Hi !

I'm a "relatively new" GM when it comes to the FFG Star Wars RPG, having GMed for a few weeks about 42 hours of game time, but I have more than 10 years of GMing tabletop RPGs, from d20 games like D&D 3.5e and 5th (never 4th!) to Mutants & Masterminds 2e, d6 Shadowrun 4th and 5th Ed. as well as GURPS 4th and some oWoD and nWoD. That said, I am a number cruncher at heart, learning D&D on the illicit school benches of the Character Optimization Boards, but I enjoy *and* remain critical towards too much or not enough of it. I have seen the excesses of crunch and optimization in D&D, the rampant abuses made possible in Mutants & Mastermind, and the fiddly and almost broken mathematics of trying-too-hard-to-be-realistic GURPS. So I came to the Star Wars RPG with a relatively fresh mind, hoping to be able to put my number crunching mind to rest and enjoy the storytelling.

But in all honesty, I can't.

Don't misinterpret me in advance, I know the Gaming-Narrativist-Simulationist model, and its successors, and I'm perfectly aware of the intentional Narrativist slant of FFG's SW. I agree mostly with it, and it's a refreshing approach. But I'm finding it hard to let go of my mathematical mind when I must constantly re-balance everything during the game to avoid my campaign from crumbling because of rules ambiguities, easily accessible overpowered combos or constant randomness in life-threatening situations (such as the critical hits rules). And I don't blame my players for it, because appart from one MTG-style "Johnny" (tournament player kind), most of the group plays it very narratively. I blame the ruleset for asking GMs to constantly invent rules to fill the gaps, something I used to be able to do a lot less.

I use rules in a sort of contractual "I trust you on this one" kind of mindset. I want the rules to be reliable so that after 12 hours of continuous game time, at 5 AM, I don't have to come up with non-stop on-the-fly adjudications for everything, and then regret it the day after. Trusting the rules is important, it frees one's mind for the more important agenda: making the story as flowing as possible.

Now, it's not a catastrophe, most of the rules hold pretty well, and I can adjudicate a lot of those rules without breaking a sweat. I can live perfectly well with rules ambiguities, but I find them way too rampant for me and my groups enjoyment. Until now, I've managed to hold the floodgates and take bullets away from the ruleset when my player's suspension of disbelief was strained. After all, I'm the one who convinced them to trust me on this one and buy a bunch of cute little colored dice. I fully intend to continue my campaign, but I just need to vent my frustrations.

Why no clear rules on Stealth and Perception, its effects on combat? On the effects of Misdirect's "cannot be perceived" effects? Why do I have to adjudicate grenades when in a small room, when the rules should obviously have covered it? Why does the Autofire rule with Jury Rigged mean I can't have any Nemesis survive a single round, not to mention having a single Disrupter pistol/rifle with Lethal Blows auto-kill NPCs on a die roll? Why does cover do so little (1 or 2 setback dice) when it's strongly suggested PCs should be able to dress like Han Solo and Chewie?

Why do I have to check Wookieepedia more than the rulebook to tell if the team's ship should be equipped with a Hypertransceiver, I mean, if they are going to spend days in Hyperspace, I better be able to tell them if they can communicate with the exterior?

Why is it that a lightsaber wielder doing the cinematic Reflect of baster bolts has a higher chance of being disarmed through Triumph/3 Threats, and then killed, something we almost never see in the movies? And if someone replies: "well, as GM you can disallow it", then I say nay! I know I'll have to arbitrate stuff, but can I at least expect common case stuff being clearly explained? One does not simply adjudicate out of thin air, a GM needs a basic system with enough clarity to avoid having to invent stuff all the time.

My point is certainly not about the examples above. My point is beyond that. I'd like to avoid the discussions from becoming about whether or not such and such an example can be explained by this or that. This would only end in more examples, and would miss the point (and I can use the search function to read advice, which is what I've done for months before writing this). My beef is with a philosophy, one which confuses lack of rules with better Narration and clarity of rules with endless rules-layering and munchkinism. A philosophy where GM adjudication and arbitrary power to house rule everything is confused with GM empowerment, even when we all know that GMs will always house rule everything: we don't need to be told not to use rules we don't like.

If the suggestion always comes back to "as GM, if you don't like it, change it", we are not really having a discussion. Everybody knows (or should!) that they can write house rules or adjudicate. My point is that I can't NOT do it all the time. If I simply can't trust the rules, what's the point of buying books? I wrote an entire campaign using Wookieepedia, blogs and websites, after re-watching the movies, TCW, reading comics, etc. I'm super excited by the prospect of my players going through the adventures (including parts of published ones like Beyond the Rim). As far as fluff is concerned, I'm overjoyed. But I fear the rules won't hold.

I'm sorry if this rant was long. This is certainly not a case of "blah blah blah, I threaten to stop playing". Because I intend to use every ounce and inch of this game. I also happen to truly love too many things with this RPG (like the mixture of class and point-based character creation, pure genius!) to simply go the apathetic way and shut up about it. It's a testament of my appreciation for good game design that I'm writing this.

I'm also french, and ranting is... you get the point.

Start by unlearning what you have learned.

2. you need to give us specifics as your complaints with out context don't help us help you.

3. Go listen to the Skill monkey. And the Order 66 podcast. Specifically Episode 24 where they discuss moving from d20 to FFG.

4. You should not have to be rebalancing things. the fact that you are tells me you are approaching things wrong. Step one start small and build up till you know what your players can handle. Different builds have different effectivenesses in different situations. Which I am sure you know.

Dropping someone to 0 wounds is extremely unlikely to kill someone. And you chose to use a triumph to disarm your player. Rather than choosing more cinematic options involving the environment.

