I think it'd bug me more if I couldn't Google pretty much anything Star Wars. YT-2400 deck plans? Check. Nal Hutta landscapes? Got it. Ewok thongs? Thankfully not.

Wait; ewoks in thongs, or thongs made from ewoks?

I think it'd bug me more if I couldn't Google pretty much anything Star Wars. YT-2400 deck plans? Check. Nal Hutta landscapes? Got it. Ewok thongs? Thankfully not.

Wait; ewoks in thongs, or thongs made from ewoks?

Yes.

Probably calling them Careers gets a lot of people off on the wrong foot. I don't know a best term for it, but Career is not exactly what we are looking for. I do love that essentially this is a classless system, though, buyer beware! Looking at you Jack and all of your Trades!

And why oh why did you have to make Ewoks sing the thong song? *shudder*

And why oh why did you have to make Ewoks sing the thong song? *shudder*

Shall I show you a twerking Gamorrean?

And why oh why did you have to make Ewoks sing the thong song? *shudder*

Shall I show you a twerking Gamorrean?

Better that than a Burlesque show starring Hutts.

And why oh why did you have to make Ewoks sing the thong song? *shudder*

Shall I show you a twerking Gamorrean?

Better that than a Burlesque show starring Hutts.

That's better than a Kardashian pool party, though!

And why oh why did you have to make Ewoks sing the thong song? *shudder*

Shall I show you a twerking Gamorrean?

Better that than a Burlesque show starring Hutts.

Ready the eyebleach...

I would have liked a section early on in the books explaining just how important the narrative is in this system for balance (I'm looking at you Auto-Fire and Move Power). Everyone eventually figured it out, but I feel it generates s lot of confusion at first. It's also quite a different GMing style, one that I love, but again not explicitly said.

Probably calling them Careers gets a lot of people off on the wrong foot. I don't know a best term for it, but Career is not exactly what we are looking for. I do love that essentially this is a classless system, though, buyer beware! Looking at you Jack and all of your Trades!

I'm guessing someone at the design table said "a job is for today, maybe for tomorrow, but a career is for life. You go to school to learn to do something for years, rather than flip burgers each summer, and on." That's probably all it took, and it stuck. You only have one Career, and it shapes your outlook on things; it's what your character wants to do. Other stuff, they pick up over a week, because they realize there's more to life than their job. You might be a medic who is really good at shooting people, playing cards, or flying a ship, but a medic is what you want to do, and what you hopefully will be doing, at least half the time, while the rest just keeps you alive from day to day, or fills a gap you didn't think of. I probably read into it more than necessary, but oh well.

I think my gripe is more with the dice, and the way the whole system tries to teach me how it works, but I haven't wrapped my d20 mind around the mechanic yet, so it confuses me, and sometimes the book gives little examples, but then I have to go look it up elsewhere for all the rest of the example (Talents, for instance). I'm still not too sure how sneaking might work, with you, and a varying difficulty, and the stormtroopers, and a varying difficulty, rather than just an opposed Stealth vs Perception check, but I'll give that it's as much my fault, at least. Overall, it looks like a good, stable system, if I can learn it well enough to show others, who then want to play it, with these weird dice, and too little knowledge of how to power-game; oh, what a shame.

I think my gripe is more with the dice, and the way the whole system tries to teach me how it works, but I haven't wrapped my d20 mind around the mechanic yet, so it confuses me, and sometimes the book gives little examples, but then I have to go look it up elsewhere for all the rest of the example (Talents, for instance).

SkillMonkey is invaluable:

http://www.madadventurers.com/category/field-recordings/skill-monkey/

I dislike how boring most of the talents are, particularly the "Remove a Setback die" ones, and particularly the Ranked "Remove a Setback die per rank" ones. Why am I having to depend on the GM to make things more difficult when I could have taken a talent that just gives me boost dice or a new ability? Why, in fact, would I want to take a +2 wounds talent when I could take a "gain the ability to terrify someone!" talent instead? The talent trees have been some of the most boring stuff to me in the game, because so many of them are variations on "add or subtract a die," and I would rather that kind of thing be left to the skills rather than talents.

Actually, I had already thought about it, and discussing with my friends we came up with the idea that setback/advantage talents should be binary:

Remove a setback die from XXX checks per rank in YYY. If there are no setback dice and you still have unasigned ranks of YYY, then use these ranks to add advantage dice to the check.

Or some variation of that. This would reduce the amount of talents focused on any particular skill and make the remaining ones more juicy to purchase (instead of just purchasing the ones which are on your way to the crack talent).

I dislike how boring most of the talents are, particularly the "Remove a Setback die" ones, and particularly the Ranked "Remove a Setback die per rank" ones. Why am I having to depend on the GM to make things more difficult when I could have taken a talent that just gives me boost dice or a new ability?

