Hello folks,

I was consindering allowing Classes from the FnD book into my current game but i want to limit the number of Jedi active in my party to 1.

What are thoughts on limiting classes in general in an RPG?? or in this case the Jedi classes in general.

And for the love of, can we get a dang FnD forum! CMMON FFG!...

I've been practicing this in the WEG version of Star Wars. That group started out pretty much according to the FFG core book sequence, beginning as free traders/smugglers and then getting involved with the Rebellion - all during the original trilogy era. I made it clear when we began play that I'd allow one Force-user in the group, although as the campaign grew and some more players came in I allowed a second one.

My reasoning here was that having a whole bunch of Jedi-wannabees running around during the height of the Empire's power would not be especially realistic. I also ran a concurrent campagin in the Tales of the Old Republic setting where everyone was a Jedi, so everyone could get a chance to try it out.

I plan on being equally restrictive in my current EotE campaign, although when I get the F&D core book I'll be happy to run an all-Jedi/Force user campaign in a setting where that makes sense. Just not in the Empire era.

Hello folks,

I was consindering allowing Classes from the FnD book into my current game but i want to limit the number of Jedi active in my party to 1.

What are thoughts on limiting classes in general in an RPG?? or in this case the Jedi classes in general.

And for the love of, can we get a dang FnD forum! CMMON FFG!...

It would depend. I can see not wanting a bushel of Lightsaber swingers, but if someone wanted to make a unique Force user character, like a hand to hand guy, or just someone that uses Force powers to only heal, I would entertain multiples in that kind of a situation.

I'm generally not a fan of only allowing one player to be a special snowflake.

Also, if you have more than one person who wants to play those specs, I would either alter the campaign to allow it or maybe just run Force and Destiny.

I was consindering allowing Classes from the FnD book into my current game but i want to limit the number of Jedi active in my party to 1.

What are thoughts on limiting classes in general in an RPG?? or in this case the Jedi classes in general.

I have done this before as part of an Old Republic campaign premise: one of the PCs was The Last Jedi. Once we'd reached a turning point in the story that it made sense for him to train others, I opened it up. The structure of F&D characters lends itself well to this kind of premise: career is starting and fixed. If you limit the party to only 1 PC taking a F&D career, your campaign can follow a similar path.

As always, make sure everyone is okay going this route.

I am GMing campaigns for two separate groups right now. They are both 'Edge' focused, and both have 5 to 6 regulars. I have one guy in each group that wanted to try out a force sensitive character... So, in our case, it just works out that only one person wants to have force powers...and they are both Force sensitives...so its not like they are running around blocking blaster shots with light sabers.

One of them is a Zabrak Colonist - Doctor, who chose the 'Move' power. He generally uses his talent to get grenades into unique places.

The other is a Bothan Colonist - Politico, who uses the Force to help him with his verbal/mental sparing. This guy plays in both of my campaigns and prefers to play his Klatooinian Bounty Hunter - Assassin in the other.

While I think the idea of having a Luke Skywalker type Jedi in one of my campaigns could be cool, I certainly wouldn't want a whole party of them...especially in the timeline suggested by the books.

I guess what I'm saying is I agree with the original post writer, I don't have any interest in running a strictly 'Force and Destiny' game, but am excited nonetheless to use the info in the new book for the Force users I do have. I am already dropping the 'Morality' bomb on my two Force Sensitives.

As far as restricting it, I agree with Doc...I don't think I would make a hard and fast restriction...but I would certainly sit down and talk to everyone about what type of game we wanted to play...and discourage the 'all jedi' part, explaining why I prefer it that way. If everyone insisted on playing Force Users...I suppose I would consider it. But I would have to close out our current campaign and start from scratch...as it just would seem too silly to try to make it work as the campaign is going now. I guess I just have a problem with 5 to 6 Jedi running around together in the context of the original trilogy of films.

I live by the 'All or Nothing' rule on the Force. The Force is just too important in the game to be a matter where one player gets it and the others still get equal attention. The exception is if a player is able to play without focusing too much on the Force, meaning it's either something that happens outside of their consciousness or they don't call it the Force and don't think about it.

Otherwise, I say that the whole group could be Force Sensitives. They don't have to focus on the Force or Lightsabers; it's just that they all have the Force in one way or another, and as such they gathered together so they could be safe with one another. Or they could all be Force junkies. The point is that they all have the ability to use the Force if they want, so if a player says, "Hey, I want the Force too, now," then they can if they didn't focus on it earlier, and I don't have to set up a whole mission to reveal they have the Force right in the middle of another mission.

In my opinion, it depends on the story you want to tell. AoR is the better choice to tell a fringe Jedi story - and it's even called out in the Emergent blurb I've been reading that the Rebellion tends to collect the aware force-sensitives. If the characters don't intend to do a lot of navel-gazing on the nature of the force and morality, I don't see the point in limiting how many can - if they want - be overt force sensitive characters.

