I don't understand why the game has such a tremendous volume of pure rules. There is actually relatively little effort made to detail the setting, monsters, npc's, etc. in the core book - it is mostly page after page after page after page of dense rules in small font. What the fuck? This isn't that complicated: nearly every roleplaying game out there, including this one, addresses similar things in their mechanics and there are hundreds of examples of how people have done it. The core rules of this game should be presented in something like 30-40 pages, and that's it - the rest should be setting material you would use at the table - ship plans, monster and npc stat blocks, maps, etc.

Gimmick dice and expensive rulebooks are no match for a solid d6 system powering your SWRPG......

Quote from: jeff37923;941167Gimmick dice and expensive rulebooks are no match for a solid d6 system powering your SWRPG......

I've had a few players that like the gimmick dice. I've also had players--including myself--that didn't much like the D6 Wild Die that came with later D6 versions. I haven't had any players that like the FFG books enough to think that they aren't terribly overpriced.

I have some notes on converting Classic Traveller to Starwars somewhere. I posted them on TMP and CotI  but I don't think I've ever posted them here. If anyone wants them I can.

The Coles Notes version: Light Sabers penetrate armor and inflict damage like a Laser Rifle but have the range modifiers of a Broad Sword, they use Dexterity instead of Strength.

Quote from: HappyDaze;941168I've had a few players that like the gimmick dice. I've also had players--including myself--that didn't much like the D6 Wild Die that came with later D6 versions. I haven't had any players that like the FFG books enough to think that they aren't terribly overpriced.

The problem of the Wild Die in D6 Star Wars is simple to solve: Just say 'No.'

Harl Quinn

Quote from: Skarg;941147LOL wow... narrative dice with symbols... those examples speak volumes. (running away)

Its funny too as I get the symbols and their use pretty well. But just am not thrilled with the system. While others I've showed it to just stare at the symbols and fail their sanity save. But show more interest in the system. Others keep wanting to use it as a more traditional RPG no matter and a few just cannot parse symbols even with the conversion chart, AND arent fond of the system.

In some ways it reads like other number of successes vs number of successes vs cancelling successes RPGs.

In all fairness, no hobby based on a game that uses a d12 is allowed to complain about goofy dice. Goofy dice, as a general category of dice, have to be accepted as a feature not a bug in table top rpg's. But you are allowed to gripe about the rest of the game.

Quote from: Omega;941182Its funny too as I get the symbols and their use pretty well. But just am not thrilled with the system. While others I've showed it to just stare at the symbols and fail their sanity save. But show more interest in the system. Others keep wanting to use it as a more traditional RPG no matter and a few just cannot parse symbols even with the conversion chart, AND arent fond of the system.

In some ways it reads like other number of successes vs number of successes vs cancelling successes RPGs.

It looks like it's 95% illusion to me - the fancy dice and massive expensive rule-laden fancy books with official Star Wars graphics and stuff and the examples in that image of how a die roll is to be interpreted as actual things about the setting (but aren't - they're about simple die rolls), they all seem to me like a way to avoid the fact that the part about the game mechanics being about Star Wars stuff is mainly illusion not supported by the rules except if a very abstract way. The GM is then supposed to talk about Star Wars details that aren't really taken into account except very abstractly - what really happened is the die roll which doesn't refer to the blaster or the armor or the situation directly - the GM is just supposed to make up a description that sounds like that's what's happening. At most, the stuff the GM and the players make up about the situation is going to determine what dice get rolled, but it's never going to have actual elements about the actual situation being taken into account except very abstractly.

Quote from: Larsdangly;941185In all fairness, no hobby based on a game that uses a d12 is allowed to complain about goofy dice. Goofy dice, as a general category of dice, have to be accepted as a feature not a bug in table top rpg's. But you are allowed to gripe about the rest of the game.

Even if I play RPGs that just use piles of d6's?

Quote from: CRKrueger;941099I have a friend who's thinking of picking this up, so I figure I'll pass on some questions, I know we have a couple veterans here.

1. Compatibility - How similar are the systems? If you can, specifically compare to the FFG 40k where Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader and Deathwatch characters didn't quite line up on the same scale/use the same modifiers, etc.

