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Post by Finarvyn on Jun 4, 2015 7:10:52 GMT -6
I'm being recruited by my local game store owner to run some sessions of the FFG version of the Star Wars RPG. (I know, it's not the better one but it is the one that the store can sell and so he wants someone to run some games to help sell some product.)
The problem is, I've never run it or played it.
What I'm looking for is some key advice or instruction on what I can do to catch up on this system in a hurry. I found a YouTube video of a guy explaining the dice system and am planning on watching it after work. I own the basic starter set and am hoping to give it another read-through soon. (The first time I read this stuff I got glassy-eyed ... which makes me nervous to try to figure it out now.)
So ... anyone want to give me some insight on this game?
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Post by angelicdoctor on Jun 5, 2015 6:54:37 GMT -6
The best piece of advice I can give is to recommend that you listen to the Order 66 podcast dedicated to all things FFG Star Wars. In addition, listen to the applicable live play podcasts on the Mad Adventurer's website. Finally, also on the Mad Adventurer's Society website, is the Skill Monkey podcast which is a focused 10 minute or so look at how to use the skills associated with that particular edition of Star Wars role-playing. These collective media streams will be more than sufficient to equip you with what you need to run many a successful game.
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Post by Finarvyn on Jun 6, 2015 7:51:45 GMT -6
Sadly, my home computer is a dam that pretty much stopps all streaming media. (It's an XP.) I was able to watch a little at school, and some of those videos are useful.
I have figured out the basics of the dice, and they seem interesting. It's basically a "skill plus stat" kind of system, but instead of adding the two you use the higher number to determine the total number of dice to roll and the lower number to see how many of those dice are upgraded from green d8's to yello d12's. Then the GM determines difficulty and gives the player some purple d8's based on the difficulty rating and the player rolls the whole handful to see what happens. If you get more successes than failures, the task succeeds. The more successes, the more flashy your action.
Sort of.
There appear to be advantage results in addition to success/failure and this seems to add an extra layer of "unexpected cool stuff can happen" or "unexpected bad things can happen" that also come up from the arcane symbols on the dice. I get the impression that this can become collaborative-narrative in that players other than the DM can suggest what some of those unexpected events can be.
Anyway, I still have a week or so before I have to run the thing. I think I'm going to debut with some crazy streamlined rules and add in more stuff later if I feel like it.
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Post by Finarvyn on Jul 6, 2015 5:27:59 GMT -6
A bit of an "actual play" report fof those interested.
I got together with a couple of players at my local game store. I had read the basic rules (from the boxed set) but hadn't run any actual encounters, and it turned out that one of the other guys had read the rulebook but hadn't run any actual encounters, either. We decided to combine our brainpower and do a combat together rather than focus on a real adventure.
The dice messed us up at first, keeping the symbols straight, but as time passed they became more intuitive. We figured out that there is sort of a "currency" of how the symbols can be spent in play and this ties in to the two types of damage that characters can take -- success/failure links to hit points while advantage/disadvantage links to strain (mental toughness and fatigue). Additional actions can be bought using strain, which is something that most of the bad guys don't get. The advantage/disadvantage thing seems to be where we learned the most during play (hit points being pretty obvious) as you can restore lost strain, you can lose strain, or you can hand out good or bad dice to self and to others. So the end effect is that you end up doing damage in the usual way, but that "currency" of strain is part of what makes things interesting and makes characters heroic.
I goofed about bad-guy difficulty. There are "minion" class bad guys and others who are a lot tougher. I threw a group of tough stormtroopers at the players and the characters really struggled. We figured out eventually that base stormtroopers are minions with a lot fewer hit points and that three tough stormtroopers were a real challenge. We also had messed up that "strain currency" thing and later realized that some of those extra advantage symbols would have translated into damage on the stormtroopers as well.
Bottom line is that we're figuring out the system and it got a lot more fun as we went along and as we got more familar with the dice mechanic. One of the players seemed very overwhelmed by the whole symbol thing at first, but by the end of the session she really was getting "into" reading the dice and even wanted to borrow a rulebook to read up on some of the details.
