad guys to clean up across the Galaxy. But Leia will have passed into the Force nad Rey ends up on Tatooine(future unknown).
We are receiving a four fold advancement in terms of points- in order to make us Knights- I would imagine that there is some passage of time...
as I am the type of player that is focused on the story more than anything else, i just want to get a feel for that so I can develop the narrative of events in that passage of time.
I will relay my advancement ideas to you in PM
(and scrolling down the list the only thing I saw that remotely looked like JBs skill tree was starfighter ace- i have some concerns there- again... in PM)
1. Is there an aspect of your character you want to improve? A niche you want to fill out more, become more expert in? Or would you rather have all-round improvements/raise your standard?
2. If you know the system, do you want a specific Force Power (if applicable), Talent or Skill Rank?
1. Continue along the path of Soresu Defender.
2. I suspect it is too far away but Protect/Unleash sounds quite up his alley. Though several other powers would certainly fit well from Endure, Enhance, etc...
PP. Curiously, the Beginner Game adventure only takes us as far as escaping Jakku with the secret information. Acting on that information is covered by the second adventure that FFG web published.
A lot happens in The Rise of Skywalker though, events that would have a big impact on the Force across the Galaxy, plus as we transition between the two adventures we can use that most powerful story effect of all. The hero prepares montage.
It should work in the fiction. In FFG's Star Wars system, characters don't become much tougher or more deadly with more XP*, not like D&D, for example. It's more like their core features gain more gimmicks. Fun, but not a massive change in capability.
Even scrambling to get to the Dedication Talent on the bottom row and increasing a base characteristic. That's a bonus to any skill running off of that characteristic, but what does it mean for your skill checks? About a +10% success if it adds a Green, or +5% if it converts a Green to a Yellow. About equivalent to a +1 modifier in D&D.
*To a point. After about 300 XP, if you ignore the gimmicks and focus on Skill Ranks and Force Rating, you can get beastly.
Continuing along the Marshall tree doesn't make since now that he isn't a colonist or a lawman anymore. He is more a soldier/commando now or tactician.
Firstly, the transition between the Beginner Game and the second adventure is a good jumping-off point for anyone who's ready to move on from this game and free up their play-time for another game on DreamLyrics, for example.
Don't feel bound or obliged to continue if you don't want to. In some ways, having played through the Beginner Game you will have achieved what I/we set out to do, learn more about this rather perculiar system.
Secondly, Art and PP, if you do want your characters to get into lightsabers, a more Jedi vibe, it may not be efficient to do that with your current build as a starting place. But we can rebuild them from scratch, ensuring continuity by including the abilities you've showcased in the fiction so far but gearing the build towards the second half of the game.
I'm totally on board with that. And for anyone else too, if progressing the current build doesn't get you where you want to be for the second half of the game, we can do the same. Rebuild from scratch, ensuring continuity with the fiction.
Art. The Sentinel Career for example contains a Spec called Sentry, that is stealthy and lightsabery. Her current Spec, Shadow is more steathy and breaking-and-enteringy. Neither has Ranged-Heavy, interestingly, those are ranks bought in a non-career skill. One thing I will say is lightsabers aren't actually stealthy, for obvious, humming/glowing reasons.
PP. The Seeker Career contains a Spec called Ataru Striker, that is piloty and lightsabery. She doesn't currently have any skill in blasters, relying on her raw Agility, so that's fine, and only has one rank in Mechanics since she relies more on her Force Manipulate Mechanics power.
So lightsabers are definitely doable. The only reason I didn't build you two for lightsabers is that back when we started I asked if who wanted lightsabers, and it was only Angr and Pande who did.
what's a force power suit, and where can Jelly bean get one? Just kidding, it would take all the Force power in the Galaxy just to get her curves into a suit like that...
Is there access from the side of our jumper to the oncoming skiff? Preach might have to leap into action. Or even from swinging out the back and around to the side, maybe it is Errol Preach.
Nice! Yes, I think this could be the moment for some high speed rail-jumping! Up the hatch and jump from the top, very doable. Up the hatch and shoot with blasters, also doable (the door gun is fixed at the rear hatch however).
