Searching for Star Wars RPI

[Tinuviel]

@Lithium Fantasy Flight Games

[Mercutio]

@Seraphim73 said in Searching for Star Wars RPI:

Whether there are any abilities that actively keep players from being included in RP is more of a game culture call, in my opinion... if Staff allows players to tear down other players for picking up particular abilities, that's a bigger problem with the game's culture in my opinion.

We definitely don't appreciate that behavior - but we're not omniscient. At times, that kind of behavior slips through the cracks (or is done in pages, and invisible to us). It's unfortunate

[Autumn]

@Seraphim73 said in Searching for Star Wars RPI:

Any level-based game is going to have problems with that. One thing that -could- be implemented to limit it would be to scale the starting level, but as you pointed out, with d20, once you get to a certain level, even specialists of a lower level can't keep up.

Although this is certainly not unique to level-based games. I enjoyed playing in the Mage sphere on Haunted Memories very much, for instance. But it was no easy task for a new player to find a specialty for their character that someone wasn't already better at -- often not even on purpose, but just as a side effect of being good at the things they actually wanted to be good at. The differentiation isn't as reliable as it is with level-based systems; a 250 XP character can be as effective as, or more so than, a 500 XP character, in a way that's rare for level 6 versus level 12. But it can still be awkward.

Not just for players, but for staff; the more subdivided the player base gets into groups who can't usefully operate together, the more separate opportunities staff has to provide to keep them happy. Running a single event for six characters is more work than running an event for three characters ... but not as much more as having to run two events for two groups of three characters because any threat that would challenge group A would be laughable for group B, or vice versa. Staff burnout is enough of a problem without further cranking up the storytelling workload.

[Misadventure]

FFG Star Wars effectively has Feat Trees, and for the most part they are pretty boring.

For all of the specialness of the resolution Dice, it doesn't seem to do much that actually sends RP into Star Warsy events. Instead you get a lot of weapon jams, weapons dropped, +1 to someone else, and the favorite failure with a ton of advantage, and Success with a ton of failure.

Now I like the mixing of results, and I like the players being given a chance to suggest how things go well or poorly, but this comes out as another task to resolve every round of actions, and slows things down.

It needs serious work.

[Ganymede]

@Lithium said in Searching for Star Wars RPI:

I've run into a couple of systems that I really liked until they dropped something like, drawing cards out of the deck, onto the system

See, I like Castle Falkenstein's deck-o-cards system.

The problem with Fantasy Flight Games' engine is as @Misadventure describes. Plus, the dice are not ordinary, which may be problematic for coders.

So, as much as I despise d20s, I'll deal with the crunchiness of the SAGA edition.

[Arkandel]

@Ganymede Speaking as a new Star Wars player who's familiar with the movies and has watched Clone Wars (I need to watch Rebels...) along with a couple of books back in the day, but is in no way an expert in the SW universe, what makes or breaks a MU* - as usual, I guess - isn't the mechanics.

I mean sure, it's important that you can roll at least the archtypes and that there's leeway to do each differently but really what it comes down to is what will I be able to do? What kinds of things are there to do after I roll? Sure, I got a blaster/saber/X-Wing but now what? How much help is there by staff, is the player culture a positive experience, how often are events ran, are there things happening?

In DoD's case I've been talking to some of their oldbies and at least one expressed reservations about SAGA in particular just because of its complexity - it intimidates newbies, and she's seen people be overwhelmed and leave because of it. I suppose I can relate to that since even if you get great help to build your PC (and they're excellent about it) it takes a bit from your agency as a player, and it still means you probably don't know how to play it or what you can do with it in regular scenes ("how do I try to tell if someone's lying?").

A macro-effect might also mean that those more adept with a system are the ones to rise in IC power which aren't necessarily the best roleplayers. I am in no way going to imply a correlation/causation link here (many people are excellent at both mechanics and posing) but it's still something to consider. With a simplistic system like WoD that's not as much of an issue since the gap between the filthy casuals and the dice doctors isn't as deep.

[Seraphim73]

@GamerNGeek It would also require that the game system be coded. Dahan has done a bang-up job coding up Saga already, so (especially if you can get in touch with him) it's relatively easy to install the Saga Edition code and get it up and running. Coding FFG Star Wars would require starting from scratch.

@Arkandel There's also the issue with any game that's lasted more than a couple of years where people gain positions of power simply by outlasting their contemporaries. This is particularly true in GoD/DoD's case, as there was a wave of departures (in fact, DoD could be seen as one of them) that drained a lot of the upper levels of power away. It's great to see some folks like Hrellyi, Abraham, and Sinya still around, but a lot of the other names are completely new to me, or held down minor roles when GoD disintegrated.

To be perfectly fair... I recognize that I'm holding some annoyance over from GoD, and it's coming through in my views of DoD, but I'm doing my best not to let it color my posts too much. The new leadership characters may be every bit as dynamic and driven as those who aren't there anymore.

[Arkandel]

@Seraphim73 said in Searching for Star Wars RPI:

@Arkandel There's also the issue with any game that's lasted more than a couple of years where people gain positions of power simply by outlasting their contemporaries. This is particularly true in GoD/DoD's case, as there was a wave of departures (in fact, DoD could be seen as one of them) that drained a lot of the upper levels of power away.

That's pretty much the case for any MU* I've ever been in; people drop out and others take their place. While it has effects of its own (say, in Vampire the upper echelons of power are typically supposed to be static as opposed to the PC Prince changing every 3 months because their player burned out) it's probably impossible to avoid unless you use NPCs for those positions.

