Campaign Idea - Suggestions?

[Campaign Idea - Suggestions?]

What are your players' characters' Duties and Motivations? And their backstories? I'm running an AoR campaign right now and, other than the initial story arc, the adventures center around what the players came up with for their characters. I also had them each come up with 2 - 3 NPCs that *could potentially* show up in the campaign and that's helped me springboard new adventure ideas.

If you're stuck, try linking what you've already developed with whatever the players have brought to the table. 

[Collapse of the Republic stole fan artwork for the back cover]

Professional commercial artist/designer who has worked with businesses both big and small here: 

1. From a legal perspective, you're rolling the dice with fan art. American copyright law is grossly weighted to benefit the financial bottom line of corporate America. That said, 99.9% of businesses don't care if you make unlicensed art because they view it as free advertising. But if you want to sell it for money, you'll have to do it under the table or else a lawyer will probably bust you. My friends who have tried to sell Harry Potter handkerchiefs (or whatever) on Etsy always end up with C&D orders.
2. Judges view these on a case-by-case basis. Just because one artist won a judgement doesn't mean another judge won't rule in the favor of a faceless corporation. Even a SCOTUS case precedent can be ignored by clever lawyers.
3. Fine artists get away with using corporate IPs because they're commenting on what the intellectual property represents. Andy Warhol didn't paint soup cans because he was a big fan of Campbell's soup. If you wanted to sell a painting of a child's bedroom with Star Wars figures on the floor, that's totally fine, because the theme of the painting isn't Star Wars, it's childhood.
4. As an example of how litigious this stuff can get, my current employer won't allow any of its design team to use free Internet resources, like music clips made in Garage Band, because it could open the company up to a usage lawsuit. Only licensed stock images/videos/audio from vendors are allowed.

I personally feel that American IP laws are disgusting, stifle both creativity and culture, and should be changed as they only benefit people who don't need more money. Corporations like Disney keep pressuring Congress to extend copyright protections way past the original expiration dates. Walt Disney has been dead for decades and doesn't have a reasonable cause to continue collecting on his work. But that's the world we live in.

Is it scummy to steal fan art? Yes. But that's the risk you're taking as a fan artist. That's a big reason why I encourage people to push their creativity and make something new *OR* work to become a preferred hire for the IP holder.

[I need a better plot device/McGuffin at the start of new campaign]

This feels like a conversation to have with your players. It shouldn't fall just upon your shoulders as the GM to provide the motivation to which player characters' respond. The point of a MacGuffin is that what it is and what it does is irrelevant, it's just a story device that spurs action. 

[Deception, how do you hide this from the PC's so they dont meta the dice pool.]

One dice roll that determines whether or not a major NPC is a goodie or baddie is a bad precedent to make. If the PCs don't have direct evidence of ill-doing they're breaking the social contract of the game by automatically assuming a "lying" NPC is automatically up to no good. As a GM, I would tell the players this directly. If they want to be suspicious, whatever, you can't control that, but that doesn't mean the PCs get to act on information they don't have.

If the PCs' roll determines the NPC is lying when they make a statement, just make up an excuse as to why the NPC was lying that doesn't hint at ill behavior on the NPC's part. Court room and police dramas are full of examples of suspects who lie in order to cover up another lie or protect the innocence of a third party.

[Player wants to be a Hutt]

Hutts are all different sizes, depending on their age. The game assumes that Hutt PCs are on the young side. 

Or you can give them a different ship. For my current game, I gave my players a choice of 10 different ships that were within a reasonable price and performance range.

[Can anyone help me out with this situation?]

Yes, this would apply to lightsabers as well. The idea behind the charge suit is that if you're close enough to touch the target, you're close enough to get zapped. If you need in-universe support, we've seen lightning zip along lightsabers and shock Jedi in the movies and TV shows.

[This is the worse possible news for the game :(]

RPGs have always been brand loyalty products for larger hobby companies. At best, they break even in terms of sales vs. production costs. They don't take the resources to produce that a board game does but it's unusual for their sales to outpace something like a collectible card game, which is the industry's bread-and-butter. Pathfinder and D&D sell a lot of books but Magic: The Gathering smashes them both.

Before Disney, the line was tapping into sources from the various Expanded Universe/Legends materials. Post-Disney, everything we've seen is directly tied to what's in the movie theater or on television (not even with the new novels or comics) or a compilation of existing RPG material. It's been pretty clear that licencors are strictly dictating what can be produced which leaves very little wiggle room for developers. After a ships-and-vehicles book, what else could they realistically produce? An Ep. 7-9 + Resistance book? I'd love a book that covers the Aftermath novels up to The Force Awakens but that might mean negotiating with Del Rey who are outside the Disney umbrella.