Hope this helps.

If you want to protect your nemesis, there are rules in the Age of Rebellion GMs kit for squads and squadrons. Pretty much they allow a PC or NPC to have a group of minions to grant bonuses and take shots for you. So you can have a nemesis fight as usual but when he or she gets hit, a minion takes the shot for you. Nemesis aren't really supposed to be solo adversaries. They need underlings in order to challenge the PCs.

As far as why certain rules aren't clear, I wish I was a developer and could answer that question. I suspect it's for the same reasons you already cited - they're supposed to adjudicated in a way that works best for your game. I'm sorry that answer is not more concrete. It was a realization that was hard for me to come to when I first got into this game.

Okay, just read up on Hypertransceivers. I am not sure they have addressed that in any book yet (I still haven't read my copies of Far Horizons or Onslaught on Arda I), but it's been a bee in the bonnet of a few posters here. Personally, I would just give a PCs access to the holonet via their ships radios if it was important to the plot. It has no mechanical (read: crunch) affect to story, so it's really only necessary if you want to be. I wish I had a better answer for you.

If you do need to tweak the rules or give some rules more crunch, I suggest you make sure you go over them with your players first so everyone knows how certain situations are going to be handled. As long as you are consistent, it should be fine.

I think you could build your own layer of crunch on top of the narrative form of the game. It'll be time consuming, but if it's really worth it to you and your players, I don't see a problem with creating a full-blown "table supplement." You could lay down a definitive guide to, say, how Stealth and Perception checks help in combat (my take: Stealth, depending on the environment, lets you evade being considered a target so long as you're not engaging either; Perception helps you locate important targets or else add Boost dice to your or your mates' shots), or how better to handle Reflect (there have been a few suggestions on the forums so far, but I don't care for most of them).

The real question is: what are you looking for? You say that you don't want us to regurgitate the philosophy of "change/ignore what you don't like," but you don't say what it is you want us to do. Is there a solution that would satisfy you that doesn't involve a complete retread of the game? Are you asking us how we've dealt with these issues personally? Are you looking for fellow number crunchers and their home-made solutions or to hear how they adapted to the narrative style of the game? (If that's the case, I'm out. Narrative for life!)

Believe me, we all want to help you. It's in our best interest to win over more supporters of the game to keep it going.

Bonne chance!

Man; the OP's whole post is like a show-topic waiting to happen...

BarbeChenue, I've gotta say that your issues with the system are some of the best explained that I've come across, so kudos for that!

I've been GMing the system for 6 months and have been a GM for... 6 months. I really enjoy the system and whenever I do come across situations like you described (stealth attacks, for instance) I wing it with something that makes sense and make a note to keep it consistent next time. Because I've "grown up" as a GM on this system, it hasn't bothered me, but I can see where you take issue with it.

I will also say that my players are not long time gamers; I have one player who's played most everything, but I hooked most other people (who have zero to moderate RPG experience) through the theme of Star Wars. That said, your issue may be that this system sometime isn't as easy for experience gamers to come in to who are used to having more rules structure.

In one game, my PCs decided to chop down a water tower; in other systems, I would have had rules for structural integrity, fall damage for the structure, and flooding rules to affect the stormtroopers that got washed away, and the process would have taken some time to figure out, but it would have a satisfying feeling from moving through the rules and still achieving this awesome cinematic moment. But because it's FFG SW, I threw some numbers down onto a piece of paper for what they needed to make this happen, simplifying it to just a few rolls to knock down the tower; the whole process took just a minute or two before the stormies went swimming, and that's a much better fit for my players in particular.

Hi Daeglan,

I've just listened to the relevant part of the podcast you suggested. It was a very interesting discussion, one which I mostly agree on. But is it not there that lies my unease with the system, for I wholeheartedly agree with a lot of the decisions FFG made. To list a few of those awesome, almost magical things I like:

• No space/time measurements in meters/feet, seconds, minutes, cubic meters, yards, pounds or whatnot; after experiencing the 6-second-rounds of 3.5, the 3-second-rounds of Shadowrun and the 1-second-rounds of GURPS (yes, ONE second), I really enjoy the freedom of roughly one minute rounds, which could be longer or shorter as far as the plot requires it. It ends up being MORE, not less, realistic that way. And don't get me started on Shadowrun's initiative passes and movement speed (especially in 4th Ed.), where you had to calculate and split movement meter-by-meter...
• Force powers being more mystical and less detailed leaves more to the imagination and avoids the tropes of "Magic A is Magic A" or "Sufficiently Analyzed Magic" (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SufficientlyAnalyzedMagic) which plagues the Player's Handbook, and seems like what they did with most iterations of WotC's Star Wars.
• The open-ended 2-3 axis of the Narrative dice pools. I'm a huge fan of dice pools and bell curves, and I hate the d20 with a passion seldom found in nature. FFG's dice capture very well the feel of SW's movies, comics, TV series, etc.
• The difficulty of predicting dice pool results and the fact that the bell curve allows for success with impossible odds (or failures of epic proportion) while also muddying the waters of successes/failures with nuance with threat/advantage. I agree with Order 66's point: it does help reduce metagame, even our Johnny-type optimizer does some stuff based almost purely on feeling rather than maths.
• The talent trees and incremental costs for gaining new specialization trees, with an incentive to stay in-carreer. OMG, like I said, pure genius. Fixes most of the age-old problem of point-buy systems versus class-based ones: with either the cherry picking endless crunchy bits from either a list of advantages (GURPS) (and *even* the multiclassing shenanigans of 3.5e D&D) while also maintaining a sense of thematic progression that binds a character together instead of a laundry list of mismatched perks.
• Product quality, in general.
• Balance of muggles versus Force-users. Our party's mechanically strongest characters have been non-force-users from the start, to the point where it's almost appealing to go mundane. Our Sage/Niman Disciple took Scientist and Scholar for his character concept, and another Soresu/Protector picked Gadgeteer.
• Ease for GM's in terms of preparation. I can really focus on the storytelling and plot when preparing because I almost never have to worry about the "****, I have to stat out all these new NPCs, it's gonna take me hours!", which ends up disincentivising creating original NPCs.
• The collaborative nature of deciphering the dice pool does help share the fun/burden of storytelling. And it does incentivise lively description of actions rather than bland FAIL/SUCCESS mathematical parameters.
• Again, on the roughly-1-minute-round, it's totally OK with me that attacks and Hits are actually many "hits", and that you can imagine them in more than one way.

