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[Star Wars D6] In praise of the Introductory Game boxed set

Started by Imperator, May 21, 2013, 02:35:13 AM

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Imperator

Anyway, I just found a cornucopia of WEG's Star Wars stuff, so I think I am set for life. Holy shit, never knew there was so much stuff for the game.
My name is Ramón Nogueras. Running now Vampire: the Masquerade (Giovanni Chronicles IV for just 3 players), and itching to resume my Call of Cthulhu campaign (The Sense of the Sleight-of-Hand Man).

Rincewind1

When does WEG's Star Wars/d6 break down? Some particular skill levels?
Furthermore, I consider that  This is Why We Don\'t Like You thread should be closed

jeff37923

Quote from: Rincewind1;656591When does WEG's Star Wars/d6 break down? Some particular skill levels?

It never has for me. I've heard of people complaining of rolling buckets of dice when the PCs get to be very highly skilled, but that is only after those characters have been played for years. I've also heard people complain that their characters were never the heroes of the game because the movies already had the Main Heroes, but again I have never encountered that in Actual Play.
"Meh."

Brad

Quote from: Rincewind1;656591When does WEG's Star Wars/d6 break down? Some particular skill levels?

Eventually, Jedi characters will outclass everyone because of the way Force skills work. JUST LIKE IN THE MOVIES. We played a 1st edition campaign one summer when I was in grad school, almost daily sessions since no one was taking classes. The Jedi of the group became extremely beastly in combat and the game grew more centered about developing his abilities. One of the players even brought it up during a session, but everyone agreed it made sense and fit perfectly within the genre/world.

The Outlaw and Smuggler ended up leading an attack on a Super Star Destroyer, almost succeeded in blowing it up and killing Vader (and the Emperor), but we ended up not playing any more right after that for a variety of reasons. Really wish we had wrapped that up...
It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.

Novastar

Quote from: Rincewind1;656591When does WEG's Star Wars/d6 break down? Some particular skill levels?
Particularly high levels, especially with Force Users.

More my gripe, is that multiple attackers can quickly overwhelm even the best of fighters (throw 20 stormtroopers against Vader, and mechanically Vader will go down in a straight fight, barring blasting through virtually unreplacable Force Points). In a more "real life" example, you can have a high-level villain, who will challenge 3 players, but will mow through the first two if the 3rd gets busy elsewhere.

(of course, you can argue that's part of genre emulation too. Vader captures Han, Chewie and Leia with Boba Fett and a gaggle of Stromtroopers. The only time fights were "one-on-one" was when Vader was fighting Luke, really.)
Quote from: dragoner;776244Mechanical character builds remind me of something like picking the shoe in monopoly, it isn\'t what I play rpg\'s for.

Imperator

And boy, was it a success.

In the second installment of the introductory adventure, the PCs arrive to a small city to try and find some Rebel contact who can take them to the rendezvous point so they can get out of the planet. Of course, things never work that way.

The PCs managed to find a contact allright, but the contact asked them to help with a mysterious bunch of disappearances around the city. Up to 40 farmhands had disappeared over a few nights, and the contact wanted to look into that. Having a Jedi in the group, they agreed.

When they (along with a bunch of NPCs) staked-out one of the farms, they discovered that Empire soldiers were kidnapping and taking away the farmers. And that is the moment where the session really took off, and the system got to shine and proide a true Star Wars feeling:

