I've seen a couple threads about incorporating the X Wing Miniature game as a substitute for starfighter battles, however none of them really address what I want.

My goal is to have a character conversion utility that basically allows you to port an RPG Character into an X Wing pilot. Such a tool would look at everything from their skills, talents, etc.

For example:

Every 2 green dice in Pilot (Space) equals +1 Pilot Skill in X Wing

Every 1 yellow die in Pilot (Space) also equals +1 Pilot Skill in X Wing.

Skills such as Astrogation, Mechanics, Computers, Discipline, Perception, Vigilance, Gunnery, etc, would all affect any number of things, from what ship could be piloted, to what actions could be taken, to available EPT slots, droids, sensors, etc.

My intent is to also do a similar conversion for the players for Armada. My goal is to have multi-scale encounters going on, all of which the heroes can partake in.

For example, one player might be leading an x wing squadron (and thus control the small ships in X Wing) that is protecting a Capital Ship(s), the battle for which is playing out on a nearby table of Armada by another player. Meanwhile, the YT-1300 attached to the X Wing squadron is trying to land on the ISD so a different group of heroes can board the ISD and make their way to the <plot device room>.

I confess I have little experience with X-wing, but how would you balance the encounter? or would you not? What would keep the player from getting blown out of the sky on a bad roll? I know the RPG system isn't exactly "safe" but at least the GM can pull punches (like granting a boost instead of activating linked or what have you)...

Don't bother. Seriously, there is not going to be any good way to do it. There is FAR FAR too much detail in the RPG characters to even remotely do the conversion justly.

You might as well be trying to convert a movie into ASCII for all the good it will do.

Don't forget Imperial Assault

My intent is to also do a similar conversion for the players for Armada. My goal is to have multi-scale encounters going on, all of which the heroes can partake in.

For example, one player might be leading an x wing squadron (and thus control the small ships in X Wing) that is protecting a Capital Ship(s), the battle for which is playing out on a nearby table of Armada by another player. Meanwhile, the YT-1300 attached to the X Wing squadron is trying to land on the ISD so a different group of heroes can board the ISD and make their way to the <plot device room>.

Sounds... complicated, to say the least. Like I assume you would be the opposing player to your players. So that means you're keeping track of 3 different games, at once, when it can be hard enough dealing with a split party in a single game. And then it's just sort of weird that you've got one freighter/X-Wing squad/whatever being controlled by one player in X-Wing, because that means they either don't exist on the Armada field, or they're just an independent thing altogether in Armada that the player playing Armada can't touch. And what happens when a player wants to move between games? When do you determine when a player switches between Armada or X-Wing?

And doing conversions, is going to be a mess. Like nevermind skills and characteristics. What about talents? What about Force Powers like Battle Meditation?

I can definitely see the desire to mix games. They're all incredibly fun. But, it doesn't really work. There really isn't a way to just say "treat X like Y" for 30 different things and be done with it.

Easiest way to mix the games. Put the minis on the table to show relative positions. Games are now mixed together. Have fun.

Don't bother. Seriously, there is not going to be any good way to do it. There is FAR FAR too much detail in the RPG characters to even remotely do the conversion justly.

You might as well be trying to convert a movie into ASCII for all the good it will do.

And it will slow your game down to a crawl. Hell, a 150 point battle will take all night - I'd much rather be interacting with people than plotting and planning moves. Also, it'll leave members of the party doing - well, nothing. "Oh, my turn to shoot? Yippie."

This is a terrible idea. Avoid at all costs!

Easiest way to mix the games. Put the minis on the table to show relative positions. Games are now mixed together. Have fun.

I agree with Kallabecca. Use the minis to show relative positions and as narrative set pieces rather than actually converting the game rules from one to another. You'll save yourself a headache and time that you could be spent playing either game.

Plus, the RPG has a far better cinematic feel than Xwing does. Using the models you can make yourself a neat little mini movie

The same with Imperial Assault. Great set pieces to show relative position and narrative. Especially with the customizable maps.

I like the vision and enthusiasm of the OP. I wish you good luck, I envy you the spare time you must have to do all the planning and the playing, this is a massive venture!

