Lit Fantasy Flight Games and the Star Wars TCG

Setting it in The Old Republic era?

Honestly I feel like the main difference will just be a lot of flavor changes, giving ships different model names and stuff.

 

Hey, if it was posted I missed it, but Consular Sourcebook announced for Q2 2017

Cossian, Arkanian, and Pau'an are the new species.
!

 

Yeah, pretty cool. Reminds me of the first WEG party I directed, a looong time ago. Any ideas for personal plots, or will you work that out with your players?

 

Well at first I'm going to run the pre-canned adventure Onslaught at Arda. My intent is to give players the time to define the who of the group; so until my current campaign ends (of which I'm a player) I'll be mapping out beats for the story in which a surprisingly Jello-esque Imperial is the villain (he said, seeing if Jello reacted).

I've spoken to 2 players; the current GM, who will take the commando role, and the other face character who will be the spy. Basic direction, like "the infiltrator is really Daniel Craig's James Bond. The skills lend themselves to tradecraft - skulduggery, stealth, deception - and you pick up ranged (light) as a racial skill obviously. But brawling is where most talents tend to fall. So think of how Craig Bond, or even Bourne (in the first and only good film), carry themselves and you get the idea."

I know I want to test the Wookie player's resolve by the party learning one intended target for a genophage are the Wookies themselves; their usefulness as slave labour is one thing, but their "capacity for violence and insurrection" makes them an unacceptable risk so the genocide is a "plan B" in effect.

The agitator I was playing with being an Imperial propagandist who defected shortly after a prominent massacre (think if Ghormann wasn't tied to a deservedly perished EU) rattled his faith, and caused a crisis of conscience. The cliché would be "ah, but your sister/roommate/piano teacher remains one of Them!, and you must battle in a contest of ideals". Instead a Tycho Celchu-esque moment of "wait, are we sure he's not a double agent..?"

But I think these are just ideas I'll hang onto. Firstly; they would actually be really useful as Obligation, but we're playing with Duty as it's AOR.

Secondly, we have one player who is just... well, remember the context of why I replied with this image to you?



Yep. That.

So if I ask him, "who is your character" I'll get, "he builds stuff" or "he flies ships." So, a 'what' not a who. I mean he's just saved like 60XP and bought into the Sentinel Artisan tree in the current game, and he's going to disregard the black pips on the Force die. And I'll say "why?" And he'll say "dark side" and I'll say how does your character know? I never trained you. You have no reason to believe that's bad for you."

And he will not get it. He is, in other words, a min maxer. A powergamer.

He proudly doesn't know the lore, proudly hasn't seen Rogue One, and proudly doesn't get roleplaying. He'll say "I walk into a bar, and try to find out from the locals what they know". And then be annoyed it doesn't open up all the results because he has CHA 16 or something.

So he will be tricky. I'm probably going to throw the pilot at him, or otherwise I'm thinking a reprogrammed IG-86 droid with engineering and protocol modules downloaded to him. He's basically already a RL K2S0, so why fight it?

 

Ghorman exists in canon, thanks to Pablo Hidalgo, but I tend to go with homebrew situations anyway. It lets the players make the scenario their own. Why use the Ghorman Massacre, when I can use the (say) Jabbawokkian Massacres and have the player co-design what happened? I like using canonical events as reference more than anything else ("The Jabbawokkian Massacres might have been the worst Imperial atrocity since Ghorman and Lasat").

Re: Tugboat Maguire

It's hard to deal with powergamers when your game has a heavier narrative slant. I used to obsess over this, until I decided I'd rather not have a player have a bad time by playing against his (completely legitimate in a different kind of game) instincts and that I'd rather tell them straight that they are going to have a bad time and make everyone else miserable if they don't change their "setting". I'm willing to compromise (one of my best D&D games happened because a couple of players insisted on giving my very narrative and very cinematic game a more simulationist touch and it ended up working out incredibly well), but if that doesn't work... well, there's always the next beer-n-pretzels game, and I'll be more than happy to have them there, but they are not sitting on my table for this one.

That said, I've managed to coax some radical powerplayers into more involved roleplaying in a couple of occasions (ask me if you want to know how) but it's a delicate process that some people even consider offensive, so most of the time it's not worth it.

 

I'd be keen to hear how, yes.