Completely compatible. One might even say to get the *all* of the goodies you'd probably want it all. It's one of the biggest irritating things that they spread out sub-systems across many books. Case in point: custom personal armor rules are in one of the Force-user books. But that aside, they're all compatible. The primary differences is Edge characters have Obligations (bad shit in your past that puts you on the fringe you need to deal with. Han owed Jabba frinstance). Military folks have Duty (which is background stuff that ties you to your organization.) Force users have their own "thing". Some GM's like to mix-and-match them, but ultimately they're used to drive potential events in the game and keep the PC's dealing with their "stuff".

Quote from: CRKrueger;941099I2. Economic Simulationism - Are the doodads of the setting concrete or abstract?  On a scale of 1-10, where 10 would be Gurps: Far Trader, how concrete is buying and selling stuff?

I'd rate it 4-7 depending on what the GM wants to emphasize. Money is a big deal, especially for Edge characters. There are no official rules for cargo-trading they just assume the GM will assign a value and you RP accordingly. There are rarity values for gear which determines cost based on where you are in the galaxy. Everything costs more on the edge, for example. The FFG community has already created really nice optional rules for ship-upkeep, docking fees etc. Mainly they're translating pretty much everything from D6 Star Wars over to FFG.

Quote from: CRKrueger;9410993. Engineering Simulationism - Outfitting/modifying/repairing your starship/droid/speeder whatever.  Can you illegally modify your Blastech-DL44 and Corellian YT-1300 like Han did?  On a scale of 1-10, where 10 would be Gurps: Vehicles or Traveller: Fusion, Fire and Steel how is the equipment customization.

This is where the game shines. It's pretty deep, you can mod *everything* and you can then mod the mods! Gear, Starships, Vehicles, everything - it can be modded to hell and back. They balance it by assigning Hard Points to each item and the mods cost a varying amount of Hard Points. Each mod can have it's own modifications so you can really customize stuff and make it unique (and legality is always an issue). What they *don't* have are rules for building things from the ground up based on points. They essentially want you to use what's in the game and just build off of those (which technically is the same thing since there's a ton of gear in the game). I'd rate this a solid 8 or 9.

Quote from: CRKrueger;9410994. Space Travel - Do they cover Fuel/Hyperspace that kind of stuff?  Do you run out of fuel only if you roll a critical failure on a Hyperspace roll or some weird abstract/narrative crap?  On a scale of 1-10 where 10 is, I guess Gurps/Traveller again, where is Space Travel?

No Hyperspace fuel. Yes you can run out of fuel on a bad roll - or whatever the GM feels is appropriate for the situation. On a scale of 1-10 in this category I give it a 2. HOWEVER - once again, the Community has created more granular rules that let you track all of this stuff. Again they translated everything from D6 if you want to smell that hyperdrive cooking in the back as your ship hums along.

Quote from: CRKrueger;9410995. Starmaps -  How well do they chart out the Star Wars Universe, and is there a single resource, or is it kind of all over the place in adventures, etc?  If you want to 1-10 this one, I guess travellermap.com is an 11?

The map they have in the book is GORGEOUS... but it's too small. But who the FUCK needs that when you have THIS: http://www.swgalaxymap.com/  which makes this a 12.

Quote from: CRKrueger;9410996. Narrative Nonsense - What kinds of OOC mechanics are floating around?  Any meta-currencies?

There are several ways to look at this. If you're a pessismist you can say there's a SHIT TON of narrative stuff. If you're moderate - you can say there's very little. The primary narrative currency is Destiny points. Essentially the Players and the GM roll Destiny dice (they represent lightside/darkside points) and the Players get to spend lightside and the GM spends Darkside. Now spending these points can be used IF the GM allows to insert narrative stuff into the scene/action/roll whatever. OR it can simply be used to give bonuses to a roll which eliminates the narrative aspect entirely. Same goes for normal dice-rolls. Pessimists insist that when you roll advantages/disadvantages on your actions that can be interpreted by the GM as "narrativist" - but they conveniently ignore the fact these values are currencies that have actual mechanical uses that have *nothing* to do with narrativism. For example - rolling X amount of advantages can give you multiple hits if you roll enough of them, or activate some of the mods on your weapons etc.  So you can run the game with very little - or even NO narrative content beyond what you'd normally do on any given RPG with *zero* effort.