Although the Star Wars lore has powered armour in it, I'd never seen a design that looked "Star Warsy" until Millard's. Most powered armour designs seem to be anime inspired. It's a big gun though, so you're right to watch out for it.
Yep, in a normal ground combat, cover gives you +1 Ranged Defence. In a trench or firing from a hatch gives you +2 Ranged Defence. This equates to 1 or 2 Black (Setback) dice on an enemy's check to hit you.
In a vehicular combat such as this, assuming they can target you at all, they have to make a Called Shot, which requires a manoeuvre and gives 2 Black dice. So you're a lot less vulnerable than you normally would be.
The sand skiff is alongside the Quadjumper, not in front. Though with the swoop bikes gone, J.B. could conceivably dab the brakes, let the skiff pull ahead and then Winta do shenanigans with the tractor beam. Or Winta could grab a boulder from up ahead, that sort of thing.
Art. Sirra is KO'd but I expect Jix will bring her around with a stimpack, resulting in no loss of turn. That's the benefit of the dynamic initiative slots. I would wait to see what Gypsy posts for Jix before posting your turn, or you might want to give us some insight into Sirra's subconscious in the meantime.
Btw, technically this is what happened on a miss from the ion disruptor! You do NOT want to get him by one of those things. I think it might be the most deadly weapon in the game!
Fortunately the chances of Dokar hitting Sirra were poor, giving the Setback dice. It was the Blast effect that got her.
Hit or miss, it seems her effective participation in this one is over for a while. I suspect the eye loss is going to KO her chances of hitting anything with her gun in the near term(loss of depth perception et al) Ah well. That’s the breaks.
She'll lose the automatic Advantage from the cyber-eye but that's all. Jix has just stimpacked Sirra, so she's awake and able-bodied, though her knee is probably dislocated.
Bear in mind healing in Star Wars is miraculous. In The Mandalorian, Mando suffers such a severe concussion from an explosion it causes a near fatal brain haemorrhage. One quick spray of bacta from the IG droid though and he's back to normal within the hour.
Regardless, sticking out of the hatch and shooting is evidently not going to be a viable strategy, and she’s not going over there so I still suspect active participation is not happening. Can’t shoot with nowhere to shoot from, and if even a miss from that gun does that to her, she would be absolutely loco to stick her head up there again.
Also, I suspect fixing that for next game is going to require some chunk of her experience or something else to replace the missing eye, which will be a little unfortunate but, eh. Oh well.
There's no arguing with that reasoning. The ion disruptor is a serious terror weapon. Though now I'm worried I've peaked the threats too early! I'll have to find something worse to throw at you next.
On a side note, several effects come together in the ion disruptor to make it hideous.
It's high damage isn't particularly unique, nor is it's good crit rating.
But it has Breach 2 and Vicious 6. These are passive qualities.
Breach 2 means it bypasses 2 Armour on a vehicle or starship, equivalent to 20 Soak on a person. So forget about soaking any of its damage.
Vicious 6 means it adds 60 to the d100 dice roll you make on the Critical Injury table, when you suffer a crit. Higher results are worse, with 91 or higher being levels of debilitating.
Furthermore, a unique special effect of the ion disruptor says that if you roll less than 96, you up the result to 96, i.e., Crippled.
Very powerful but still not terrifying.
Then we add its Blast 6 quality. This is an active quality, so you need 2 Advantages to activate on a hit and it will do 6 Wounds to every person in Engaged Range with the target. The target takes the full 12 Wounds, and any Successes also count as Wounds.
On a miss, you've rolled no Successes but you can still spend 3 Advantages to activate Blast. This will do 6 Wounds to the target and every person in Engaged Range with them.
Most PCs could Soak 4-5 Wounds of that damage, no problem, but the Breach 2 negates their Soak. So that's 6 Wounds on a miss, and if the roll resulted in 2 more Advantages or a Triumph, you can activate a crit too.
With all sorts of ways to generate automatic Advantages and improve crit ratings, even increase Engaged Range of the Blast to Short Range, the ion disruptor is like a miniaturised Death Star!
It's one weakness is it's Slow-Firing 1 quality. It can only be fired every other round. This limitation can potentially be overcome with a Destiny Point or Triumph though, as in this case.