I could go on and on about the Pro's, so said philosophical problem lies elsewhere. I don't want to sound like an apologist for any system, nor an ever-frustrated "perfect system" seeker. There are definitely things I like in FFG's system, things I'm ready to overlook or tollerate, and there are things I seriously wonder how they got past the Beta tests...

See, I can accept less granularity. I don't need "health bars" that reach 9999, stats in the hundreds, bonuses you need a calculator to manage or dice pools that those 36-d6 Chessex packs can't even account for (like 41 d6 dodge/soak pools in Shadowrun...). I'm fine with the way stats are laid out, even if I would prefer bigger numbers for details (like 10 skill ranks progressions instead of five, with 10 being somewhat impossible to reach, or a wider range of stats to make alien species a bit more detailed instead of the 3-2-1 current range). But that's stuff I can accept, and it does make my job as GM easier to mentally process. I could go on and on about things I'm willing to "give a chance" even if I'd rather have it some other way.

The things I don't vouch for at all still remain. And it's *because* I enjoy the game in general, and can become immersed even as gamemaster, that the rusty nails feel so much more painful once I stumble upon them.

To make a somewhat random list:

• The math behind "removal of setback dice" can be fine, but as a GM I can't put setback dice EVERYWHERE just to make those talents useful. I mean, in common circumstances, they won't have more than 1 setback die, sometimes 2.
• The math behind upgrading dice from green to yellow or from purple to red is VERY wonky. Sure you get the very random Triumph's/Despair's (1/12 odds), but it's just not as significant as one would expect. At lot of mechanics in the game are written as if the authors had never done the maths. It's not something you can easily change either. It may seem like overly "optimizer" or "gamist" on my part to mention it, but heck, as a GM I am expect to run the maths and evaluate challenges, not just muse at the beauty of non-metagame thinking. I am totally OK that player's cannot feasibly run formulas and predict results, but they are mislead by the impression that "upgrading" their dice pool will do more than getting a boost die most of the time, or that turning a purple into a red is so much better than adding a setback to the enemy.
• Everything about cover. This would have been a great place to put a "double dice upgrade" mechanic, a minor Soak bonus that doesn't stack with Armor or just add one or two purple without upsetting the size of the defense pool. I really want the unarmored characters to feel like they can defend themselves without having a huge Battle Armor, but it's not the result. As written, it's the characters with Armored Clothing (1 soak/1 defense) that suffer from not really gaining much from cover, since it's redundant with their 1 defense. It's also a much too small penalty on the attacker's dice pool to be worth spending the maneuver.
• Defense in general is weird. It's especially weird in space battles, because of how Shields are represented in the movies as these impregnable barriers, and at Personal scale it's rather insignificant. Soak does a finer job of preventing damage and is granted much more generously. Heck, Stormtrooper minions can almost never miss in this system if I play them correctly. I know the goal was to make it so low Agility, low Ranged skill characters could contribute to fights, but it feels weird. It's especially weird with lightsaber combat, which is supposed to be about dodging this blade of pain, crippling limbs and cutting hands and... you get the point. I know Wound Threshold is supposed to be akin to a "energy left to fight" gauge to some extent (which then begs the question about the Strain Threshold playing a similar role), but to be fair, better dodging/defense mechanics would have helped. Failing to hit is narrative too, ya know.
• While I don't ask for detailed Grapple rules (the infamous Grapple rules!), knowing when a pool should be roled by a player or an NPC is kind of important, as it determines who spends an action in combat (oh, and BTW, some skills should really be maneuvers or incidentals too... I have enough RAM to remember such important exceptions). Last game, three hidden NPCs, all Nemesis, were hiding behind crates and junk. One player decided to Hide first thing in combat, which is fine. But then, who rolled what, and thus who ended up having to spend an action to do it. Since purple/green and yellow/red dice are not symmetrical, it's obviously of strategic importance, but this wouldn't be a problem if I had a consistent set of rules to fairly adjudicate this! I ended up going the active perception way (players doing the checks), since the NPCs were already hidden... not knowing if they had to roll for each a different dice pool, or just one, they rolled three... which lead to a rare three different Despair results for the same player. Of course it was an intense moment, but a weird one too. It was not clear how to penalize so harshly a player for attempting to find enemies (spending an action on it, rather than doing something more active). I felt unfair to the player, especially since the other player was using a Stealth check and got away with the NPCs not having to spend an action looking for him... again, weird.
• Regarding the Misdirect's lack of precision (does attacking turn you power off, or does it allow for Boost dice when attacking a foe?), this is also applicable to Stealth rules in general. I mean the Personal Stealth Field rules are not clear on how they interact with Stealth, and items like the Optical Camouflage System. Do you roll two dice pools: one for Stealth with all your perks/items, and then another for the Stealth Field's effect on the NPC's Perception roll? This is pretty important. Also, if you happen to attack someone when "invisible" to them, players are bound to ask you for Boost die or special effects, after all they spent points/credits on Stealth, and since you want to be fair, when you attack them with the same device, the rules have to be consistent. This should be clarified.
• Since Autofire + Jury Rigged was pointed out as unbalanced in the Beta, why is it still available? It's pretty obvious it's too strong, but I don't want to be unfair to my player who uses it, since he stopped using his autokill Disrupter Rifle, which was also too strong. 50+ % chance of autokill for any NPC? And let me tell you, Durable talent ranks would be cheap as heck for a solution, and there are very few except trying to increase the odds of Threats showing up instead of Advantages, which again sounds forced and GM metagame. If you follow my drift, it's this kind of imbalance that makes one go from a flowing storyline to a worrisome headache of measuring the duration of your NPCs, since no matter their WT/ST, they will die. And just banning/houseruling stuff is not an appropriate response, because of course I can! It's just that in this case, I'd be cracking down the same player twice, and this would be disrespectful since those abuses were readily available and not convoluted at all. Just Bounty Hunter Gadgeteer + Assassin.
• I'm sorry if I sound nitpicky, but most of the above were pointed out by the players themselves, including the Grenade Blast rules issue. I argued that it was possible to miss with a Grenade, and that it would be too strong to allow Grenades to auto-hit in various circumstances, but as I was searching the rulebook, no clarification or tip was given. This strained suspension of disbelief.
• Yellow dice can trigger Triumphs that generate weird results. Sure you can adjudicate everything, but consistency is important for player-GM trust relationship. Trust is paramount, and arbitrary adjudication can create a feeling of unfairness that player's loathe, creating a Player-vs-GM rivalry rather than collaborative effort. For example, the best thing a bunch of Stormtroopers can do to stop a wannabe-jedi is use Triumphs to repeatedly Disarm them. This rarely happens in the movies or anywhere else, and is completely anti-climactic out of an appropriate narrative context (a skilled bounty hunter shooting at the hilt) or in a lightsaber fight, where this is commonplace. Last game, our force user was Disarmed of his lightsaber this way, since it was the best option, and the enemies were crafty Bounty Hunters who even used flamethrowers to great effect. But if my players start doing the same to the nemesis dark siders, this is going to be cheap and not very cinematic (even for them), and I don't want to limit them, but I'd rather have a clearly laid out way of deciding whether or not to allow it instead of everyone being magically immune to Disarm or the players all picking Makashi Duelist to get disarm resistance!

