Hey everyone,

Given that I live north of the 49th parallel, I was the last of the four writers for Stay on Target to receive my copy. It's not a complaint, just a reality. Chances are many of you already have it, but I thought I'd throw this out there, now that I have it in my hands, and have seen the differences between my final submission and the final copy. I'm better able to answer some questions, but with the caveat that I do not speak for FFG in terms of official rulings. It also showed me how important playtesting is to the development of new rules, and for that I am deeply indebted to Jegergryte, DarthGM, Doc, the Weasel and other playtesters in refining what was my first venture into rules-writing.

So, with that, any questions with the above caveats? My section of the book was the first 2/3's of Chapter 3, from pages 67-89. I know that Keith Kappel is out there and also able to add questions. I can't speak for either Sterling Hershey or Jason Marker, but they did a fantastic job on their respective sections

Oh yah, I did NOT expect that my name would be the first listed in the writing credits...

Firstly, thank you for your contribution to the books, Agatheron.

Secondly... as the book hasn't hit Europe yet, can you let us know what parts you worked on? Were you or Keith involved in the Talent trees, as I admit I'm baffled by one thing in particular and I'm trying to understand the design process involved.

I can ask if private if you wish, in case things get... overheated...

I'm not too worried. The talent trees are the department of the developers, in this case Andy Fischer. They're usually being worked on in parallel to the rest of us doing our stuff. Since I worked on most of Chapter 3, I wasn't anywhere near the talent trees, whereas Keith's section included the species and specialization write ups, but not the talent trees. Even then, we could probably give our best guess, but final rulings obviously sit with the developers.

Since I didn't work on that section of the book, the first time I got a good look at the talent trees was when I cracked the book open last night Even then, I'm only just starting to give it a good read. Some of the playtesters may have insight on that that I don't.

No worries, thanks anyway.

Firstly, thank you for your contribution to the books, Agatheron.

Secondly... as the book hasn't hit Europe yet, can you let us know what parts you worked on? Were you or Keith involved in the Talent trees, as I admit I'm baffled by one thing in particular and I'm trying to understand the design process involved.

I can ask if private if you wish, in case things get... overheated...

Sorry to tell yo, it HAS hit Europe, just not the 51st state yet. My copy arrived like four days ago.

Ugh, the delay is annoying me. What country are you in, Spraug?

Especially with the players pretty much in meltdown until I can make a call, and I can't make a call without seeing the book...

I might be able to help you there... what is the call you need to make?

Might be easier if I sent you a note?

It has a complex background, about new characters and old ones and player roles and all those silly politics.

But the solution comes down to how the Signature abilities work, and whether or not I should alter that. While I'm swift to alter the lore, I try to change the rules as little as possible...

Sure, shoot me a message.

Yeah, I'll be lurking in this thread as well, so any Chapter 1 questions, I'm more than willing to give my view.

Ugh, the delay is annoying me. What country are you in, Spraug?

Especially with the players pretty much in meltdown until I can make a call, and I can't make a call without seeing the book...

Somehow I can't send you PMs, otherwise I could send you some links.

Mine is coming on Tuesday, apparently!

Can I have your copy? I can't afford it for a while. One of the few downsides to being a stay at home dad.

Calgary is a bit far to drive to Hamilton mid-winter to drop it off. I did that three years ago (there to here), not recommended.

Looking at my section, I was curious to see what stayed and what ended up on the cutting room floor. The reality is, I wrote more than they had room for in my section, so I was curious to see what was cut. There actually is a clue, as something is briefly mentioned in the text, but not detailed like the other elements that are mentioned along with it. Consider this a hunt, and the only hint I will give is that it's somewhere between page 67-89.

My copy of the book just arrived yesterday (just before the pipes froze and burst, so I'll admit I haven't had time to do more than glance through it). But I am curious, quite a few gamers in my age bracket have made reference to the X-Wing and TIE Fighter PC games when creating encounters for our roleplaying sessions. I still belong to a few D6 boards where someone will ask about the difficulty for a particular starfighter task. Almost invariably the discussion makes reference to teh shared experience of that kind of task in the computers games.

Were the X-Wing and TIE Fighter games at all a reference point when trying to capture the experience of being an Ace in Stay on Target?

I played X-wing and TIE Fighter back in the early 90s when they both came out. They were fantastic games, and would be why something like the Defender ended up in the Core Rulebook. However, the Defender was waaaaay overpowered in the game, and I think how it has been statted out in both the RPG and tabletop games is much more reasonable.

