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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

Lit [Fantasy Flight Games] Because it just keeps getting better

Discussion in 'Literature' started by The Loyal Imperial, Sep 7, 2012.

  1. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Feb 18, 2001
    It's not.

    Lots of miniatures companies make approximations of famous characters. I've got third party Lara Crofts, Indiana Jones', etc. The fact the "Rey" has variant heads including a gas mask and predator mask, and has a weapon closer to a Praetorian Guard, is the same as "Finn's" blaster.

    Here are some other examples from the company (http://www.hfminis.co.uk/):

    "Foster"



    And "Codename: Alexander":

    [​IMG]

    Someone from FFG boards redid Finn's blaster properly, and used green stuff to make custom Kylo Rens and Poe Damerons from existing WOTC minis.

    Honestly just browsing the FFG minis forums is a good way to see all the work people've done, and if you have some disposable income it may be worth getting a custom paint job out of someone.
     
    TheRedBlade likes this.
  2. blackmyron

    blackmyron Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Oct 29, 2005
    @Ender_Sai - Whatever disagreements we have - and I'm sure we'll continue to have - I think we can both agree that we enjoy running and playing FFG's Star Wars RPG. So there's always that. [face_peace]

    Over the holidays I picked up a copy of Ghosts of Dathomir. F&D is probably my least favorite of the three (our own little group has only one Jedi out of the five, which I prefer), so I'm always leery of their books. The adventure is fairly good, and can easily be adopted for the EOTE (especially since it features Toydaria and the Kwenn Space Station). The usage of Dathomir is rather pointless, however; the adventure has little to do with Dathomir's unique qualities. I was also amazed that the Imperials don't seem to care too much about people landing on Dathomir in the adventure.

    Still waiting on Dawn of Rebellion - which the CoolStuff website still says "December". [face_shame_on_you]

    Other RPG news: a company called Modiphius has gotten the Star Trek RPG license and I picked up their core book. The licensee is the fourth one - FASA was the first, one of the earliest franchise tie-ins in fact (1982), and well-received until Paramount abruptly pulled the license in 1989. Last Unicorn Games got the license years later - they did a pretty great job, and (similar to FFG) had separate core rulebooks, in this case by show. I have almost all the original run in storage somewhere, but Decipher managed to steal the license away in 2000 just as LUG got bought out by Wizards of the Coast.
    Decipher's Star Trek RPG... the less said, the better. Along with their Lord of the Rings RPG, textbook cases on what not to do in a licensed RPG.
    The new rulebook is pretty high-quality, and instead of splitting up the settings, went with the intersection of the most settings - around the start of Voyager. Looking forward to seeing more of their material.

    And lastly, while I'm probably the only one here who cares, one of my favorite RPGs - West End Games' TORG - is finally returning, completely updated. TORG came out around 1990, and essentially involved various genre worlds invading regular Earth (well, low-key Earth with some special stuff). It was one of the first to have an active, ongoing campaign world, although it petered out towards the end. Apparently I missed the whole Kickstarter, and a whole slew of products are coming out all at once this month (hopefully). I'm going to push for the group to try it out once our current Star Wars adventure is over.
     
  3. DigitalMessiah

    DigitalMessiah Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Feb 17, 2004
    @blackmyron maybe they disregarded the interdiction of Dathomir because TCW wiped out the Nightsisters and they forgot about it?

    or is FFG usually good about that stuff?

    Speaking of Decipher, I've been feeling nostalgic for Decipher's old SW CCG
     
  4. blackmyron

    blackmyron Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Oct 29, 2005
    The module indicates that there are both Nightsisters and Nightbrothers still on the planet at the time of the adventure. There's a sidebar about if the players 'insist' on going to see the Nightsisters, but the story has the players going to a place avoided by everyone on the planet.
    There is a small Imperial presence on the planet, said to be about keeping the locals there, but they appear to ignore the PCs. [face_dunno]
    Funny you should mention that - the entire reason they lost the license was because of WOTC convincing LFL that they should have the CCG license since they already had the RPG, and it was clearly because of what Decipher did in taking the Star Trek RPG license (WOTC went to buy out Last Unicorn Games, which was 90% their Star Trek RPG - they announced the buyout at GenCon, and Decipher announced they had gotten the Star Trek license at the same convention, which left LUG with virtually nothing to bring over to Wizards.)[/QUOTE]
     
    Last edited: Jan 11, 2018
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  5. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Feb 18, 2001
    I think I actually raised this a while back with you. I've played the EOTE adventures (Beyond the Rim, and Jewel of Yavin) and the prior FaD adventure, Chronicles of the Gatekeeper. I own Onslaught at Arda I but haven't run it yet.