However, the 'force journey' tends to be a very centralizing thing - if two separate players each want to build up and come to terms with the force, it reduces the 'special-ness' of the trek. If the two players accept that, and want to work together on the story, more power to them. If they don't, and each want to be the special snowflake on their own, it might be better to develop it over two separate campaign arcs.

My reasoning here was that having a whole bunch of Jedi-wannabees running around during the height of the Empire's power would not be especially realistic.

In general, it's a bad idea to limit the 'special snowflake' to just one person, as Doc said.

As for 'realistic'... I think just by using Force & Destiny, you're departing from 'canon'. You can see, from the movies, that there are smugglers and bounty hunters and that they must have stories too. You can see that there are other Rebels and they probably do stuff even away from the movie heroes.

But from the movie perspective, there's only supposed to be one special snowflake, and there's no groups of force-users chumming around together and having adventures as a group of jolly quasi-Jedi.

So to some degree, the very concept forces you outside the canon anyway. I guess there's billions of Order 66 survivors in the EU, and even EOE and AOR has a few, so that seems to be the best way to rationalize it if you're bothered about 'canon'.

Or run it in some other era when the galaxy is crawling with lightsaber-wielders. Or set it just after the movies and have the PCs as the first pupils of some new order. That's essentially what I'm doing, even if everything else is radically different.

Oh, and don't feel you'd have to limit 'Jedi' because of power reasons. They seem to have balanced things pretty well, in that Force types have to split their XP three ways, between skills, talents and powers, whereas muggles can focus on talents and skills and will have higher ratings, and more career skills in any event.

If only one of your players wants to play a Jedi that's great.

If more then one wants too though the limit is a recipe for disaster.IMO. It will likely lead to resentment towards you for imposing the limit and resentment towards whichever player gets to have the Jedi slot even if that is determined randomly.

I'd say you should run it by your group if you want to limit Jedi and I think there's nothing wrong with limiting if that's the game you want to play. I've played games like this where options were limited. When my GM sat us down and said, "hey guys, I would like to play D&D Dark Sun, but that means limited Arcane magic and no Divine magic." My group throught it was a fun idea. The trick is making sure you're all on the same page. As long as the player's expectations match the GM's expectations it should work out.

As for not having more than one Jedi in a group in the movies, well, I guess that depends on how you look at it. I'd say in A New Hope that Obi Wan is a FnD character and Luke is a Fringer who bought one of the Universal Force specs. Han and Chiewie are of course Smugglers / Mechanics. Which, to me is half of the PC party. Leia is an NPC plot point in that movie and the droids really aren't much more than NPC followers to advance the plot as needed.

I don't plan on limiting my group, although so far I only have one that has chosen to become Force-sensitive. The way I see it is that the *party* is the snowflake in the Star Wars galaxy, establishing their own path concurrently with the other events going on. So if the whole party eventually becomes force-sensitive, I'm fine with that, explaining that the Living Force drew them together, and each awakens to their gifts as part of the larger whole.

Of course, there are consequences, and heightened attention from Imperial/Inquisitorial forces... but that will depend on how the story unfolds. I won't restrict it, but from what I have seen, things balance out.

What I won't do, however, is have someone who wants to do a FaD Career/Specialization and expect the Knight-Level experience points right out of the gate. Everybody will start with the same level of experience. They're all knight-level or none of them are. In my case, my party will likely evolve into it...

Noah-the spoony one-Antwiler's rule for playing jedi in a starwars rpg:

ALL JEDI OR NO JEDI

Noah-the spoony one-Antwiler's rule for playing jedi in a starwars rpg:

ALL JEDI OR NO JEDI

In many ways that has the same problems as the limited number of Jedi rule. Players that want to play Jedi will resent the GM in a no Jedi game while those who don't want to play Jedi will resent the GM in an all Jedi game, though it is easier to adapt many non-Jedi concepts to Jedi/original plan hybrids then to adapt Jedi concepts to a non-Jedi game IMO.. If you make it down to a player vote all Jedi or none those players who support the losing side will resent the players who supported the winning side and resent the GM for making the vote in the first place.

Noah-the spoony one-Antwiler's rule for playing jedi in a starwars rpg:

ALL JEDI OR NO JEDI

In many ways that has the same problems as the limited number of Jedi rule. Players that want to play Jedi will resent the GM in a no Jedi game while those who don't want to play Jedi will resent the GM in an all Jedi game, though it is easier to adapt many non-Jedi concepts to Jedi/original plan hybrids then to adapt Jedi concepts to a non-Jedi game IMO.. If you make it down to a player vote all Jedi or none those players who support the losing side will resent the players who supported the winning side and resent the GM for making the vote in the first place.