Regardless, looks like she’s not (actively) in the rest of this combat, one way or the other. Trying to look over her sheet to find if there is actually anything she can do non-combat related. Want to figure out some way to still participate. Unfortunately not a techie, no stealth to happen, no computer systems need breaking into ... so really, I see no rolls to be making. Looks like pure exposition mode time unless I’ve missed something.
Mechanically, there are a few things you can do on a starship other than pilot and gunner.
Plot Course. Perception check. You act as lookout, with an eye on the surrounding environment, calling out hazards or shortcuts, etc. This helps the pilot by removing Black (Setback) dice.
Copilot. Piloting check. Monitoring crucial instruments in the cockpit. This helps the pilot by downgrading the difficult/removing Red (Challenge) dice. That reduces the chance of failure and Despair, the opposite of Triumph. i.e., Instead of something vitally good happening, something vitally bad happens.
Jamming. Computers check. Prevent that enemy ship from calling for backup or announcing your presence to the Galaxy.
Boost Shields. Mechanics check. If your ride has Deflector Shields (Quadjumper doesn't), you can increase the Defence these provide.
Manual Repairs. Athletics check. If relevant in the fiction, hit something with a hammer, glue something shut. Reduces Hull Trauma.
Fire Discipline. Discipline check, or Leadership if a large crew. Observe, call out targets and co-ordinate gunners. Adds Blue (Boost) dice to gunners and their shots can do extra System Strain.
Scan the Enemy. Perception check. Scrutinise the target, either with scanners or the Mk 1 eyeball. Learn the target's vitals (which I post anyway), but Advantages and Triumph generated from the check can be spent as normal. So this is always a good fall back.
Slice Enemy's Systems. Computers check. For a ship with sophisticated computers attacking another ship with sophisticated computers. Can reduce target's Defence, disbale weapons, and inflict System Strain. Not applicable with the crude Quadjumper and sand skiff.
Spoof Missiles. Vigilance check, or Computers if a large ship. If you're having to do this then you're in big trouble!
Finally, if you can think of anyway your character can help another, that's assistance and can be extremely useful since at the very least it grants them an extra Blue (Boost) dice.
Assistance doesn't require a skill check, so that's always an option if you can think of who Sirra would assist and how.
Sirra also has good Computers and Perception skill fwiw.
Stimpacks don't require a skill check, they heal 5 Wounds or 6 when Jix applies them, because of a Talent she has.
Jix is also carrying Nullicaine injections, which allow her to make an Easy YYGB¬P Medicine check and upon success, the subject to ignore the effects of a Critical Injury until the end of the encounter.
That's a check Jix would struggle to fail, so the question becomes, what do you want back for the rest of this encounter, eye or leg?
It is, but the Nullicaine allows you ignore that consequence for the rest of the encounter. So during this combat, we'd describe the eye as glitchy but somehow still giving a feed to her optic nerve. At the end of the combat, it'd finally fritz out.
No problemo, Pandemonium. I only ghosted you and Gypsy because I wanted to move us on quickly before today. I started back at work today after the annual factory fortnight and it's usually a crazy week for me.
Do we have some players taking a half-time orange?
Preach has sensed impending galactic doom.
Mhar-li has asked J.B. where she learned to fly. In a positive sense.
The team still has to contact Lieutenant Bek using the military-grade communicator in J.B.'s backpack. Otherwise you could be floating in space a long time. That might be Winta's call as team leader but you aren't a drilled military unit, you're more like a team of equals, like Rey, Finn and Poe, so anyone can jump in.
And thank goodness August is over! It's always a crazy month at work for me as our factory customers come back from two weeks of holiday---the traditional factory fortnight---but this year they're coming back from four months of shutdown! Chaos ensues. But now I have the long weekend to look forward to, with the Bank Holiday Monday.
So we left off in a Dun-dun-duuun! moment, Star Destroyer threatening to swallow the tiny Quadjumper whole and a desparate plan put in place by the Resistance Team to evade detainment. Splendid!
Warm up your porgs and feel the Force, it's time for the final encounter in the Beginner Game!
Cinema is currently £5 all day, every day for anyone who actually pays for tickets any more. So that's cool. I get six free tickets a year from my bank and one a week from work benefits, and I have a cinema gift card from Xmas so I never pay (directly) for tickets these days.