    My complaint at the time, and from memory you hadn't played yet @blackmyron, was that the adventures are a bit too narrowly rigid to fully utlise the narrative dice system's ability to generate story. By which I mean - I ran a really good AOR game where I had the names of villains, their plans, their ships, and their goals and everything else was pretty much free form. They were able to just pick a direction and I could make it work.

    If the players want to make up the script like that in a standard FFG game setting, the GM - provided they're a) experienced and b) well versed enough in the Look'n'feel of Star Wars - can adapt and the players will find the d20 conceit of GM-as-adversary replaced with the more accomodating GM-as-ally. In short, it's better and they love it.

    In the adventures - if you want to have the imperials react to the players or if a player is a career spec that would have them curious about Nightsisters, you don't have the pathways to resolution you ordinarily have in a campaign of your own devising. in D20, it's a bit more managable but when the 3 SWRPG FFG games encourage you to go off piste, it's jarring.

    If you are going to run an adventure, and have it work, Jewel of Yavin is the one I'd recommend. Contained entirely to Bespin, it's well written, pretty open ended (for a story about a floating city) and a lot of fun.
     
  6. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Feb 18, 2001
    Also; what was it about F&D you didn't like?
     
  7. AdmiralNick22

    AdmiralNick22 Retired Fleet Admiral star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    May 28, 2003
    Wow... watching that tutorial for painting minis was awesome. Someone should setup an online marketplace selling those pre-painted. I bet they could make a profit!

    --Adm. Nick
     
  8. blackmyron

    blackmyron Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Oct 29, 2005
    I have them all - and read them all, Ender. :p

    I agree, The Jewel of Yavin is a pretty fun little adventure that uses a movie location (and character!) to great effectiveness. Plus it's got that museum about Xim, so that sold me on it right there. But I'm probably not running myself for a while (we're doing a round robin GM method, and I was first). The current GM adapted a Traveller adventure to Star Wars.
    I'm not fond of having an entire group of Force users as the party. Honestly, I think it's best having a mixture of all three (like the OT) and having the separate cores represent adventure types. The only place where I see it working is in time periods where there are groups of Force users running around, like the Clone Wars. One of the reasons I'm looking forward to the new sourcebook, as it's the first one that is specifically designed to work with all three (although the Hutt Space and Corellian Sector SBs certainly work too - I'm hoping for more regional SBs in the future).
     
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  9. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Feb 18, 2001
    will respond properly a bit later but here's an AT-ST from IA vs one from Legion... :eek:

    [​IMG]
     
  10. AdmiralNick22

    AdmiralNick22 Retired Fleet Admiral star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    May 28, 2003
    Forgive my ignorance about table top games, but why are ship games like X-wing and Armada pre-painted but ground based games are not? Is this due to some long history of people painting miniature figures, but not ships?

    Don't get me wrong, as a ship guy I'm BEYOND thankful that Armada is painted, but I am curious.

    --Adm. Nick
     
  11. Sarchet

    Sarchet Jedi Master star 2

    Registered:
    Jan 23, 2016
    Armada/X-wing are more of a board game type where it is traditional to have everything ready to play out of the box. Legion is more of a hobby wargame, where it's expected to have to paint your army.

    Also, it's a lot easier and cheaper to production line paint vehicles than it is to paint people to any reasonable standard. Prepainted Legion minis would look pretty bad or else be prohibitively expensive.
     
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  12. Noash_Retrac

    Noash_Retrac Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 14, 2006
    Can I ask? Are Armada and X-wing Miniatures actually canon? I'm confused with how its treated on Wookieepedia.
     
