A Generic RPG from Fantasy Flight Games?

[SolemnGolem]

A very late bump - in light of the mass layoffs at FFG RPG division, I have gone out to buy the hardcopy GeneSys book and the bespoke dice.

This is to add to my collection of generic role-playing systems, including HERO, triStat, and GURPS. If any relevant thoughts strike me about the system's design vis a vis GURPS or other generics, I'll note them in passing.

It's sad news to see FFG stand down. When a craftsman departs from a trade, it leaves the whole market poorer.

[rlbeaver]

Originally Posted by SolemnGolem

A very late bump - in light of the mass layoffs at FFG RPG division, I have gone out to buy the hardcopy GeneSys book and the bespoke dice.

This is to add to my collection of generic role-playing systems, including HERO, triStat, and GURPS. If any relevant thoughts strike me about the system's design vis a vis GURPS or other generics, I'll note them in passing.

It's sad news to see FFG stand down. When a craftsman departs from a trade, it leaves the whole market poorer.

My understanding from other posts on other forums, they aren't out of the RPG business, just changing the mode to the more standard freelance model (like most publishers seem to be doing) versus staffed positions. They still have planned releases. Of course that may still change...or it's all just internet blather and who knows what they're doing. :)

[RogerBW]

Originally Posted by rlbeaver

My understanding from other posts on other forums, they aren't out of the RPG business, just changing the mode to the more standard freelance model (like most publishers seem to be doing) versus staffed positions. They still have planned releases. Of course that may still change...or it's all just internet blather and who knows what they're doing. :)

This may be the case, but at least some of the people who've been sacked seem to have been the editors who were evaluating freelance proposals and, well, editing them. We'll see.

[Mark Caliber]

The news that FFG is shutting down it's RPG department actually isn't that much of a surprise for me.

I've been running an FFG Star Wars Campaign for three years now using the core rules and I was (in essence) trained in this system by one of the many 'play testers.'

The FFG Narrative system and dice mechanics are unique and supposed to be quick to resolve. And in that way, they work pretty well. The dice end up giving you a dual result, but when you have a simple binary resolution question, the second result matrix is just fluff.

The game overall is highly flawed with some very broken mechanics. To make my campaign work, I've had to make some major alterations, and I'm still tinkering with some upcoming changes as I work with this system.

One of the things that I do like about this game system is that the non Force Sensitive characters are just as potent and effective as the Force Sensitive characters.

That said, I wasn't interested in Genesys when it came out, but I had a friend who picked up the rules. It turned out that Genesys had some minor alterations (The way characters purchase 'Talents'), but other than that, there weren't any major alterations that would fix anything that had previously been considered broken.

To be honest, the reason I'm using FFG is because I have players who want to run around in the Star Wars universe and the FFG rules do that well enough. I haven't figured out how to properly scale force powers into GURPS yet, but if there were a way, I'd be more than happy to run Star Wars in GURPS. (To be fair, I think the scaling and effects that FFG derived may be adaptable to a high powered GURPS campaign, but I'm more focused on keeping this campaign going forward with the rules that I'm using. And as long as we're all happy with the campaign as is, we'll just keep plugging away).

But that said, I can't recommend Genesys. Especially with it's expensive unique dice.

[robertsconley]

So folks know Genesys has a Community Content program. So fans can continue to support the system.