Hi, I'm the GM and I came across some things that I need to know...

1) I read some topic on wiki and I still don't know how does the Holonet exactly work?? If only imperials have access on it and how can I find informations about people and other things through communication services etc.

2) If Iam not the Bounty hunter and I take the Bounty am I criminal ?because I haven't got licence?

3) Other thing that I want to know is communication device. How long range has holomessenger got and how can I contact people in other planet through which communication device?? Please tell me in which situations should I use which device??

4) If I take a cover in combat and completely hide myself still I get only defense point or I can't shoot but the enemy can't too or for example I take cover behind the corner and start to run away am I out of encounter?

5) If some character has debt obligation for for example lending the money and he pay of all of the money what should I do??

6)If character say I'll shoot to this buildng from laser cannon of the ship what should I do?? It explodes or what?

7) At the last meeting my friend wanted to use stealth check for sneaking behind the dune on Tatooine and he failed so I told to him you are trying to sneak ,but you aren't good at it and he wanted to use the check again. So my question is what about the repeating check how do you do this situations??

8) I didn't find how exactly the minion group work. Does the group have united damage ??

For example we have got group of 5 stormtroopers and each stormtrooper has got 6 dmg.

So if the check success they have got dmg of 30 or How does it work ?? And can I fire to separate targets on one check??

9) If someone want to shoot to the ship for example to the laser cannon with blaster and the ship hasn't got shields on what i should say(do)? or Does it count like 10x ?

10) If I get the advantage in the combat ,but not enought to grant critical hit I have several options for example heal one strain what do you think should I use it all the time if I don't want to give boost dice to my friend ?

11) Diffrence between granade and thermal detonator especially price It pays to buy the thermal detonator??

12) When Should I roll the iniciative cool or vigilance chesk before encounter ?? For example I'm attacking at some thug which doesn't know about me should I make the check??

13) Finally I have question about lasers in the starships. Can I operate the lasers from cockpit

or it depends on what laser I have ?? For example Millenium Falcon has got lasers which must be operated by gunner and the rest of lasers can be operated from cockpit??

I'll be glad to see your answers and your advices... and sorry for my english and quantum of the data.

1-3) Some will have all kinds of opinions how these things work based on all sorts of sources but frankly this is all up to the GM in my opinion.

4) If you are completely removed from line of sight and have no possibility to engage a target and they have no way to attack you with some sort of indirect fire like a grenade then you are out of the combat and can't be hit.

5) It's your call, even though they pay off the debt the person they owed might still hold a grudge and they always retain some Obligation. Obligation is supposed to rise and fall with a player's fortunes and be a fluid marker, so while they may dispose of their starting Obligation, through the course of play they should be accruing Obligation from other sources for various reasons.

6) Your call, if you want the building to blow up, blow it up, if you want it to be a protracted fight, give it some stats like a stationary ship.

7) If you fail a skill check for a given situation then you fail. Unless he has a talent that allows a skill check re-roll like Natural Rogue which allows a re-roll once per session, they are out of luck.

8) Minions have united wounds not damage, so they just have the default damage of their weapon of choice, whatever that is. How you deploy them determines how many times they fire. If you use the rules of grouping them together to get the skill upgrades it is one attack per a given group of minions. If you choose to separate them they all get to attack individually minus that skill upgrade rule.

9) Shields don't actually do all that much in the game, so it is just standard damage applied to each ship in combat regardless of current shields.

10) This is your call and what the GM is comfortable with. If I need to heal strain I am greedy and I use mine for that primarily.

11) Thermal Detonators are vastly more lethal than grenades and effect a wider area of targets when Blast activates. Grenades only affect additional targets at engaged range with the primary target while a TD will affect targets within short range if Blast activates. They are also viewed as a restricted item.

12) The easiest way to determine the difference between Cool and Vigilance is, if you know combat is coming it is Cool, if combat is a surprise it is Vigilance.

13) This is another one where it will be the GM's call, there is no hard rules one way or the other.

Hi, I'm the GM and I came across some things that I need to know...