  13. TheRedBlade

    TheRedBlade Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Mar 17, 2007
    Serious answer: No. Like their RPG sourcebooks, they draw from both Legends and Canon, and have a few wholly original inventions.

    Enlightened Answer: Free yourself from the concept of canon and just enjoy stuff, my dude.
     
  14. Noash_Retrac

    Noash_Retrac Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 14, 2006
    The only thing I liked was the name Garel's Honor for one of the Hammerhead corvettes because its such a good name and my headcanon dubs it as the third Hammerhead at the Battle of Scarif (the one still there as the Profundity is being pounded).
     
  15. Vthuil

    Vthuil Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Jan 3, 2013
    Last edited: Jan 13, 2018
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  16. JediBatman

    JediBatman Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    May 3, 2015
    Yeah if they're using Armada as a Canon source, by that logic Corran Horn is Canon too.

    And that's not all: they've marked several Legends planets as Canon based solely on the justification that they're on the galaxy map in The Force Awakens Beginners Game. This also apparently proves that "Korriban" is indeed an alternative name for "Moraband" . . . even though it's still called "Moraband" in every other Canon source.

    Keep in mind, that map is the same one that appears in all their other RPG core rulebooks, just with the planets from The Force Awakens added, and Zonama Sekot removed. (Though if they had kept Zonama Sekot listening to all the fan theories on how the Vong are canon would've greatly amused me.)

    TL:DR version: like all Wikis, don't take Wookieepedia as an infallible source, there's all sorts of double standards and contradictions on which FFG stuff they accept as canon and which they don't.
     
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  17. blackmyron

    blackmyron Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Oct 29, 2005
    General rule of thumb for a wiki - use it as a way to find sources or source material... but treat any 'conclusions' they draw with a grain of salt. (And yeah, Wookieepedia has had issues over the years for various reasons).

    Dealing with the Witcher wiki today, their timeline is all messed up because of one bad date from the original Witcher game. :rolleyes:
     
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  18. The Positive Fan

    The Positive Fan Force Ghost star 4

    Registered:
    Jan 19, 2015
    All these responses to N_R's question are correct, and I'll add for clarity that FFG's status as non-canon does not make it Legends, either. The best way to look at it is as existing in a distinct, non-canon "bubble" all its own.
    The Vong were planned to appear in a seventh or eighth season TCW arc, and those arcs are considered canon despite never having been completed, so in a roundabout way they are canon - although how true they'd have been to the familiar Vong of the novels we can only guess at this point.
     
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  19. JediBatman

    JediBatman Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    May 3, 2015
    But unlike say, The Bad Batch or what eventually became Dark Disciple, didn't that never get past the concept stage? Can't exactly say it's "canon" if all we have are some concept art drawings and no script to tell us what exactly happened beyond "the Vong showed up".
     
  20. The Positive Fan

    The Positive Fan Force Ghost star 4

    Registered:
    Jan 19, 2015
    You might want to take that up with Pablo; he's the one who says that the unaired TCW material is canon. I think it's safe to say they had, if not scripts, then at least the stories planned out through season eight.
     
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  21. AdmiralNick22

    AdmiralNick22 Retired Fleet Admiral star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    May 28, 2003
    FFG isn't canon, but it's unique place and role allows it to cherry pick from the EU or current canon for stuff it wants to include in it's works. There isn't obviously such a thing as "FFG canon" in a strict sense, but they obviously try to have their products tie into one another. They have done a great job pulling ships from the EU for their X-wing and Armada games, seamlessly integrating them alongside the canon designs. Makes the games more fun and varied, but it also provides them with some added visibility. I truly believe that Battlefront 2 used the Raider-class corvette because it was popular in FFG products. It had a visibility that other ships that could have filled that role for the Empire didn't have at the time.

    Speaking of ships, I'm still holding out hope that we eventually get Dornean gunships in Armada. Preferably as flotillas, just so that concept can be used again. How can I gameplay Scarif accurately without them? [face_dunno][face_monkey]

    I've given up hope for the wingless MC80, which is the unloved bastard child of Rebel capital ships. The most numerous seen on screen, yet they are not even acknowledged as being distinct in the canon yet. Of course, I don't see FFG rushing to release a fourth Mon Cala warship any time soon, save the MC85 Raddus if they ever expand into post-OT ships.