Look at it as a circle of life. The old give way to the new. It's not necessarily a bad thing, other than that you miss your friends after they move on.

[Ganymede]

@Arkandel said in Searching for Star Wars RPI:

Speaking as a new Star Wars player who's familiar with the movies and has watched Clone Wars (I need to watch Rebels...) along with a couple of books back in the day, but is in no way an expert in the SW universe, what makes or breaks a MU* - as usual, I guess - isn't the mechanics.

Yes, but if the mechanics are difficult to code, good luck seeing that version of the game online.

That said, the sparkling fun part of DoD is its set of help files, which are extensive and detailed. It is obvious they put a lot of time into making sure that players could play the game without having to flip back through reams of books to get the text on a particular Feat, Skill, or Talent.

So, yeah: it boils down to staff. Because they determine the set-up, and DoD's set-up is pretty stellar, as far as games go.

[RnMissionRun]

I wasn't going to mention this because the project is still in it's infancy, but since we're talking about systems for use with Star Wars MU*s, I figured, what the heck?

I am currently involved in the construction of a Star Wars MU set during the time period of the new movies. We had originally intended to use the FFG system, but decided against it due to the complexity of the dice mechanics (and a few other reasons). SAGAs was not an option because none of us cared for D20 and D6 was just so... dated.

We ended up going with a custom system based on QuestCore. QuestCore is often described as a 'crunch lite' system aimed at fans of D20 who want simpler and better mechanics. It's simple to learn, easy to code, and works very very well for MU*s, at least IMO. I'm curious to see how well it works in actual practice, but we have a lot of work to do yet before we'll be ready to open for testing.

[Seraphim73]

@Ganymede said in Searching for Star Wars RPI:

That said, the sparkling fun part of DoD is its set of help files, which are extensive and detailed.

This is true of any game running Dahan-Saga. And yes, they're awesome, absolutely awesome. And the clone system that lets you try out builds/create NPC sheets makes the nerd in me (which is, admittedly, most of me) go all atwitter.

[Jennkryst]

The dice mechanics for FFG are simple enough, and can be explained in webcomic form.

Coding... can't you assign success/failure/triumphs/setbacks to the rand()? +roll can pull directly from your +sheet and roll the Ability and Proficiency dice for you. Set a modifier of some sort for boost and setback and difficulty, and have a despair flag?

I ask because I have no idea how bonkers the code for it would turn out. Aside from +roll and +sheet tracking, you don't need code to automatically do stuff for you. You should know what your stuff does.

[ThatGuyThere]

@Ganymede said in Searching for Star Wars RPI:

See, I like Castle Falkenstein's deck-o-cards system.

Castle Falkenstein had a really neat system it's biggest problem was if you had players that were also big card players, it was pretty easy to game by counting cards especially if you already had those probabilities hard wired into your brain.

[faraday]

@Jennkryst said in Searching for Star Wars RPI:

Coding... can't you assign success/failure/triumphs/setbacks to the rand()? +roll can pull directly from your +sheet and roll the Ability and Proficiency dice for you.

Coding almost any dice system in a MU is stupidly easy (7th Sea 2nd edition dice being an insane exception). The code complexity comes from chargen and from making those rolls do something (like combat, or ship code, or what have you).

[Ganymede]

@faraday said in Searching for Star Wars RPI:

Coding almost any dice system in a MU is stupidly easy (7th Sea 2nd edition dice being an insane exception).

If so, then why hasn't someone coded up Earthdawn's step-system? Chop, chop.

(FFG's dice are ... complex. Sorry, they are.)

[faraday]

@Ganymede said in Searching for Star Wars RPI:

If so, then why hasn't someone coded up Earthdawn's step-system? Chop, chop.

Because nobody's ever run an Earthdawn game? It wouldn't be hard to do. FFG wouldn't either unless there are some hidden depths beyond the webcomic @Jennkryst cited, but based on what I've heard about the system, it doesn't seem so?

[Ganymede]

@faraday said in Searching for Star Wars RPI:

Because nobody's ever run an Earthdawn game? It wouldn't be hard to do. FFG wouldn't either unless there are some hidden depths beyond the webcomic @Jennkryst cited, but based on what I've heard about the system, it doesn't seem so?

If you say so; you're a far better coder than I.

I just always figured that a system that uses all dice, with the potential to explode, would be rather difficult to code up. Especially if it tracked just by step.

[Mercutio]

@Ganymede
Just some simple recursion (using fold()) so you don't have to deal with going over the same dataset again.

[Faceless]

@Ganymede if you haven't already, play with Dahan/Gizka's +roll and +dice stuff(I'm assuming that it's theirs). You can throw a huge amount of modifiers into a single input. I also love the ability to add (notes) into a +roll to make sure you're specifying where that little +1 came from, so everything's kept on the up and up.

I only mention this because when it comes to do damage (+dice), there are a lot of modifiers that can be lumped into that. Especially on a critical hit, two-hand wielding, Powerful Charging, Ataru-using saber monkey or something. So it's not a perfect representation of FFG or Earthdawn(whatever that is) being able to be coded, but just my own outlook of 'I could totally see it being possible', just because of how complex someone exceptionally talented with Saga +sheet-work can make the +dice command.

[faraday]

@Ganymede Here you go: Earthdawn Dice

Obviously I didn't spend a lot of time polishing it up. You'd have to add special handling for step 1/2 (because they work weird) and for karma and some error checking, but it's got the basic mechanics down.