Quote from: CRKrueger;941099The whole reason FFGSW is looking attractive to him is because there's a ton of source material and adventures to splice together.  The one thing he doesn't have time for right now is to take everything from the Star Wars technical readouts and convert to some system and he doesn't want to just take general space stuff and handwave it all as Star Wars (where everyone everywhere is using like 1 of 4 different blasters for example).

I gave him a pdf of d6 REUP, but he was asking me about FFGSW so here we go.

I'll say this: the FFG adventures are seriously some of the best adventure modules out there. They're designed well, and easily manipulated to fit in just about any campaign. You could run really satisfying campaigns just on the stuff that's out there right now. And they have really cranked out a LOT of material with huge community support. I still have room for all my d6 Star Wars stuff as reference where the tiny gaps that aren't filled in are needed.

Quote from: CRKrueger;9411057. So you never run out of fuel, ammo, etc. unless it's some form of Dramatic Complication as dictated by the Funky Dice?  I think that might spike the idea right there.

I was skeptical of this too. But I've seen it in play enough to "feel" it worked. So you have to buy a few clips and keep them on you just like normal. That said - you can *easily* just ignore this, since the complication could be *literally* anything that forces you to clear a jam/reload your weapon/got a eyelash stuck in your eye etc. or the GM could just assign a penalty. So it's as narrative as you want it to be.

Quote from: CRKrueger;9411058. Aren't there Destiny Points or something like that?  What can you do with them?  Reroll with them, Get Out of Death Free, add a Corporate Sector Blaster Carbine behind the bar?

They can be a numerical value or a narrative value (depends on how you want to use them). Force users get more specific use out of them because they fuel their abilities.

Quote from: CRKrueger;9411059. Ok, so maybe they don't have maps, but what about Hyperspace Routes?  I remember the WEG stuff at least listing known routes for popular systems, do they go that deep into it?

See the map-link in my previous post. Most of the adventures have mini-maps of the sector. I just use the maps from the Galaxy Map site that way I can calculate hyperspace jump difficulties and travel times using the d6 method.

The map you linked to is certainly better as a game aid than what comes with the game. But you can't tell me it compares with the canon Traveller galaxy map. There is orders of magnitude less information. One response might be that star wars isn't about all your liberal facts and figures; its a space opera and who cares about random planets with toxic atmospheres. Even so, let's keep this all honest: Traveller kicks the shit out of every other space game when it comes to fully fleshed out setting.

Having to refference outside sources to plug the holes in a game is not a selling point.
Having to canniballize material from other RPGs to plug the holes in a game is not a selling point.

These are flaws.

Quote from: Omega;941208Having to refference outside sources to plug the holes in a game is not a selling point.
Having to canniballize material from other RPGs to plug the holes in a game is not a selling point.

These are flaws.

I'm not claiming either of those things. I'm merely pointing out means around those existing flaws that we both have recognized.

FFG's Star Wars is *nowhere even close* to having the same amount of time in production that WEG Star Wars has had. But in the time FFG has had the license they've had they've put out a very large amount of content with higher production quality (with corresponding much higher cost).

I think the inference being made by you on this point, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that community-made content doesn't count? Isn't it disingenuous to think that people *wouldn't* translate content from d6/d20 Star Wars into this new system while it's still growing? That seems a bit silly. Especially given much of this is happening on FFG's own forums much like Savage Worlds does the same on theirs.

Quote from: Larsdangly;941202The map you linked to is certainly better as a game aid than what comes with the game. But you can't tell me it compares with the canon Traveller galaxy map. There is orders of magnitude less information. One response might be that star wars isn't about all your liberal facts and figures; its a space opera and who cares about random planets with toxic atmospheres. Even so, let's keep this all honest: Traveller kicks the shit out of every other space game when it comes to fully fleshed out setting.

I wouldn't argue this with you at all. I'm speaking strictly from the context of Star Wars and its self-contained setting, since CRKrueger is asking specifically about FFG's Star Wars. Heh if he was talking about Traveller - that would be an entirely different discussion.

Quote from: Larsdangly;941185In all fairness, no hobby based on a game that uses a d12 is allowed to complain about goofy dice. Goofy dice, as a general category of dice, have to be accepted as a feature not a bug in table top rpg's. But you are allowed to gripe about the rest of the game.

'the hell is wrong with the d12?