It was a comfy experience. Not crowded, everything distanced, in the screen two seats between each party and every other row closed.
As for the film, I enjoyed it a lot, one of Nolan's best works but suffered greatly from two of his trademark flaws. Insistance on no ADR, and overlong.
No ADR (additional dialogue recording) means the dialogue used is always what was recorded when the scene was shot. In Tenet there are scenes on a racing catamaran, on off-shore wind farms, scenes in gas masks. Without recording the dialogue later in a studio, you get all the wind noise, all the muffling. There are entire conversations in Tenet that are unintelligible because of it.
It's also 2 hours and 31 minutes long. Add your 30 minutes of adverts and trailers and that's 3 hours out of your day. Unfortunately Tenet is not a character drama, it's an action thriller with a bare-bones plot. By the final 30 minutes I was getting a bit bored, a bit hungry, and needed a pee.
Ironically, because of both of these factors I think Tenet will work much better as home viewing, despite Nolan fighting so hard to get a cinema release.
So, the Resistance team are back aboard the Bargon Flit and almost guaranteed a clean getaway from Jakku, since the First Order are looking for the Sunstrider.
That puts us one skill check away from completing The Force Awakens Beginner Game, so exciting times!
No PCs have been killed off in the course of this game, nor NPC allies. A bit unusual for one of my games, which tend to have a high body count. But Fantasy Flight Games intend their Beginner Game products as introductions and they're relatively easy by design.
By comparison, Wizards of the Coast's D&D 5th Edition Starter Set has a potential TPK in the very first encounter and some major difficulty spikes down the road. I'm not sure how players new to RPGs would feel about their party being wiped out in their first ever combat, but I think FFG chose more to threaten the PCs' allies with their product.
Either way, I've found it a lot of fun to GM and have gained a much better understanding of the system.
As always it's the players that bring a game to life and I think your character play injected more story and depth into the Beginner Game than its writers probably expected. I knew you would though! As written, the Beginner Game comes with pre-gens, Mhar-Li, Fira Bon, Bormo and Tiras. Obviously, it was more interesting with your custom-built characters.
I hope you've enjoyed it too and learnt more about FFG's Star Wars system, although it now looks like FFG might be abandoning the Star Wars RPG licence. So now's probably not the best time to get into it.
A sort of potted adventure made up of small encounters that each introduce new mechanics in FFG' Star Wars system. (Obviously their intention is that you'll be intrigued enough to buy the full game line.)
We're just about at the end of it now. It ends at the point the team escape the First Order. We still have some role-play left to resolve though and a quick brush with Astronavigation, so let's keep going for the time being.
Once we've completed the Beginner Game, there's the follow-up 'bonus' adventure here:
I also planned on running this, which is where the discussion about powering up the PCs to a higher XP level came in. In D&D terms, it would be like jumping from 2nd level to 5th, something like that.
I think we're about a week away from completing the Beginner Game portion.
I'm going to resolve the last round in the Beginner Game portion now and leave it at that.
In our own minds we'll know that the team successfully recovered the Ghidrah data, escaped Jakku and made the jump to GH-531.
We'll also know that in the Battle of Exegol (in The Rise of Skywalker), the fleet of the free Galaxy arrives in time to save the day. So Ghidrah must have been successfully disabled or hijacked.
Although I think we'd have some fun with the follow-on bonus adventure, it doesn't teach us any more about FFG's Star Wars system and we've learned enough already that we're either sold on it or not. And that's the whole point of the Beginner Game as a product.
Perversely, it now seems certain that FFG have abandoned the game line. They laid off their RPG staff prior to lockdown and confirmed they wouldn't be reprinting. But most people assumed they'd at least hand off reprinting to another company.
It might be that the Star Wars licence doesn't allow that, who knows. All we know is that as of now, FFG's Star Wars RPG line is discontinued, no reprints planned, very limited stock available. Ah well, it happens with these big IPs.
I hear you though. "We don't have to play current, in print games here on DreamLyrics." "There are still PDFs." I agree totally. But CFH was conceived more as a lightweight introduction to a very distinctive and unusual game system, whilst enjoying some Star Wars hijinks at the same time.
Before game start we didn't develop relationships before the characters or an idea of forward story arcs for them. We dived right in and made the most of the lockdown.
