Barl
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Posts posted by Barl
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I haven't got the book yet, but from the snippets I have seen in the marketing and from people who have it, the book seems to not really have a hard set structure for games. I believe one of the articles described the players as more or less being everyday (future) people trying to get by day to day, not rich, but not destitue either.
I have a four frameworks I have been thinking about using, one of which I actually ran a short game with to test out the Genesys systme, when it first released.
There is the first, tried and true, method that others have mentioned. The group is deniable assests, troubleshooters, shadowrunners etc, that do jobs for shadowy corp reps. I would equate this to the dungeon crawl or kick in the door approach in D&D, lots of action and easy to set up plot hooks. Given that raids on corp compounds can be set up as dungeons and the PC will just be hired for each mission. While the setting certainly allows for this sort of play, it does not seem to be the main focus, things seem a little bit more organized and clean than the usual cyberpunk aesthetic.
My second is having the PC be a gang or the leaders of a gang. This would be more gritty and involve the players setting up their operation and organizing their manpower. I would be stealing the rules for setting up a colony or buisness from Far Horizons, the sourcebook for colonists for EOTE. And have the PCs control gang memebers as minions when going into battle with rival gangs (or Globalsec or private corp military etc).
The third one is the PCs wokring for an agency of some kind, it could be the police as a special investigative unit, a government black ops anti terror unit (inspired by Ghost in The Shell) or the same, but wokring for Globalsec. The focus would be on investigation and solving crimes and mysteries, with the option to go more action oriented on occasion.
The last one is similar to the third one, but with a few differences and it comes in two main varities. It has the players working as a special task force for a corp, the main choice the players would have to make is if they wanted to work for one of the big four or other large established corps or would make their own smaller corp from the ground up. This could give the players an opportunity to step into the role of, what is usually depicted as the bad guys, in cyberpunk fiction. This would be a mix of the types of play I mnetioned above, running a business, controlling underlings, investigation and action.
The last one is also the style I ran my first trial game with. The player chose to make their own small corp, "Human Solutions". One of the players had latched on the idea of the changing nature of labor itself and how it was all pretty much controleld by two megacorps. He wanted to make a corp that competed with them. At first I was a bit baffled, seeing as any small corp making clones or bioroids would soon be destroyed or bought out by Jinteki or HB. But his idea was to focus on, as the name implies, human solutions. High end service specialists trained by them and rented out for special events or on longer contracts. So if you hired a cook, he would not only be a cook but also have some deeper knowledge of chemistry and be trained to be empathetic and easy to talk to.
Human solutions employees would be trained to not only match androids in certain areas, but also exceed them by still having that real human element: "I have hired a real human to tutor my kid in math" etc.
To accommodate the players who wanted to make a clone of bioroid character, I also had the corp function as a sort of underground railroad for escaped androids. So they were not directly hostile to androids themselves, but saw it as sticking it to HB and Jinteki when they freed or hired those twos former "products". This also opens up room for some Human First plot hooks, maybe they are a bit pissed why Human Solutions will not endorse them and maybe there actually some Human First adherents already working inside Human Solutions. -
I agree some skills are very narrow, like Vigilance and Cool which seem like they should fall under Perception and Discipline respectivly.
I have just accepted it is for game balance so as not to make certain skills too powerful. Perception (and skills like it) already gets a lot of use in most any RPG or setting for example, it would be overkill to also have it be your initiative AND the skill used to tell when people are lying or being dishonest.
Another thing is Cool though. I have never been a fan of its primary use being as initiative when setting up ambushes. It makes it so there is practically no benefit using ambushes, either as a player or GM. To me it makes a lot more sense to give boost dice or impose Setback dice on those being ambushed.I have not been able to figue out why the game needs two sepreate types of initiative, if there is some balance reason (like I mention with Perception) or something like that. So I would be happy if anyone could enlighten me?
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On 10/6/2018 at 8:20 PM, Thanatos said:The problem is we don't have more toolkit books for this toolkit system. Like it would have been nice to have a gear book with expanded gear creation rules. Or a vehicle book. Or a threats book. Or maybe a book that re-adds the talent trees. Or a magic book.
They seem to want the setting books to do double duty as both setting and toolkit book, the Terrinoth book had a bunch of new rules that could be used both for Fantasy and other settings. And of course expanded on the gear for fantasy settings.
