Some background and context:

I just started running a game using a slightly modified version of the EotE rules set in the Firefly 'Verse (changes are primarily "cosmetic" to the setting, such as adjusting available gear and changing Knowledge names).

Because of the setting and the characters created, this will not be a combat-heavy campaign. I expect as we get going, there will be more running away and heists than knock-down, drag-out fights. Yesterday's session featured a lot of die-rolling, but the only actual fight was a brief fistfight (and even that ended in the two PCs involved stealing some goods and running away, leaving the opposition largely intact).

My players and I are all very experienced gamers (15-30 years of experience all around). Since 2002, we've rotated between three campaigns (two D&D, and one Star Wars) all using various iterations of the WotC d20 "game engine."

I originally bought EotE thinking I would convert my Star Wars game, but then decided I wanted a new setting. One of the D&D GMs ended his game and plans to start a straight Star Wars campaign using EotE when it's his turn. The other D&D GM isn't clear on if she will continue, but I believe if she does, she's planning to convert to 5E. (I say all this to be clear that we're not a group of combat monsters, and we're excited to move away from protracted fights that require maps and minis and generally end when one side has no hit points left).

So here's the problem:

At the end of the session yesterday, I asked what people thought of the system. Everybody "gets" the basics, even though this was our first time rolling, but one player said "I feel like we failed a lot. I feel like everything cancelled out a lot of the time." The other players (and I) agreed that surprisingly often, there seemed to be a lot of dice rolled, amounting to nothing (or perhaps a single Advantage or Threat).

So... What am I doing wrong? What am I missing? Is is it just that in EotE you DO fail more often than we're used to?

The players did a pretty good job of pooling their resources to support one another (many rolls were made with a Boost die from someone assisting), but I do think the Destiny Pool may have been a problem. They rolled 3 Dark, 1 Light, and the 1 Light got used fairly early. There were few good opportunities that didn't feel like just heaping misery on them, so the Destiny Pool was largely stagnant, and that was on me.

But how big a difference would that have made?

Some related questions:

The core rulebook is great about giving clear direction on how to spend Threat, Advantage, Triumph, and Despair in combat, but what about OUT of combat? How do you apply them to, say, a Perception check or a Knowledge check?

Also, if your roll comes down to a a Triumph and a Failure, I know that the Failure cancels out the Success "part" of the Triumph, but is the remaining part enough to succeed, or does it basically become just an Advantage?

I may have more questions after some folks respond... Thank you in advance for your time and feedback!

What kinds of difficulties were you presenting them.

Combat checks aside, I usually stick to easy or average. Only about 1-in-5 checks garners a hard difficulty. And only 1 per adventure arc will they see formidable or harder.

During character creation, how did they spend their starting XP? The book suggests spending most of their initial XP on characteristics, and I tend to agree. The next time you dole out XP, suggest to them that they put a few ranks in skills they might have struggled with.

I would add D&D is easier to Min/Max a character. EotE is story focused rather than math focused, which means people who try to Min/Max have a tougher time with it.

They need to understand the statistical model upon which the game is based. Until one hits 4 positive dice, average checks are still mostly a crap shoot. Even then, it's only about a 70-80% chance of success.

Failure is just much more a part of this system than d20 and the statistical model upon which it's based is much more complex with multiple axes of effect. Go through the forums and look for probability-based posts and you'll see some interesting numerical analysis. It's a very different model from d20.

You're not doing anything wrong. Failures are such an integral part of this system that it's strongly suggested that anything that could potentially stop the party from accomplishing their goal shouldn't even be rolled. Everything should fail forward and failures should merely increase the time taken or reduce the effectiveness of what's being attempted.

Yeah, you’ve got to look at “failure” in a different way.

One way to think of it is as another way not to build a light bulb.

But you’ve also got to set up the situations correctly. If they’re trying to open a door, don’t make it a flat success/failure thing, instead make it a time-based thing — One way or the other, they WILL get through that door, the question is can they get it unlocked before the security guard hits this area on his rounds?

Success would mean yes, and additional success could mean that they get through it even faster.