So I decided I'd rather keep CFH as this small slice of self-contained gameplay. Neat and tidy.
You're not too disappointed I hope?
I also need to post my conclusions on FFG's Star Wars system. (Spoiler alert! I'm not convinced.)
I would love to hear your feedback on CFH as a game and/or FFG's Star Wars system.
OK, what do I make of FFG's Star Wars system? ("FFGSW" for short.)
First up, I have to say all four Beginner Games are excellent stand-alone products, providing easily enough material for one day's gaming, and with the follow-on bonus adventures, maybe another two sessions. Pretty good value for money.
Each Beginner Game comes with pre-gen characters and a set of FFG Star Wars dice. None of the Beginner Games contain character creation, starship combat, or the complete ruleset on personal combat, so for that you have to pick up a copy of the core rules.
Yes, I can gladly recommend buying one of the Beginner Games. They're a fun, high quality product and pretty good value for money.
Beyond a three session run, I have my doubts about the system.
I've used the system now for a couple of years, playing in an ftf campaign and GMing CFH on DreamLyrics. We tried the Beginner Games, we use all three core rule books, Edge of the Empire, Age of Rebellion and Force & Destiny.
One thing stands out as a glaring flaw: Skill checks are too drawn-out.
Most checks run off of a character's skills (another flaw I'll come to) and require assembling a dice pool.
Assembling a dice pool is always a slower mechanic than rolling single dice but plenty of excellent systems use dice pools. FFGSW adds some variables to the pool that can further slow things though.
Let's take an ranged combat check with a blaster pistol.
You assemble the dice pool. Your positive dice pool is derived from ranks in the Ranged-Light skill and ranks in Agility and should be recorded on your sheet. The difficulty depends on what range you're shooting at.
You can negotiate with the GM to add Bonus or Setback dice for situational benefits or penalties. Finally, you or the GM can spend Destiny Points to upgrade the positive or negative dice.
That's a fair bit of discussion right there, and once the dice pool is rolled, you have to resolve.
The first hurdle is remembering the function of each symbol. It only takes a few sessions to learn but while you're learning can be frustrating.
Then starts a lengthy tracking process.
For our ranged combat check we track number of Success or Fail symbols (for determining damage), the number of Advantages or Disadvantage symbols (for spending on specials), and any Triumph or Despair symbols.
There are many effects to spend Advantages and Disadvantages on, some granting Bonus or Setback dice to other character's next checks, requiring them to be tracked also.
If you roll 5 Advantage, for example, that's up to five separate effects you could buy. The more powerful the effect, the more Advantage it usually costs.
Once you've decided that, you can inflict any damage dealt. This is tracked against the target's Wound Threshold or Strain Threshold, depending on the type of damage.
If you've bought a Critical with your Advantages, the target must now track their Critical Injury, which is determined by rolling on a table using 1d100. Each Critical Injury has a separate effect and difficulty level.
Before you get into any other mechanics, this ranged combat check is already ridiculous, involving tracking Destiny Points, Bonus and Setback dice, received and granted, the three pairs of symbols, Strain and Wounds, Critical Injury effect and Critical Injury difficulty. That's eight to twelve separate things we're tracking for one roll!!
I would be just about OK with that if one roll resolved a whole scene or action sequence. But it doesn't. The result isn't an outcome; in D&D terms it's a loss of hit points. Like D&D, combats generally go on for three rounds.
The skill system is another, lesser flaw, but one that's hard to ignore.
A skill check's dice pool is derived from a primary Characteristic. Either Brawn, Agility, Intellect, Cunning, Willpower or Presence. Purchased with XP.
The skill will have ranks too, purchased with XP.
So far so good. But a character also has a Career and Specialisation that gives them access to Talents, aka special abilities, and may have Force Powers too. Purchased with XP.
The problem is, Talents and Force Powers all tend to boost a skill check.
So you are generally just as capable, maybe more so, by buying as many ranks in your Characteristics as you can. Then buying as many ranks in your skills as you can.