It is not really ideal, since if you are not interested in the settings, you are still paying for a lot of pages of stuff you wont use. I think the Terrinoth book is like 50% pure lore (or maybe even more than that). Also some of the "new" rules have already been in some of the Star Wars books, like signature skills. And these things are also bound to be repeated in other setting books.
Although on the other hand doing tons of generic source books may not be sustainable either as others have pointed out.
I just hope to see continued support for each setting. It has been a year since Realms of Terrinoth came out and the only setting specific additional content we have seen is NPC cards. Which, admittedly are useful, I used them for Edge of the Empire. I guess they are waiting to see which setting sells well before going too crazy with additional support. Trying to fully support too many settings is (partly) what bankrupted TSR in the 90s.And there still isn't a GM screen, not even a generic one.
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Cyberpunk, specifically the Android setting. I even got the "Worlds of Android" book, it is pretty much a setting book without any crunch and is probably more detailed than the Android book there will be coming for Genesys at some point.
I would also like to run some space opera, Edge of the Empire almost gave me what I wanted, but I was not interested in the Star Wars setting. I would be fine with perhaps a Twilight Imperium setting or even just some generic setting stuff, so I can fill in the blanks myself.
I am also thinking of porting some Deadlands and/or Pirates of the Spanish Main (or really just doing a pirate game with some light mystical elements) over from Savage Worlds, since I really like those games, but my group is not really into Savage Worlds as a system.
Fantasy is probably not something I am gonna touch with Genesys, unless it is part some mashup (Dragonstar or Shadowrun for example), I prefer D&D 5th and WFRP 2nd ED when I do play fantasy games.
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I got by with just 2 sets as a GM + 4-5 players. But there were many times an extra set would have come in handy, especially when the players skill ranks started to increase.
I have pre-ordered 3 sets (and a core rulebook) and expect that to be enough. Although I may want more so each player can build their dice pool out of turn. But untill I am sure I am going all in on this system I will keep it somewhat limited. I got tired of the Star Wars setting pretty fast and thus stopped playing the games. Even though I really loved the system.If they do Beginner sets for a setting I like, similar to the Star Wars ones, I may pick one up. Even if I and my players should be at home with the new system, the extra dice, cardboard chits and maps are handy stuff to have.
EDIT: Oh and I should say that 1-2 of my players used the dice roller app and also myself sometimes. Although I do prefer the tactile part of picking out your dice pool and rolling, even if tallying symbols is faster with the app. -
Forsaken Lore is probably the best place to start, it fills out the 8 card encounter "decks" in the main game so they become actual decks and also adds more basic stuff, that gives the game more variety.
As Eldan985 says, you can get the rest depending on your interests (like if you have a favorite ancient one, investigator or just overall theme), but I will say that I find Under the Pyramids and The Dreamlands to be the most interesting expansions.Wildbastian reacted to this -
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Scenarios is the lifeblood of this game, but seemigly also the part that is most arduous to develop. Espceially when FFG is understaffed in their digital department at the moment.
But still, that is what I want to see more of, both as DLC and as part of the boxed expansions. Also more variation within excisting scenarios, using the new monster, spells and items is a good start, but i would like to see the expansions tiles be used more. 1-2 more permutations of the maps based on what expansions you own for each scenario, would very welcome as a DLC packet or as part of a boxed expansion.
New tiles investigators, cards and monsters are fo course always welcome, but for me they are secondary to new scenarios and replayability for those.
That being said a campaign game of some sort would be great. Masks of Nyarlathotep and Horror on the Orient Express are both good candidates for those, but may not be possible since I think they are technically IP owned by Chaosium. Mountains of Madness may be a better option since I am pretty sure that is in the public domain now. That of course would stop FFG from doing a scenario based on a long train ride or even the Oient Express itself, they just can just stay away from specific elements used in that campaign.
I imagine having a map based on three or more small tiles with a train motif in a long row, then each new location is built out from that. It would be an opportunity to use a lot of varied tiles, from across all expansions. -
This game has so much potential for DLC, so it is sad that it is marred by these issiues. Itm ay also be why there is only 1 DLC so far, it was a test to see how many were willing to shell out for it. But since many will be holding back because of the cross-platform problems, FFG may not do any or only very few future DLCs.