Because the result is not the same. I actually really like these Talents because they appeal to the semi-math geek in me while also serving a critical narrative role. It's about the spread of the odds, but also how the ability of the PC is explained.

Adding setback or boost increases the odds of "crazy". It's certainly possible for all the negative or positive dice to come up blank, while the other comes up loaded. Setback talents are a way to mitigate the odds of extreme negative results without necessarily increasing the odds of extreme positive results. Narratively, the person is not more skilled (that's the purview of proficiency dice), but they are more competent in handling adverse conditions.

If you replace "setback talents" to add boost dice, all you're doing is increasing the odds of superb results on the positive side. But I think this wouldn't really play to the character's situation and actual ability. If they have only two ranks in a skill, they shouldn't get the kind of result one might get with five ranks of the skill just because it wasn't raining out.

Granted it is a feature of the game that took a while to get used to, but it's one of my favourite aspects, and as a GM I'm happy to make those talents worthwhile.

I dislike how boring most of the talents are, particularly the "Remove a Setback die" ones, and particularly the Ranked "Remove a Setback die per rank" ones. Why am I having to depend on the GM to make things more difficult when I could have taken a talent that just gives me boost dice or a new ability?

Because the result is not the same. I actually really like these Talents because they appeal to the semi-math geek in me while also serving a critical narrative role. It's about the spread of the odds, but also how the ability of the PC is explained.

Adding setback or boost increases the odds of "crazy". It's certainly possible for all the negative or positive dice to come up blank, while the other comes up loaded. Setback talents are a way to mitigate the odds of extreme negative results without necessarily increasing the odds of extreme positive results. Narratively, the person is not more skilled (that's the purview of proficiency dice), but they are more competent in handling adverse conditions.

If you replace "setback talents" to add boost dice, all you're doing is increasing the odds of superb results on the positive side. But I think this wouldn't really play to the character's situation and actual ability. If they have only two ranks in a skill, they shouldn't get the kind of result one might get with five ranks of the skill just because it wasn't raining out.

Granted it is a feature of the game that took a while to get used to, but it's one of my favourite aspects, and as a GM I'm happy to make those talents worthwhile.

I get that they're mathematically sound; they're just narratively boring in comparison to a talent offering a special ability. It's an example of good game design that doesn't really grab at the player. The big issue is that it feels boring in comparison to other talents, and causes a lot of the specializations to feel "samey" due to talent overlap and very few unique talents.

The guy who has been Astrogating for ten years might not be any better at day to day things than the guy who has been Astrogating for two years (both may be skill level two and Int 3) but when there's a complication [black die], the guy who has been astrogating for two years has no clue what to do [he has to roll the black die], while the guy who has been astrogating for ten years knows what to do from the last time this happened [even if he failed then], and does not have to roll the black die.

In game terms the experienced pro has 'Galaxy Mapper' and the new guy does not.

I dislike how boring most of the talents are, particularly the "Remove a Setback die" ones, and particularly the Ranked "Remove a Setback die per rank" ones. Why am I having to depend on the GM to make things more difficult when I could have taken a talent that just gives me boost dice or a new ability?

Because the result is not the same. I actually really like these Talents because they appeal to the semi-math geek in me while also serving a critical narrative role. It's about the spread of the odds, but also how the ability of the PC is explained.

Adding setback or boost increases the odds of "crazy". It's certainly possible for all the negative or positive dice to come up blank, while the other comes up loaded. Setback talents are a way to mitigate the odds of extreme negative results without necessarily increasing the odds of extreme positive results. Narratively, the person is not more skilled (that's the purview of proficiency dice), but they are more competent in handling adverse conditions.

If you replace "setback talents" to add boost dice, all you're doing is increasing the odds of superb results on the positive side. But I think this wouldn't really play to the character's situation and actual ability. If they have only two ranks in a skill, they shouldn't get the kind of result one might get with five ranks of the skill just because it wasn't raining out.

Granted it is a feature of the game that took a while to get used to, but it's one of my favourite aspects, and as a GM I'm happy to make those talents worthwhile.

I get that they're mathematically sound; they're just narratively boring in comparison to a talent offering a special ability. It's an example of good game design that doesn't really grab at the player. The big issue is that it feels boring in comparison to other talents, and causes a lot of the specializations to feel "samey" due to talent overlap and very few unique talents.

The remove setback talents are great, I just hate seeing entire trees that are mostly "remove setback when using skill 'X'". I'm looking at you, Beast Rider.

Some of those talent slots could have been used for more interesting abilities.

And yet, at the same time, my Seeker / Pathfinder that takes Beast Rider is going to be loving those talents. So many of these follow the Chinese thought path of "it might be good / bad" and that perspective is everything.

I dislike how boring most of the talents are, particularly the "Remove a Setback die" ones, and particularly the Ranked "Remove a Setback die per rank" ones. Why am I having to depend on the GM to make things more difficult when I could have taken a talent that just gives me boost dice or a new ability?