OK, well, I did end up detailing examples. Hopefully the idea behind my criticism carried across those examples, showing the moon beyond the finger ("When the wise man points at the Moon, the idiot looks at the finger"; and I don't mean to be rude, that's just the quote ).

• You are George now.

This systems is intended to be story based. So when I see you're running to wookieepedia a lot, tthat suggests you're having trouble with your story. Disconnect from the established lore. Try writing an adventure without referencing anything at all, just write it. George never worried about if someone else said a ship has a hyper transceiver, why should you be? In D&D if the DM said wood elves like the taste of manflesh, the players don't argue, and if they do, the DM s something like "they like it now, deal with it." When dealing with star wars you can do the same when you have to.

• Options are optional.

Things like adjudicating grenades in a small room are there to speed things up combat and quickly resolve situations that need not be dwelled on. If you want to roll for it as normal because that's how you roll, do it. Just be ready ffor the encounter to work like that. You've played enough games to have seen the breakout box saying " or you can do it like this if you want" before. Same thing here.

• No special rules doesn't mean no rules.

Some stuff works exactly like is says. Perception and stealth being one of ose things. You roll, you hide, they roll, they see you. You're both blowing actions. Now it will work differently for you then say D&D. Instead of surprise rounds and sneak attack bonuses, you get boost dice and setback dice (you are using these right).

• Bad guys are people to.

You mention nemesis getting sacked easy. So I gotta ask, are you setting them up to survive? A lot of other systems make high level opponents survive by just making them super tough. High ACs, DR and so forth are a cheat to make sure even wrinkly old Saruman can survive a fireball. Star Wars doesn't do that, or at least not on the same level. Simply dropping a nemesis on the board and expecting him to survive because of his sheer nemesisness won't work. You have to set him up to succeed. If he's got a talent that let's him toss minions in front of him, by the force give him plenty of minions! If he's the general of an army, give him an army. Think of other action films. The loose cannon cop with a machine gun (ho ho ho) doesn't face the master mind in a normal combat ever. Even in star wars you see things like grevious where he's got an escape plan for every occasion that can kick in the moment he needs it to. Do the same.

I'm sorry for the walls of text. It took me literally hours to write the reply to Daeglan, and I didn't even include replies to further posters (sorry for that). I guess having the plumber working in my bathroom kind of gave me a reason to find a calm activity such as writing lengthy replies.

Edit:

Perhaps to help readers, two things. First a diagram showing my interpretation of the GNS system with player types inspired by Robin D. Laws gamemastering guide, then second, the kind of players I have at my table to explain why I don't think were doing it wrong. (The prejudice against former D&D player seems deeply ingrained in the SWRPG crowd, I'd like to dispel that a bit.)

Perhaps I'd change some words (I've made this diagram a year ago). The essential is that games and player types can be more or less associated on it, AFAIK, YMMV.

The "Johnny" of the group, definitely a powergamer. Plays a game, has a harder time interacting with the story. I'm working on it, but it's a challenge for him since he seldom watches movies, read novels or comics. He's responds in Simulationist ways to many narrative situations, with science (physics) as his reference point. He's the Bounty Hunter, Gadgeteer/Assassin, with the Gun shenanigans, spec'ing in Heavy and Gunner for the synergies. He carries a tricked out Light Repeating Blaster and will have a capped dice pool once he gets his hands on cybernetics.