I guess so far the best place to get the DLC is on Steam, since many people I play with have either a Laptop or Desktop PC and the phone is bit *** to use if you are many people. -
I think the suggestion with alternate maps being unlocked by having the expansions is the best option so far. So each expansion or DLC scenario has 2-3 versions of the map (using core set and that expansions tiles), with more being unlocked with certain other expansions.
This would avoid the DLC scenarios requiring having any expansions, but still having more variation with more expansions. Because, I agree that for all the tons of tiles the game has (if you also own the two figue and tile sets) much of it seems to be very rarely used. -
My idea so far is something with some similarities to how they did most special powers in New World of Darkness. Seeing as there no force dice in Genesys, I am guessing magic will be done with a skill roll of some kind. You could have them just hit the the target if you manage to succeed on the roll or make them opposed by certain skills, like the social skills are. Lets take a basic ranged damage spell:
Magic/psionic/holy etc-Bolt
Deal X damage + succsess rolled to 1 target at short range
Spend X Advantage to hit 1 more target for the same damage result or the same target for double the damage result
Spend X Advantage to increase the range one step
Spend X Triumph to ignore X soak on 1 target
Then you could have a single table for all magic where the GM can spend Threat and Despair on bad stuff effects, similar to when a psyker would roll for bad stuff in the Warhammer 40K games or wild magic in D&D. Stuff like the spell hitting an ally or the caster himself too or the spell only fireing a round or two later. The spells could also be modified for each setting or even given more descriptors in the same setting, that add unique ways to spend advantage and triumph: a Fire Bolt could apply a damage over time effect or a Necrotic Bolt that adds a setback die on certain skills/attributes on the target, for the rest of the encounter.
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Wasn't there talk of doing "genreric" Star Wars sourcebooks that will work for all three games?
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This makes sense, but I hope they find a way to do it a bit differently than in the Star Wars games. As Xuc Xac and Tom Cruise pointed out above it is really something of a non choice. Sure you do not HAVE to min-max and many players don't, but even if you are not going for that 4 at char-gen, the best option is still to spend all the bonus xp on stat boosts. i would much rather it have be a number of picks all the way through.
So each of the archetypes would start with something like the base stats you describe, but then just be given a number of extra stat boosts and ways to spend them. So lets say the Well Rounder (aka "Human") would start with 2 in all stats and get +1 to two different stats and the talented would also have 2 in all stats, but he gets minus 1 to a single stat and +2 to another stat. Obvoisly the stats would need to be adjusted for balance, but not having spend more of your "character creation budget" on stats frees you up to make more interesting characters. I would also prefer to get one of more starting talents as part of choosing your career later in the character creation process.Heck, you could even expand on the stat choices and make it have more far reaching consequences, like giving an XP discount to increase your postive stat picks and increased XP cost for your negative choices (maybe with the "Well Rounder" getting neither). This would all depend on if and how you can increase stats during play.
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2 hours ago, Split Light said:They could probably technically do Cthulu, as Lovecraft is old enough to be public domain, though that has been done to death.
There are a number of non-Call of Cthhulhu rpgs out there, Trail of Cthulhu, Achtung Cthulhu (actually double statted for Call of Cthulhu too) and CthulhuTech.
I think they can do an "Arkham Horror" rpg setting for Genesys without too much trouble. All of FFGs other Chtulhu themed games have a Pulp Adventure feel, than the cosmic exsistensial horror of Call of Cthulhu. So a Genesys game would also serve a different audience than Call of Cthulhu. -
You would need to blend the vehicles rules with the personal scale rules. For example all the bots would have vehicle scale armor, wound threshold, strain threshold and weapon damage. This wouldn't matter when they are just fighting each other, but will give a major power boost against regular humans.
Now that I think it would probably be a perfect way to handle superpowered characters. If you have super-toughness, instead of just having an insanely high wound threshold, you would just have a vehicle wound threshold. And if you have invulnerbility, you would have vehicle armor. Similarly if you have a energy blast or other offensive superpower it would do vehicle scale damage. That way you can wade through mooks, but other superpowered characters would still be a challenge and regular people can still be dangerous to you if they attack with a tank or something like that.TechnoGolem reacted to this -
Things I am (90%) sure they will be doing:
Android - Cyberpunk
Rokugan (LOT5R) - Alternate fantasy (although this would very much be its own thing)
Runebound - Kitchen Sink fantasy
Generic Steampunk Sourcebook
Generic Weird War Sourcebook
I could see them doing Generic sourcebooks for all 5 of the settings they mention in the product description and they may in fact come out before any named settings.