We got three complete lines plus five general books. That's better than a lot of RPGs publishes do, especially with the traditional "splat book" model. I'm not following this license to another publisher, especially not WotC or someone similar. I sensed the line was winding down long ago but I've got two FFG SW campaigns coming up in the near future so I'm not done playing. Not by a long shot.

[How common are non-Human PCs in your games?]

On 1/3/2020 at 3:49 PM, Stan Fresh said:

I wouldn't try that, it risks them acquiescing and then losing interest because they're not playing the PC they were looking forward to embodying.

 

We'll see. It's been my experience that my players will pick something either because it "looks cool" or they feel it gives them a statistical bonus. Typical trad gamer behavior. I've told them that I'm going to run a very character-focused campaign and if they're struggling to come up with something that's appropriately Chiss-y about their character, we may end up working together to come up with a different character concept.

Session Zero/charagen sessions are a long conversation in order to make sure everyone, including me, is on the same page with what's going on. I definitely don't dictate what my players play but I do expect them to put some thought into what they want to play because I don't want to do all the narrative heavy lifting when it comes to generating adventures. That's... exhausting.

[What's in your headcanon?]

On 1/6/2020 at 2:21 PM, Voltron64 said:

The reason I figure Corellia was in such a crummy state was because it came under attack during the Clone Wars.

Also the reason for a such a surplus of orphans like Han and Qi'ra, they lost their parents in the war.

That's a good explanation. After the Clone Wars, Corellia may have needed to jumpstart its economy and agreed to break with centuries of tradition and start manufacturing on the planet's surface again.

[What's in your headcanon?]

My (probably unpopular) opinion is that I'm glad that Lucasfilm rebooted Star Wars canon. As someone who had been reading SW comics and novels since the late 1980s, the Expanded Universe was ridiculously bloated and a lot of material was poorly written. My "baseline" for canon is the movies, TV shows, and the current crop of published, third-party materials. 

That said, Legends material is a great source to dip for ideas without feeling like you're breaking holy sacrament if you change it up to better fit your style of play.

• The Evocii of Nar Shaddaa play a big part in the first adventure in my upcoming EotE campaign.
• I'm planning to use Corellia as presented in Suns of Fortune, just with the caveat that the planet was cleaned up following the big shipbuilding boom of the Early Imperial years.
• I've used the Matukai and various other Force traditions that were introduced in Legends though I've tweaked them a bit. For example, if the Jedi are Akira Kurasawa samurai then the Matukai are 1970s grindhouse kung-fu monks. 
• The "Tales of the Jedi" comics are mostly canonical though they're considered a part of the "oral tradition" in the Star Wars universe so they're open to interpretation and not considered historical fact. It's fun to twist what players think they know about Ulic Qel-Droma and company.
• Pius Dea Crusades are absolutely in my head canon. 
• I'll reference pre-Republic cultures from Legends from time-to-time but I'll usually change them up if they don't fit what I want.

[How common are non-Human PCs in your games?]

Session Zero (character generation, setting expectations for the game, etc) for a new Edge of the Empire campaign is next week. My wife and I created a character and she wants to play... a Human. ☹️ And with the chatter I've overheard from a couple of other players, they want to play... Chiss. ☹️

As a GM, I'd love to delve into a lesser-known species with one of my players. Maybe help develop some interesting lore that stands on top of what Lucasfilm has already approved. I think Thrawn is a cool character and the Chiss are an acceptable take on Vulcans-in-the-Star-Wars-universe; but they're probably the most well-covered species in the franchise outside of Wookiees. Which makes finding something cool, unique, and/or interesting about them as a people a little tough.

Maybe I can talk one or both of them into playing something else, if they aren't committed. 

[Is this game discontinued?]

Reprints come from demand. If you're looking to buy a core book or accessory, you're better off finding a retailer. 

[How do you incorporate a bounty backstory?]

The question you've posed is so broad that it makes me wonder if you've discussed who issued the bounty, why they issued bounty, and the price tag on the PC's head with the player.

Like a lot of questions that pop up on these boards, working with the player to come up with an intriguing backstory around the Obligation will inspire interesting encounters. Also, a bounty doesn't mean that only one un-killable hunter will come after and attack the Player Character, a la Boba Fett vs. Han Solo. It's perfectly legitimate to have a bunch of bush league hunters spring an ambush (a la Greedo) only to get blown away by the PCs.

Work with your player and get them to bring some cool ideas to the table. I'm generally a pro-player GM but at some point the players need to make a stake in their characters' backstories and do some of the creative heavy-lifting.

