Threat/advantage frustration - suggestions?

[sonny sixshooter 46]

First: Great game! Have a party of beginners who are loving it.

My frustration, however, lies with the threat/advantage system. Great though it is, I find I have to come up with tons of extra axplanations on the fly to explain the Threat/advantage rolls that are at least as common as successes. I find this quite exhausting and detracing from telling the actual story.

The idea is that the players themselves should come up with these things, but these guys are just too green for that yet.

I know I could just go with succes/failure rolls, but that kind of defeats the purpose of the new dice.

So, any suggestions?

Thanks.

 

[Tanarri 144]

Warning potential spoilers

 

 

 

Actrually we are playing with a bunch of extremly green players as well and while the gm holds final vote on what actually happens we have all come up with things that happen with advantages or disadvantages and some of the best ideas have come from the players who have never role played in their lives. If it gets to be too much you can always just have it add/reduce strain put them into or out of cover or give them a boost or the opposite(can't remember the name right now) dice on the next roll. In my experience if they have watched movies or read books they will have ideas of thing that they think should or could happen with their characters and you should give them a chance to come up with the ideas it will take the strain off of you. Things that they came up with in our first session where oskaka missed but ended up with something like 8 advantage so she hit the archway above her target and it collapsed on them, another huge advantage but failed roll missed a security droid but hit thedoor control panel behind the droid closing the door and locking out other security droids, the smuggler in his haste to fire shot the ceiling above himself instead of anywhere near his target and took out the lights making it dificult for the enemies to see him. A Gamorian's axe got stuck in a counter, I can't remember what else they came up with.Out Gm on a despair dice when a certain trandoshan died the ship was set to self destruct so while that battle was relatively easy(we finally were rolling successes) we then spent 3 rounds trying to find the explosives and stop the bomb. (I am pretty sure our gm added that in. Our GM did veto somethings people came up with and but for the most part as long as things were being reasonable he let us come up with what was going on once everyone got into the swing of things. You could warn your players ahead of time that they should think about things they would want to see happen with advantages and disadvantages and then when they come up they will already have some ideas.  Thats just my two cents.

[Wilhuf 1]

In our very first encounter we tended to spend net advantage on boost dies either for the active player or the next PC. For a boost,thematically we'd say things like "Oskara gives a hand signal directing your fire at a vulnerable fracture in the Gamorean's armor."

Sometimes we spent advantage by giving NPCs setback dice.  One player spent an advantage by giving one setback against a Gamorean. Thematically, the Gamorean's cudgel bounced off a closet door frame and in to his head, dazing him.  The Gamoreans also seemed to fall over each other a bit as part of their setbacks.

It was amusing to watch Pash "triumphantly" hide in a cantina booth. The player received a few boost dice on her attack as a result of rolling a triumph on her deceit opposed skill check.  Hidden in the darkness surrounding her booth, she shot a Gamorean in the back, knocking it over and creating a blocking position through which other Gamoreans couldn't pass. 

Next time I'm going to remember that I can spend threat to inflict strain, not just setbacks. 

I  ask the players what they did to inflict a setback or a boost. They were fine with coming up with some kind of description. I find it engages the players and gives them a sense of ownership of the story and thus makes them care about it. 

 

Edit: blurb about player engagement by asking them to narrate how they spend advantage and threat. 

[Kallabecca 983]

sonny sixshooter said:

First: Great game! Have a party of beginners who are loving it.

My frustration, however, lies with the threat/advantage system. Great though it is, I find I have to come up with tons of extra axplanations on the fly to explain the Threat/advantage rolls that are at least as common as successes. I find this quite exhausting and detracing from telling the actual story.

The idea is that the players themselves should come up with these things, but these guys are just too green for that yet.

I know I could just go with succes/failure rolls, but that kind of defeats the purpose of the new dice.

So, any suggestions?

Thanks.

 

I get they are green, but you should be able to find the reference sheet in the Beta forums, or if you have the Beta book, then that should provide a basic list for ideas for them to use. That should cut your work in half at least. Also, you can't buy any one thing more than once unless the list says otherwise (like Strain can be bought multiple times, but setback can't). Anything not spent is just lost.

[Ceodryn 41]

Hey Sonny,

I ran the Beginner Game last weekend with a group of newbies to EotE and RPGs in general, and they did well with advantages on their own. I undertand your players are green, but let them try to come up with threats and advantages, even if it takes them a few secondes at the beginning. Let them also discuss it together, the player that rolled shouldnt be pressured to come up with something alone.

What I think is even more important, on the GM part and I am still struggling with it myself, is to describe the environment in enough detail that your players can use that description in their usage of threats and advantages. So, it isn't only that they enter a room with windows, but what is in the room, how many people, what are they wearing, holding, is there plants, is there machines, is there furniture, electronics, etc… so with those threats and advantages, they can use, destroy, throw etc… all those things.

Also, I wouldn't use every threat and advantage. If there is only one, go with the default use. If there are two, but it's not the right time in the story, also go with the default use, maybe with a tiny bit of description. Don't be afraid to re-use. Yes, every time a blaster shot is fired it is likely the target duck, jump, get frazzled etc… and get a black dice to their next attack. Now if there are 3 or more, you definitely wants something fun/dramatic!

Cheers

Ceodryn

 

 

[mfluder 73]

Easy answer, just use them for recieving and recovering from strain when you cant think of anything interesting to use them for or perhaps just award a bonus maneuver to the pc's (advantage) or to the next npc (threat) im pretty sure the use of the advantage/threat system for developing or enhancing narrative is entirely optional and up to the discretion of the GM. Also as the others mentioned I tend to favor the boost die reward or setback die as a result of remaining threat or advantage.