Things they may be doing, but not right away:
Twilight Imperium - Space opera
Arkham Horror - Horror
Dust - Weird War/Alternate History
Things that are unlikely, but would be cool:
Dragonstar - Fantasy/Space Opera
Game of Thrones - Fantasy (I don't think they have the licenese to make an RPG with this IP)
Personally I am just looking forward to an Android game, it is something I have been wanting for this system ever since I first played Edge of The Empire. And I am almost as hyped for a possible Twilight Imperium game too. These two are the worlds and genres I have been wanting a good rpg for, for the longest time. I have tried a bunch of different systems and games and none of them really fit what I wanted. While I can appreciate Star Wars, it is not the type of space opera I want, so even if i got some of the books it always felt somewhat unsatisfactory to play because of the setting. And as for Cyberpunk, I backed the Interface Zero kickstarter, but I didn't really care for its approach to cyberpunk. Like do I really need a big rules section on mechs, battlesuits, 4 types of psychic powers as well as genemodded human/animal hybrids, biological cyborgs (flesh and bone with computer mind) and regular cyborgs (metal and chrome with flesh mind)? Sure it sounds cool, but the identity of the setting got lost in all the systems and concepts it introduced. Also it was horribly unbalanced, to the point of almost being unfinished, with the GM having to fill in the blanks. It ran on Savage Worlds and the system couldn't really handle all the things the game tried to do.XCOM would be a really cool setting too, FFG has some sort of license, so it may be a possiblity. I just don't know how you would do it justice. Do you play the soldies going on missions? Or the management back on the base? Or both, but how would that work? What makes the XCOM games special is the interplay between the strategic gameplay on the base and the tactical game in the field, so an RPG would need to capture that somehow. If you would just be playing one of the other, the game would lose some of what makes XCOM what it is.
Richardbuxton reacted to this -
Holy **** you are right, a completely kayfabe RPG would be perfect for Genesys: cutting promos, locker room arguments, kidnapped family memebers, voodoo magic, love, betrayals and occasionally some wrestling.
I am watching GLOW at the moment, so I may be a little more amped up for this than usually :-D -
You also upgrade difficulty when doing opposed rolls, so challenge dice can come up quite often in social interactions, when players use their skills in such encounters.
Each social skill is "resisted" by a another specific skill. So if a character is trying to use his Charm skill to get into the VIP area of the nightclub, the bouncer would resist that attempt with his own Cool skill. So the GM, instead of setting an arbritary difficulty, looks what the bouncer has in his Presence attribute, bouncing is not only about being big and strong but also about looking intimidating and being able to handle drunks, so lets give him 3. That means the basic difficulty for the characters Charm roll would be 3 difficulty dice. But the bouncer has also recieved some training in being aware of any disturbence in the room and "keeping a cool head", so he has 2 in his Cool skill. That would mean 2 of the 3 difficulty dice in the Charm roll would be upgraded to challenge dice. As a GM I would also add a number of boost and/or setback dice depending on what the player of the character actually says when we roleplay the encounter out.
I really like this system because it makes any social interaction tense since there is a risk of a Despair being rolled pretty much all the time. I have had simple haggling with a merchant turn into entire side-adventures, I would have never come up with if it weren't for the narrative dice. But I can also see why some may dislike it, if they prefer to keep dice-rolling to a minimum doing social encounters.
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It seems more like archetypes will be the replacement for the races of the Star Wars rpg, selecting a race was the first step of character creation there too and it seems to fit the same mechanical function for "providing the basis for your character". Since we know there are four and from the descriptions I would guess they are something like: "Physical", "Smart", "Social" and "Generic" (with better names of course). This could easily be expanded out to work as different fantasy and sci-fi races.
As for the Careers, I think they will work like Specializations, so you get one starting talent tree and can "multiclass" into others as in Star Wars, cutting out the middleman of Professions entirely. The book will probably provide a list of generic Careers as they describe, Entertainer and Trader being two of them and then one or more for each of the 5 basic settings they describe: Knight for Fantasy and Mad Scientist for Steampunk, for example.