1) Mostly, this detail about the world lets you, as the GM, limit communications between different planets however you feel like.

If players need to find information about a specific individual they'll either have to know it themselves with an appropriate Knowledge check if the person is particularly well-known or with a Streetwise check to ask around. Since this is a collaborative narrative game, let your players come up with how they find that information out. Maybe they flip a Destiny Point to know someone with limited access to the Holonet. Let them do some sort of social skill check (Charm, Deception, Streetwise, etc.) to arrange the deal. Maybe there's a complication like a personal betrayal in the past. Maybe you can work Obligation into this somehow. Maybe they roll some Threat or a Despair and create potential complications in the future.

2) Up to you. You can get some ideas here:

http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/105328-how-hard-is-it-for-non-bounty-hunters-to-find-bounties/

3) Since the Holonet is restricted, it will be very difficult or impossible to communicate in real-time between planets with a holo-messenger. In A New Hope, Princess Leia uses a holo-messenger in R2-D2 to relay a message to Obi-Wan Kenobi but R2-D2 has to deliver the message personally. Use that as your guide.

Here, again, you as a GM get to make things as difficult or as hard as you want them to be. If it doesn't matter how the players deliver the message and they want to transmit it in real-time over the Holonet, it might be more fun if they slice into the Holonet but this should be it's own encounter in an of itself since they'll probably have to break into a place that can access the Holonet, deal with any Imperial presence there, and not get caught slicing into the computer terminal. This could be a good way to increase any Criminal obligations if they get caught or if there are any complications.

4) The game assumes you'll do what makes the most amount of sense in any given situation. If the PC is behind a solid duracrete wall and firing a blaster through a narrow opening, you can add two Setback dice to attacks made against them from enemies on the opposite side.

If there is no line-of-sight, then you can't make any attack so cover doesn't even apply.

5) What do you and your players want to have happen? Remember, the lowest total Obligation that a PC can have is 5. Maybe they pay that one debt off and reduce their total Obligation to 0 and remove the Debt but maybe the debt-collector gets greedy, thinks that if the PC was able to get the 10,000 credits to pay off the debt that they can get more credits and now they get a Blackmail obligation. Maybe the PC paid the debt off late but the lender forgives them in exchange for a Favor obligation.

Most importantly, you should talk with the player and you should both come to an agreement on what should happen.

6) Very likely, yes. That's a rather reckless method of property destruction and depending on who owned that building and how many people were murdered in the attack could mean all sorts of consequences from being hunted by local authorities or a crime syndicate, having a bounty put on their heads, or even Imperial involvement.

7) Generally, my personal style in non-structured (non-combat) game play is to only allow a single skill check for a particular situation. If the PCs are sneaking, they get one Stealth check. If the PCs are searching for something, they get one Perception check. The results of failure depend on the situation. If combat is imminent (the PCs are trying to sneak past some guards) then failure means initiative begins and attempting to roll Stealth again would just be a waste of a turn when they should be diving for cover or returning fire.

Most commonly, I'll have players that keep rolling Perception until they find something in the room. If there is a specific item that they PCs are meant to find and they say they look for it, then they simply find it. No need to roll dice, just give it to them. You should only roll dice if failure means something interesting happens. If I wanted something interesting to happen, I'd call for a single Perception check for the entire party using skilled or unskilled assistance and I'm mostly using the results to narrate how long it takes to find the item (if time is an issue) or what else they find in addition to the desired item. More success means perhaps they find another useful item. Triumph might mean they find a key bit of information or an item that makes a later encounter easier. Advantage might mean they find what they need quickly. Failure would just mean they only find the one item needed to move the story along. Threat might mean it takes longer to find the item and the PCs take some Strain damage. Despair might mean they trigger a silent alarm and guards arrive right as the PCs are about to leave.

For your scenario, they attempt a Stealth check, fail, and then if try to Stealth again it wouldn't really matter. If they failed and the bad guys are on the way then the bad guys are still on the way.

8) What 2P51 said above.