Mostly I agree with these others, but I say go for it, try it out. See where it leads you and your players, and come back and tell us all about it I'll never get enough time, or players, or space in my apartment for a game of that size

I tried to... it came down to use the miniatures with the rpg rules

Unless you already play X-Wing

I tried to do a conversion to X-wing, it was our second session (second time we played an RPG) and it looked good. The first time we tried to play as intended bur it finished up being:

A) i bring closer

B) i aim and shoot

C) i repair

A) i bring closer

B) i aim and shoot

C) i repair

using x-wing, we used an x-wing as the enemy (PS6) aganist the team in a YT1300

the pilot had a Pilot Skill of Agility+pilot (it was too much to the sistem i think) and could decide the maeuver and perform boost (EotE piloting roll aganist dices depending of the maneuver decided)

the gunner could make a gunnery roll to put a target lock and could shoot

the mechanic could repair shields or hull with a mechaniks roll aganist difficulty 3

when making a green move, gunnery and pilot tests have difficulty: 1 dice. white move: 2 dices. red maneuver: 3 dices and the ship gains a stress token (all tests are upraded)

I don´t remember where i had read all that ideas but it still needs a few changes

hope it helps!

Ok wow, there are a bunch of negative nancies in here! This can absolutely be done.

So here's how I envision it (and this is only one of many possible interpretations).

I'll start with the RPG > X Wing conversion first. The basic idea is that the character is "translated" (or ported) to an X Wing Pilot Card first before you even do anything. In fact, characters can have a bunch of conversion to various ships done before hand. I'd basically give them a separate page of the character sheet with 4 ships (the ones they are likely to pilot) and have them do the conversions before hand.

Basic translation rules would look something like this:

1. Pilot Skill (in x wing) = +1 for each 2 green dice pool in Piloting (Space) and/or Gunnery, and +1 PS for each yellow die pool in Piloting (Space) and/or Gunnery.

2. A series of secondary skills will unlock the actions that can be take in game (though the ship must still have the action icon type).

Astrogation: anyone can pilot class 1 ships (see below), 1 yellow die to pilot class 2 ships, 2 yellow dice to pilot class 3 ships.

Athletics: 1 yellow die to boost (must be in good shape to handle the G's on body.

Computers: 1 yellow die to target lock

Cool: 2 green or 1 yellow die unlocks focus and evade

Discipline: 2 green or 1 yellow die unlocks focus and evade.

Leadership: 2 green or 1 yellow die unlocks focus

Mechanics: 1 yellow die to cloak and uncloak

Perception: 1 yellow die to barrel roll

Vigilance: 2 green or 1 yellow die unlocks evade

Class 1: small ships without hyperdrive (Z95, Tie Ftr, Tie Int, Tie Adv, Tie Bmb)

Class 2: small ships with hyperdrive (A, B, X, Y, E, Hwk, Tie-Ph, Tie-D, M3, Starviper)

Class 3: large ships (YT1300, 2400, Lambda, VT-49, Firespray, IG88)

3. Unlocking upgrade cards (coming up next!) All of the EPT slots will have some sort of pre-reqs in order to take them, based on a combination of attributes, skills and talents.

If you manage to pull it off, please let me know. Having plenty of items for both games, I'd love to see this made to work.

The problem is Talents Do not translate. And that is the biggest problem. It really does not translate well. It also is WAY too slow. then there are the different maneuvers from the RPG. Really the rules are too different and do not translate.

Ok wow, there are a bunch of negative nancies in here! This can absolutely be done.

To paraphrase Jurassic Park: Don't become so preoccupied with whether or not you could that you don't stop to think if you should.

Very slow combats that'll take up all your evening.

Lethal - or at least hard to fudge and balance as a GM.

Most of the cool stuff about a character - the talents - don't translate well at all.

Not much fun for anyone not piloting.

If after all that, you can still make it work, more power to you - but I can't see it as anything other than playing a round of X-Wing when we should be role playing.

Ok wow, there are a bunch of negative nancies in here! This can absolutely be done.

So here's how I envision it (and this is only one of many possible interpretations).

[snip...]

And how do you translate the RPG Pilot's skill into maneuver choices in the game? Frankly I found the turn maneuvers and such very limiting and caused tons of problems for THE PLAYER if they couldn't visualize how the turn would happen in the limited 2D space of the table as opposed to the player DESCRIBING their pilot taking the ship through a crowded area and rolling a skill check to deal with the terrain and the result of the check being used to work how it happened (close calls, minor strikes, etc...). Same problem for the GM when it comes to running the NPCs, especially if he has several ships or groups to control in one fight.

Also, the minis game took hours to play with just 4 ships (2 on each side) vs 15 minutes to maybe a half hour depending on the amount of RPing happening and focus on the parts of the players.

As a guy with a buttload of X-Wing ships myself, there's a part of me that would love to see this happen. But the greater part of me hates to see the fun of an rpg devolve into that 'wargame mentality'... I think that's a big part of what made SAGA so unattractive (to me).