[Treasure from the past]

They would be worth the material needed to make them minus whatever profit margin a purchaser would want to make. Republic Credits were in circulation for 1000 years so I'd imagine that they're so ubiquitous as to be basically worthless after only 20-ish years. Plus, money is only worth whatever the government says its worth; that's the point of using an abstract measurement of wealth, like currency, and it's why governments print money.

[Stealing a Gonzati, while being broke]

Tell your GM you want to steal a ship and the terms by which you want the ship stolen and let the GM set up the situation. 

[Using the Oath Obligation]

An obligation, by definition of the word, requires someone to engage in an action. "I'm not going to kill/steal from/hurt/bribe Population X," is a statement of inaction and, ergo, not an obligation. 

An oath is a promise made ("Thou shalt not steal") but an oath as an obligation requires action, i.e. "I swear I will spread the holy word."

As a rule of thumb, if you can dodge an Obligation by simply avoiding the situation, it's not a very good Obligation.

[Any broken rule sub-systems?]

10 minutes ago, Bellona said:

I am more interested in type 1 answers - I think that our tabletop GM is worried about the players getting their hands on non-core rulebooks and then being able to exploit the h*** out of some sub-system because there's a loophole with which he's not familiar. (Like endless crafting checks, from the look of some early replies and other threads which I've seen.)

And I know from personal experience that it's no fun to be in a game where a player has gone all munchkin/power-gamer with every last option (never mind the fact that they don't even fit together flavour-wise!) and left the rest of us in his dust. The "Great, shall I hold your cape while you one-shot the demon lord's avatar?" kind of thing. (Translated to the GFFA, of course!)

Which is not to say that type 2 answers aren't interesting to read as well. Our tabletop group are system noobs to FFG SW, so it's good to hear where there could be simple rules confusion (and possible streamlining fixes of one sort or the other).

Tell your GM not to worry about that. All of the dice mechanics in the various career books are directly reflected in other career books, just with different names. There's nothing to exploit unless your GM isn't capable of telling a player who says "well, there's nothing in the rules that says I CAN'T do it" to put a sock in it. The best skills a GM can have aren't rules mastery (though that's very important) but being able to say "Yes, and..." or "No, but...".

At the end of the day, your table needs to accept that a trusted someone - in this case, the GM who is working to keep the game moving along - is going to be the final arbiter and that rules-lawyering/munchikin power-gaming is both a quick way to kill the fun of a game and is a waste of everyone's time.

If you're coming from D&D/Pathfinder, this game is going to be a very, very different experience from what you're used to.

[Any broken rule sub-systems?]

6 minutes ago, c__beck said:

And? That doesn't change the fact that I would prefer to use Favours then either Duty or Obligation.

I am well aware of the differences between each game line and what Duty/Obligation/Morality represent. I just think they are clunky and the advice given on how to use them are not clear enough for me. Favours are a lot more "solid" to me. If a player owes a Big Favour to Black Sun I know exactly what that means. What does a 28-point Obligation to Black Sun mean? Nothing, really, unless the dice say so? That…doesn't work for me.

I can let that favour sit there on the player's sheet until I, the GM, deem it best for the story without the dice having to tell me to do so. Heck, any one of my players can suggest when a Favour gets called in.

As for Duty, being a member of the Alliance allows the player to, once per session, flip a Destiny Point (Story Point in Genesys parlance) to call in a small or normal Favour from someone in the Alliance, and the GM can do the same, calling in a Favour from the PC. That sounds like a good Duty replacement.

At the end of the day, it doesn't have to be different mechanics to have a different feel.

We're all playing a narrative game but GMs are turning around and fighting the narrative structure. I don't get why, though I have some educated guesses. At any rate, pre-planning what's going to happen in the campaign or even in a said adventure is a lot of extra energy that can go into other areas of prep. The randomness of the Obligation/Duty/Morality dice mechanics are there to make the GM's life easier and to help fill in the broad strokes of the story beats.

That's not how Obligation works. An Obligation means there's a whatever-percentage chance that said Obligation is going to negatively affect a PC. It can mean as little as two points of strain loss up to a PC/NPC conflict in the adventure.

In role-playing games, mechanics always dictate the feel of play. Otherwise, every game would be the same D20 or D100 system since those are the easiest ways to determine probability. There's a pretty big difference in feel between the investigative cyberpunk noir of Android and the cowboy/WW2/samurai space fantasy of Star Wars.

[Difficulty of talent-checks]

You should always be throwing setback dice at your players (so long as it's reasonable [your definition of reasonable, of course]). 