What I am really wondering is how they are gonna handle special powers, the Force system could be adapted (it would need to use the regular dice in some way) to work for some types of powers and genres, but would not work all that well for others. I don't like it for a fantasy magic system, but it would be excellent for psychic powers. -
I really hope they reskin this game again and NOT as Star Wars. It is unlikely, I know, but FF/Asmodee seems rather hellbent on exploiting that IP for all it is worth. So I wouldn't put it past them, even of they would have to make the factions variations of the Rebels and the Empire. And even if they already have a Star Wars themed game covering some of the same ground in Rebellion.
So fingers crossed they have something up their sleeve, it seem like they saw the GW exit coming at least a year ago, if not longer, since they usually release an expansion for a game like Forbidden Stars after about a year, And we only got silience.So my hope is they already have a plan to replace or reskin some of the games they lose from their lineup. Chaos in the Old World could work well with a Mythos theme for example, but that may be too similar to Cthulhu Wars.
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The two groups I play EH with like to get random investigators instead of picking, which is fine, though I do think it can ramp of the difficulty a bit. And the designers seems to agree, since the rulebook tells you to choose an investigator
When i am playing by myself, I like to choose since you need to have a diverse team and with some AOs you "need" to have certain investigators.
So far I have this list:
Shub - Leo Anderson and Diana Stanley as my gatecloser/spellcaster since she is also good in combat.Cthulhu - Silas
Yog-Sothoth - Akachi and more spellcasters than fighters
Yig - Leo again as well as an more fighters than usual.
Most of the time I play with 4 investigators and have 2 fighters, 1 spellcaster and 1 support character, sometimes I use Charlie Kane but usually it is another spellcaster with fleshward, bless and such.
What other Investigators have you found works well with particular AOs and how do you and your group prefer to pick investigators? I haven't got MoM yet, but I would like to hear about the new investigators and AO and what combos work both with the expansion and the base game.
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I think the AO specific research deck and mysteries, as well as the fact that you build a Mythos deck for every game (instead of just putting them all in a huge pile), will help tremendously with avoiding the expansion bloat seen in Arkham Horror. There, all the story flavor came from the, ever growing, Mythos deck, where in EH it comes from the mysteries and research decks.
I still would have preferred not having extra game boards, but I can't make a final judgement on that, until I have played MoM a few times..
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"Activating" one Viper can be one of three things: Launch one unmanned Viper from one of the red spots on the side of galactica, move one unmanned Viper to an adjacent space area or attack with one unmanned viper (that is shoot at ONE Cylon ship in the same area as the Viper). So the two activations from the command area, can for example, be used to launch a viper and move it to an adjacent space or attack with one Viper TWO times. Or any other combination of the three options, two times. As explained above, Lee Adama's once a game action ability lets him do the same,just six times instead of two.
Now, if you are piloting a Viper yourself it is a bit different, because you can use your characters "move" to move the Viper you are piloting (your little red disk is underneath), and then you can also use your action to "activate" the Viper. So if you begin your turn in a Viper you could use your move to go to an adjacent space area and then use you "action" to "activate" the Viper with another move or an attack. Also launching yourself with an action from the Hangar gives you another action, which could be used to activate the Viper. You can never "activate" a Viper being used by another player using the Command action area or Lee Adama's ability.
The main advantages to piloting a Viper yourself comes from the pilot skill cards, that can let you reroll an attack against you with -2 or let you attack 4 times. Starbuck's special ability also lets her take an extra action if she is piloting a Viper at the start of her turn. So she could move and attack two times, move 2 times and attack, move three times or move and activate her Viper AND take an action (using a skill card or chorum card, if she is president, for example).
Lee Adama's other special ability lets him kinda teleport into a Viper being launched and take one action (i am a little unsure of the timing, but I think his action takes place before the active player can do anything else), so you if launch one and the Lee player decides to jump into that Viper, you can no longer use your second "activation" on it.
What will be the future of Genesys?
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This is sadly one of the costs of the consolidation Asmodee has been doing the last fe years. Even very well known and successful RPGs (like D&D 5th ed.) are not gonna be huge money makers, at least not big enough for a large conglomerate like Asmodee.
I had really hoped FFG would have been able to keep their rpg deparment going for a while yet, by keeping the team small and with moves like monetizing fan content via the Foundry. But sadly it seems the profit was still not worth the cost of keeping a "side project" like this going.