Questions about the game from a non-RPGer

[Xelto 435]

Actually, to be more precise, I'm someone who no longer has the ability to meet with a regular group on a regular basis any more, thanks to real life; I now do more in the way of board games. I'm possibly interested in this game, but not for me. It would be for my brother, who has all the time in the world now, thanks to him being in jail, and will be for a while.

Yeah, I know. I'm not going to defend him or what he did. But he is my brother, and I would like to do what I can for him. He does like RPGs, but isn't happy with much that's on the market right now. So I have two questions for people who actually have the core ruleset, to see if it would work for him:

1) As I understand it, the core rules are more or less a generic set of rules, designed to give you a fair amount of flexibility in what you do with them. But, does that flexibility come at the cost of having a solid rule set right out of the box? I've seen some games that try to do so much that in the end, they don't accomplish anything well; and I've seen other games that advertise being flexible/universal that, in reality, work for a single setting, and fall apart if you try to adapt them much; and I've seen still other games that actually manage to do what they advertised themselves as, at least to a certain extent. In your opinions, which area does this game fall in?

2) The jail he's at, for obvious reasons, has rather strict regulations on what he can receive and how it can be sent. Anything other than printed material is very likely to be rejected. Now, the game obviously uses dice, but that should be deal-with-able. He can either download the dice app, or I've been told that he's become rather good at making dice from cardboard, tape, and varnish. So: beyond dice, does this game look like it will need anything that's not in book form? It didn't look like it did, but I really want to make sure before starting to try to get stuff, as I can't undo sending stuff to him easily.

Thanks for the advice!

[TheSapient 596]

Dice or the app are vital.  The dice are unique and you need quite a few of them.  Aside from that, paper and pencil.

The system is not completely and ready to play.  It allows someone to create such a system with a little work. Maybe that is a good thing for someone need to fill up time.  But I would not recommend it for someone who has not played a fair amount of RPGs.  

The system is good though, and just having the one book could lead to a lot of possibilities.

[DarthDude 556]

26 minutes ago, Xelto said:

1) As I understand it, the core rules are more or less a generic set of rules, designed to give you a fair amount of flexibility in what you do with them. But, does that flexibility come at the cost of having a solid rule set right out of the box? I've seen some games that try to do so much that in the end, they don't accomplish anything well; and I've seen other games that advertise being flexible/universal that, in reality, work for a single setting, and fall apart if you try to adapt them much; and I've seen still other games that actually manage to do what they advertised themselves as, at least to a certain extent. In your opinions, which area does this game fall in?

These rules works very nicely for Star Wars, so Space Opera and SciFi are covered by experience. And there is a GenCon Module for the fantasy setting Terrinoth with which was received very positively and is downloadable. So I guess other settings between SciFi/Space Opera and Fantasy like Weird War, Horror, Steampunk will probably work smoothly as well.

26 minutes ago, Xelto said:

2) The jail he's at, for obvious reasons, has rather strict regulations on what he can receive and how it can be sent. Anything other than printed material is very likely to be rejected. Now, the game obviously uses dice, but that should be deal-with-able. He can either download the dice app, or I've been told that he's become rather good at making dice from cardboard, tape, and varnish. So: beyond dice, does this game look like it will need anything that's not in book form? It didn't look like it did, but I really want to make sure before starting to try to get stuff, as I can't undo sending stuff to him easily.

Dice and the book suffice. If he's allowed to download the dice app, the better. Maybe you should also print a couple of Character Sheets and other Genesys stuff like the Setting Sheet and the Terrinoth GenCon adventure from the Genesys site for him as well.

Edited December 6, 2017 by DarthDude

[Xelto 435]

Thanks for the replies. I think it's going to come down to the dice; if he can get the app (don't know, they're changing the prisoner-owned tablet system right now), then it's probably a go. 

[Desslok 13,575]

Interesting - RPGs in the Big House? I always understood it that the prison system considered RPGs to be a bad thing for the usual swath of nonsense (It's satanic, it promotes being in a gang and so on).

The old Beta editions of Edge had a formula where you could translate normal 4, 10 and 20 sided dice into NarDS symbols, so if the app isnt a possibility and he cant get normal NarDS dice, this might be a way to go.

[ArtWend 93]

Many prisons will not allow dice as they think it promotes gambling.

(I know this because I was once a nurse on a jail ward. Turns out most prisoners are really nice to the medical staff. Whodathunk?)

[themensch 3,092]

Genesys does contain a conversion table for regular dice, pg. 10.  

[Xelto 435]

On 12/6/2017 at 11:54 PM, themensch said:

Genesys does contain a conversion table for regular dice, pg. 10.  

That right there will make it a go. Thanks for the info, I'll get the game off to him...

... once it comes back into print.  I tried to time it so the present would arrive near Christmas, and it looks like that was a mistake. Christmas comes late to the big house this year.    

On 12/6/2017 at 6:19 PM, Desslok said:

Interesting - RPGs in the Big House? I always understood it that the prison system considered RPGs to be a bad thing for the usual swath of nonsense (It's satanic, it promotes being in a gang and so on).

I don't have extensive information about the prison system, but I suspect that time moved on, and the people who run the system now grew up either playing or knowing someone who played RPGs when they were younger, and the nonsensical reasons have faded away.

Edited December 18, 2017 by Xelto