Dicey Stories: Episode 28 StarCraft FRAWD Investigators: DORF Star Part 3 of 7 DORF Star: Under the cover of their FRAWD employment, Lilly and Imogen work with the exiled tal'darim Malorn and the friendly mercenary Durian to steal a protoss weapon from the Dominion Optics Research Facility (DORF) on Korhal. While in Augustgrad, they also follow up on some leads related to their first job together, Rose Corporation's illegal mine on Brontes IV. This episode: Lilly and Imogen complete their plans for recovering the protoss weapon from the Dominion Optics Research Facility, and their mercenary friend Durian joins the operation. Current episode: audio | serialized write-up Character profiles: Lilly | Imogen RSS feed | Google Podcasts | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | Castro | Pocket Casts | Overcast

Dicey Stories: Episode 27 StarCraft FRAWD Investigators: DORF Star Part 2 of 7 DORF Star: Under the cover of their FRAWD employment, Lilly and Imogen work with the exiled tal'darim Malorn and the friendly mercenary Durian to steal a protoss weapon from the Dominion Optics Research Facility (DORF) on Korhal. While in Augustgrad, they also follow up on some leads related to their first job together, Rose Corporation's illegal mine on Brontes IV. This episode: Lilly and Imogen conduct reconnaissance on the Dominion Optics Research Facility. Current episode: audio | serialized write-up Character profiles: Lilly | Imogen RSS feed | Google Podcasts | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | Castro | Pocket Casts | Overcast

Dicey Stories: Episode 26 StarCraft FRAWD Investigators: DORF Star Part 1 of 7 DORF Star: Under the cover of their FRAWD employment, Lilly and Imogen work with the exiled tal'darim Malorn and the friendly mercenary Durian to steal a protoss weapon from the Dominion Optics Research Facility (DORF) on Korhal. While in Augustgrad, they also follow up on some leads related to their first job together, Rose Corporation's illegal mine on Brontes IV. This episode: The exiled tal’darim Malorn prepares Lilly and Imogen to steal a protoss weapon from the Dominion Optics Research Facility on Korhal. Current episode: audio | serialized write-up Character profiles: Lilly | Imogen RSS feed | Google Podcasts | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | Castro | Pocket Casts | Overcast

Good point. That Heroic Abilities mechanic is in Realms of Terrinoth, starting on page 74.

We played a year-long campaign that clocked in at 625 XP earned. I completed the full pyramid, and then had another column of Talents from Tier 1 up to Tier 5, plus an additional Tier 1 and 2 Talent beyond those. You can keep adding 5-high columns of Talents. If there are not enough Tier 4 or 5 Talents of interest for your players, consider what sorts of "super-powers" might fit their character concepts and develop new Talents to fill them. Or encourage them to develop more of their skills.

No problem. When people present new mechanics, I always wonder whether something already exists to handle their need. But if what exists doesn't suit your purposes, making something new to fit with the rest of the existing rules and trying to balance it is a worthy effort. Plus, you can only do so much planning... eventually, you have to try your system out with players in an ongoing game to see if it stands the test of time and really addresses all your concerns. Good luck when that time comes!

I see what you are saying now, and the consideration you have put into it. It sounds like good reasoning for developing this game mechanic in your setting. I do see your point of not wanting all one's ranks in a skill to "go to waste" when a new skill is opened up. If there are just a handful of specialties for each skill, then that is something I could get behind as a player. Perhaps I am a bit scarred by my years and years of playing GURPS where there were so many, many skills and subskills that as a player I felt like I could never gain any ground. Like I'd have Chemistry, but the GM would call for a Pharmacology roll, so that was a Chem roll with a heavy penalty. Or I had Acrobatics but the GM wanted an Aerobatics roll, so again, Acrobatics at a stiff penalty. I felt like I was often being told to make rolls that were just outside my skillset, no matter what skills I invested in. If the players know upfront about the familiarity system and there are a reasonable number of familiarities for each skill, then that would address the sort of concerns I would have about how to spend my XP. As for what your familiarity grants a player... I am the sort of GM that allows players to try things, regardless of whether they have ranks in a skill. I don't think you should disallow a character from trying a check if they are unfamiliar, so your option 2 above seems good to me. If you think setback dice for unfamiliar rolls aren't scary enough, I would go for upgraded difficulty myself, rather than just adding an automatic failure to the roll, as the opportunity for despair raises the stakes. I am wondering about how you intend familiarities to be purchased, whether you are considering them to be Talents, or whether they are their own XP spending category. If they are Talents, then they will occupy slots in the Talent pyramid. If they are their own category, will they have a flat purchase price? Or will they have their own pyramid? (Kind of like in Star Wars, where buying into additional specializations had an increasing cost?)