Failure would mean that something happens — maybe the security guard sees them and sets off the alarm, or at least moves forward to investigate. From there, what do they do? Do they take out the security guard? Do they try to run and hide around the corner when he gets too close? Maybe the door unexpectedly opens from the inside as someone is coming out? Maybe the door opens unexpectedly and they are mistaken for the Peetza The Hutt delivery people?

The dice in this game give you two axes of narration — Success/Failure and Advantage/Threat and it takes a while to get used to that. And then they have another level of monkey-wrench that they can throw into the works, in the form of Triumph/Despair.

Even after playing this game for a couple of years, I’m still learning how to get better at this part.

I'd need to see PC builds, Difficulty specifics of dice pools, numbers of opponents and or structure of specific tasks to give a specific answer.

In general I think part of it I found as a GM was adjusting to becoming less pass/fail focused, or save for 1/2 focused, and getting more creative with lateral minded results.

What I mean by lateral is how I structure the various skill checks, as an example. The PCs are gaining entry to a facility via a locked/monitored door. The result of the roll is not going to be whether or not they unlock the door as is the case in a lot of linear pass/fail RPGs. Them getting through the door is not the question, the result of the dice pool is going to tell us how well they got through the door, or not. Failure but with Advantages might mean they opened the door, but it tripped an alert, however because there are Advantages it only shows up as a maintenance fault and in all likelihood all they will bump into is an R2 unit sent to troubleshoot and fix it. You then use the concept of that sliding scale to judge the results, don't get me wrong sometimes a fail is a fail but in my example that just means the door was opened but the enemy is enroute and they are pinched for time.

Don't just use the dice or the skill checks in a linear pass/fail way or you are setting yourself up for failure with plot choke points imposed by dice.

Combat as you pointed out provides a bevy of positive things you can do even when you technically 'fail' unless you throw a complete handful of poopay, but that's not typical as the dice are weighted to the positive.

I guess I would council patience and be a little broader in the precise task you are looking for them to accomplish.

I had the same thing my first few sessions, and I had to learn to scale the dice accordingly. The descriptions of difficulty are a bit misleading because they are relative to the "universe as a whole". But an "Average" Coercion check might be really difficult for anyone in a new party to pull off if they have low Willpower and/or no skill ranks.

Look at the PC's pool and base the difficulty off that, depending on story needs. If I want it to be easy, make the difficulty 2 dice smaller; if I want a success with "struggle" (e.g.: threat), then make it 1 less, or on par. Anything more will be frustrating, but can be useful if you want to send the message that the PCs are in over their heads.

So if you have a bunch of new characters and the "face" has a Charm of YGG, you can't really expect him to charm anybody with a resistance higher than P or PP.

One other note: if you lower the number of negative dice, it gives you more room to add in setback dice, or even upgrades. This is great for adding flavour, and very satisfying for the player when their character can suddenly ignore those setback after buying a talent.

I agree with the "open the door" examples above.

Most skill checks (other than combat ones) in the game should probably be made with the "they'll make it one way or another" approach in mind.

The check isn't to see if the PC's manage to complete the task at hand. The check is to see if they manage to complete it in a timely manner (or whatever the situation demands).

So a success with advantages would mean they not only do it fast and quietly, but they actually do it with no effort at all and make it look easy.
A plain success just means they do it in a decent amount of time.
Success with disadvantages means they do it, but something slightly negative happens (like the alarm example above where it's written off as a glitch, but a droid is sent to check it out).
Failure with advantages means it takes longer than they hoped but luckily nobody notices them or a somewhat similar situation to the above one.
A plain Failure means they succed but something bad happens, like the alarm is tripped or someone is monitoring the data traffic at the moment they slice into the computers.
A failure with disadvantages means they are immediately discovered somehow. The door they opened has a pair of stormtroopers guarding it on the inside, or the computer they sliced is actively used by someone who traces them to their location.

Trying to use that instead of just the plain do or do not approach is something I'm trying to do (but constantly falling back in old habits) when GM'ing EotE.

Remind them they are "1st level" which they should be able to understand across most systems. For example, D&D. I've only played D&D 3rd and earlier (most experience earlier) but 1st level characters always had a heck of a time hitting and staying up...even against 1st level monsters.

Since it's become a problem, ensure your next adventure is strong on Simple and Average tasks as already suggested above. It's learning time not excelling at most everything time.