The "Timmy"'s of the group, because they are two, are split between specialist and method actor/storyteller. One of them, the specialist, always plays characters inspired by comic superheroes, and he sacrifies power for concept very easily. He's the Sage/Niman Disciple/Scholar/Scientist and he plays a Mad Scientist kind of antihero. He often raises Simulationist concerns for why things should scientifically work one way or another, and he raised the grenade example.

The other "Timmy" plays for the pure moral conflict and experience of the here and now, so he's part method actor (emotional involvement), part storyteller. He listens a lot, interacts with everything and very much participates in creating the story. He's the party face, and plays a Makashi Duelist/Niman Disciple, and he doesn't optimize at all.

The fourth player is a mixture butt-kicker/storyteller. He doesn't care about rules as much as setting info and being of even power with the rest of the group. He is concerned about balance only insofar as it's fair for everybody.

As a GM, I am a bit of everything, but as a player, I'm definitely a setting-conscious powergamer, or a "Spike", if using the MTG terminology. I care about the story, and especially the world and ambiance, but I enjoy clear rules and take pleasure in playing with balanced crunchy bits (and creative combos!). Game balance is an obsession, because I'd like the rules to reflect realistic strategic choices that characters would take in-universe, so I love incentives that align setting and mechanics.

Regarding the NPCs and Nemeses - some time ago I had the same issues with them - due to my DnD, Shadowrun and other systems past I first tended to make them using the same rules as PCs use.

And then it struck me - this was wrong. This forum, or rather its users (and I've been on many RPG forums - this one is one of the best) helped a lot with changing this mindset. You make your NPCs, especially combat-oriented ones with what your scenario needs in mind. So you take as many adversary talent points as you want, any other talents that seems to suit the NPC. So what it is an ex-soldier, ignore the PC careers, give him for example scathing tyrade and hidden compartment - his backstory supports it, right? If your players enjoy the encounter, they won't mind...

Recently I have found another inspiration - "Middleearth: Shadow of Mordor" video game, or rather the Nemesis system implemented there. The orks there gain new "talents" even if you (the protagonist(s) you control) vanquish them, if they win a fight with you etc. They grow stronger even "off-screen" - they keep returning, you start to recognize (and hate) their name... Good stuff.

Regarding the other points of the OP: yeah the game sometimes seems to be unfinished, but on the other hand it makes it much easier to modify, or mold, according to your needs. Take starfighter combat. How I hated the rules when I first read them and we got through several space fights. Now, with minions and one other modification we use it's ok. However, if the rules were as rigid and detailed as in the systems I mentioned before it would be much more difficult to change this particular ruleset.

Or autofire - yeah, it is deadly. But again, since this game is so flexible we just changed the rule (with growing number of advantages needed for each subsequent hit). And so on...

Summing up - this forum and its user always come up with great ideas for fluff, scenarios and game mechanics. The fact you're posting here means that you're interested in such changes and thus, because the game is flexible you will be able to adapt it as you want. If you didn't care about rules and details like maths etc., I guess you would just play with your group from time to time, perhaps you would all complain about this and that and eventually you would move on. So, just keep reading the threads here and on AoR and soon you'll be happier with your game mechanics.

And ALWAYS, always remember - there is no such thing as a perfect game mechanics!

First I'll say I've been a GM off and on for 30+ years, so I'm no stranger to other systems that have more detail. I do understand some of your reservations. But despite my occasional wish for more detail here or there, this remains the only system I want to run. Every time I play in someone else's non-EotE game I watch the players and GM fumble around trying to force-fit the mechanics into the narrative. I ain't never going back...

I think for the most part you're going to figure this out, you're hitting issues most of us had questions about early on. In some cases you've identified valid systemic issues, but I think most of them are just about learning how to deal with those situations.

From your random list:

You want to use setback "liberally", but not all the time. I'm also pretty liberal with boost dice, especially if the description is good or makes the table laugh, and that can go a long way to balancing things out.

The math is actually very solid IMHO. Greens vs purples tend towards success + threat. Upgrading greens to yellows pushes it towards success with Advantage, with the possibility of Triumph. Upgrading purples to red pushes it to more Threat with a chance of Despair. If you want the PCs to barely succeed, you'll want to make the difficulty one less than their dice pool. If you want them to succeed with panache, you'll want to make the difficulty 2 or 3 less than their dice pool. This includes setback and boost, so an Average shot by a PC with Agility 3 and no training, shooting in the rain...he's probably not going to make it.

One thing I think that messes up the math for some people is that there's also a discrepancy in the fluff text. The fluff text would have you believe that a Triumph or Despair is a world-shaking event. But if you take your cue from the combat Triumph and Despair spending chart, you get a more subtle result.

I won't argue about Shields I think they got the flavour entirely wrong.

Defense does work though, and I'd say beautifully...yes a setback isn't automatic, it's basically a 1/3 failure, but every little bit helps. If your players aren't going for it they are either being hit more often, or allowing their opponent more Advantages which can trigger criticals and other weapon qualities. Honestly it helps to not think about it Defense as a fixed value, which most other games do...the problem there (hello D20) is that eventually you become immune, which leads to ridiculous in-game discussions about how your 20th level lord can survive a knife to the throat while manacled. They had to invent a special coup-de-grace rule because their system is that flawed.

The beauty here is that it prevents combat ossification. First, you realize as a player that no matter what you do, something could get through, and even if you have 1000XP, a room full of stormtroopers is a threat. Second, the narrative axis with Threat serves to shake things up further.