I would be inclined to agree. And while I'd love to be in an all-Jedi party, my current group that isn't going to happen. And I'd enjoy it much less if I shanghaied or coerced the rest of the group to try, and they resented that.

Noah-the spoony one-Antwiler's rule for playing jedi in a starwars rpg:

ALL JEDI OR NO JEDI

In many ways that has the same problems as the limited number of Jedi rule. Players that want to play Jedi will resent the GM in a no Jedi game while those who don't want to play Jedi will resent the GM in an all Jedi game, though it is easier to adapt many non-Jedi concepts to Jedi/original plan hybrids then to adapt Jedi concepts to a non-Jedi game IMO.. If you make it down to a player vote all Jedi or none those players who support the losing side will resent the players who supported the winning side and resent the GM for making the vote in the first place.

I would be inclined to agree. And while I'd love to be in an all-Jedi party, my current group that isn't going to happen. And I'd enjoy it much less if I shanghaied or coerced the rest of the group to try, and they resented that.

You guys have a good point. Spoony's solution is a bit drastic. But the GM will have to keep an eye on things in a mixed party and be prepared for player charcters acting diffrently from movie characters. I guess a lot is up to the players involved.

If you have jedi and the player doesn't start acting like he's teh star of the whole show thats great.

If you get one who thinks the whole game resolves around him...PK him with bounty hunters with flamethrowers- lot's of them.

I ran a 1 shot con game that had +150 XP characters, that had 1 droid, 2 characters with FR2, and 2 characters with FR1. The droid was nether the most powerful nor the least in the party.

Wow..

some really really interesting points.

The reason i ask is in my current campaign i have it planned to bestow via narrative and the aid of a training device, one of the players with a free emergent specialization as part of my plot arch.

But i am wondering now if this may cause issues.

Giving only one player a free spec sounds like a bad idea IMO because it implies favoritism. I would suggest coming up with ways to give each PC a free spec if you go that route or the option between a free spec and a sum of XP.

Why am I seeing the splat books having other force traditions based on the Career that defines them most. I see Zeison Sha in the Seeker splat and the Witches of Dathomire in the Mystics. It would be nice if that was to happen, then yes not everyone has to be a Jedi.

Everyone doesn't need to be Jedi now. The generic nature of the careers and specs means you can have Jedi, Sith, Imperial Knights, Zeison Sha, Dathomir Witches, Emperor's Hands, Dark Side Adepts, or whatever you want, really. I haven't seen the book yet, but from what I gather it seems rather utilitarian.

I think you should ask what the players want to play. I have run a few Star Wars games and in all three most of the players make smugglers, slicers, and bounty hunters. Making characters together is an important part of the FFG Star Wars metagame, though, and a party with multiple Force users might develop. Or, you might have to ask one of them to take that spec. for the story you want to create.

I would not give a specialization away for free to only one player. Give them all one, or give the XP for something else. But, the cost of the extra specializations is one of the balancing factors for being a Force user. The other players won't be overshadowed by a Jedi that doesn't get free stuff.

Regarding canon, there are a few things to consider.

First, we have Obi-Wan's perspective, but we know he is not entirely trustworthy.

Second, there wouldn't be Inquisitors if there weren't Force users, including Jedi, to find. {Edit: not that that applies to the real world inquisitions in any way.}

Third, in Legends continuity there are hundreds of Force users in this era. Few are fully-trained Jedi, and not all traditions use lightsabers. No one knows what the Abrams continuity will be like, but I am guessing we will see Jedi like Kanan Jarrus in every show and most novels published.

I really really really want to run an ALL force user group. I have the story, locations and NPC's. I highly doubt I'll ever have a group that wants to do this.

Only way I'd run an all force user campaign is either;

1) They were picked up by the Empire and trained to become applicants for one of the Hands of the Emperor, but realising most of them were going to be killed off a group of them escaped and are trying to survive out on the edge.

2) They're force sensitives rescued by a suspected force user who left them in the care of a former Jedi Knight whose far from ready to train such a number of potential padawans...

3) They were all former padawans whose masters were killed either during or after Order 66.

They're being hunted by a former fellow survivor who has now become an Inquisitor and is seeking them out to improve his standing in the Emperor's eyes.

4) Captured by a bountyhunter they discover a common bond as they try to find a way to escape...

Well my problem is that I've only run the Beta Edge game and if I did play I can see my gm ask that I ignore the F&D book and just take either the Exile or Emergent instead as it doesn't sound like it really plays into the Original Trilogy Era that much... otherwise I can see a group having two force users one with different outlooks.

An entirely Force User party sounds like something that be better off the result of extended gameplay rather than everyone be Force User straight from the start, gives them the means to differentiate themselves from each other.

After all why different coloured lightsabers unless there's a story behind them?