A plain Failure means they succed but something bad happens, like the alarm is tripped or someone is monitoring the data traffic at the moment they slice into the computers.

A failure with disadvantages means they are immediately discovered somehow. The door they opened has a pair of stormtroopers guarding it on the inside, or the computer they sliced is actively used by someone who traces them to their location.

I agreed with everything until this point. You would have to rephrase the task at hand to make this task not be confusing:

Player: "I try to open the locked door using Mechanics". Rolls a simple Failure.

GM: "It opens!...but the alarm goes off"

Player: "Huh? I failed at my open door task but opened the door? The alarm fails due to the Failures? Isn't that a Threat or Despair thingy?"

I suppose you could make some strange task phrasing with bonus conditions such as, "Opening the locked door without triggering the alarm". But, again, confusing. I could imagine a player arguing that task uses Stealth instead? And what about the "locked" part? Is there thus no way to fail at opening a locked door, ever?

I prefer the basics of my tasks to be pretty plain to all - Unlocking the locked door or not. Advantages/Threats and Triumphs/Despairs are where the added details (and fun) come from:

Plain Failure: It remains locked. Nothing extra good or bad happens.

Failure with Threats or Despairs: Remains locked and.....Alarm goes off....Or you broke your lockpick device...Or....

Failure with Advantages or Triumphs: Remains locked.......But you open up a hidden firing port on the door....

Trying to use that instead of just the plain do or do not approach is something I'm trying to do (but constantly falling back in old habits) when GM'ing EotE.

You are falling back into old habits because that is what makes the most logical sense for the Failures and Successes on these dice.

ETA: IMHO!

I do think the Destiny Pool may have been a problem. They rolled 3 Dark, 1 Light, and the 1 Light got used fairly early. There were few good opportunities that didn't feel like just heaping misery on them, so the Destiny Pool was largely stagnant, and that was on me.

But how big a difference would that have made?

You are misunderstanding the Destiny Pool in part. The initial rolling just sets the "out of the gate" amount. As you use a Dark Destiny, it flips over and becomes a Light Destiny available for the players to use. As they use a Light Destiny, it flips over to the Dark Destiny waiting for you to use it. As a GM, you should use these to heighten tension and provide ways of making things more exciting to the players (or more difficult if needed for a superior foe). The players should also be using them frequently...

This can make a big difference in the feeling of the play. Not only that, once players start looking at the Talent trees they are going to feel robbed if you aren't using it fairly frequently so that it can fuel some of their more heroic aspects.

If you want to take a walk down the zany lane and see how to use all of the dice in non-combat situations, tune in to a few episodes of One Shot: Campaign ... and buckle your seatbelt for improv!

I do think the Destiny Pool may have been a problem. They rolled 3 Dark, 1 Light, and the 1 Light got used fairly early. There were few good opportunities that didn't feel like just heaping misery on them, so the Destiny Pool was largely stagnant, and that was on me.

But how big a difference would that have made?

You are misunderstanding the Destiny Pool in part. The initial rolling just sets the "out of the gate" amount. As you use a Dark Destiny, it flips over and becomes a Light Destiny available for the players to use. As they use a Light Destiny, it flips over to the Dark Destiny waiting for you to use it. As a GM, you should use these to heighten tension and provide ways of making things more exciting to the players (or more difficult if needed for a superior foe). The players should also be using them frequently...

This can make a big difference in the feeling of the play. Not only that, once players start looking at the Talent trees they are going to feel robbed if you aren't using it fairly frequently so that it can fuel some of their more heroic aspects.

If you want to take a walk down the zany lane and see how to use all of the dice in non-combat situations, tune in to a few episodes of One Shot: Campaign ... and buckle your seatbelt for improv!

I understand exactly how the Destiny Pool works. The PCs "rolled poorly" can gave me 3 Dark points, and themselves only 1 Light point - which was used fairly quickly. I "locked" the pool unintentionally, in part because the rolls didn't seem to merit making them more difficult.

I probably should have arbitrarily flipped half of them back over, but that didn't occur to me until after the session was over.

What kinds of difficulties were you presenting them.