Who rolls: I have the PCs roll everything, except for the NPCs shooting. If the PC hides, he is rolling his Stealth against the NPC's Perception. If the NPC hides, a PC is rolling their Perception against the NPC's Stealth. Note that you don't have to give the PCs a Perception roll until it matters, nor do you have to tell them what it's for. In your example, I would have had only one player roll once for the opposition (unless the opposition is scattered around, in which case each PC might roll for the NPC nearest to them, but not the others). Your Nemesis could use his Leadership to keep his minions in line, and perhaps one of his minions could have used his Stealth to help all his buddies hide. Personally I like keeping all rolls open, but I might still roll the NPC's leadership and stealth rolls behind a screen to see if the final pool might be modified. The final pool is rolled openly.

I think many Disarms should get an opposed check to recover, especially if the target is a Rival or Nemesis.

The perceived prejudice against D&D players isn't what it seems. Most of us have played D&D extensively (even the dreaded 4e), and liked it. The thing is this system isn't anything like D&D, and trying to compare it to that, or any other related system, isn't going to help much. See its not that we don't like D&D, it's that we that to "get" this system, you have to forget a lot of what D&D taught you about how a game should be run mechanically.

Also to add to Frog, the "how to hit with a missed grenade" thing is under the blast rules entry.

It seems a bit odd to complain about having to eyeball everything whilst saying you never played 4e, the only D&D system where you didn't have to eyeball everything. All the rest were just as imbalanced and full of gaps in the rules as EotE is, the only difference is they pretended they weren't.

Can a thread be titled it's 'tiring' to 'eyeball' a lot of stuff and then kick off with an initial post 10 paragraphs long? Pretty sure therein lies the crux of the issue.

I'm not going to get into rule minutiae because the OP initially said they didn't want to. The OP also said they are going to continue to play regardless of reservations, so I honestly don't know what to say. I play D&D currently, 5E as well as way back 1E, and I've played this. I like them both. They both have good aspects. I've never played any RPG where the GM didn't have to house rule because they had to or they wanted to, frankly its the most fun out of character aspect of RPGs I think.

At the end of the day if a GM isn't sitting in that chair because they like to tell stories and they like to entertain people, then they are in the wrong chair at the table imo. No rule is ever going to fix that.

Merry XMas everybody

I'm going to take a stab and give my thoughts on a few things here...

EDITS FOR SANITY

To make a somewhat random list:

• The math behind "removal of setback dice"...
• The math behind upgrading dice from green to yellow or from purple to red...
• Everything about cover....
• Defense in general is weird...
• While I don't ask for detailed Grapple rules..
• Since Autofire + Jury Rigged was pointed out as unbalanced in the Beta, why is it still available?
• Yellow dice can trigger Triumphs that generate weird results...

OK, well, I did end up detailing examples. Hopefully the idea behind my criticism carried across those examples, showing the moon beyond the finger ("When the wise man points at the Moon, the idiot looks at the finger"; and I don't mean to be rude, that's just the quote ).

Setback Dice: You're correct, you shouldn't be putting in Setback dice EVERYWHERE, but every roll you should be looking at the negative pool of dice you're making and think "is there a reason to add Setback Dice". If you can come up with a good reason for it, add one. If you can think up a couple reasons why the environment or external disadvantages would cause a Setback die, add two or three. PCs should not expect to be able to use talents every single time on every single roll, they're there for when the situation dictates. It's okay to have rolls with no setback dice even if your PC has Setback-removal talents.

Upgrading Dice: Talking with the Devs, I can attest that they considered the math. As has been stated before, the dice on average tend towards Success with Threat or Failure with Advantage. If you're going for more or less chances to Succeed, increase the number of dice. If you're looking for more dramatic results, upgrade the dice to Yellows and Red. Remember that upgrading to the 12-sided dice reduce the chance of rolling a blank side to 1/12 instead of 1/8. That can (and has) affected the outcome of many encounters.

Cover: This came up with the "Messages from the Edge" section from our last show, where GM Chris and I talked about Maneuvers and moving into cover. To me, when someone takes cover and the cover is significant (large boxes, a vehicle, fortified position, sturdy corner of a building) they're in Improved Cover (Defense 2). They only have enough of their body exposed to fire their weapon at their opponent. If they have that same type of cover between them and their opponents, but don't actively "take up position" behind it, I give the Basic Cover (Defense 1); there's "stuff in the way" but they're not utilizing it effectively, or as effective as they could be.

The reason they don't let cover and armor Defense stack is because they didn't want the dice pools to get too huge, and let some armored behemoth have 4 (or more) dice from Heavy Battle Armor, Personal Shields, and Improved cover. Effectively, the character is carrying their cover with them. But a PC with Armored Clothing (or even Heavy Battle Armor with it's base 1 Defense) could get benefit from cover if they take the Move Into Cover Maneuver and the cover is resilient as I mentioned above.

Defense: I agree that shields/defense works oddly at Vehicle scale. I get what they were going for, making shields block all of the incoming damage or a miniscule part of incoming damage (each Failure removing one success from the damage). The problem is the damage you either take zero damage (by missing) or your shields are removing one or two points of damage from a hit of what is usually 6 points or more (by cancelling extra successes). It does capture that feel of "the shields took it!" and "The shields have been breached!", because if you punch through the defenses, there's still a lot of energy making it through. Armor is supposed to deal with the leftovers.

Given the system, I'm not sure what other direction they could go. Guess we'll have to wait for "FFG Star Wars RPG 2nd Edition" or something.

