Thinking back on the FFG SW.

Another way to look at it is that the odd dice function much like how other games use oracle systems. And the same advice to not use it for every single action.

Though as noted in another thread on this. At the end of the day all the FFG dice are is a marketing ploy. Propitiatory dice that are pretty much incompatible with any other RPG. Though odd that the dice arent even compatible with their Imperial Assault board game which also uses special dice.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;942296I appreciate the sentiment, but it isn't necessary.

#Vulcan

What's frustrating here is FFG Star Wars is one of the few licensed RPG lines which does a damn fine job of both targeting gamers as well as fans, so little oversights like this are a bigger deal than they otherwise would be. The level of effort it takes to either include percentiles or design a game which didn't need them is so slight I'm honestly at a loss as to why it wasn't done.



This is true AFAIK. Thing is, the whole point of a 'beginner' set is to encourage players to continue, so providing content which encourages that is helpful.



Is this in the book? Because damn this solves so many problems, solves all of my problems, and almost justifies the existence of Boost/Setback dice.

Yep! You can use those cubes in a bunch of ways that just keep feeding into the economy! It can get pretty crazy, to be honest, but it feels good when players are boosting each other's actions.

That's a big part of why I love the system. In most games when it's time to roll, the action moves from the table-centered action to the individual. I've noticed nearly every roll with those funky dice draws the group in and they all work together in figuring out what to do with stuff.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;942296Is this in the book? Because damn this solves so many problems, solves all of my problems, and almost justifies the existence of Boost/Setback dice.

I don't think so. It just seemed to be fairly obvious to us to do this, to speed up combat.

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;942327Yep! You can use those cubes in a bunch of ways that just keep feeding into the economy! It can get pretty crazy, to be honest, but it feels good when players are boosting each other's actions.

That's a big part of why I love the system. In most games when it's time to roll, the action moves from the table-centered action to the individual. I've noticed nearly every roll with those funky dice draws the group in and they all work together in figuring out what to do with stuff.

This right here! When I ran my very first encounter which was unintentionally starship combat (I wanted to do personal combat first - but oh well) The passing Advantages and trying grab as many boosters as possible really got the group to play very cohesively. It helps when doing group initiative the PC's get to decide the order they go in - so they milked the tactical advantages for all it was worth. It makes all the combat encounters feel very "team oriented".

When we started doing normal combat - we had PC's passing off their Advantages (which I could give narrative descriptors to fairly easy) to the PC playing a sniper - as he blew the heads off of adversaries which would in turn grant certain Advantages based on his rolls to the next in line. The way combat unfolds made it feel like a well-oiled kill-team working in unison. Very very satisfying.

Quote from: tenbones;942359This right here! When I ran my very first encounter which was unintentionally starship combat (I wanted to do personal combat first - but oh well) The passing Advantages and trying grab as many boosters as possible really got the group to play very cohesively. It helps when doing group initiative the PC's get to decide the order they go in - so they milked the tactical advantages for all it was worth. It makes all the combat encounters feel very "team oriented".

When we started doing normal combat - we had PC's passing off their Advantages (which I could give narrative descriptors to fairly easy) to the PC playing a sniper - as he blew the heads off of adversaries which would in turn grant certain Advantages based on his rolls to the next in line. The way combat unfolds made it feel like a well-oiled kill-team working in unison. Very very satisfying.

These moments are pure bliss and a favorite aspect of the game. Oddly enough it wasn't the dice or rules that tripped me up at first, it was this style of play. Having players with access to random "mecha-narrative" rules took getting used to. Most games I've played have teamwork and rules for boosting your party, but I can't think of a game where every roll could have concrete effects everyone else could use. Once I got it down it was full-on fun.

Quote from: Michael Gray;942342I don't think so. It just seemed to be fairly obvious to us to do this, to speed up combat.

It's not?  Huhn.  And I say this because the cheat sheet I use just lists what the each level of success, not that you have to describe it.