Combat checks aside, I usually stick to easy or average. Only about 1-in-5 checks garners a hard difficulty. And only 1 per adventure arc will they see formidable or harder.

During character creation, how did they spend their starting XP? The book suggests spending most of their initial XP on characteristics, and I tend to agree. The next time you dole out XP, suggest to them that they put a few ranks in skills they might have struggled with.

Most rolls had a difficulty of 2. In fact, midway through the session, I said "Unless I say otherwise, assume you're adding two purple." That's average, no? Is that too much?

I used Setback dice fairly liberally on top of that, but also Boost dice equally (if not more) liberally.

Although the characters are not maximized like D&D, they all have their areas of expertise, so most rolls probably looked something like this: GGYPP (plus/minus a Boost or Setback).

I trotted out some red dice only twice -- both near the end of the session. In one case, a player trying to diagnose a problem had failed repeatedly, so I upgraded the difficulty of his chances moving forward (he actually succeeded anyway), and the other was an opposed skill check that was supposed to be difficult). In both cases, the red dice had the desired effect of making the PCs realize this was a serious situation.

The frustration seemed to be that they were rolling large numbers of dice and getting very little payoff -- positive OR negative -- for it.

They need to understand the statistical model upon which the game is based. Until one hits 4 positive dice, average checks are still mostly a crap shoot. Even then, it's only about a 70-80% chance of success.

Failure is just much more a part of this system than d20 and the statistical model upon which it's based is much more complex with multiple axes of effect. Go through the forums and look for probability-based posts and you'll see some interesting numerical analysis. It's a very different model from d20.

You're not doing anything wrong. Failures are such an integral part of this system that it's strongly suggested that anything that could potentially stop the party from accomplishing their goal shouldn't even be rolled. Everything should fail forward and failures should merely increase the time taken or reduce the effectiveness of what's being attempted.

It's good to know that the game is more geared toward failure (which I don't mind - just takes some getting used to).

I have a little difficulty getting my head around the "new definition" of failure that a few people have suggested. I understand and appreciate that if something MUST happen to move the story forward, it shouldn't hinge on a die roll (which is true of any RPG) but I agree with the poster further down who says that giving the players a success, even one with bad circumstances, when they fail, seems off (and seems like it should be a success with threat).

Overall, I found an easier time adjudicating threats on successes than advantages on failures (with respect to non-combat rolls). For example, at one point, the ship ran out of fuel due to a hull breach. Two players went out to collect chunks of frozen (and volatile) fuel while the other two worked on a way to get the fuel reprocessed and back in the engine. Both pairs ultimately had successes with threats, so I judged that the first group was able to collect fuel-- but not as much as they wanted. And the second rigged up a system that was able to safely load half the fuel in, but which risked exploding after that point.

But what do you do in a reverse situation (failure with advantage), or something else, like a failed Knowledge check? For example, one of the characters has a lot of Knowledge skills (for Firefly fans, he's sort of got elements of both Simon Tam and Shepherd Book). He tried to identify a semi-obscure spaceship. He failed miserably, but with, like, 4 advantage. I felt like I should do something for him, but "Well, you have no idea what kind of ship it is, but you're so relaxed thinking about it that you recover 4 fatigue" seems silly.

Unfortunately, the biggest alternative that I could see was allowing a bonus on a subsequent roll... but that just suggests that the character should be allowed additional rolls, which doesn't seem fair (and which could slow the game down if it happens too much).

I have to admit, playing the beginner games, I have run up against this similar issue several times. It has seemed surprisingly frequent to come out with no successes and a couple of advantage or threat. In combat it's a little more boring but when making other types of rolls these can be opportunities in disguise. They fail to find the data they were looking for on the computer but they come across plans for a new class of star destroyer, these could be valuable to their rebel allies.

I think flipping the destiny points can help too, those chances to upgrade/downgrade dice pools can make a noticable difference.

I understand exactly how the Destiny Pool works. The PCs "rolled poorly" can gave me 3 Dark points, and themselves only 1 Light point - which was used fairly quickly. I "locked" the pool unintentionally, in part because the rolls didn't seem to merit making them more difficult.

I probably should have arbitrarily flipped half of them back over, but that didn't occur to me until after the session was over.