[Encumbrance]

JFYI: characters aren't going to be carrying a golf-bag full of swords, a la classic D&D or GURPS. 😉 Encumbrance primarily focuses on "are they strong enough to pick up and use this weapon," not "how do I carry a platoon's worth of weapons on one person."

In early campaigns I had players try to "loot the bodies" and I told them that, unless they come with a convincing method to carry all this stolen equipment, they're going to have to leave it behind.

[Any broken rule sub-systems?]

6 minutes ago, c__beck said:

I personally think that both Duty and Obligation can be handled pretty easily with the Favour rules from Shadow of the Beanstalk.

A smuggler could be a member of the Hutt cartel and thus get the benefits (and drawbacks) therein. Whereas someone part of the Rebel Alliance would be able to call in completely different Favours…but still might have to owe a Hutt a Favour if they can do something the Alliance can't.

While GMs roll dice the same way (roll 2d10, check the chart, compare totals) Edge and AoR are two different games with two different narrative intents. Edge characters are trying to claw their way out of a bad spot (see Solo) whereas AoR characters are soldiers who are rewarded for doing a good job by getting better equipment (see Rogue One).

I've allowed my players to pull Careers and Specializations from the different game lines for our games and it's been interesting to see an Edge character's Obligation ("I need to deal with this bounty hunter!") conflict with an AoR character's Duty ("I need to recruit more soldiers into the Rebellion!").

[Any broken rule sub-systems?]

1 minute ago, kaosoe said:

So a question I have for the OP is how do you define broken?

1) Is there subsystems that are easily exploitable that causes the character to be niticeably stronger than the other character?

Or

2) Is there a subsystem that does not work as intended or otherwise too confusing that most GMs disregard it?

Based on the recent comments, a lot of people are interpreting it as #2.

The reality is "neither." The subsystems are all straightforward but GMs don't seem comfortable exercising their referee powers against rules-lawyer players unless the text gives them explicit permission to do so.

[Any broken rule sub-systems?]

39 minutes ago, whafrog said:

Maybe in your world.  But all these can be creatively replaced with something more effective, streamlined, and less of a straight-jacket.  My issues with them are not about intent, but implementation.

You don't get a more streamlined mechanic than "roll dice, GM-fiat story complication/story perk happens" and one person's straight-jacket is another person's guide-post. I've never played nor seen an RPG that didn't have clearly delineated boundaries of play. 

[Any broken rule sub-systems?]

13 hours ago, LordBritish said:

I don’t know, duty works fine to me provided the group is role playing a team of semi-professional military group, with duty representing their feild of expertises. E.g. the general, the admiral, the sapper, the flying Ace, the cracking nerd and so fourth. I’ve never had any problems in its implications.

ditto obligations. I mainly use it as an interactive “threat and complications” tracker. I don’t see it used to throw in direct complications often, but it’s a reflection of a complicated society that might crop up at any moment, unless the group make an effort to mitigate the attention, which keeps the focus on the players to take charge of their direction. Given my group has had a single campaign lasting 4/5 years and Obligation has pretty much served as a player resource to remind them what the ongoing background noise is.

Once I understood the point of Obligation/Duty/Morality, I never had a problem with them. They're behavior modification tools for the players and opportunities for the GM to introduce challenges in the story that directly affect the player characters. They're useful as GM story hooks and as motivations for players to have their characters actually do something. If you take them away, you're taking away a level of PC investment. 

From what I've seen, GMs who cling to tight plots - typically people who come from D&D or other pre-scripted games - struggle with them because they require the GM to improvise away from their sets of encounters. Instead of players reacting to the GM, those mechanics require the GM to react more to players than what's traditionally expected. It's definitely asking a lot more of GMs' mental capabilities when they're sitting at the table. I've learned to plot games in broad strokes and other tricks to be efficient. 

It was definitely an... interesting... choice for FFG to take a very popular franchise and give it a narrative bent. Previously, I associated narrative games with the indie fringe. But now that I comprehend how they function, I've started playing more narrative games, like FATE. I've also seen narrative mechanics creep into traditional-style games, like the D&D clone, 13th Age.

[Imperials]

On 8/18/2019 at 9:35 AM, WolfRider said:

I'm always surprised to see the ranks for the Empire armed Forces mimicking closely those of the US armed forces, while the Empire is THE Space Nazis.

Anglophone movie audiences generally know what a sergeant or a colonel is, not a Haputfeldwebel or Overgruppenfuhrer. The Empire are space Nazis but they're also representative of every authoritarian regime in history, going back to the Romans.