abookfulblockhead
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Posts posted by abookfulblockhead
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5 hours ago, MarlowK said:While I'm a shill for the discord server (It's fast moving, sure, but posts don't go away, the search function is much better than this forum imo),
I can recommend the subreddit. It's a good community of people.
https://www.reddit.com/r/swrpg
https://discord.gg/TmBHaN5The one place I would say to avoid like the plague are the facebook groups. They are run by a group of racist, weirdly politically affiliated people.
The SWRPG subreddit is a solid community, for sure. I'll have to check out the discord.
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With the forums shutting down at the end of January, are there any any plans to host these links somewhere else where we can easily find them?
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Is this intended to be a long term campaign, or a few sessions of fun?
If you really want to drive home that they're young and untested, I agree with Superwookie, it's worth tweaking things so they start at a lower power level than usual. Starting with 0 XP is probably a good one. I might even avoid giving them a career and specialization.
Instead, you might be able to start them with just a few skill ranks, maybe do a dungeon world style bit of backstory generation. Ask each of them a handful of questions, and give a skill rank that represents their response.
"What's the most trouble you've ever gotten into in the temple?" Maybe they beat up another Youngling, and get a rank in Brawl, or broke into the kitchen at night for a snack and get a rank in Stealth.
"What is your favourite lesson at the temple?" This one's fairly easy. Maybe they like meditation and get a rank in discipline, or they like lightsaber training and they get a rank in lightsaber.
Rather than award XP at the end of a session, award them specific skill ranks or talents based on things they accomplished, and lessons they learned. Don't give them anything too flashy. The 1st rank of a talent like Parry, or confidence, is probably a reasonable reward. I would avoid awarding skill ranks above rank 2, to get them to "Starting character level".
Once they undergo the Gathering, maybe do a one-year time skip, during which they get to spend starting XP on characteristics and choose their specialization, as they rise to fully-fledged padawans.
SuperWookie reacted to this -
I've also used the Imperial Academy Cadet career to represent other "formal military academy" training. I rolled up a Pantoran character a while back, and part of his backstory was that he was part of a home-grown Pantoran navy, and went through training based closely on Republic training programs. So he didn't study under the Empire, but the training regimine was probably close enough that it would make sense to take that tree.
I've come to think of Recruit as the "Enlisted Soldier" tree, and Imperial Academy Cadet as the "Officer Training School" tree.
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The forward launch bay on the Arquitens looks a little small for a TIE Reaper, which I believe is wider than a Lambda shuttle, and that Lambda barely squeezes in there in the first place.
However, we also saw there was some kind of hangar bay or access on the ventral hull, which might fit the bill better. The Arquitens definitely got scaled up substantially for the Mandalorian.
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One nice thing about the gunslinger is that with two pistols, you can potentially crit twice. Which is 1) great for shredding minions, and 2) lets you stack up crit roll bonuses over several rounds against a single target, since each existing crit adds +10 to any further crit rolls.
Daeglan and P-47 Thunderbolt reacted to this -
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2 hours ago, Vondy said:I would propose engineering, emergency repairs, and sensors and communications could be performed by someone other than the pilot and co-pilot.
I'd add gunnery crew to the list as well. Some ships, like the Lambda-class shuttle, have more guns than can feasibly be fired by just the standard crew complement. Which means there's probably some extra gunnery stations.
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I'm currently considering an Imperial Intelligence game, so I've been going back to the endless well that is The Imperial Sourcebook from West End Games. I'll probably gloss over a lot of the finer details, but I am 100% stealing the Ubiqtorate - the anonymous council that runs II - and Adjustments, the only group of agents who receive directives straight from the Ubiqtorate.
I mean, that's just a perfect setup to hand out Mission Impossible style briefings hidden in common objects, that self-destruct after viewing.
And I might also steal the Secret Order of the Emperor from TIE Fighter. Nothing like a bit of cryptic Dark Side insight being injected into an intelligence op.
I can play the two shadowy cabals off each other. It'll be great.
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On 1/2/2020 at 11:20 AM, Desslok said:*shrugs*
It's a garbage moment from a garbage movie. Another JJ "Eh, f the rules of the setting. I do what I want."
Which is, incidentally, how I like to run my Star Wars.
The more I think about it, the more I like the Lightspeed Skipping scene. Because it opens up the toolbox for me as a GM. Now hyperspace isn't just an "instant escape" option, and it can lead to new kinds of encounters.
Star Wars has never been a Lore-first universe. The movies come out and show us new things. Then the EU rushes in to "explain" it all.
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I avoid getting my news directly from reddit users with "Anonymous Sources". Reddit is notorious for fake news, even when it's linking to external sources. Users can and do fabricate entire stories regularly for karma. This might play well in SaltierThanCrait, where the community is predisposed to thinking all the Sequels are a travesty, but this redditor's premise is that Disney sabotaged The Rise of Skywalker to ruin JJ Abrams.
