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This post will stay stickied for (at least) the week-end. Please enjoy this space where you can talk about anything: your last game, your current project, your patreon, etc. You can even talk about video games, ask for a group, or post a survey or share a new meme you've just found. This is the place for small talk on r/rpg.

The off-topic rules may not apply here, but the other rules still do. This is less the Wild West and more the Mild West. Don't be a jerk.

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Link to video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luHj-2BapME

Hadn't seen this posted on this sub yet, but thought there was some interesting things to discuss here: Like the DS Summoner class as a design, and how their funding to open license model works.

I have to say I think the Summoner class as a design is the most 'head-turning' of the classes they've come up with. There's a whole kind of mini-RTS going on there and it's impressive if they've managed to get that into a player turn without bogging the game down for everyone else at the table.

Crosspost from: https://papercult.club/thread/738/blaster-head-which-official-star

Alright, Blaster placed to the head: which OFFICIAL Star Wars RPG do you run? Which one do you play?

Thread Rules:

• You can only pick Official Licensed Star Wars RPGs. You cannot pick, say, something like Fate Core or Black Star

• You answer both what you would RUN and what you would PLAY, as the two are different

• This part is iffy, but we are counting similar titles as one option. All of D6 is one option since its the same basic game (but one may have preference for 1e, revised, etc) as are D20 and D20R (since they are basically just editions, even if a lot change). But, SAGA is separate because it was not considered SWD20 3e, but a whole new game.

Your options:

Star Wars d6

Pros:

• THE original Star Wars system, built from the ground up for the franchise

• Light weight and fast.

• Easily hacked and modded.

• Vibrant fan community updating things after publication ceased back into this game as well as making new editions to improve on it.

Cons:

• Old School in a bad way, at times. Anyone want to spend 2 weeks healing in a bacta tank?

• Game Masters must police Jedi players to keep any semblance of balance.

• Everything is balanced around the OT so the PT stuff requires a lot of homebrew.

Star Wars d20

Pros

• Familiar d20 framework that many gamers will likely pick-up without any issue.

• Two distinct versions that are actually different and take some interesting swings (like Vitality and Wounds).

• Official support for all PT and OT content.

Cons

• You are fitting Star Wars into the D20 mold instead of making a Star Wars Game.

• While it was once-familiar, most gamers have moved onto 5e and may actually be confused by D20's clunkier elements.

• Jedi are OP for the same reason d20 Wizards are OP

• Pretty much feels like playing D&D 3.5e with a Star Wars paintjob

• Like all d20 games, making your own NPCs and enemies is an absolute nightmare as they are made the same way PCs are made & PCs chargen takes a long time

Star Wars Saga

Pros

• Possible one of the best versions of the d20 system.

• Tons of homebrew and fan support.

• Covers OT, PT, & KOTR official.

• High Powerlevel in a way that fits the EU at the time of the game's production.

Cons

• The tactical combat doesn't feel very "Star Wars."

• Still feels like stuffing SW into a d20 mold.

• Homebrew support pretty much ends in 2011 when FFG comes out.

• While more balanced than d20, Jedi are still very OP.

• Like all d20 games, making your own NPCs and enemies is an absolute nightmare as they are made the same way PCs are made & PCs chargen takes a long time.

Fantasy Flight's Star Wars Trilogy

Pros

• An original system built from the ground up for Star Wars (mostly, as Warhammer Fantasy 3e was a major inspiration)

• Design that mixes a narrative focus and tactical elements that tries to appeal to both narrative gamers and lovers of crunch

• Three distinct lines of games that split the core Star Wars experience into three elements (Scoundrels, Soldiers, Jedi) so that each title can focus on one of the franchise strengths. Each title is compatible for cross-system games.

• Support for OT, PT, & even some ST

• The Talent Tree system is the best implementation of Genesys, the generic system that followed these titles, and help keep every character very "Star Wars"

• The Force Rating/Force Die mechanic actually makes Jedi balanced for the first time with all other character types. Even comes with official support for Dark Side games, which technically required fudging the Dark Side Point mechanic all prior titles used.

• Genuinely great enemy making rules that make GMing easy.