You know, I just realized that we have recently had some games where our three light-side paragons have all rolled white pips at the beginning of the session, so the GM didn’t have any dark-side pips to play with.

I’m starting to think that maybe the process should be changed slightly.

When you roll, you get whatever you rolled plus one pip of the opposite color. So, the destiny pool can never be 100% black or white at the start of the game, there will always be at least one white pip for every player (and the GM) plus at least one black pip for every player (and the GM).

That would mean you need to have more pips to put out on the table, but at least no one would ever have a situation where they start off the game with all the pips (or virtually all the pips) one color, and then the destiny pool gets locked when the other side never spends any.

I "locked" the pool unintentionally, in part because the rolls didn't seem to merit making them more difficult.

I probably should have arbitrarily flipped half of them back over, but that didn't occur to me until after the session was over.

I get that. I've been there also. The party was rolling horribly (couldn't get a net success on YYGBB vs PP), so the destiny pool sat there, all black*. I didn't want to pile on.

I didn't even remember this until after the session was over, but destiny points can be used for things other than upgrading die rolls. Just like a player can flip one from light to dark for "Oh, hey! There's a second set of bridge controls just behind this box!" you as a GM can use them for similar things. Just keep them minor when the players are doing poorly, that way you can give your players their light destiny back without undue increases in the opposing rolls.

* - Go NZ! One day, my US team will score a 2nd try against you guys!

I had the same thing my first few sessions, and I had to learn to scale the dice accordingly. The descriptions of difficulty are a bit misleading because they are relative to the "universe as a whole". But an "Average" Coercion check might be really difficult for anyone in a new party to pull off if they have low Willpower and/or no skill ranks.

Look at the PC's pool and base the difficulty off that, depending on story needs. If I want it to be easy, make the difficulty 2 dice smaller; if I want a success with "struggle" (e.g.: threat), then make it 1 less, or on par. Anything more will be frustrating, but can be useful if you want to send the message that the PCs are in over their heads.

So if you have a bunch of new characters and the "face" has a Charm of YGG, you can't really expect him to charm anybody with a resistance higher than P or PP.

One other note: if you lower the number of negative dice, it gives you more room to add in setback dice, or even upgrades. This is great for adding flavour, and very satisfying for the player when their character can suddenly ignore those setback after buying a talent.

In your experience, what's a reasonable opposition to things like GGY, GYY, GGGY, and even YYY? Those are levels for the "signature" skills of most of the group. I thought PP was reasonable (up to PPP once or twice), but now I'm second guessing myself.

PP-PPP is reasonable, but it's still close.

Being able to add in some Boost and negate some Setback really swing it into the players' favor at those levels.

But what do you do in a reverse situation (failure with advantage), or something else, like a failed Knowledge check? For example, one of the characters has a lot of Knowledge skills (for Firefly fans, he's sort of got elements of both Simon Tam and Shepherd Book). He tried to identify a semi-obscure spaceship. He failed miserably, but with, like, 4 advantage. I felt like I should do something for him, but "Well, you have no idea what kind of ship it is, but you're so relaxed thinking about it that you recover 4 fatigue" seems silly.

I sometimes need to stretch the boundaries of what's important to a particular roll. I would assume identification of the ship model is important to the plot, something that will help the party make connections. So I would try to bring in some other detail they might not be privy to, e.g.: "you aren't sure what kind of ship, but it looks like it has a serious armour upgrade". Or maybe "you notice something subtle about the paint job and when you look at camera footage you notice some UV paint creating this insignia..."...and hand over the insignia clue.

If the roll is not important, but the player just "wanted to know", then I'd either give them the info depending on their native skill level, or simply skip the normal advantage rewards.

But what do you do in a reverse situation (failure with advantage), or something else, like a failed Knowledge check? For example, one of the characters has a lot of Knowledge skills (for Firefly fans, he's sort of got elements of both Simon Tam and Shepherd Book). He tried to identify a semi-obscure spaceship. He failed miserably, but with, like, 4 advantage. I felt like I should do something for him, but "Well, you have no idea what kind of ship it is, but you're so relaxed thinking about it that you recover 4 fatigue" seems silly.