Except that The Rise of Skywalker has not been nearly as widely hated as The Last Jedi. And I say this as someone whose favourite sequel is The Last Jedi. If Disney's goal was to make JJ Abrams look bad, then... I think they failed spectacularly.
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Yeah, no luck for me either.
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These seem like rather complex fixes, when Fantasy Flight itself has given precedence for gaining talents that aren't part of any specialization tree.
Exhibit A: Battle Scars, from Forged In Battle - when you heal a critical injury the GM may, at their own discretion, allow you to pay some amount of XP to gain an out-of-career talent.
Exhibit B: Quick Path To Power - A GM may allow a player to spend 30 XP at character creation to buy a rank of Force Rating, allowing them to start as a Jedi Knight or Jedi General.
I could also see the "Mastering a Technique" rules from Keeping the Peace coming into play, if you want to give PCs a way to learn certain talents outside their specializations. Or just let the PCs buy the talent outright, if it's restricted to a specialization that doesn't fit your campaign.
Alternatively, you could gate certain essential talents by skill rank. Perhaps you need 1 rank in a Piloting skill to buy Barrel Roll, 2 to take Improved Barrel, and 3 to take Supreme.
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Still 404, sadly.
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Gungan IT support! No wonder we were getting 404s.
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18 minutes ago, KungFuFerret said:You can't have Fate without predetermination. They are intrinsically linked. That's what destiny and fate are, predetermined outcomes.
And I hate to break it to you, but Star Wars IS just an action movie with fortune cookie wisdom. It's inception was a white guy from California film school, in the hippy days of the 60s, mooshing together eastern philosophies that he had a cursory familiarity with, and smooshing it with New Age drug culture and post-war political views on conflict. So yeah, it IS fortune cookie wisdom. The fact that fans have tried to "make it serious" in the ensuing decades, doesn't negate what it was when it was first made. A silly romp of a Flash Gordon spin off idea, with some hokey religion stuff tossed into it to spice it up a bit for the audience.
I dunno. I don't think Star Wars would have held up nearly so well if it was as simple as that. The fact that fans take it seriously is a testament to the fact that it has substance worth discussing.
Me, I like talking theme. Morality, Mysticism, Destiny. That's the stuff of Greek epics, and I feel like Star Wars is at its best when it resonates with those same themes.
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For me, as soon as PCs get one of those "Win the Encounter" buttons, I start planning around it. In my group, I had PCs with Last One Standing, Always Get My Mark, and Diplomatic Solution. Basically, three "Nope" buttons.
So I expect my players to use these tools. That means giving the bad guys more resources, more than can be deployed in a single encounter. I plan "Capture the NPC" as the start of my session, rather than the end. I start thinking of possible motivations for NPCs that might open them up to Negotiation.
It means I throw away less content, because I'm expecting it to be bypassed...
And then, every once in a while... in spite of giant dice pools... the players don't succeed on the check. That's when it gets interesting. Everyone once in a while, those 4 dice skew hard on advantages, and the purple dice skew hard on failure. It doesn't happen often, but when it does, the PCs are suddenly screwed pretty hard, and those make for some exciting, improvisational sessions.
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3 minutes ago, KungFuFerret said:Then Lucas apparently changed his mind about how the Force should be represented, and is even more foolish for doing so. Giving the Force a will is a terrible idea, because it basically just makes it god and the devil as one thing. And there is already enough crap about supernatural beings with agendas moving human pawns around for their own reasons in the world. I'd rather it not be in Star Wars too. The Force is much better as just a simple energy field, that people can manipulate, that reacts to, and responds to emotions in the weilder, instead of a literal embodiment of the devil trying to tempt people, and a theoretically benevolent being on the other end.
I thoroughly disagree. But that's partly because I don't think of it as just "God and Satan."
Star Wars is like the Iliad or Odyssey. When Jedi and Sith meet on the battlefield, their fates are weighed in the balance. All lightsaber duels become a metaphor for moral conflict. Yoda never teaches Luke about swinging a lightsaber. Instead, he teaches Luke self-knowledge, discipline, and inner peace. Luke doesn't become a Jedi by besting Vader in swordplay. He becomes a Jedi by casting down his weapon and denying hate.
If the Force is just a toolbox, a thing to be used, then it reduces Star Wars to an action movie with some fortune cookie wisdom. The Force does not predetermine all things - the future is always in motion, as Yoda says - but it does bind destinies together. Vader, Yoda, Obi-Wan - all of them speak of Destiny in the Original trilogy. Luke must confront Vader. The Force Wills it. But whether he succeeds or fails depends on whether he gives in to hate, or rises above it.