The issue is this - the GM and the other RP'er (who will play the Infiltrator) are friends of a friend, so I'm new to the group. I probably therefore have the advantage of no baggage or history in terms of "well, you guys all know I know the system and the lore, so this is how I'm running things"; but it also means I can't really break up a group of friends.

So yeah, advise away!

 

I once posted a long diatribe about it in Twitter, but it ends up being "go straight for the jugular." Even the most closed player has a weak spot. I usually go straight for the heart, but even the less-emotional players have something that allows them to get engaged with the game. That's why it's important to socialize with the players before, during, and after the game. You can't make them fill one thousand different surveys, but there's nothing like direct knowledge. So just be patient for a while and start getting your assault ready. Poor mother****** won't know what hit them.

In one case one of my players, who had been on my table for just one year, was your typical "hooligan" player: he gave his character stupid names, he loved playing Chaotic Stupid alignments, he loved causing commotions and derailing the whole campaign for the sake of a quick laugh. I mean, I'm more than okay with laughs at the table, but when another player sees his character's fateful meeting with a possible Jedi Master ruined becase the bounty hunter in the team decides to lob a thermal detonator with the excuse "it's explosives day", something's not working. So I started casually quizzing people on favorite movies, favorite TV series... and I discovered that this guy loved manly tearjerkers about a man and his estranged father. You know, Field of Dreams, Big Fish... that kind of movie. So I had a WEG game where his father, an old and grizzled spicerunner, reached out to him and his friends for help taking a spice cargo to a small space station. He, of course, accepted, and I ran the adventure as a light-hearted game, playing the PC's father as a more stable version of his character and even giving them some of the same catchphrases and mannerisms. Everyone appreciated that. So, once they got to the space station, he decided to invite his dad for a beer while everyone else unloaded the ship, just to have more fun with the silly interactions. And while they are chatting at the station's run-down cantina, his father drops the bomb: it's a trap. He's actually sold everyone out to the Empire in exchange for an amnesty for his son. And indeed, the rest of the team is suddenly assaulted by stormtroopers. The bounty hunter PC ended up having a hectic fire fight against his father in the cantina, saying stuff that we had never heard from him, like, emotional stuff. And he, for the first time in one year, ended up setting his gun to stun.

Since that adventure, his style changed completely. He started looking up for more things he could do with his character beyond blowing stuff up. Making friends? Falling in love? Affecting the world around him? He probably hadn't thought of it before. He still loved playing hilariously anarchic characters, but he saw them as real characters in a real universe, having real interactions. He actually created some of the best roleplaying opportunities in many of my games. And he ended up becoming a game designer himself, and the game he co-designed has become an indie success in Europe (not giving any hints, just in case). So I'd call that a win.

I've won players over in many different ways. I discovered that one was really into 4X strategy games, so I had him get a duchy in D&D and slowly had all of the different managerial tasks stop being die-dependent and become roleplaying encounters. He discovered that he loved giving his character a voice and playing it to the hilt, so I started giving him more and more moral dilemmas, and at the same time I made the best "loot" be completely story-dependent but in a way I knew he'd like. I'd say he's one of the best players I've ever had. And with a different player, who was also a bit... Tugboat Maguire..., I eventually discovered that he was a really creative person, so I gave him more and more worldbuilding responsibilities and he eventually realized that his own character was one.

It's not easy, but it can work out in the end.

 

This Tugboat Maguire is a bit more of a Curtis Saxton type. He wanted to invent tech that wasn't in Star Wars, like powerful stuff that would be inconsistent with the milieu. Like the way the ruinously evil Dr Saxton tried to shoehorn real physics into Star Wars, because he was a bad person.

I said once, when he was rejecting the notion of thematic tech limits - "would you invent 4G internet and the Model T Ford in D&D?" and he said "yes, because I (the player) know how".

So when you've got someone who can't stop thinking in hard sci-fi terms playing in a space opera, it doesn't promise to end well. And given he can't roleplay a simple conversation, literally having no social skills IRL too (So how can he approximate them) I can't see how throwing in responsive personal hooks will work. I'm going to try, but I feel from talking to his friends in the group this is a decades long challenge.

Being able to get through to him would be a massive coup for the group though so I will try your suggestions.

 

Sorry I mean to address earlier; Arkanian and Pau'ans are not new species; they are in other books. Cossians are the only new ones.

But.

OMGOMGOMG:

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2017/1/13/deploy-your-droids/

Imperial protocol and astromech droid villain pack:



AND HERA/CHOPPER:



I'm so getting these. And Kanan is basically the best F&D character looks wise, so when they eventually do the rest of the Ghost crew... will buy.