9) If a PC is firing a blaster pistol at a ship or vehicle that has no Armor, they would have to do over 10 points of damage to even hope to cause any effect. The PC would have to use the Aim maneuver to target the specific cannon on the ship and have two Setback dice (rules on page 201). If they spend two Aim maneuvers, they would only have a single Setback die. If they did manage to score over 10 points of damage, I'd let them temporarily disable the component with three Advantages or disable it until repaired with a Triumph.

10) That is up to you. You can also use it to apply Setback dice to the enemy.

11) Only if you can buy it. It's a restricted item and likely illegal on some worlds. A thermal detonator is also more likely to destroy the entire room or the part of the building you're in. It's a bomb and not something you want to be anywhere near when it explodes.

12) If the PCs are making an ambush that the enemy is unaware of and can control the terms of how the combat begins, then it is a Cool check. In nearly all other situations, it is a Vigilance check.

13) It depends on the ship. You will have to make a decision based on what makes the most sense.

Ok, Thank you very much guys..

Most commonly, I'll have players that keep rolling Perception until they find something in the room. If there is a specific item that they PCs are meant to find and they say they look for it, then they simply find it. No need to roll dice, just give it to them. You should only roll dice if failure means something interesting happens.

I can't express how important this point is. There is a great post on Skill Monkey on when not to make players roll. It's frustrating for the players and GM when they need to make a roll to advance the plot and they need to keep rolling to succeed. I.e finding a clue in a room, the players shouldn't need to keep rolling they should make one roll and then the GM describes what happens. Maybe if they all fail you take the sum of failures, threats, etc and that is what determines the amount of time it takes them to find it, maybe they find the clue but they got spotted by the enemy faction searching the area and now they are more ready for them, maybe they set off a secret alarm. Whatever you decide the players should never roll more than once to succeed at a plot advancing skill check.

Hi. I have another 3 question.

1) This question is about hyperjump. Especially, for example if I am under the fire... Why for expamle X-Wing can't jump if it's fighting?? I mean X flies forward and shoot at TIE and meantime the Pilot making a calculations...and when he passes TIE he just push a button and jumps. It's this possible??

2)The next question is currency. In Clone Wars a characters paid by credit ingots and they just paid with them like we pay with metal currency. But I don't know how exactly the modern credit chips work?? Must they be pushed int ot he reader or something ?? And have they got specific value ?? And in TV series there were marked and unmarked credit ingots. What did they mean with it ?

3)Last question is smuggling. How can the smuggler be caught by Imperials in space like Han Solo with spice ?? Isn't it impossible in hyperspace? Just say I got gliterstim on some planet and I want to smuggle it on Correlia. What might happen ?? And can I land away from starport?? I mean if I land away isn't it better, beacuse I haven't to pay docking fees? Thank u very much for answers...

1. You can jump. The Falcon did under fire in Star Wars. You might represent the craziness of it by adding setback dice to the Astrogation check.

2. There is hard currency, just like money, coinage, probably even paper money. There are also credit chits which from the way they are presented in literature would be like a Visa gift cards. Encoded with a fixed pre paid value, although in Scoundrels there is also some kind of intrinsic value on credit chits as well, regardless of the sum encoded on them. There must be some kind of default amount on them or something. They strike me as means of transferring large sums of money like a bearer bond.

3. It's assumed ships are at times boarded at random and searched. They also might be trying to slip by some cordon or blockade and end up caught by a capital ship with a tractor beam or take a hit that disables the hyperdrive.

There are a lot of threads that deal with all these questions...a bit hard to find, but if you do find them they're invaluable. But briefly:

1) my assumption has always been that the jumping ship has to align their direction in real space with the direction in hyperspace. This fits with all the scenes in the movies and TCW. That's why others can do things like "calculate every known route based on their last trajectory". This is kind of hard to do in a dogfight. Depending on the needs of the story, you can make it a simple maneuver and off they go, or turn it into an action. I recently had the pilot make a piloting roll to align the ship properly or become a sitting duck for at least one turn for some incoming TIEs. This was because the ship they'd hijacked was total junk, with a (temporary) handling of -4, and they couldn't really afford a round of giving the TIEs some easy shots. Original difficulty was Average, next round was Easy and they got away.