Cons

• Proprietary dice that will eventually (and have frequently) gone out of production, making the game a chore to play in-person. Digital dice rollers mitigate the issue, but those apps/servers may eventually go dead. While official support for using normal dice are in the book, that method is tedious and time consuming. Practically unplayable. Thus, in a few years time, if you don't have a set of dice/fans do not maintain adequate digital dice rollers, this game will become extremely difficult to run.

• An identity crisis that exists between its attempt to do both Narrative-heavy dice mechanics and tactical combat. Fans often house rule more narrative elements into the combat, but RAW the combat locks down most of the narrative mechanics and kind of harshes the vibe of the narrative gamers. Mixed with the intense gear porn and chargen/charops, the game feels like something trying to appeal to many people and, while accomplishing a lot in its own right, leaves some saying "would it have been better to just focus on one demographic?"

• While the three separate lines are great for gamers who want to focus on one experience, a lot of the material in the corebooks and even the supplements overlap. The basic systems are the same and a lot of Gear/Planets/etc. overlap in the supplements of the three lines. The game line even dropped the whole separation eventually and released cross-system setting books, specifically for the Dark Times (between Episode 3 and 4, to tie into the Star Wars Rebels cartoon) and the Clone Wars. Which further makes a push for owning all three lines, despite the overlap. When one considers that the talent trees aren't even fully balanced (EotE are too generalist and have trouble with AoR characters and both still have to compete with the slight edge the Force gives FiD players) makes one wonder if they should have just made a single game line from the start. And the entire thing starts to feel a bit like a cash grab.

• This is the only title to lack official stats for iconic characters as a terms of their licensing required them not to release any stat blocks for said characters. You need to go to supplements to find stats for, say, Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, Han Solo, Princess Leia, etc. Which can be wonky.

• Space combat rules are pretty weak, to the degree some recommend simply grabbing the official Star Wars Space Tactical Game from the same company to resolve such combat instead.

My Picks

To Play:

Fantasy Flight's Star Wars Trilogy

My Reasons:

• In-depth character creation rules

• I love the Force Die Mechanic and how it models the dark side of the force perfectly

• The narrative dice mechanic genuinely works and is easy to make more narrative during tactical combat, even if you have to break RAW

• The Gear Porn is overwhelming, but can actually be easily ignored by simply not making a Gear focused character. Talents are strong enough that you can focus on those and care less about Gear. Though, it was fun once making a "General Grievous" cyborg character

• Character creation actually focuses on making the party have a reason to be a group.

• There are mechanics to tie characters to the world and adventure (Obligation for EotE and Duty for Rebellion), but I will admit that one (Morality for FiD) is weak and actually best kept to Jedi characters and given as a secondary system behind one of the others.

To Run

Star Wars d6

My Reasons:

• I am getting older and bogged down in real responsibilities. I rely more and more on improv and simple rules/enemy making to get by when I run. Fitting in the time to spent 1-3 hours making an adventure is just less feasible between a full time job, family obligations, my love life, and other hobbies. I also am just more fatigued nowadays in general and lack that youthful spark to push through.

• I went off on the elements that didn't age well, but fans are well-aware of those issues. There are options to mitigate those factors. They aren't perfect, but they are there. Also, balance matters in a TRPG, but, when the TRPG is more rules light and you have players you can trust, you can fudge it more. It matters more on the dev side because you need to make for every group, including those who can't be trusted to share spotlight. Or for more tactical games where imbalance will ruin the entire experience.

• I actually prefer the grounded power level of the early OT when compared to the EU, PT, ST. So, those limitations are a plus to me.

So, with the options laid out, what is everyone's pick?

There is a new Free League Humble Bundle.

It's slightly different from the last (?).

All Twillight 2K Books and most core books of the other systems included.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/free-league-rpg-collection-books

This title may even be lacking in terms because I'm not sure which ones to use here but I'm looking for sci-fi/space games and settings that have a very distinct 80s-2000s feel to them.

Id like to run a game with space travel but locked into our solar system. Hard (mostly) accurate science is a big bonus here.

Ideally it has space mechanics but also options for many on plant concepts.

Sort of like a lower tech SWN maybe? But not wwn. I'm going to check out traveller. I also have orbital blues to read.

I am always looking for new rpgs to read and try, but there's always a hitch, not having enough time to play every game I want and living in Europe and not the US which screws my time zone notwithstanding.