In our games, we add setback dice for unfamiliar conditions (that would cover your flying mount situation or building a boat when you're used to carts). After the character has tried it out, it is no longer unfamiliar, and they do not have the setback dice on future rolls. If I want to emphasize that something could really go wrong, I spent a story point to upgrade the difficulty. If you truly believe that way too many things are covered under one skill in your campaign setting, then break them out into separate skills. This is already modeled by the many types of Knowledge in Terrinoth, or the different ways combat skills are handled in the Core Rulebook. I've played games with Melee, Ranged-Light, Ranged-Heavy, and Gunnery. I've played ones with Melee-Light, Melee-Heavy and just Ranged. I've heard of other people including Powdered weapons as a separate skill or Artillery weapons that are based on Intellect. In your situation, maybe you want Crafting (Mechanical) and Crafting (Steam)... or some such division.

Dicey Stories: Episode 25 StarCraft FRAWD Investigators: One Quiet Night Part 4 of 4 One Quiet Night: Having left Mar Sara aboard Hyperion, Lilly and Imogen investigate mysterious beings prowling the ship at night. This episode: Lilly and Imogen sort out the vermin issues aboard Hyperion and get Saffron in proper working order. Current episode: audio | serialized write-up Character profiles: Lilly | Imogen RSS feed | Google Podcasts | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | Castro | Pocket Casts | Overcast

Dicey Stories: Episode 24 StarCraft FRAWD Investigators: One Quiet Night Part 3 of 4 One Quiet Night: Having left Mar Sara aboard Hyperion, Lilly and Imogen investigate mysterious beings prowling the ship at night. This episode: Lilly and Imogen encounter other alien lifeforms during their search for their zerg larva Snowball aboard Hyperion. Current episode: audio | serialized write-up Character profiles: Lilly | Imogen RSS feed | Google Podcasts | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | Castro | Pocket Casts | Overcast

Dicey Stories: Episode 23 StarCraft FRAWD Investigators: One Quiet Night Part 2 of 4 One Quiet Night: Having left Mar Sara aboard Hyperion, Lilly and Imogen investigate mysterious beings prowling the ship at night. This episode: Lilly and Imogen search Hyperion for Snowball after the zerg larva goes AWOL. Current episode: audio | serialized write-up Character profiles: Lilly | Imogen RSS feed | Google Podcasts | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | Castro | Pocket Casts | Overcast

I've pulled together the archetypes, talents, skills, and psionics our group used and put them into a PDF. You can find it here: https://diceystories.com/genesys-supplement-for-starcraft/

Dicey Stories: Episode 22 StarCraft FRAWD Investigators: One Quiet Night Part 1 of 4 One Quiet Night: Having left Mar Sara aboard Hyperion, Lilly and Imogen investigate mysterious beings prowling the ship at night. This episode: Lilly and Imogen explore Hyperion, the flagship of Raynor’s Raiders. Current episode: audio | serialized write-up Character profiles: Lilly | Imogen RSS feed | Google Podcasts | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | Castro | Pocket Casts | Overcast

I have been wondering this exact same thing, so thanks for asking! I figured Mask made sense for Verse.

Dicey Stories: Episode 21 StarCraft FRAWD Investigators: Old Red and Saffron Part 6 of 6 Old Red and Saffron: Lilly and Imogen return to the Mar Sara wastelands to investigate an old Cerberus vessel that may shed light on both Lilly's and Snowball's pasts, but they discover it is not as abandoned as they had thought. This episode: Lilly and Imogen take drastic steps to ensure Rory Swann will help fix up Saffron. Current episode: audio | serialized write-up Character profiles: Lilly | Imogen RSS feed | Google Podcasts | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | Castro | Pocket Casts | Overcast

Dicey Stories: Episode 20 StarCraft FRAWD Investigators: Old Red and Saffron Part 5 of 6 Old Red and Saffron: Lilly and Imogen return to the Mar Sara wastelands to investigate an old Cerberus vessel that may shed light on both Lilly's and Snowball's pasts, but they discover it is not as abandoned as they had thought. This episode: Imogen burns a bridge while Lilly mugs a zerg. Current episode: audio | serialized write-up Character profiles: Lilly | Imogen RSS feed | Google Podcasts | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | Castro | Pocket Casts | Overcast