We're playing it again in a couple of weeks.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jul 6, 2015 8:57:28 GMT -6
I goofed about bad-guy difficulty. There are "minion" class bad guys and others who are a lot tougher. I threw a group of tough stormtroopers at the players and the characters really struggled. We figured out eventually that base stormtroopers are minions with a lot fewer hit points and that three tough stormtroopers were a real challenge. We also had messed up that "strain currency" thing and later realized that some of those extra advantage symbols would have translated into damage on the stormtroopers as well. I like the minions rules quite a bit. Since they can act as a single entity, I view the rules as an ad-hoc squading mechanism (something I've gotten flak from in the FFG boards). It makes it easy to run fairly large groups of enemies. Back when I was paying, I tried to keep the groups to about five or less as the dice sort of break down with large groups. FFG's dice app, although clunky, does a good job at teaching you how to read the dice as it automatically cancels out results properly. I prefer real dice though. The one thing that's most frustrating with the game is that you can't modify the actual dice. I'd like to change some of the pips around. As an obsessive rules tinkerer, this is the worst. Anyway, good to hear that it went well. FFG has a boardgame called Imperial Assault, that works in a similar but simpler manner. We've been playing this every couple weeks or so. |
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Post by Finarvyn on Jul 7, 2015 4:56:02 GMT -6
I like the minions rules quite a bit. Since they can act as a single entity, I view the rules as an ad-hoc squading mechanism (something I've gotten flak from in the FFG boards). It makes it easy to run fairly large groups of enemies. Back when I was playing, I tried to keep the groups to about five or less as the dice sort of break down with large groups. Explain to me a bit more how this works. Our battle didn't use minions but I want to use them next time to make encounters work better, but I'm not sure how they work in groups. The one thing that's most frustrating with the game is that you can't modify the actual dice. I'd like to change some of the pips around. As an obsessive rules tinkerer, this is the worst. Yeah, I thought about this as well, particularly when players spent advantage for blue d6's that always came up blank so they did nothing. I suppose one could get little stickers to put over certain faces... FFG has a boardgame called Imperial Assault, that works in a similar but simpler manner. We've been playing this every couple weeks or so. I bought a copy for the minis and boards for my RPG but haven't opened it yet. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 7, 2015 9:05:10 GMT -6
Explain to me a bit more how this works. Our battle didn't use minions but I want to use them next time to make encounters work better, but I'm not sure how they work in groups. The minion rules aren't too complicated. Firstly, Minion NPCs generally don't have skills. So a Rival-level Stormtrooper has an Agility of 3 and a Ranged skill of 2 so he'll be rolling two yellows and a green. But a Minion-level Stormtrooper just has his Agility of 3 so he'll get three Greens. However, when multiple Minions are acting together, such as firing on the same target, you give them a skill level (in certain skills listed) equal to the number of extra troopers. So two Minion Stormtroopers will have a skill of 1 whereas five Stormtroopers will have a skill of 4. So when 5 Stormtroopers fire they roll three yellow and a green (four dice total). It's one more effective shot rather than five less effective shots. When getting shot at, you pool their hit points together. So three Stormtrooper minions with 5 hps each will have 15 hit points, with one dying for every 5 points of damage. [Sort of, the rules for this game are weird in that you only die if the damage exceeds your hit points. So, actually, one Stormtrooper will die one the 6th, 11th, and 16th point of damage. It's an easy rule to miss or ignore but some of the rules, as written, don't make sense otherwise.] Yeah, I thought about this as well, particularly when players spent advantage for blue d6's that always came up blank so they did nothing. I suppose one could get little stickers to put over certain faces... It's the Blue die that I'd mainly like to change. You'd think that getting a Boost would make it more likely to succeed but, actually, there are twice as many Advantage symbols as Successes. So, Blue dice are good at generating excess Advantage which can be used to buy more Boosts. So you end up with a Blue die being passed around the table with little effect on game play. I'd rather swap the symbols out so the Blue die had 2 Advantage and 4 Successes. |
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skars
Level 6 Magician
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Post by skars on Jul 14, 2015 18:29:18 GMT -6
I can empathize with the blue dice comments. When the first starter set was released, they didn't specify that without the presence of at least one success, it was considered a failure. So, we would end up in these situations where the resolution was null but there was advantage/disadvantage. That was clarified with the first hardbound book and subsequent releases. But, it really put a nasty taste in our mouth regarding the special dice. The results are still a bit odd at times and can be super anti-climactic when the odds are absolutely in favor of the player, yet the random element just rears its ugly head to cock things up. Sure it's fun at times to roll with the dice results, but it grew rather tiresome quickly. Much like the lame tower in Dirk Henn boardgames or the card draw in Command & Colors.
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