That is, I often feel like I am missing out when games get praised even though they are are not my cup of tea. A big category of those is what I call DnDlikes. Call them alternatives... probably not heartbreakers, as they definitely have their own rabid fans and a good niche. I'm talking about games like PF2e, Draw Steel, Daggerheart, Nimble. They get a lot of talk, but of all of them the only one I really enjoy is Dragonbane.

Because they are praised as the answer to everything, I feel like something is wrong with me for not getting their appeal. Yet, I know why I would not like them.

Draw Steel is too heroic, abstracts resources and cares mostly for combat and definitely not for exploration, for example. Daggerheart sits between narrative and trad games without committing to either, PF2e is again too heroic, tactical and very rules over rulings, when I am big fan of NRS/OSR and narrative games, so it is antithetical to what I like.

I could explain how I wouldn't really enjoy them in more detail, but that's not the point. What is is that I google up builds, keep up with their news and read avidly over posts on their subreddits.

And every time I do I see people being happy with them. People telling stories of how their group finally moved on from DnD and they are having a blast or how they really want to move because this game is the answer to all their problems, when the stuff I like playing is different from DnD altogether and it's been a while since I've played it, so I don't remember all the gripes I had with it besides the major ones because time made let go of the hard feelings and left mostly memories of having fun with my friends.

I feel like they are yapping round about which hamburger is more delicious when I'm a quest to try foods from around the world... but holly fuck... that must be a really good hamburger to get so much praise.

First of all, hello to everyone who sees this post.

I was thinking to make a captain Tsubasa based campaign with some of my friends, and tho I have yet to start to write it, Id like to see if I have to make one myself or I can use one as a base for what I want to do.

So, I've just discovered 3:16. Love myself a rules-lite, RP heavy system and I'd like to bring it to one of my tables next month as a one-shot.

The one thing that's tripping me up is if I plan out the various combat scenarios on the planet, what's to stop a player busting out a strength, especially say during a climactic final battle, rendering it a bit pointless?

I'm going to have 6 players probably, which I know is above the recommended number, but that's what I'm working with.

I've read through the core rules section a few times, but it's not beyond the bounds of possibility that I'm missing something obvious. But if not, how have you worked with the rules to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion or homebrewed around them?

I have been DMing the Stonewalkers campaign and it have been so fun but for some reason the combats tend to get boring.

They ended up being characters throwing their attacks, then waiting to their next turn and just do their attack again and it gets worse if there is more enemies.

What can I do to make the combats more dynamic and engaging to the players?

The rest of the things are very fun and my players really enjoy it, but the combats tend to get very slow.

I know there's a Dark Souls rpg, but it doesn't appear to have inspired a subgenre in the ttrpg field in quite the same way as it's video game counterpart.. Not really surprising for obvious reasons.

But as a growing fan of that genre (who apparently enjoys the torture), I enjoy wondering how it could be replicated. Or how ttrpg's might be so inspired.

Big boss fights can't really work in the same way since they are reaction based not dice based.

But what if you had a setting where death was part of the experience. That is, your character can and will die a lot (as is the norm in soulslikes, it's meant to happen). Maybe while dead characters become something else or go somwhere else (party splits notwithstanding - soulslike games are solo experiences for the greater part). So you don't lose your PC, but something changes, even if temporarily.

I've been running a conceptually challenging game for some time now ... The concept was an impulsive mashup of Slow Horses / Firefly / Touring rock band.

I'd never intended to run this thing, only wished out loud (local Meetup group) that I could play in it.

I was approached by one person who asked me to put a game together and run it. I consented, and over the last few years we played with a variety of folks. My original player had a well defined long term goal, and we're approaching the point where they would have the opportunity to complete that arc.

Today I received a text telling me that they're bowing out. I understand, it's been a challenge to maintain a group, and the latest lineup is dominated by one of the other players.

My issue is that I'm an emotional person, and it feels like a relationship breakup ... which it is. Also, the frustration of building the story to facilitate the characters arc, only to have the PC bow out just before the climax.

Any counsel appreciated ...

do you create a sandbox filled with adventures your players can freely choose or disregard? do you create a more linear, story-focused game where the adventures come one at a time, and each one narratively leads into the next? or, do you do something in between?