Hi,

Me and my group, well specially me, do not like the flipping destiny points for dice upgrades. I have tried to think of an alternative but I cannot find one. I believe that removing destiny points mechanics altogether it is not an option since there are other rules, like talents, the force, and the Luck and Deus ex machina that need the destiny points.

Do you have house rules on the destiny point usage or complete removal from the game that you would be so kind to share with me?

Cheers,

Yepes

I lurve the Destiny Points rules and want to have its babies. So I can't really help, sorry. I might have gutted the setting and completely rebuilt it from the ground up, but I tend to be wary of changing the mechanical rules.

For me, DP's are a way to express the ebb and flow of fortune that seems to be a part of every pulp story. The only thing I've seen that does anything like it was TORG, and TORG was sooooo fiddly compared to the FFG SW rules.

I'm not sure you even could get rid of DPs, because as you say, so many Talents and things like Morality use them.

D'you mind me asking, 'snopes, what is it about DPs you dislike? It seems a fairly simple and elegant mechanic to me.

I did remove the mechanics for Duty and Obligation, and vastly simplified Morality, but the system doesn't seem to suffer for losing these elements. Removing DPs though? I'm not sure where you'd start with that, sorry.

Yah, I would think if it's just the dice upgrading you don't like, then don't do that and use them for the Force, Talents, and narrative stuff only, as opposed to purging them.

D'you mind me asking, 'snopes, what is it about DPs you dislike? It seems a fairly simple and elegant mechanic to me.

^This. Maybe if you explain what you don't like about them we can help destroy your arguments and bring you back to the light

Yah, I would think if it's just the dice upgrading you don't like, then don't do that and use them for the Force, Talents, and narrative stuff only, as opposed to purging them.

The problem with this is that as a GM I don't have other ways to flip DPs, so If my only change to the DPs mechanic is removing this portion of it, my players end up without light sided pips.

Later on with more time I will try to explain better what I don't like

Then use them.

Yah, I would think if it's just the dice upgrading you don't like, then don't do that and use them for the Force, Talents, and narrative stuff only, as opposed to purging them.

The problem with this is that as a GM I don't have other ways to flip DPs, so If my only change to the DPs mechanic is removing this portion of it, my players end up without light sided pips.

Later on with more time I will try to explain better what I don't like

Yah, I suppose you're right. I'll be honest I got nothing for you there. If they are causing that much consternation I'd say just dump em, or maybe convert the PC Talents to once an encounter or something.

The problem with this is that as a GM I don't have other ways to flip DPs, so If my only change to the DPs mechanic is removing this portion of it, my players end up without light sided pips.

??

I use them as GM whenever we make a roll that I feel has the potential for an 'oh ****!' moment for the players.

Which is, actually, quite a lot of the time! This is the pulp genre after all, it comes with the territory.

That ensures a pretty steady flow for me. Something could always go wrong with most rolls..

Disaster is only a 1 in 12 chance, but the possibility of it is what makes it interesting....

I use them as GM whenever we make a roll that I feel has the potential for an 'oh ****!' moment for the players.

Which is, actually, quite a lot of the time! This is the pulp genre after all, it comes with the territory.

That ensures a pretty steady flow for me. Something could always go wrong with most rolls..

Disaster is only a 1 in 12 chance, but the possibility of it is what makes it interesting....

Yes, this is the standard (and only) use of them as a GM.

The "problem" I have is that at my table my players (I have 4 or 5, depends on the session) don't use DP for anything else than upgrading their dice pool. That is mainly due to that only one of them has a single talent that uses DPs. There is also a force user who recently has started to use DPs to use dark force points, but it happens rarely as he does not want to gain conflict. Ah, well indeed, once upon a moon phase, I see a flipping of a DP for the deus ex machina. Briefly, 95% of the use of DPs by my players is for upgrading dice pools.

Of course, 100% of DPs as GM happens for upgrading dice pools since we don't have any other mechanics. This, on the paper, could be interesting. I agree with you Maelora. I guess I could put more enthusiasm each time I flip a DP and show some evil grin to my players. But truth is that each time I flip a DP to upgrade on of my NPCs pools they flip a DP too to upgrade the difficulty.... I am doing a poor job explaining myself Anyway, too me it feels a flat and flavorless mechanic.