2) this is kind of up to the GM, but I think based on TCW the credit ingots are actually a securely encrypted chip with a value that can be set or altered with the correct set of transactions or using a proper reader. Kind of like a memory stick today, but with a very specific purpose. Each transaction would be encoded into the chip's history (and maybe synced up with a specific bank's history). Some credits might have a set value that can't be changed (indicated by the colour perhaps). "Unmarked" might simply be that all prior transaction history has been erased; or that transactions don't "stick", i.e.: they can't be tracked back beyond their last transaction, which would make it almost impossible to find out who was distributing them.

3) Hyperspace engines have a safety feature to pull the ship back into real space if they detect a gravity well in their path. This prevents them from inadvertently flying into planet or a star. Sometimes pirates tow asteroids into well-known hyperspace lanes and see what pops out. The Imperials also have an interdictor ship which projects a "fake" gravity well. Those pulled out of hyperspace by these methods have to clear the gravity well before they can resume their travel, and presumably that means recalculating the jump, all of which takes a few minutes. In the meantime the pirates can attack or the Imperials can lock tractor beams, or...

If you're out of hyperspace approaching a planet you have to avoid any patrols and active sensors. On a major planet that might be hard to do, all ship traffic would be well monitored, but there must be ways to spoof this because they're doing it in the shows all the time. I have to assume that the sensor tech isn't foolproof (piloting or computers to avoid), or gaps between sensors can be detected (computers), or maybe on a core planet there is somebody in the scanning room who will filter your ship as "space junk"...for a fee. You can easily hand-wave this as you like, or turn it into a plot point. If you hand-wave it though, you can foreshadow potential problems by saying "you guys find the gaps between sensors and satellite arrays...pretty easy on a planet like Tatooine, and land on the edge of the Jungland Waste". That way you can introduce a time where "finding the gaps" becomes more of a challenge.

Landing away from star port is a certainly doable, but think about our own planet...could you land on the "outskirts" of New York and not crush somebody's home, or land on private property? Wouldn't the cops show up as residents freak out? Then again, maybe the players know a farmer with enough acreage to hide a YT-1300... The ability to avoid star ports depends on the situation.

Nice answers both of you. They are very useful, because I didn't know how to exactly operate smuggling missions... Thx

Hi, I'm here again with questions...

1) We tried to play The Corellian Shuffle from suns of fortune and there was a question why I must do the first micro-jump instead of calculating the course on the place. I mean astrogation check to get to the edge of the system and than other astrogation check to the Moldy Mynock. Why I can't just pop out on that place ?

2)Other thing in this mission was that the player failed in piloting check to dock, so what i should do ? Say something like you otherwise dock but crash and give him a hull trauma ?

3) Other failed check in this mission was astrogation check to get to agreed place. Should I say that the flight takes longer than thay expected ?

4)The player wanted the fighter starship so I let him, but when fight comes he got it as a sieve. And I thought that the handling and other stuff will be good, but now I don't think so... And I think that manuvers aren't enough good they needed to be to survive. So are u OK with starship battle ? Thx for answers again.

1. Not sure about this one. Maybe Keith Kappel can help, I think he may have written this encounter.

2. Saying the PC docked but had a rough landing with maybe a few points of hull trauma, or even a Vehicle Critical Hit if you want to be nasty I think that's perfectly appropriate.

3. Also agree that it's fine to say they failed their Astrogation check so either the voyage takes longer than they'd hoped. This could also mean "you're almost out of fuel, you'll need to refuel and resupply before you can leave the system". It's a great way to give the PCs some work to do, having to pay for maintenance and upkeep on their vessel.

4. I'm not sure what you mean by "got it as a sieve", sorry.

Hope this helps!

Ah, sry. It means totally devastated in our country.

Oh I see!

I think that's a great way to handle it. Often when players get items (whether it's weapons, gear or even vehicles) in the course of a game, there might be problems with the item. That can give your player a fun complication during an action scene or a motivation to earn some credits, to fix up their new ship.