What I think I would be inclined to do is to say that he doesn’t know what that specific ship is, but he recognizes some of the hallmarks, so like he knows what engine type it has, he might know what general category of ship it is and who the shipbuilder is (i.e., CEC versus Nubian or Ubrikkian), and maybe some idea of what types of weapons loadouts they typically do, etc….

In that regard, I like to think of it kind of like seeing a car on the road that you don’t quite recognize. You can see the emblem on the hood, and the overall shape looks familiar, but maybe you’ve never before seen a four-door Ferrari SUV?

I had the same thing my first few sessions, and I had to learn to scale the dice accordingly. The descriptions of difficulty are a bit misleading because they are relative to the "universe as a whole". But an "Average" Coercion check might be really difficult for anyone in a new party to pull off if they have low Willpower and/or no skill ranks.

Look at the PC's pool and base the difficulty off that, depending on story needs. If I want it to be easy, make the difficulty 2 dice smaller; if I want a success with "struggle" (e.g.: threat), then make it 1 less, or on par. Anything more will be frustrating, but can be useful if you want to send the message that the PCs are in over their heads.

So if you have a bunch of new characters and the "face" has a Charm of YGG, you can't really expect him to charm anybody with a resistance higher than P or PP.

One other note: if you lower the number of negative dice, it gives you more room to add in setback dice, or even upgrades. This is great for adding flavour, and very satisfying for the player when their character can suddenly ignore those setback after buying a talent.

In your experience, what's a reasonable opposition to things like GGY, GYY, GGGY, and even YYY? Those are levels for the "signature" skills of most of the group. I thought PP was reasonable (up to PPP once or twice), but now I'm second guessing myself.

I think PP can be reasonable, it depends what you want to accomplish, but it gives you little room for setback. I'm not sure about PPP, remember it takes 1 net success to succeed. PPP vs GGG is going to fail more than succeed. If it succeeds it will likely be with threat, and if it fails it will likely be with advantage. The yellow dice do increase the odds of success, but not as much as simply adding another green die. The most important part of the yellow dice is that it pushes the result towards "success with advantage" or "failure with a ton of advantage + triumph".

As an example, I'd never advocate a player start Two Weapon Combat with two pistols until they have at least YYGG. At medium range that's PP for range, +1 for Two Weapon Combat. If you have less than YYGG, you likely will not hit, or if you hit, you likely will not have the advantages to trigger the second hit. Meanwhile, you've lost damage output.

In your experience, what's a reasonable opposition to things like GGY, GYY, GGGY, and even YYY? Those are levels for the "signature" skills of most of the group. I thought PP was reasonable (up to PPP once or twice), but now I'm second guessing myself.

The EotE Dice Probability Generator has the answer to these questions. For example, YYYPP has a total probability of at least one net Success of 74.732%, according to the page at < http://game2.ca/eote/?montecarlo=100000#proficiency=3&difficulty=2 >. Here’s what that looks like:

For YGGPP, the page at < http://game2.ca/eote/?montecarlo=100000#proficiency=1&ability=2&difficulty=2> shows us that they have a 65.213% chance of at least one net Success:

As an example, I'd never advocate a player start Two Weapon Combat with two pistols until they have at least YYGG. At medium range that's PP for range, +1 for Two Weapon Combat.

And the dice probability calculator tells us that the odds of at least one Success there is 69.535%, see < http://game2.ca/eote/?montecarlo=100000#proficiency=2&ability=2&difficulty=3 >.

However, what this program doesn’t do so well is tell you what the odds are of hitting or exceeding a specific target of Success+Advantage. If you know what you’re looking for, and you know how to put the numbers together correctly, you can probably do the math yourself.

But to do those calculations correctly, I like to use Litheon’s dice probability generated for that — see his thread at < http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/108337-dice-probability-generator/ >.

Of course, any time new GMs start talking about dice probabilities in this game, they need to make sure that they read and fully understand the pages at http://maxmahem.net/wp/star-wars-edge-of-the-empire-die-probabilities/ and https://illuminatinggames.wordpress.com/2014/09/19/star-wars-age-of-rebellion-a-deep-dive-on-dice-probabilities/ .

I disagree with some of the conclusions of the latter page, as I feel those are based on his feelings of how he wants this game to work. But he does have some points that you should at least consider.