So once again, great in theory, but over designed in practice. All this could be accomplished with 4 kinds, 2 kinds, or even just 1 kind of dice, as demonstrated in 2d20 which is the product of the same designer. And when you have Talents which are specifically linked to certain dice types, players will be encouraged to use them that way, and their application becomes far less flexible and dynamic.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;942395It's not?  Huhn.  And I say this because the cheat sheet I use just lists what the each level of success, not that you have to describe it.

It's there to extrapolate, but I'm trying to remember if the book says not to worry about narrating if not necessary or says to narrate all the things. I suspect the GM advice is the latter, but I can't remember.

Quote from: Michael Gray;942497It's there to extrapolate, but I'm trying to remember if the book says not to worry about narrating if not necessary or says to narrate all the things. I suspect the GM advice is the latter, but I can't remember.

Bolded for emphasis -

Edge of the Empire - Resolving Advantages and Triumphs

QuoteAs with every skill check, Advantages and Triumphs can be spent to gain incidental beneficial effects on a combat check. However, just as the rules governing encounters are somewhat more regimented than the rules governing narrative gameplay, some of the options governing the spending of Advantages and Triumphs are more clearly defined. In encounters, the player controlling the activated character determines how his character spends Advantages and Triumphs unless the GM has a specific reason to decide for him instead.

The first and foremost way to spend Advantages and Triumphs in an attack is to activate a Critical Injury or active weapon qualities. As described on page 158 and 216, each weapon has a Critical Rating that consists of a numeric value. The user can spend that many Advantages to inflict one Critical Injury on the target, in addition to regular effects and damage. Remember, a Critical Injury can only be triggered on a successful hit that deals damage that exceeds the target's soak value. For more information on Critical Injuries, see page 216.

Weapon qualities are special effects and abilities that apply only when using that particular weapon. They come in two forms, active and passive. Active abilities require the user to spend a certain number of Advantages to trigger them. Generally this is two Advantages. although some qualities may require more or less. Passive qualities always grant their effect Qualities may inflict effects on a target, which unless specified otherwise, are always in addition to other effects, Critical injuries, and damage.

In addition to always counting as an additional Successes and Triumphs can be spent to activate these abilities as well. A Triumph may be spent to inflict one Critical Injury (no matter what the Critical Rating of the weapon is) In addition, a Triumph may be spent to activate one weapon quality, no matter how many Advantages it would normally take to do so.

Caveat - there *are* in other parts of the book an emphasis for GM's to give narrative emphasis to these Advantage/Threats and Triumph/Despair. But in almost all cases they emphasize to use them for dramatic results that underpin the mechanical effect of players spending their Advantages/Triumphs and GM's spending their Threats/Despair.

The very first thing in the tables for Advantages/Triumphs have little to do with narrative. It's simply a table of what you can spend your Advantages on.

For 1 Advantage or Triumph you can:

Recover 1 strain (this option may be selected more than once).
Add 0 to the next allied active character's check.
Notice a single important point in the ongoing conflict, such as the location of a blast door's control panel or a weak point on an attack speeder. <---Narrative element! WARNING
Inflict a Critical Injury with a successful attack that deals damage past soak (0 cost may vary).
Activate a weapon quality (0 cost may vary).

For 2 Advantage or a Triumph you can:

Perform an immediate free maneuver that does not exceed the two maneuver per turn limit.
Add 1 Setback to the targeted character's next check.
Add 1 Booster to any allied character's next check, including the active character.

For 2 Advantages or a Triumph you can:

Negate the targeted enemy's defensive bonuses (such as the defense gained from cover, equipment, or performing the Guarded Stance maneuver) until the end of the current round.
Ignore penalizing environmental effects such as inclement weather, zero gravity, or similar effects until the end of the active character's next turn.
When dealing damage to a target, have the attack disable the opponent or one piece of gear rather than dealing wounds or strain. This could include hobbling him temporarily with a shot to the leg, or disabling his comlink. This should be agreed upon by the player and the GM, and the effects are up to the GM
(although the Critical Injury table is a good resource to consult for possible effects). The effects should be temporary, and not too excessive.
Gain + 1 melee or ranged defense until the end of the active character's next turn.
Force the target to drop a melee or ranged weapon it is wielding.