If you intend to put them right into a starship battle in a used ship which is a piece of junk, I'd be careful though. Maybe it is not a straight-up fight and there are other factors (asteroids, satellites, junk in space, solar flares, ion storms, etc), which give the enemy some problems too.

Or you can let the player fix up the ship and improve it before the fight.

Thx for answer, but I thought about something different. I let him buy a new fighter starfighter for example something like A wing or whatever. And he got to the dogfight. And as he fought he was down very quickly. I mean if this fast and agile ship can compete with for example Flyspray patrol, YT-1300 or ... Coz Is there a manuver or something that can get ship off the opponent's fire angle (forward,etc)? Thx.

1) I read some topic on wiki and I still don't know how does the Holonet exactly work?? If only imperials have access on it and how can I find informations about people and other things through communication services etc.

Generally, what you need to realize is that most things in Star Wars universe are plot devices instead of something that would actually work logically and consistently. HoloNet is a prime example of this. It works when the plot requires it to work and otherwise it doesn't.

HoloNet can't work all the time as that would make a mighty boring story (Why would PCs navigate across the galaxy to find out about something when they could as well make a HoloNet call?). On the other hand there are examples when it magically works (Long Arm of the Hutt adventure: Ota can contact PCs at Geonosis when he is in Ryloth. Game Master's Kit adventure: The evil droid can place an order to an arms merchant to acquire some firepower). It is obvious that not even the developers at Fantasy Flight have no idea about the logic of how HoloNet supposedly works (neither do Uncle George or Mickey Mouse for that matter).

Overall the problem is that Star Wars is a childrens' tale and when a regular person over 14 years old with an average IQ tries to make sense of it all the requirements for the suspecion of disbelief sometimes grow insurmountable.

Ever thought The Force and how dumb concept it actually is? Why is it that The Jedi most of the time do things the hard way, when there would be an easy and elegant solution using The Force? For example a speeder chase, why chase when you could reach out with the Force and turn off the adversary's speeder engines by pulling the key out of the ignition? Why didn't Obi-Wan just Force pinch Django Fett's carotid artery to make him pass out in a few of seconds insstead of letting him escape to cause troubles later on? There are literally hundreds if not thousands of examples of these kind in the movies, tv series and other official productions. From all of the plot devices The Force is the biggest one.

My point being: why worry, you decide how HoloNet and other things work in YOUR Star Wars universe and stick to it. Everyone will have good times. Trying to make sense and have things work logically just gives you bad karma.

//B3NDR

1) I'd look up wookipedia but think of it kind of like starwars version of the internet.

2) Yes technically you need several liscenses to do this sort of thing, ones to capture and even ones to transport. Though mostly this will be up to you as the GM and many may wave it as I think most areas would just be happy that the criminal they wanted off the streets is off the streets (so situational really though imperial authorities are typically going to want those liscenses).

3) Largely up to you as the GM and what you think is appropriate but I generally rule that a handheld comlink is short range, a long range comlink can hit around a ship in orbit and a holo messenger can hit anything connected to the holonet given you can aqcuire access yourself (there may be interference from stellar phenomina, jammers, or even atmospheric conditions that wouldn't allow it, all up to how you want to run the plot at the given moment).

4) Depends on the cover really, a wooden box probably would just give defense against anything that could pen it for example while a durasteel wall would completely make it next to impossible for anything to shoot you without a lot of breach on it.

5) I'd not set a specific amount of money owed, perhaps it's just "alot" or he's been gaining interest on it over the years, etc. Either way this is another one of those vague things where you really have to find a value your comfortable with having the player remove by forgoing certain rewards. Typically I avoid allowing cash to be turned in, more often the players may forgoe selling a stash of spice they found and instead say give it to the hutt another player owns money to and he forgives part of their debt obligation by x ammount or something to that extent.

6) Depends on what the buildings made of and what you think is cinematically appropriate, one things for sure though it's going to attract a ton of attention and likely gain serious bounties on their heads if authorities find out.