 

Aw, so you also have a villain based off of Jello? Interesting.

 

I don't. I think we already have a Iello in canon:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Ransolm_Casterfo

No my BBEG will be an officer/moff type who is driving a "genophage" (like the Krogan one in Mass Effect) against certain species. Iello has not, as I know, expressed a preference for Genocide.

 

I just wanted to pop in and say that I love reading the anecdotes about people's experiences with roleplaying.

Also, I was reading some of your advice about how to run a FFG game Ender, and I think I realized what happened with the 1 game I was a part of a little while back. The story was OK, but the game itself was still structured like D&D game and me, being a rookie, didn't know better. The other players were, for the most part, old-school D&D players and the GM ran a few different types of games in other systems but we were basically playing a d20 campaign with the FFG dice system, the GM read the dice and fully narrated the battles and we were limited to the effects out of the book for triumph/threat, etc. We started getting bogged down in logistics and loot and everything else and people's interests waned enough to break up the game.

 

And that's really common, I think, Cynical_Ben. Based on the number of resources which state basically "this is not d20", anyway.

My experiences are across 2 groups of players, running all 3 systems (though more EOTE than anything), is as follows:

* Fear of failure ingrained by d20 is crippling towards the intended pace of the game. The destiny point pool is intended to resolve things that players would otherwise bog things down obsessing over.

* Examples of where the GM needs to be blunt and OOC: searching piles of junk/stores/armouries for useful or necessary kit; and searched the hull for a tracking beacon etc.

d20 has the evil and wicked mistress, the DC. And we know this well - we estimate a DC15 for a check. Maybe the GM even tells us. And we roll a 14.

So instantly, rightly, there's <this object> or <this risk> or <this threat> and I know it and yet my player doesn't but for sure it's there so how do I find ways to let the GM let me roll again?

Let's say you have to do a Perception check to determine if there's a tracking beacon. Your Cunning is 4, and you've got 2 pips. Meaning, die pool starts as G G Y Y.

You get a Blue boost from a friend 'helping', and another blue as a situational because you know every line and angle of the ship.

But, the difficulty is Daunting, with one setback (black) die because of time constraints. To compound woes, you decided to upgrade and so does the GM.

Your pool look like this:

G Y Y Y Blue Blue P P P R Black

11 dice. A huge hand.

You roll and.... the adjusted, final result is 1 success. This is worth as many as 10 successes. It's there, or it's not. It's not like with more successes you would have discovered it but one isn't enough.



That's not how the Force Dice works!

The only time more successes matter are as follows:

Combat - it adds to the base damage of the weapon.
Skill checks - it reduces the time taken. i.e. 4 success on an astrogation check will make the journey a bit quicker.

This is fundamentally at odds with how d20 based systems work. But once players get this; it's easy.

* Under-valuing threat and despair and overvaluing advantage and triumph - "I got 4 threat; I remember a sad moment from my childhood, and am momentarily in emotional pain."

"I got 0 success but 2 advantage. Ok so the shot misses the stormtroopers, but hits the fuel cells they were hiding behind. They rupture and explode and kill the stormtroopers."

Simple rules:
* Advantage cannot do damage (though it can trigger a crit)
* 2 threat should be annoying
* A triumph isn't firing your blaster in the air and watching the bolt travel through space. It's not even firing 2 torpedoes at the exhaust port on the death star. Two triumphs would be Chirrut shooting a TIE into a turbolaser on Eadu. Two triumphs would be Luke's shot.
* Despair negatively affects the group. If I roll it but it undoes your plan to ambush the baddies and save us, you may not like it but that's how FFG envisioned it.

I mention this stuff again because I'm a big fan of letting the players narrative the results, but also of them doing it properly relative to their rolled results.

For your GM - tell him not to write a D&D adventure. Tell him to write a series of key milestones in the plot with no idea how they get from A to B. Whatever happens inbetween should be in response to player wants and dice results.

Example:

When GM'ing ROTJ, Richard Marquand had a series of set pieces. One setpiece was that the party would arrive on Endor. The next was them shutting the shield generator down.

How they got from landing to the generator, though, was blank. He had no ideas.

So they're making their way through the forest, and they detect a scout patrol. Han, who is leading the commando force, decides they'll quietly take out the scout patrol - after all, they might have datapads with key information on them, and ripping out a helmet comlink might give them access - short or long-term, to Imperial comms.