The pieces are certainly beautiful, and would be welcome on any rpg table... as vague representations only, in my opinion. And as Desslok says, the WotC ones can take a lickin' and keep on tickin'!

Ok, I am trying to do the same thing here,
The biggest reason I want to do this is that the players don't like the space combat because they don't understand how their ship moves, what it can do and so on. So I got a bunch of x-wing minis and we sat down to try and figure things out.

1. we figured that we would use the the characteristic of the pilot and their skill trainings to represent pilot skill. So 4 agility and 4 skill training= 8 pilot skill (this is better than luke in an x-wing) we thought that would work well, and a maxed character would at most have a piloting skill of 11 (5 skills and 6 characteristic).
but this is where it stopped being easy to see relationships. We didn't want to multiply the dmg on the cards or any what not like that, but we also didn't want the players to be so easily defeated as a ship is in x-wing.

This is where we have decided to stop using the X-wing rules with a few exceptions.

​2. maneuvering dials, this is really going to help my party realize what they can or cannot do with the ship and helps them to realize where the ships are in relationship with each other. (rig pilot skills that increase speed and maneuverability would allow for increased capabilities of the ship but it would be a red maneuver.

​3. Red maneuvers and strain. We basically decided that the strain in x-wing and system strain in the rig don't align at all. so we are going to keep the x-wing rule of strain and system strain separate. Whenever the ship incurs strain in x-wing, it causes the players (not the ship) 1 strain in the rig representing the harsh G forces placed on the body doing that maneuver. This also prevents anyone on board the ship from taking any actions on their turn until the pilot executes a green maneuver.

4. Range limitations and firing arc on the ships are the same as x-wing. only in range band 1 the attacker gets a boost die and in range 3 the defender give the attacker a setback die.

Other than these things we are using the RPG rules for greater flexibility in gameplay and fun in adventures.

Ah I just realized this was unclear.

We are in the process of testing to see if we ought to keep the pilot skill mechanic (in x-wing it means the higher your skill the later you move but the sooner you shoot, It is its own kind of initiative which could be done away with by the simple turns and rolling of cool or initiative. So we are still testing to see which plays better. We are leaning toward keeping this system because my players don't like the traditional initiative when the only the pilot really matters in space. They all just prefer to act in the same slot in space to make things easier)

I'll let you guys know how it goes.

The next session will involve players defending a corellian corvette as it escapes from raxis prime. So we'll see how it all works using the proper initiative system since the party will be divided among the space craft.

Ok wow, there are a bunch of negative nancies in here! This can absolutely be done.

Yeah, ignore them. One thing I've learned about the FF forums Is that there are so many fanboy apologists that if FF had done the "Box of bull" thing that the Cards Against Humanity people did, we'd be reading about how brilliant the color and texture ratio is and how if you're not using the Smell Modifiers Chart, you're not playing it right.

Ah I just realized this was unclear.

We are in the process of testing to see if we ought to keep the pilot skill mechanic (in x-wing it means the higher your skill the later you move but the sooner you shoot, It is its own kind of initiative which could be done away with by the simple turns and rolling of cool or initiative. So we are still testing to see which plays better. We are leaning toward keeping this system because my players don't like the traditional initiative when the only the pilot really matters in space. They all just prefer to act in the same slot in space to make things easier)

I'll let you guys know how it goes.

The next session will involve players defending a corellian corvette as it escapes from raxis prime. So we'll see how it all works using the proper initiative system since the party will be divided among the space craft.

The roleplaying games initiative allows for better teamwork. Which is a huge improvement over other initiative systems.

Ah I just realized this was unclear.

We are in the process of testing to see if we ought to keep the pilot skill mechanic (in x-wing it means the higher your skill the later you move but the sooner you shoot, It is its own kind of initiative which could be done away with by the simple turns and rolling of cool or initiative. So we are still testing to see which plays better. We are leaning toward keeping this system because my players don't like the traditional initiative when the only the pilot really matters in space. They all just prefer to act in the same slot in space to make things easier)

I'll let you guys know how it goes.

The next session will involve players defending a corellian corvette as it escapes from raxis prime. So we'll see how it all works using the proper initiative system since the party will be divided among the space craft.

The roleplaying games initiative allows for better teamwork. Which is a huge improvement over other initiative systems.

I feel you are right, but I need my players to come to the same conclusion. I'm thinking I could still use the same type of "initiative" idea from the x-wing series where the last person in initiative moves first but fires last and then the players could still influence the character slots with RPG skills and let other players act first if they need to etc..

So explain to your players that by having the slots as in edge they can plan and coordinate their actions to make them more effective. Team work wins.