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Old 09-20-2017, 10:12 PM   #11
Tom H.
 
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Default Re: A Generic RPG from Fantasy Flight Games?

The Genesys dice mechanic appears to be similar to the Fantasy Flight Star Wars one.

In a nutshell, you build dice pools with good and bad opposing dice. The good and bad results have the ability to cancel each other out.

The dice come in three different strengths.

And the results on the dice also come in different strengths.

After the results cancel out, you are left with the surviving good are bad degrees of outcome.

The strengths of your character and the challenge of the threats faced are modeled by adding or removing various dice from the pool.

So where in GURPS you may get a +1 for extra aim, in Star Wars you would throw in an additional "good" d6 to your pool.
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Old 09-22-2017, 08:43 AM   #12
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Default Re: A Generic RPG from Fantasy Flight Games?

I've never played with the FFG Star Wars dice, but systems I've played with that introduced such fancy dice mechanics, IME, became a game about the dice rather than about the characters. Simpler dice mechanics (roll these dice against this target number) just disappear into the background and let me play the game. Don't know if that would happen here, but since literally the only thing I've ever heard about the system is the fancy dice mechanic, that is my big concern.
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Old 09-22-2017, 12:11 PM   #13
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Default Re: A Generic RPG from Fantasy Flight Games?

To me, the dice pools are pretty fun to play with.

It probably is no more distracting than having to crunch a bunch of modifiers in your head to come up with a final effective target number.

The biggest problem is that the probabilities are highly obfuscated. This impairs a GMs ability to accurately improvise and adjust the situation if he doesn't just trust the suggested abstraction of the mechanic.

It seems a bit complicated for me to work out the probabilities without some time, but maybe there's a resource that indicates the approximate impact on probability of adding or subtracting incremental dice. (I never got around to studying dice pools.)

The Star Wars dice pools seem kind of like a FUDGE dice mechanic on heavy steroids.
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Old 09-22-2017, 03:41 PM   #14
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Default Re: A Generic RPG from Fantasy Flight Games?

Difficult dice mechanics are also bad for players, as they don't really have a good idea of how good or bad they are at something, or how hard a particular roll is. That's a dreadful play experience.
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Old 09-26-2017, 03:10 PM   #15
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Default Re: A Generic RPG from Fantasy Flight Games?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tom H. View Post
The Genesys dice mechanic appears to be similar to the Fantasy Flight Star Wars one.

In a nutshell, you build dice pools with good and bad opposing dice. The good and bad results have the ability to cancel each other out.

The dice come in three different strengths.

And the results on the dice also come in different strengths.

After the results cancel out, you are left with the surviving good are bad degrees of outcome.

The strengths of your character and the challenge of the threats faced are modeled by adding or removing various dice from the pool.

So where in GURPS you may get a +1 for extra aim, in Star Wars you would throw in an additional "good" d6 to your pool.
The photos of the dice showed enough to know that they're almost identical save for the symbols themselves to the Star Wars ones.

In which case, it's 6 different strengths
Expected results
Green is 5/8 Success, 5/8 Advantage, 0 triumph
Purple is 1/2 fail, 3/4 Threat, 0 despair
Yellow is 10/12 success (including that from the triumph), 7/12 advantage, 1/12 Triumph
Red is 10/12 fail (including the despair), 8/12 threat, 1/12 despair
Blue is 1/3 Success, 2/3 advantage, 0 triumph
Black is 1/3 fail, 1/3 threat, 0 despair.

White is an asymmetric 7/12 light, 7/12 dark...
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Old 01-14-2018, 07:36 PM   #16
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Default Re: A Generic RPG from Fantasy Flight Games?

So this system released recently. It's also available on FFG.com as a digital purchase. I might buy a copy and take a look.

Anybody have any experience playing through it yet? Have you run any games of your own? What genres come supported out of the box?
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Old 01-14-2018, 11:30 PM   #17
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Default Re: A Generic RPG from Fantasy Flight Games?

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Originally Posted by SolemnGolem View Post
. . .
Anybody have any experience playing through it yet? Have you run any games of your own? What genres come supported out of the box?
I received the book for Christmas and browsed through it briefly.

It does indeed appear very general and a foundation for much more genre development. In fact, the artwork is very sketchy--almost as if to suggest it won't get "detailed" until specific application books are produced.

There are several setting suggestions that are general overviews at this point. Some of the settings recommend use of Fantasy Flight Games existing properties.

Settings (with FFG property):
  • Fantasy - Runebound
  • Steampunk
  • Weird War - Tannhauser
  • Modern Day
  • Science Fiction - Android
  • Space Opera - Twilight Imperium

The Runebound Fantasy sourcebook was just announced to be released in the second quarter of 2018.

I may hold off on delving further until some others are developed.

Having played a bit of their Star Wars game, I'm still trying to decide if the combat treatments are too light and abstract for my tastes.

It will definitely be interesting to see where all this goes. And I fully support more generalized systems in the market. (Come on everyone, SJ Games helped lead the way in 1986, you know it's the future, wise up and start building more core systems.)
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Old 01-15-2018, 03:52 AM   #18
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Default Re: A Generic RPG from Fantasy Flight Games?

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Originally Posted by SolemnGolem View Post
Anybody have any experience playing through it yet? Have you run any games of your own? What genres come supported out of the box?
Playing a bit with Whartson Hall. The dice (which are identical in layout and effect to those in FFG Star Wars, but with different symbols and minus the Force Die which isn't used) are a big barrier to getting the hang of things. Dice pools are always a bit twitchy, but it looks as though probabilities aren't as broken as they are in Savage Worlds - which is really the game that this seems likely to unseat, for me.

We've had some discussion of it over on the tekeli.li forums: https://discussion.tekeli.li/t/ffg-s...esys-system/31
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Old 01-15-2018, 06:46 AM   #19
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Default Re: A Generic RPG from Fantasy Flight Games?

Quote:
Originally Posted by SolemnGolem View Post
So this system released recently. It's also available on FFG.com as a digital purchase. I might buy a copy and take a look.

Anybody have any experience playing through it yet? Have you run any games of your own? What genres come supported out of the box?
While not Genesys, FFG Starwars, yes. The differences are pretty small.

The genre support is minimal; it looks like they plan splat books aplenty.

Biggest differences from FFG star Wars:
  1. No class-specialization distinction
  2. No talent trees by specialization
  3. all talents now ranked at a given tier, rather than being in different tiers by tree (especially since the trees are gone)
  4. Vehicle scale gunner based upon range, not size.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tom H. View Post
The Genesys dice mechanic appears to be similar to the Fantasy Flight Star Wars one.
Not similar, identical.
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Old 01-21-2018, 12:31 AM   #20
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Default Re: A Generic RPG from Fantasy Flight Games?

I'm not sure if my comment will be interesting or not, but WOtC ended up trying out a lot of what would later become D&D 5th edition in their Star Wars Saga edition rules.

Fantasy Flight has a lot of brainpower available to it creatively, Z-Man Games is now HQd out of FF HQ in Minnesota. Asmodee is quielty forming quite an empire.
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Originally Posted by Tom H. View Post
Interesting.

I just read about an RPG named Genesys that is in development by Fantasy Flight Games.


From what I know of the Star Wars RPG, there should still be a wide difference in implementation style between GURPS and Genesys.

I believe Genesys will handle the multi-genre market with mechanics that simplify play with more abstractions and unequivocal rules.
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