The players roll Cool for initiative. This is a surprise round, so they're just banking their order. The GM rolls vigilance for the Imperials. The order is set, but they skip rounds until they're made aware of the Rebels.

Han wants to sneak up so he can potentially melee or silently kill the first trooper. GM upgrades the check. Han rolls his sneak and... uh oh. 2 fail with 3 threat and 1 despair!

"OK, Han," as Marquand. "What happens next?"

Han: Sorry guys, I blew it. Ok, for the failure - I step on a twig and it audibly snaps, alerting him.

GM: OK, sounds good. And for the threat?

Han: Well, we'll say he spins around and clocks me in the jaw. It's not hard enough to really hurt me, but it knocks me prone.

GM: I'll allow it, but only at 2 threat. You still have one more.

Han: OK, so he also says to his squadmate, "Go for help! Go!"

GM: So your cover's totally blown yeah?

Han: Yep. And for the despair - there are another 2 scout troopers we didn't see.

GM: I like it.

So whilst Han brawls with his scout, the other one has been tipped off to the Rebels' presence and double moves to get his speeder going. Chewie fires and destroys it, but the other two see them and go for backup. Leia and Luke pursue them.

As we know, this lead to the Ewoks being discovered which turned the tide in battle. But for RPG purposes - it wasn't planned. The GM worked with it.

 

I've moved like an hour away from my old LGS where we used to meet for the game, so I'm probably just going to find a new group at some point. No one I know likes to play, so I'll actually have to go out and meet people.

 

That's what I did. My old gamer group had fallen apart, and one player in particular kept just playing these esoteric choices that involved essentially being "cute and cuddly" and nothing else. And then being annoyed if the game world was harsher than fluffy.

So friends of a friend had a group and could take on one more, so here I am.

 

Hmm, I'm thinking about buying one of those 3x3 rubber mats from FFG for Armada. I just can't decide which one. On one hand, that Battle of Endor mat is gorgeous. On the other hand, I like the plain star map, as it has much more use and it's as distracting (I don't want every game to feel like I'm assaulting the Death Star). I've seen that some tournament players for Armada do a 6x6 map, which seems incredible!

Out of curiosity, do most of you use 300 or 400 point fleets?

--Adm. Nick

 

I still haven't played it Nick, but the FFG forums might be a good place to check. I'm a member, I'll see what I can find.

 

I appreciate it Ender! I haven't joined those forums yet, but I'm definitely interested in hearing peoples feedback. I'm fortunate that I have two people I can play with, but I definitely wish I knew some super experienced players to get feedback on game play from.

There are so many mechanics that need to be observed. Hell, I've avoided using any of the upgrade cards (leaders, additional weapons, special systems, added bonuses, etc) just to keep the game only semi-complicated.

My gut on a 6x6 map is that it allows for much more movement and maneuverability. A 3x3 gets crowded REAL fast, plus when you can't complete a movement phase without landing on another ship you basically reduce your speed by one and sit there. It's sometimes fun to just sit there and fire away at point blank range, but movement is KEY in the game, especially for the Rebel player. I'd be curious to hear what you find out about 6x6 play.

--Adm. Nick

 

Can't see much about playmat size, but 400pts seems the most common build tally.

 

400 is the standard size, since Wave 2 with the ISD and Home One hit.

And the standard table is 3x6 feet, so basically 2 of the x-wing mats side by side. Personally I like Endor and Bespin the best. Starkiller base coming out is not bad, but the new Hoth one seems weird to me.

 

Sorry, I meant to say 3x6, thanks for confirming! I've been playing just on a 3x3, which doesn't leave a ton of room to move. Doubling the map will make a big difference.

Currently, I'm a big fan of building a Rebel fleet composed of one MC80 Liberty, one Phoenix Home, one MC30 frigate, and two CR90B corvettes, plus fighters led by the Ghost. In my last match, I destroyed an opposing VSD, all but destroyed an ISD, and severely damaged an Interdictor. Best of all, it wasn't just due to luck of the roll, but positioning & movement of ships. It's key.

--Adm. Nick

 

So I managed to convince my group of WEG die-hards to give FFG a try sometime in the near future. I'm planning a campaign loosely inspired by both Rogue One and Force 10 from Navarone: a team of Alliance commandos and spies on a secret mission.