Dicey Stories: Episode 19 StarCraft FRAWD Investigators: Old Red and Saffron Part 4 of 6 Old Red and Saffron: Lilly and Imogen return to the Mar Sara wastelands to investigate an old Cerberus vessel that may shed light on both Lilly's and Snowball's pasts, but they discover it is not as abandoned as they had thought. This episode: Lilly and Imogen explore the Cerberus science vessel. Current episode: audio | serialized write-up Character profiles: Lilly | Imogen RSS feed | Google Podcasts | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | Castro | Pocket Casts | Overcast

Dicey Stories: Episode 18 StarCraft FRAWD Investigators: Old Red and Saffron Part 3 of 6 Old Red and Saffron: Lilly and Imogen return to the Mar Sara wastelands to investigate an old Cerberus vessel that may shed light on both Lilly's and Snowball's pasts, but they discover it is not as abandoned as they had thought. This episode: Lilly and Imogen contend with the dangers of the Mar Sara countryside. Current episode: audio | serialized write-up Character profiles: Lilly | Imogen RSS feed | Google Podcasts | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | Castro | Pocket Casts | Overcast

Dicey Stories: Episode 17 StarCraft FRAWD Investigators: Old Red and Saffron Part 2 of 6 Old Red and Saffron: Lilly and Imogen return to the Mar Sara wastelands to investigate an old Cerberus vessel that may shed light on both Lilly's and Snowball's pasts, but they discover it is not as abandoned as they had thought. This episode: Lilly and Imogen visit Li June for a Snowball update and some sweet tea. Current episode: audio | serialized write-up Character profiles: Lilly | Imogen RSS feed | Google Podcasts | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | Castro | Pocket Casts | Overcast

Introducing... Dicey Stories - stories shaped by dice - a tabletop RPG actual-play podcast with emphasis on storytelling - listen to us play or read the serialized narrative. My gaming group has recently started up Dicey Stories. We share our table-top RPG experiences in two formats: the actual-play audio and the serialized narrative write-up. If you're interested in reading adventures as they occurred in the lives of the characters, those are at our website, diceystories.com. If you like listening to real people laughing their way through telling a story together, you can listen at our website or find episodes on Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. Here's the RSS feed, too. Our first series on the podcast is StarCraft: FRAWD Investigators, played using Genesys. “The Fraud, Retaliation, Abuse, and Waste Division (FRAWD) needs hardworking terrans like you to inspect facilities and gather evidence. Satisfy your service obligation and earn steady pay with FRAWD today!” — Dominion recruiting pamphlet, 2503 This game is set in Blizzard’s StarCraft universe at the beginning of Starcraft II. The characters are Dominion investigators within the chronically underfunded, under-equipped, understaffed, and possibly underhanded FRAWD. Their first assignment together is to gather evidence of an allegedly illegal jorium crystal mining operation nestled between zerg hive clusters on the remote planet Brontes IV in the Koprulu Sector. If you know nothing about StarCraft, that’s fine! Neither did the players prior to starting this game. But if you do know StarCraft, don’t worry; our GM Dan is quite familiar with the universe from playing the video game. This campaign began as a beta test of Dan’s module for the 2019 Rincon Gaming Convention, an adaptation of Leovaunt’s module The Raid on Installation Delta Rose using Genesys rules. Players Lex and Jenn did a trial run of the module using two of Dan’s pre-generated characters, and he included a third as an NPC to round out the skill set of the party. That made the party Lilly, a resocialized soldier (a resoc); Imogen, a latent psionic from the Umojan Protectorate; and Ted, a zerg-infested researcher. Enough fun was had by all that we decided to continue with the characters. Following a few tweaks to the PCs to make them our own, we began regular play. That is where the actual-play podcast series begins, picking up the story after the mining adventure (which, while not recorded, is available in narrative form at Dicey Stories). We release a new episode at the start of each week and the audio is accompanied by a serialized write-up of the adventure on our website. The podcasts themselves are edited to cut down on digressions (as well as "uhs" and "ums"), so they generally clock in around 30-90 minutes. Episodes 1-7 are out already. The first story arc will conclude with episode 8.