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6 minutes ago, KungFuFerret said:Again, there is no actual basis for the Force having a will, or agency of it's own, in the material made by Lucas. It's only until later creators start giving it more overt religious, and godlike traits. I mean a lot of the verbage, just replace the word Force, with god, and it sounds no different than any religious nonsense being spouted by people in real life.
I would disagree. The Force is far more active and alive in the Clone Wars series, which was produced under the direct supervision of George Lucas. Dave Filoni, in interviews, states pretty clearly that his understanding of the Cosmic and Living Force comes straight from Lucas. The Cosmic Force is that power of Destiny, and Destiny is the Will of the Force.
We see this with both the Mortis arc and Yoda's vision quest at the very end of Clone Wars. Yoda is chosen to undertake a vision quest, so he might preserve his consciousness after death, as a way to allow the Jedi to survive the destruction of the Order.
And while Lucas may not have produced Rebels, it was produced by Dave Filoni, who is generally regarded as Lucas's padawan. And, well... The Bendu would like to have a word about the Will of the Force.
SEApocalypse reacted to this -
I tried this from Mobile, and got a 429 error, which is apparently due to links causing too much traffic?
I find that hard to believe. I imagine these links would have been much hotter around the release dates of new splats with more specializations.
It might be that @RLogue177 can see the files because they're in his personal dropbox, but external users can't.
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One trick for Force versatility might be to start in a tree with two Force Rating upgrades, then hop into Jedi Master. The Powerful Ally talent lets you spend a Destiny Point to use the basic version of any Force Power you don't already have, or use an unpurchased upgrade on a Force Power you do have.
Capping out that tree would also get you to Force Rating 4, which is pretty darn solid.
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I think one thing we've forgotten over the years is that.... the Original Trilogy always upped the ante on the Force, in a way that the Prequels never did. In The Last Jedi, Luke asks Rey, "What do you know of the Force?" To which Rey replies, "The Force is a power that Jedi have, that lets them control people... and lift rocks." And we of course laugh and say, "Oh how naive," but... that's what the Force had been reduced to for a long time.
In A New Hope, we see Luke gain a certain intuition, a sight beyond sight. We also see Obi-Wan preserve his consciousness beyond death.
In Empire, I posit that Luke taught himself Force Pull in the Wampa cave. The way the saber inches forward bit by bit indicates that it's not something that comes to him immediately. We'd never seen the Force do that before. Then we go to Dagobah, and Yoda's like, "Pfft. Lightsaber, X-Wing. Same difference."
And in Return of the Jedi we see Palpatine whip out that sweet Force Lightning.
And then the Force became stagnant. We never see anything in the Prequel trilogy that we hadn't seen before. There's this "Chosen One"... but he never does anything... chosen-one-y. He's just another guy lifting rocks and controling minds. Actually, we don't even see him do the mind control bit. Lift rocks and choke people. That's all any Jedi in the prequels ever does. At the height of their power, they were no more advanced in their training than the kid who got a week-long Jedi summer camp on Dagobah.
Video games made it worse, by reducing the Force to a "spellbook". All of these things are just "tricks" that Jedi can use. As if the Force has no will, no agency.
It wasn't until Dave Filoni and the Mortis arc that the Force became mystical again. Not just a spellbook, but an entity with will and agency, a character in its own right. Rey and Kylo certainly display a lot of raw power in the Force, but much of that power isn't in their direct control. Their connection happens at inconvenient times, the objects that pass between them are side effects of their actions, rather than intentional, the Force passing clues along to draw them together.
I think, more than any other installment of Star Wars, we see the will of the Force in action, guiding and directing, tying the strings of Fate together.
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It's generally good to be flexible in this system, but "being good at all the guns" isn't necessarily an immediate concern.
I played a Starfighter Ace in a campaign once, who ended up being one of the deadlier party members, despite having no ranks in Ranged weapons, and nothing more than a standard blaster pistol.
With 4 agility, I could still close to short range and fire on minion groups, absolutely demolishing the 1 difficulty die, and generally scoring enough advantages to crit, killing an additional minion. I might not have been as effective against nemesis-level enemies, with higher soak, and who aren't as phased by standard blaster crits.
So don't feel like you'll be ineffective with Light weapons if you're untrained. Raw ability counts for a lot in Star Wars.
micheldebruyn and P-47 Thunderbolt reacted to this
Alchemist Stim Application
in Star Wars: Force and Destiny RPG
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It says you must have access to "Drugs, a medpac, or stimpack". So, if the Doc dropped their Medpac out of the airspeeder due to a despair, and all they've got are Stims, I'd say they have to consume a stim. If they've got some kind of broader medical gear though, they can Utility Belt it.