Rolling Dice: As has been stated before, with the exception of combat checks I try to have everything rolled by the PCs. For opposed checks the NPC's dice pool turns into corresponding Difficulty and Challenge dice. This tends to skew in favor of the PCs; that's okay, it's their adventure.

Disruptor Rifles: Pro-Tip; do not ever give your PCs access to Disruptor Weapons. If you do, make sure someone finds out about it and the PCs get slapped with a 10-20 point Criminal Obligation due to having a weapon outlawed in practically every civilized system in the galaxy. It would be like...man I can't even think about what it would be like owning in the real world. I guess it would be like the cops knowing you own 2,000 rounds of armor-piercing bullets; because the only reason to have those bullets is to defeat body armor, and the only folks who wear body armor are cops and the military. Even that's not as bad as a weapon that completely and painfully turns whatever it hits into ash, goo, and dust.

Auto-fire + Jury Rig: I can see why they left it in, specifically for this reason. It's a sick combo. Make sure you're remembering to increase the difficulty of the check by 1 if they're using auto-fire. Spend Destiny points judiciously to increase the difficulty of the PCs attack and more importantly to have every NPC target that PC and bring him down ASAP. I'm sorry, but if I as a GM give you four Stormtroopers, an Imperial Officer shouting words of encouragement, and one Stormtrooper with a Heavy Repeating blaster and a prepared position who are you going to target first? And if the First PC doesn't bring him down, and the Second misses, the Third PC is going to shoot the guy with the repeating blaster. Because he is the one guy who, if he does not get the full attention of the PCs, can kill them all by himself.

Take a page from MMOs; burn down the DPS first. If the "Johnny" complains, cite the above example and remind him "you made this character, this is the disad to doing so". That has to be a balance point the Devs considered when allowing that combo to remain in play; the "increased aggro" such a character brings to every encounter.

Triumphs: Triumphs can do a lot. A LOT. Especially if you roll multiples. Here's something I don't often have them do; crit PCs. Critting PCs is boring. It also gives them a side effect that can last for SESSIONS. It's so easy to drop PCs in this system that they end up getting crits anyway. Why layer on multiple critical injuries just because some Journeyman Bounty Hunter who shows up because someone's Obligation was rolled? If it's a "Big Boss Fight" or other climactic encounter, sure I'll crit a PC with a Triumph or advantage. Otherwise I'm using those Triumphs to give my NPCs more Defense, to add Upgrades to the PC's next difficulty. To change something in the encounter to favor the NPCs.

If you want consistency, stick with the "Spending Triumphs" result in the book and think about how each mechanical result will translate into the scene. Go with those, instead of just activating the Crit option on a weapon. It's not the Best option, because that implies that you as a GM is trying to "win". Same thing with Disarms. By saying "Best" you mean "Most Effective at diminishing the PCs ability to overcome the combat". That's not the point of the GM, and I'm sure you know that. Your job is to tell a fun story with the PC's help and provide challenges for them to overcome (sometimes ridiculously difficult challenges, but challenges none the less). If the PCs are steamrolling your NPCs, maybe disarming them once in a while will ramp up the difficulty a little while slowing them down. Disarming them and criting them at every opportunity is boring and unnecessarily harsh. It's also a little lazy (not that I'm calling you lazy). There are much more creative things to do with a couple Triumphs and a boat-load of Advantages.

Regardless, you've figured out some issues and brought it up as a concern. We're here to help talk them through.

Take what advice works and keep asking questions. And most importantly; keep trying to be a better GM. It's a never ending, yet rewarding journey.

May the Dice be with you.

There seems to be a recent trend of rules-lite games, like Fate, and D&D 5th seems to have gone on the bandwagon. I'm not entirely sure I like that trend, but I can understand why it came to be. After the end of the 1990's and 2000's, game systems had gotten complex and the market was fragmented and falling behind, the "edition wars" in many systems caused system-segregation and plummeting sales, and video games like WoW became beacons of structured Gamist worlds, leaving tabletop games in a state of identity crisis. I think it's logical that the redefinition lead to games with a lighter rules weight and a heightened importance on what computers can't do.

I admit to having a gamist-simulationist bias that's obvious, thinking in terms of balance and realism before plot-relevance. I tend to spontaneously think of rules almost as the "laws of physics" of a universe, and of a universe as some metaphysical entity. That doesn't mean I 100% enjoy that mindset, hence why I'm trying this.

I didn't mean to attack people's beloved game "from the outside", as I very much feel as sense of "belonging" to the system as well (and I also "belove it" ). Like I said, it's a sense of wanting the system to be good that motivates my criticisms. As such, I would gladly welcome diverging views about the minutiae I've mentioned if it helps broaden my understanding of the "why it's that way, and not otherwise".

Edit:

Really great answers everyone! Thank you!

The rules aren't vague. They're general, but very specific and the mechanics are applied broadly. IMO you're looking for minutiae for the sake of minutiae, and in the case of the grenade in the room you just didn't read the rules that do exist, and frankly to a level of specificity and detail you profess to desire in that case.

The dice pool construction section on standard pools, opposed checks, competitive checks etc are very broad but also very specific and essentially apply to any scenario, skill check, or obstacle a GM might create. Once how to build a dice pool is understood and the uses for the various checks, there is essentially no reason to even open the rule book.

The dice pool rules apply a very simple and elegant solution to virtually everything that would be needed in regards to hard mechanics or pure narrative elements. While they aren't detailed for the sake of it, they do in fact relieve a GM of the need to know volumes of rule specifics as they allow you to craft the exact kind of check you want to.