- the Brash Pilot retrieved a Scout armor they got from the previous session, she disguised herself, and shot in stun her romantic interest (a local constable she just met) so she could get inside one of the armored transports pretending she was carrying a prisoner. "Hey, nice outfit, why are you pointing that blaster at me?" "Believe me, is for the Rebellion." "Bitch." Priceless :D
- at the same time, the Young Jedi and the Pirate rose from the high grass where they were hidden, and pretended (with some wicked Con rolls by the pirate, who rolls 5D and loves it) to be farmhands dazed by blaster fire. And they got into the same transport as the Brash Pilot. Meanwhile, they could hear the Bounty Hunter PC threatening to kill them once they got out.
- the Smuggler got back to a warehouse where he got a salvaged Y-wing while the Bounty Hunter and the rest of the NPCs shadowed the Imperial convoy. Despite a Rebel mechanic trying to warn him about the miserable status of the ship (only 25% of fuel, only 4 torpedoes, no ion cannon), he looked at him and just told him "starships are my bitches", before taking off, Solo-style.
- the Imperials took the group to a secluded landing site, where a Lambda shuttle was arriving in order to take the prisoners to the Star Destroyer blocking he planet, for unknown purposes. Of course, my players were not taking any of that shit, and being confronted with almost 30 Stormtroopers, 2 speeders, 2 armored transports and a fucking AT-ST walker is nothing if you got the surprise :D Using a combination of surprise, clever tactics, the aerial support of the Y-Wing (which destroyed the AT-ST and the shuttle before it could get back to the Star Destroyer) and a fuckton of Force points ("it doesn't matter, we're spending them to save these people at the best dramatic moment, we'r getting them back and then some!") and character points (this they didn't like so much), they managed to obliterate the Imperials and rescue most of the farmhands. Some of the farmers died when a PC (the Pirate) detonated the fuel deposits without thinking about who was near, and almost killing the Brash Pilot (and killing her romantic interest).

After playing the battle, my players and I got to the following conclussions:
- the rules of scale are great. My players liked a lot how elegant they are when it comes to emulate how powerful a ship's weapon is against a walker or speeder.
- once you get the hang of the movement rules they stop being weird and cumbersome and truly add to combats. Movement and terrain becomes an important part of the combats.
- the system is quite lethal, and Stormtrooper armor is badass (I also tend to roll super high :D) Stormtroopers are tougher than in the movies.
- it is great that there are rules for combined fire and the like, because otherwise managing a big battle becomes quite unwieldy. The system is not that fast, and if you have many NPC rolling is better to devise some rules for combining their attacks.
- they loved how you can use Character Points to improve rolls after the roll is done, until I remembered them that Character Points are also XP :D
- lightsabers are not that lethal against Stormtroopers, at least until you buy the lightsaber combat power (5D damage against 4D soaking, like a heavy blaster).
- Force points are badass. Jetpacks too, if you max out your skill (as the Bounty Hunter did).
- skill specialties are awesome. You can be really badass at something for a very low XP amount. My players are going to use this a lot.

Everyone agreed that it felt really Star Wars. Also, they are really excited about the next session, that should be next Sunday. They interrogated an Officer and knew about a couple of Dark Jedi twins or some weird shit like that, so they are itching to find them.

Great session, great game :)
My name is Ramón Nogueras. Running now Vampire: the Masquerade (Giovanni Chronicles IV for just 3 players), and itching to resume my Call of Cthulhu campaign (The Sense of the Sleight-of-Hand Man).

Opaopajr

Awesome. Reminds me of my time with WEG Star Wars. I'm sad I moved back from college and stopped playing it.

... gotta dig in the used book stores...
Just make your fuckin\' guy and roll the dice, you pricks. Focus on what\'s interesting, not what gives you the biggest randomly generated virtual penis.  -- J Arcane
 
You know, people keep comparing non-TSR D&D to deck-building in Magic: the Gathering. But maybe it\'s more like Katamari Damacy. You keep sticking shit on your characters until they are big enough to be a star.
-- talysman


Novastar

#23
Quote from: Imperator;661498- lightsabers are not that lethal against Stormtroopers, at least until you buy the lightsaber combat power (5D damage against 4D soaking, like a heavy blaster).
Actually, Stormtrooper armor only adds +1d to energy attacks, so it should be 5d damage against 3d soak (unless these were special troopers, with greater than 2d STR). 2nd Edition and later made Stromtrooper armor add +1d versus energy attacks, and +2d versus physical attacks (like knives and grenades, which makes my troopers a little more grenade happy...)
Quote from: dragoner;776244Mechanical character builds remind me of something like picking the shoe in monopoly, it isn\'t what I play rpg\'s for.