Talents and Force Powers then become somewhat redundant. Understand that this is purely from a mechanics POV. If you want to be able to Force Push a squad of Stormtroopers, then yes, you need to invest XP in your Talent tree, your Force Powers and your skill check. But ultimately, if you just want to get rid of those Stormtroopers non-lethally, you could just invest in Agility, Ranged-Heavy and use a Heavy Blaster set to stun. A fraction of the XP spent and probably more effective.
The game doesn't make a good enough mechanical argument for Talents and Force Powers.
In conclusion, FFGSW's core mechanic, the skill check, takes far too long to resolve and character creation/progression might be viewed as hollow in parts.
It is interesting that your end conclusion is very simliar to mine. I haven't played FTF with it, but I get that it is too complicated. Personally when we are talking about Space Opera/Star Wars I feel like a less complicated system is better. I still like the old West End d6 version. It played well.
Much the same here. As when I kept trying to ask about estimating ballpark probabilities because I couldn’t really get an intuitive feel for them like I can with many simpler systems.
Ideally for play-by-post gaming you want any roll to resolve as much action as the player has described their character doing. So I don't think even D&D is ideal for PbP gaming. It's d20 mechanic is quite simple though and doesn't involve much tracking. Usually you don't track the result of the d20 at all, you either hit or miss and then roll damage (which is tracked against hit points). That's tracking one thing per roll vs tracking eight to twelve things.
I think FFGSW works in the Beginner Game products because it slips each mechanic in step-by-step and the adventure is short enough that it doesn't overstay its welcome.
But certainly I found it taxing to match the actions that you guys were describing to the mechanics. Sometimes I just couldn't squeeze it into one turn because each player only has two Manoeuvres and one Action to play with. That could lead to resolving one round becoming two rounds--- twice as much working out behind the scenes and delaying the write-up.
That's just the mechanics though.
As far as the story goes, I think we made it thrilling, with a colourful cast of characters and a Star Wars-vibe that was reminiscent more of The Mandalorian and Rogue One than perhaps the saga movies. I guess the saga movies are more romantic.
I enjoyed it. As always, thanks for the game guys!
I prefer it FTF. It does take a few games to get a feel for how the dice work but once over that, it works! My only beef is the cost of the dice. Over £12 or $16.
In short, I don't think there's a strong motivation to.
We completed the Beginner Game, so have reached a convenient end point. The FFGSW game line appears to be dead now anyway. (There aren't even decent PDFs available, only scans of books.) We've covered everything and had fun. Unless I read the room wrong, I don't think you guys will be disappointed not to continue. We all enjoy playing, for sure, but I can always start work on another game.
I read that, and I get it. I was just interested to see where things would go. Your right, we can always do another game. As a GM you have to be interested to invest the amount of time necessary to make a game work, FTF or DL.
Preach doesn't usually drink, but this seems like as good a time as any. He accepts a cold brew if for no other reason than to be supportive.
GM takes a slug of green milk from the teet of the nearest Thala-siren. (Probably one of the most disturbing scenes I've ever seen in a 12A film!)
I'll ponder some ideas this weekend, guys. Thank you very much for the feedback, it is always appreciated. In the meantime... Mr Williams, take it away, sir!
OK, I did a conversion from FFGSW to FFG's The End of the World (EotW) system for our face-to-face campaign a while back and it worked well. Let's go for it! Starting a new OOC thread.
![[Linked Image]](https://images-cdn.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/StarWarsRPG/edge-of-the-empire/beginner-game/preview-2/dice-chart.png)
I know, surely this is only the second encounter, right?![[Linked Image]](https://i.imgur.com/UyyAlgu.png)
![[Linked Image]](https://i.imgur.com/FLCS3Ym.jpg)
Oh well then you should've said...![[Linked Image]](https://media3.giphy.com/media/1HH6lJOzOXAY/giphy.gif)
Just about finished by afternoon tea! (This is why I put off updating it for so long!!)
The Beginner Game as written is pretty easy. Plenty of opportunities to screw up, but screws up aren't so harsh. They don't want new players feeling down because of a dice roll; the whole thing is more about learning the game.
And for anyone else too, if progressing the current build doesn't get you where you want to be for the second half of the game, we can do the same. Rebuild from scratch, ensuring continuity with the fiction.
So forget about soaking any of its damage.
So now's probably not the best time to get into it.
(Probably one of the most disturbing scenes I've ever seen in a 12A film!)