Played the old d20 Saga system last night. Seemed so industrial compared with the FFG System. Publish some new adventures, please!

Played the old d20 Saga system last night. Seemed so industrial compared with the FFG System. Publish some new adventures, please!

I have never played d20 Saga (I am a crusade to anything that smells to D&D mechanics and philosophy), only WEG and FFG. What do you mean by "industrial"?

I don't know about industrial, but it's definitely mechanical. It's a decent star wars themed tactical game, but it just doesn't even come close to FFG's system for roleplaying opportunity.

Saga needs a really good GM to properly feel like Star Wars. I love it though, it is a really fun game with lots of possibilities to play the kind of character you want to play. IMO it was the best Star Wars option in its day. Better than WEG, and waaaaay better than RCR.

One of the main beefs I have with d20 systems is that they really seem to passively discourage players from participating in the narrative ("I rolled a 15 my d20! Mister GM, what happened?"). FFG's system, on the other hand, actively encourages it. So that is a big win for me and my group. Between the dice and the Destiny Point mechanic, players really feel like they get a say in what happens in the game.

I enjoyed Saga as much as I could, after I home-ruled-away that stupid "Magic the Gathering Force Powers" mechanic.

But D20 just blows, can't get away from that.

Yeah, Ymmv on the per-encounter Force powers. Those didn't bother me.

A couple simple rules that I implemented in Saga towards the end were 1) Pathfinder-esque CMB & CMD instead of Grapple score, 2) a single Athletics skill, and 3) no double-move cost to move diagonally. There were a few talents & feats that had to be tweaked as a result, nothing major.

I liked Saga because the map system is a lot easier to use then in weg or ffg and converting X-Wing or Armada for battle purposes requires a lot of guesswork unless every ship in the RPG someday makes it into X-Wing or Armada. Never understood why the personal blaster range bands were so large though. Getting a fight out of a blaster pistol's point blank range almost never happens in my experience without houseruling that the squares on the map represent a 4 square area for a battle.

I've had a lot of fun playing and GM'ing Saga Edition, even if it was more of a tactically-oriented game.

it wasn't a perfect RPG, but then neither is FFG's system. They've got different core design philosophies, and I think each of them does what the intend to do quite well.

But much as it required a shift of mental paradigm to transition from Saga Edition to SWFFG, it requires the same to go back.

Some folks prefer the general simplicity of Saga Edition and the d20 mechanic in terms of task resolution, as well as the usage of the condition track rather than having to worry about a dozen plus different status effects that D&D has. Not every player is looking to tell grand stories; some gamers just want to roll the dice and bust some imaginary heads along the way.

I liked Saga because the map system is a lot easier to use then in weg or ffg and converting X-Wing or Armada for battle purposes requires a lot of guesswork unless every ship in the RPG someday makes it into X-Wing or Armada. Never understood why the personal blaster range bands were so large though. Getting a fight out of a blaster pistol's point blank range almost never happens in my experience without houseruling that the squares on the map represent a 4 square area for a battle.

I think the range bands in Saga Edition were expanded as a reaction to the much, much shorter range bands used in the OCR/RCR d20 version, where point blank range wasn't that far and rarely came into play, making feats and abilities that worked at point blank range of rather limited utility.

I guess that makes sense though I wonder why pointblank range stayed so short in space combat? Th point blank range bracket on most space weapons is less then the range you can travel with one movement action in anything smaller then a capital ship except for torps, missiles, and capital grade weapons.

Saga was OK for what it was, but over all I wasn't a fan. It was too easy to make overpowered characters. I didn't like the half step rules test bed that it was towards D&D 4e. The force powers were weird and hard to make a character who just dipped into them, but if you made a force power only character you were unstopable. I didn't like the skills that they had. IIRC, there was one skill that covered both Perception to see someone sneaking and Sense Motive to tell if someone is lieing. All of that was on top of the fact that a level based system just doesn't feel right for anything but D&D, but it was a WotC game so what can you do.

Otherwise, it was decent. The rules had blasters, lighsabers, force powers, and spaceships. All of that plus a decent GM is all you need for a decent Star Wars game.

I'm feeling there's no going back to many gaming systems. This system is just so free-flowing and quick. I love the narrative and using my imagination to come up with cool advantages and threats, triumphs and despairs.

This is a system that could lend itself to all sorts of genres. Superheroes.... someone already made a Western system. That's awesome. Back in the day, I used to create all kinds of games; from Masamune Shirow's "Appleseed", to Aliens (back before they actually made a game), even played a few games in the original Bubblegum Crisis, where the PC's were members of the Advanced Police.

It's almost so good that I'm dreading the upcoming game I'm having with my current group. We're taking a break and someone is running Savage Worlds... I'm pretty "meh.." about it.

My group has five GMs running three campaigns at a time with the GMs who aren't running a campaign playing in the ongoing ones, and those who are running campaigns playing in the campaigns they aren't playing., Though very few players are in all three campaigns normally.. Usually each of the three is in a different setting, and different rules set but Star Wars wise we have two GMs who like to run FFG, one Saga, and two D6. Pre-FFG Star Wars one of the FFG GMs ran D20 Star Wars and the other D6.