    Then again, if you told me years ago when Armada's first wave was being released that I'd be able to own Home One, the Liberty, and the Profundity (which didn't even exist yet!), I'd probably say you were crazy... :p

    --Adm. Nick
     
    Last edited: Jan 14, 2018
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  22. Commander_Andersen

    Commander_Andersen Jedi Grand Master star 2

    Registered:
    Apr 10, 2004
    Dornean gunships and DP20 frigates for me.

    And I'm right with you on Wingless Liberties.
     
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  23. AdmiralNick22

    AdmiralNick22 Retired Fleet Admiral star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    May 28, 2003
    I'm honestly surprised we haven't had the DP20 Corellian gunships yet. They are an iconic EU design and would be right at home in Armada. From a gameplay standpoint, either they or the Dornean gunships could have something unique, like a three dice anti-fighter roll or something that makes them dangerous. The wingless Liberty, from a purely gameplay standpoint, would be identical to Home One. It would be hard to make that cruiser unique enough to add something new to the game. The only thing I could see it being used for would be to make a cheaper MC80, one that is less than like 80-90 ship points, but the trade off is less shields or hull points. Otherwise it is just another large base ship that costs 100 points +/- and throws a good chunk of dice.

    --Adm. Nick
     
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  24. blackmyron

    blackmyron Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Oct 29, 2005
    Miniature, card and board games rarely - if ever - have any canon. They're always exceptions (in the past, information on CCG cards or special miniature scenarios contributed to Legends), but the fluid nature of those games makes that difficult.

    RPGs with settings almost always have their own canon - Paranoia being the exception that comes to my mind, that has a sort of anti-canon. Having a (generally) self-consistent set of information that builds on prior works is true for every RPG that has come out since Dungeons & Dragons and Traveller. No one is saying that the Star Wars RPG has an ongoing metaplot like Deadlands or Shadowrun; but it isn't a set of freefloating bits of disconnected information like Armada, nor is it a pure crunch set of rules like GURPS (in fact, FFG has a pure set of rules minus any setting for the SW rules set anyways). Being a licensed work doesn't change anything, either - putting aside the past Star Wars RPG, the only exceptions to the rules - those that parroted the source canon and added nothing (like Decipher's Star Trek RPG) - died a quick death and were quickly forgotten.

    I get it. Some people want Legends to go away forever. Some people want to make sure it's understood the RPG will never have any influence on the NEU. The RPG is its own thing. And that this keeps coming up concerns me - not because of individual opinions here, but because of it potentially mirroring discussions at the StoryGroup level. I don't want to see one of the better RPGs out right now destroyed because LFL yanks the license over fears that 'people think it's Legends continued' or 'people think it's canon with the NEU' - because it happened before, with FASA's Star Trek license in the 1980s, which was pulled by Paramount because a game they fully admitted wasn't canon with the TV shows and movies was too non-canon. Or that StoryGroup, fearful that someone will take information about something from the NEU in a sourcebook as canon will leave the game so neutered that it would be pointless to even have sourcebooks - which is probably why the TFA core rulebook was downgraded to an introductory kit.

    I really think that SW canon is being taken way too seriously at this point - and this is coming from someone that engages in cataloguing and researching fictional universes as a hobby. I suspect that, looking back, that may be why I decided to not bother with the NEU, even though I had originally decided to still follow the OT era, and enjoyed Rogue One very much. There are other universes calling to me at this point, anyways.

    I'm sure you're just as tired reading this from me as I am typing it, so I'll go ahead and end this screed. I'd much rather talk about the RPG itself, to be quite honest.
     
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  25. AdmiralNick22

    AdmiralNick22 Retired Fleet Admiral star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    May 28, 2003
    Woo hoo! As of 1/8/18, the Profundity and Chimaera are on the boat and US bound. :D

    They're definitely on track for a early March release. I wonder if we'll be getting a new wave announcement soon... [face_praying]

    --Adm. Nick
     
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