Just my anecdote: It took me a long time to realize that this was not Saga Edition or D20. There were lots of impulses at the beginning to want minutia for everything. There were often gripes in our long running Saga game about lack of rules for details and I ended up with a mighty long House Rules document. I've since let that go and embraced the freedom to rule on the fly that FFGs system offers up. It is quite impressive. Once I let go I was better able to see how all the parts of the game worked together. It is lacking detail because the narrative dice are encouraging the players and GM to create the detail as befitting THEIR particular story. That was a huge roadblock to overcome. Several of my players are still stuck behind it. I stuck it out though and I have gained a very enjoyable experience out of it and as a result the stories I am able to tell are more enjoyable.

IMO you're looking for minutiae for the sake of minutiae, and in the case of the grenade in the room you just didn't read the rules that do exist, and frankly to a level of specificity and detail you profess to desire in that case.

If said player got neither success nor three advantages, the Blast quality can't be activated. Which was the case during our game. I don't see the need to be snarky.

The rule section said a GM can choose to have everyone suffer damage in a small enclosed space. Written right in the rule section for Blast. Separate sentence in fact, not referencing dice results at all. Pretty straight forward and unambiguous, as well as specific.

IMO you're looking for minutiae for the sake of minutiae, and in the case of the grenade in the room you just didn't read the rules that do exist, and frankly to a level of specificity and detail you profess to desire in that case.

If said player got neither success nor three advantages, the Blast quality can't be activated. Which was the case during our game. I don't see the need to be snarky.

I would have narrated that as the grenade was a dud and went pop fizz with a small cloud of smoke.

That's what I argued to the group. I only listed it because it was something that caught my player's attention and strained their suspension of disbelief. Most examples come from our 14-hour long marathon session three days ago. The Agility 2 Scientist/Scholar who missed throwing a simple grenade was quite unhappy with my explanation for both in and out of character reasons.

Admittedly, it's possible I read the rule wrong, thinking the sentence 2P51 highlighted only applied to the Range Band AoE of a successfully activated Blast quality, as the previous sentence discussed (Engaged Range Band, etc.). Anyhow.

Well from what people I know who have actually handled grenades while they are fairly reliable there are duds and some really weird **** will happen. like amazingly and inexplicably because of the way things happen in combat someone near a grenade will get hit by nothing. There are real world examples of this. So if it is straining their credulity...that is because they do not know enough about the weird **** that happens in real combat. like the guy hit in the face by an AK-47 and only taking minor injury because it literally bounced off his tooth,

and here is a guy who was literally blown up and only has minor injuries.
http://www.ptsdsupport.net/1_finger_salute.html

The dice pool construction section on standard pools, opposed checks, competitive checks etc are very broad but also very specific and essentially apply to any scenario, skill check, or obstacle a GM might create. Once how to build a dice pool is understood and the uses for the various checks, there is essentially no reason to even open the rule book.

This is a key point. Unlike most other games, I rarely have to open the book for a rule during a session. The GM screen has almost everything I'd need specifics for.

This is a key point. Unlike most other games, I rarely have to open the book for a rule during a session. The GM screen has almost everything I'd need specifics for.

Its the great irony in our group that the most useful supplemental product is the one that they encourage you not to use (open table dice rolling and not hidden behind a screen)

Back on topic

That said, the narrative systems are quite difficult as a GM to arbitrate as most of us come from binary systems where its just a yes/no in terms of success or failure. That fuzzy middle ground of you succeed/fail 'But' have advantage/disadvantage, makes it another level of complexity, which some people have trouble adapting to and you do have to be on top of your game as a GM to arbitrate results that everyone feels fits the scene, but not throwing out the good/bad results.

It takes practice and a relatively good handle of how things are running.

For me, the biggest challenge always seems to lie in finding the limits of the PC's skills and abilities so that I can present challenges to them which are appropriate for their xp, character types and the actual scene itself they're working in. Back in things like D&D and other games, they had 'Challenge Ratings' meaning the critter/NPC or event would be appropriate say for a group that was X-level of experience on average.

It was relatively easy

It wasn't always good, but it did give you a ballpark of roughly where things should be aimed and the rest you could fit in.

Plus as a GM, I like characters to feel useful, so their talents and skills get used and its kind of like being a 'Director' if you will, rather than a 'game master', if the group's pilot is away- its probably not fair to throw them into a full on, critical space battle with their ship for example. Instead, they might be the guys taking out the enemy command and control functions on a nearby space-station or moon base.

The critical space battle still happens in your storyline, but the perspective changes.

This is not easy to direct, especially if your group requires some regular degree of cat-herding... or beatings with a blunt object.

Being critical of the system so far

At the moment, the PC's have a little more advantage in material, GM's have a couple of adventures, some NPC's and a couple of modular encounters, but not exactly a comprehensive amount of material in terms of running games.

'How do I make my NPC's not suck and get gunned down in 1-round'

'A directors guide to making a story progress'

'Adding in dirty tricks and twists to the story'

All that sort of stuff I think is needed to help GM's along a little more, sure the PC's are the primadonas and stars of the show, but the Director of the story needs a bit more love. Sure you can point me at the O66 Podcasts (which I do like at lot) however, the bulk of the support material really should come from the actual company making it!

FFG does Player and Small-scale conflict really well, anything with less than 10 baddies and half a dozen heros works just fine and can make for a manageable and engaging encounter.

Once you get over that... it drags down into mechanics of throwing constant dice and that kind of sucks

In very big, grand scenes with lots of stuff happening- nope! Ain't going there, it really sucks to keep track of!

Vehicles- now I will put this out there as an important part of the game. Because often the Players space ship, space truck or whatever they're rambling around in, is both an important set-piece and part of the group itself. Hurting it, is like hurting a player and losing it is like a player death.

But, in this system, Vehicles are just bloody awful, there's no real way to put it otherwise.