Because the result is not the same. I actually really like these Talents because they appeal to the semi-math geek in me while also serving a critical narrative role. It's about the spread of the odds, but also how the ability of the PC is explained.

Adding setback or boost increases the odds of "crazy". It's certainly possible for all the negative or positive dice to come up blank, while the other comes up loaded. Setback talents are a way to mitigate the odds of extreme negative results without necessarily increasing the odds of extreme positive results. Narratively, the person is not more skilled (that's the purview of proficiency dice), but they are more competent in handling adverse conditions.

If you replace "setback talents" to add boost dice, all you're doing is increasing the odds of superb results on the positive side. But I think this wouldn't really play to the character's situation and actual ability. If they have only two ranks in a skill, they shouldn't get the kind of result one might get with five ranks of the skill just because it wasn't raining out.

Granted it is a feature of the game that took a while to get used to, but it's one of my favourite aspects, and as a GM I'm happy to make those talents worthwhile.

I get that they're mathematically sound; they're just narratively boring in comparison to a talent offering a special ability. It's an example of good game design that doesn't really grab at the player. The big issue is that it feels boring in comparison to other talents, and causes a lot of the specializations to feel "samey" due to talent overlap and very few unique talents.

I felt the same way until I realized how fun it is for a player to say, "No, take those Setback dice back!". They're empowered and in their focus, more specialized. Yes, it hinges on the GM to give them, and not just for the sake of taking them away. That's the case with everything in the game; the GM making the call when to add/change what. Boost and Setback dice should, IMO, be common, and for everyone. Not arbitrarily added, of course. When they're more of a norm, the characters with the ability to remove them shine that much more.

See that's the issue. A GM is basically required to be giving it setback dice for as many rolls as possible. If the GM only does this in response to the talents being taken, it kind of takes away the point of them being an actual advancement.

Basically, the talents that give a new special ability allow a player to actively declare something. The remove a setback talents require the GM to remember to give the player the chance to declare that. Yes, it's fun for them to declare "take those setback docs back!" but that depends entirely on the GM. The distinction between setback dice and difficulty dice is also pretty muddled (I know the general idea is that difficulty is how hard the task is outside of context and setback is how hard context makes a task, but this gets contradicted in rules examples in the core book and adventures and its frankly hard to set a firm line between the task itself and its context) so it's easy for a GM to mostly forego setback dice, especially if they're used to running games that have only one way to add to difficulty. So the setback dice talents, more than any other, are the most situational and the most demanding of the GM. I also maintain that the "increase strain/wound threshold" ones are mostly boring. If I had to come up with a solution, it would be something like combining those talents with more interesting ones, or for awarding them automatically for every 3 or 4 talents purchased in a tree.

As a GM, I don't think about PC remove talents when creating a check. I create the check with all the difficulties and what not, then I turn to the player to remove setback dice. This allows me to show setback dice and the reasons for them, then allows the players to remove them for talents, or keep them in because the talent wouldn't remove it. (Example: Brace does nothing to remove setback for Darkness or Blinded.)

Flipping destiny points shouldn't be like reaching over to the popcorn (or miniature reese's cup) bowl and grabbing a handful every time you stop taling, but they should certainly be used as often as possible to add tension and drama to a scene. As a player, you shouldn't be expecting to remove a setback dice in every action just because you have a talent.

I bet you wouldn't complain about your "Astonishing Leap" not having ten large crevices to hurtle over in a D&D Session... but you were glad you had it when you had to conquer the one that was in the party's path during the month long campaign. It allows for situational greatness to come into play. Not everyday greatness. As you get better and better (assuming you can remember all of them) you will become greater at more and more situational greatness which translates into part of your everyday greatness. Along with some upgrades to some characteristics and other things.

Not every weapon has a line drawing. I don't care how cool the description or statblock for a weapon is, if I can't see that it's a Cool Gun then why bother taking it?

See that's the issue. A GM is basically required to be giving it setback dice for as many rolls as possible. If the GM only does this in response to the talents being taken, it kind of takes away the point of them being an actual advancement.

That's kind of hyperbolic. I throw in setback when it makes sense, not just because I know a PC has setback removal...okay, that's not true, I did it *once* to demonstrate to the player, and his eyes lit up. But otherwise, it's only when necessary...and it's usually necessary.

The art is great, but especially for the ships, I'd like a title to show which is which. It's annoying to have to dig through the fluff paragraphs for neighboring pages trying to guess which picture is supposed to be which.

If a player has two or more ranks in a talent that removes two or more setbacks to the same skill I will give them a boost if there are no setbacks in that roll since I try and give setbacks for things that I mean to do, but prefer players to get use out of talents that they spend multiple ranks in.

I am considering calling improved parry Ripost, basic reflect deflect, and improved reflect just reflect