7) No, if he failed the check he got noticed by someone, any checks beyond that point (without first loosing the attention of whomever spotted him) would be pointless and if there's no one there to spot him then the check is pointless and shouldn't even be made since there are no consequences for failure.

8) No the way a minion group works is you basically combine their health pool and then have one of them attack with a skill rating equal to the number of minions in the group -1 (or in other words a group of 5 has skill 4 for example). If they are struck by an attack a crit will kill one and damage may kill more. Ie if they each have 5 health and 3 soak then 13 damage would kill to (soak would apply lowering damage to 10 then that would be dealt to the group, since each individuals health is 5 two would drop dead).

9) For Vehicles in general 1 armor stops 10 damage from personal scale weaponry and I believe 1 hullthreshold is the equivalent of 10 wounds (could be wrong about that last part would have to look it back up).

10) You don't always "have" to use your advantages if you don't want to, but it's a good idea to do so if theres something to gain.

11) The stats. A thermal detonator is just a really powerful gernade. I mean look at them, the thermal does over double the damage to the initial target it hits and three times the damage to those unfortunate targets in it's blast radius than the normal gernade does. It also crits a lot harder and ignores 10 soak.

12) Whomever is aware that combat is going to occur rolls cool, whomever is unaware rolls vigilance.

13) Up to you but typically I rule yes unless the ship is specifically constructed otherwise.

OK

Me again! I have a copule of questions that I discovered.

1) I need to know melee vs ranged combat. Especially edgage and disengage. I know that if u fight with melee against ranged u get blue dice and if u fight engage with ranged weapon u get + 1 or 2 difficulty dice. But I don't know if the melee has a cost, coz ranged attacks do more damage and u can disengage for one manouver and that fire without penalty. Am I right or wrong ? I mean that if u come to person with gun u have to be better with sword than he with gun.

2) I have success in hitting a NPC and I don't give him a critical injury. What should I tell to the players ? Something like u hit him hard, but he is OK and he still can fight...

3) I didn't find when u have a base of operations or homestead how many creds u get in period of time ??

4) And I still don't know main diffrence between BH and tHG coz except hunting the pray they do the same thing. Aren't they??

Thx very much.

1) I need to know melee vs ranged combat. Especially edgage and disengage. I know that if u fight with melee against ranged u get blue dice and if u fight engage with ranged weapon u get + 1 or 2 difficulty dice. But I don't know if the melee has a cost, coz ranged attacks do more damage and u can disengage for one manouver and that fire without penalty. Am I right or wrong ? I mean that if u come to person with gun u have to be better with sword than he with gun.

You seem to have it right, yes, the opponent with a ranged weapon can spend a maneuver to disengage and then shoot. Even the stormtroopers in Jedi Knight II game understood this Still, the ranged opponent needs room to maneuver. If space is tight I'd probably impose some kind of penalty, or a boost to the melee opponent.

2) I have success in hitting a NPC and I don't give him a critical injury. What should I tell to the players ? Something like u hit him hard, but he is OK and he still can fight...

Sure, why not? Not sure what you're asking for here, but you don't have to be specific.

3) I didn't find when u have a base of operations or homestead how many creds u get in period of time ??

Not sure about base of operations. I think the assumption for the homestead is that it is profitable enough to cover all costs, but with no extra. Expanding it, making it more profitable, etc is left to the story.

4) And I still don't know main diffrence between BH and tHG coz except hunting the pray they do the same thing. Aren't they??

If you look at the career skill lists and talent trees, they aren't the same at all. One is more about stealth and self-reliance, the other is more about warriors and thugs.

Just to expand a little on Thermal Detonators.

You can't see them as just grenades. They are literally a handheld thermonuclear device that is also rather unstable. Nearly anything that gets directly hit will be dead, and if blast is triggered most things caught in the blast will either be dead or very close.

It should be very difficult for PCs to purchase Thermal Detonators and never in large quantities. Our group has 1 thermal detonator and 6 mini-thermal detonators and we've yet to find a situation where we would need something that destructive.