So yeah - narrative options are in there. I don't think they're emphasized nearly as much as crunchy mechanical outcomes. Nor are they even necessary. They're just to give you license to color your results to whatever degree you think is appropriate.

Quote from: Sommerjon;941477EotE FAQ which btw came out before your review. Makes one wonder if it was ignored it because it pokes holes in your ranting.
"However, the Triumph and Despair narrative(Advantage and/or Threat) effects cannot be canceled, so the incredibly potent beneficial or negative effects still occur. "

Quote from: Justin Alexander;941596First: That is not what those quotes say and it's not how the game works.

Second: I double-checked and discovered that you actually re-wrote the quote from the FAQ. There's really only two possible explanations for why you would do that, and neither of them reflect well on you.

EotE FAQ
Q.
Does a Failure(symbol) cancel the Success portion of a Triumph(symbol)?
Does a Success(symbol) cancel the Failure portion of a Despair(symbol)?
A.
Yes in both cases. However, the Triumph(symbol) and Despair(symbol)'s narrative effects cannot be canceled, so the incredibly potent beneficial or negative effects still occur.  It's even possible to have the narrative effects of both a Triumph(symbol) and Despair(symbol) happen on the same roll, making for especially dramatic results.

What did I rewrite?  Surely you cannot be meaning the (Advantage/Threat) that I purposely put in parenthesis and did not italics.

Your precious review says
"(3) Triumph vs. Despair (these don't cancel)"
This has never been true.  Why you are lying to everyone is beyond me, I just assume your ego got in your way again.

So as far as just Success or Failure is concerned, they cancel out only the part that counts as a traditional Success and Failure compared to the other dice, but the unique effect only those dice have, do not cancel?  That makes sense.  The math cancels, the narration doesn't.

Now here's a question, can the Success portion of a Triumph symbol be canceled by any other type of die that gives you a Failure, or is only the Despair die that can cancel that Success?  It seems like it would have to, otherwise you'd have very odd results.

Quote from: CRKrueger;942663So as far as just Success or Failure is concerned, they cancel out only the part that counts as a traditional Success and Failure compared to the other dice, but the unique effect only those dice have, do not cancel?  That makes sense.  The math cancels, the narration doesn't.

Now here's a question, can the Success portion of a Triumph symbol be canceled by any other type of die that gives you a Failure, or is only the Despair die that can cancel that Success?  It seems like it would have to, otherwise you'd have very odd results.

Yes, a regular Failure can cancel the Success portion of a Triumph and vice versa. But nothing cancels out the...'narrative' portion. Yes, this means you could possibly have a Triumph and a Despair on the same roll have effects.

So the guy in the A-wing gets shot to pieces... on his way out he crashes into the bridge of the Executor causing it to collide with the Death Star II!!!!

Quote from: Sommerjon;942661EotE FAQ
Q.
Does a Failure(symbol) cancel the Success portion of a Triumph(symbol)?
Does a Success(symbol) cancel the Failure portion of a Despair(symbol)?
A.
Yes in both cases. However, the Triumph(symbol) and Despair(symbol)’s narrative effects cannot be canceled, so the incredibly potent beneficial or negative effects still occur.  It’s even possible to have the narrative effects of both a Triumph(symbol) and Despair(symbol) happen on the same roll, making for especially dramatic results.

What did I rewrite?  Surely you cannot be meaning the (Advantage/Threat) that I purposely put in parenthesis and did not italics.

Your precious review says
"(3) Triumph vs. Despair (these don’t cancel)"
This has never been true.  Why you are lying to everyone is beyond me, I just assume your ego got in your way again.

Triumph and Despair symbols cannot be cancelled. It's that simple.

Quote from: tenbones;942672So the guy in the A-wing gets shot to pieces... on his way out he crashes into the bridge of the Executor causing it to collide with the Death Star II!!!!

While I'd never do that to PCs (if they were a bridge crew) that's a fantastic example of how to use Triumphs and Despairs!