Imperator

Quote from: Novastar;661604Actually, Stormtrooper armor only adds +1d to energy attacks, so it should be 5d damage against 3d soak (unless these were special troopers, with greater than 2d STR). 2nd Edition and later made Stromtrooper armor add +1d versus energy attacks, and +2d versus physical attacks (like knives and grenades, which makes my troopers a little more grenade happy...)
Ouch! My bad :D Well, I'm sure my players will forgive that :D
My name is Ramón Nogueras. Running now Vampire: the Masquerade (Giovanni Chronicles IV for just 3 players), and itching to resume my Call of Cthulhu campaign (The Sense of the Sleight-of-Hand Man).

Fiasco

Loving your writeups, Imperator! I picked up the WEG 1E rules and I'm just itching to run them at some point.

Imperator

People, tomorrow is game night! Finally, after the fuckton of work and several other RL happenings, the crew is back for more Star Wars action. So, pretty soon we will get more writeups :)
My name is Ramón Nogueras. Running now Vampire: the Masquerade (Giovanni Chronicles IV for just 3 players), and itching to resume my Call of Cthulhu campaign (The Sense of the Sleight-of-Hand Man).

finarvyn

I bought the 1E version of WEG Star Wars when it first came out and we played the heck out of it, but I haven't played in years.

I ran across a similar thread on starter boxed sets and a couple of folks posted that the WEG Star Wars starter set was the best starter set ever, so I bought one on e-bay.

Wow. It's really well done!

Brings back great memories. I haven't run it yet, but I'm getting some adventures ready for a friend's sons who are huge Star Wars nuts.
Marv / Finarvyn
Kingmaker of Amber
I'm pretty much responsible for the S&W WB rules.
Amber Diceless Player since 1993
OD&D Player since 1975

Imperator

OK, last Friday we played but I didn't makethe write-up because baby. Tonight we play again, so I better get this thing done.

Our heroes are reaching Fortune City on speeder, using their salvaged Y-wing to keep advanced patrol and recon, at least while the thing has fuel. They detected a TIE fighter on patrol, whose route would bring it to detect the group. So the Brash Pilot (Azahara) and the Smuggler (Seth) decided to take care of that shit and use their Y-wing for something other than blasting AT-ST walkers and defenseless Stormtroopers. Thus, our first dogfight started!

It lasted a fucking couple of rounds. The TIE not having shieds is a massive laibility when the other side is shooting proton torpedoes :D

While the dogfight was taking place, the ground group detected a convoy moving on their direction. They sneak behind them and discover a ragtag band of armed people looking for the place where the TIE crashed. They confront them, and learn that they're a group of guns for hire, lead by a man named Talenn Scruts. They used to work for Edan government before the ocupation and as guns for hire, but guess what, the Empire fucked up their shit and now they try to get by with the Rebels to fuck Imperial shit up. There is some mistrust, anyway, because Talenn is not sure if the PCs may be some undercover Imperial spies trying to flush up Rebel cells. Unknown to him, his demolitions and mechanics expert (Jarus Kai) is an Imperial agent.

My Pcs needed like 3 minutes to nail the guy's cover and catch him red-handed trying to put a transceiver on the Y-wing. After confirming that there are two Dark Jedi running ops in Fortune City, they ally with Strut's band to attack an Imperial convoy that carried lots of fuel, ammo and other useful supplies. As they cleverly positioned the Y-wing (at the moment almost fuel-empty) they could use it to dispatch the heavy repulsortank and some clever traps disabled the rest of the escrot vehicles.

In this fight, players learned to love grenades.

The Y-wing was refittted with fuel and torpedoes (the ion cannon couldn't be repaired at the moment), so they split the loot with Struts and go on and reach Fortune City. Here, things really wnet down the shitter.

Have to leav now to run some errands, be right back ;)
My name is Ramón Nogueras. Running now Vampire: the Masquerade (Giovanni Chronicles IV for just 3 players), and itching to resume my Call of Cthulhu campaign (The Sense of the Sleight-of-Hand Man).

flyingcircus

Quote from: Rincewind1;656591When does WEG's Star Wars/d6 break down? Some particular skill levels?

Well we house ruled a skill and force level cap of 15D as the Emperor had the only Force skill of Sense at 15D in the Game and the Highest skill as well, Intimidation at 13D, so we just assumed a natural cap of 15D anything more would be overkill anyhow.
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