When doing the Dogfight terrain, for example, I largely went back and watched every major space battle portrayed in the films for ideas, along with admittedly a bit of inspiration from an Order66 podcast with Sam Stewart back in early 2014. While I rememebr my experience from those video games, the primary inspiration remains the films themselves.

I put a ton of hours into the X-wing series of games. I believe they are actually remastering those as we speak for an HD re-release. In my opinion, they did a much better job, and were much more the game I wanted, than future games like Rogue Squadron or Jedi Starfighter, which seemed to put the action on rails when I felt like it had already broken free of them. They felt like a step backward.

I think an early draft of the backgrounds might have had an Azzameen reference in it, but I don't think it made it to my final draft. For Chapter 1, the only stuff that got a lot of research was the species. Each had pretty limited legends information, and obviously even less official canon. I tried to squeeze every drop out of the legends material and extrapolate to try and build species that had rich and complex backgrounds. It can be tricky to ride that line between sweeping an entire species with a broad brush without making them too two dimensional, or making exceptions seem impossible.

I'm one of those guys who has read all of the legends comics, rpgs, novels, novellas, short stories, etc (I've been reading everything that comes out since like 1994). So for me, I didn't really have to go back to anything to find tonal inspiration, so much as just think about what pops for me when I think about Aces in Star Wars. From there, its just a matter of fact-checking whenever I reference something.

Other than Star Wars, I was basically weaned on the movie Top Gun. Subconsciously, that might have had a strong influence on my manuscript. I also spent about two years serving on an aircraft carrier for the US Navy, and some time at Naval Space Command, so I'm sure those experiences might have influenced some word choices and decisions of what to include as well.

Keith, do you have a reference for where you heard the X-Wing games are being remastered?

They've been re-released through GOG: http://osrtoday.com/2014/10/28/classic-x-wing-and-tie-fighter-digitally-remastered-games-at-gog/ but these are just the original versions.

Not having played them when they originally came out, I tried playing the re-releases but had a hard time comprehending the control schemes.

I've always thought it would be great if there were a modern first-person starfighter Star Wars game!

at least I know the is a fan group that redid the models for X-wing alliance. over at www.xwaupgrade.com

well worth reinstalling the game if you have a copy and the upgrade

Keith, do you have a reference for where you heard the X-Wing games are being remastered?

They've been re-released through GOG: http://osrtoday.com/2014/10/28/classic-x-wing-and-tie-fighter-digitally-remastered-games-at-gog/ but these are just the original versions.

Not having played them when they originally came out, I tried playing the re-releases but had a hard time comprehending the control schemes.

I've always thought it would be great if there were a modern first-person starfighter Star Wars game!

Prog, it appears the articles I found were in reference to the GoG downloads. Shame they were the originals, I was under the impression they were getting a face lift too.

Not to derail the thread anymore, but it would be awesome if they did! I'm definitely going to try out those texture mods.

Keith, can you comment on how the species were selected? Were the three species chosen in house, at which point FFG contacted you to write them up? Or did they give you some leeway to make suggestions based on the specializations to be included in the book? Or was it something else entirely?

So Im not sure which of you writers did the Astromech rule section, but I was curious. Are the new actions only available to a socketed droid, or could a droid on a bigger ship do them without the socket? Also how would the NPC droid rules work in that scenario?

So Im not sure which of you writers did the Astromech rule section, but I was curious. Are the new actions only available to a socketed droid, or could a droid on a bigger ship do them without the socket? Also how would the NPC droid rules work in that scenario?

Not a writer, but I would say that all new actions and maneuvers require being plugged into a socket, this is mostly because they all require a special interaction with multiple aspects of a ship to pull off what they're doing, and can't be done if the astromech were just at a single station (at which point you might just be able to argue why a slicer or humanoid droid with an SCOMP link couldn't do the same stuff). "Increase Power" because it requires manipulation of how power and fuel is being distributed through the ship and forces the engines into overdrive, "Watch Your Back!" and "Target Lock" because it uses interaction between scanner systems and targeting system to more actively anticipate enemy actions. That and "Target Lock" is written as a continuation of "Watch Your Back!" which more explicitly states the requirement of being socketed.

The astromech rules were me. They do assume a socket, but if you notice an astromech socket is a purchaseable attachment that can be added to a hard point.