I guess I will take 2p51 counsel and remove them altogether and just make talents that need flipping a DP a once per encounter talent.

I use them as GM whenever we make a roll that I feel has the potential for an 'oh ****!' moment for the players.

Which is, actually, quite a lot of the time! This is the pulp genre after all, it comes with the territory.

That ensures a pretty steady flow for me. Something could always go wrong with most rolls..

Disaster is only a 1 in 12 chance, but the possibility of it is what makes it interesting....

Yes, this is the standard (and only) use of them as a GM.

The "problem" I have is that at my table my players (I have 4 or 5, depends on the session) don't use DP for anything else than upgrading their dice pool. That is mainly due to that only one of them has a single talent that uses DPs. There is also a force user who recently has started to use DPs to use dark force points, but it happens rarely as he does not want to gain conflict. Ah, well indeed, once upon a moon phase, I see a flipping of a DP for the deus ex machina. Briefly, 95% of the use of DPs by my players is for upgrading dice pools.

Of course, 100% of DPs as GM happens for upgrading dice pools since we don't have any other mechanics. This, on the paper, could be interesting. I agree with you Maelora. I guess I could put more enthusiasm each time I flip a DP and show some evil grin to my players. But truth is that each time I flip a DP to upgrade on of my NPCs pools they flip a DP too to upgrade the difficulty.... I am doing a poor job explaining myself Anyway, too me it feels a flat and flavorless mechanic.

I guess I will take 2p51 counsel and remove them altogether and just make talents that need flipping a DP a once per encounter talent.

I can understand you, snopes. I had similar problems a while back.

But I became the poster child that my players needed to be more creative with destiny point usage. They used to flip DP's just to upgrade checks, and for talents (Utility Belt was used quite often...) but when I started using DP's to give my foes cover or having a nemesis pull something useful out of his pocket to be particularily useful against the PC's (becuase not doing this as a GM while expecting the players to is a little unfair, in my humble opinion) was inspiring enough to have the PC's to start thinking up new and useful ways to spend them instead of just upgrading their checks or mine.

Now, speaking of house rules, and this is only my opinion, one you might want to think about is reactive flipping. I always let the active roller (meaing me, too) decide if a destiny point is doing to be used. If so, the other side doesn't get to flip in return. My players know to stop me before I roll if they want me to upgrade a difficulty. I stop them, if they look to be about to roll and have them upgrade, if they haven't. It's not that time consuming of immersion-breaking, and it's stopped the flipping in response, which I wasn't particulary fond of.

Now, speaking of house rules, and this is only my opinion, one you might want to think about is reactive flipping. I always let the active roller (meaing me, too) decide if a destiny point is doing to be used. If so, the other side doesn't get to flip in return. My players know to stop me before I roll if they want me to upgrade a difficulty. I stop them, if they look to be about to roll and have them upgrade, if they haven't. It's not that time consuming of immersion-breaking, and it's stopped the flipping in response, which I wasn't particulary fond of.

This is pretty much what we do.

We don't track Conflict either, but we do use a DP to flip to use DS points, so that ensures a regular amount of DPs coming my way all the time.

But truth is that each time I flip a DP to upgrade on of my NPCs pools they flip a DP too to upgrade the difficulty.... I am doing a poor job explaining myself Anyway, too me it feels a flat and flavorless mechanic.

My players had that reaction at first as well, but finally realized that their upgrade wasn't cancelling mine (because Triumph and Despair don't cancel) and they stopped the reactive flipping and put more consideration into their use. Their next tactic was to let me flip and refrain from flipping themselves to "lock me out"...it seems like a lot of players fear the Despair more than they savour the Triumph. So I explained that as the GM I reserved the right, if they locked me out for too long, to flip them all back over again. The points are meant to be used.

As for "flat and flavourless"...I don't see it. Any time you upgrade the pool (on either side, or both), you're increasing the range of results. The outliers can be far more interesting.

While they can sometimes be a minor pain, I think the good more then outweighs the bad. One upgrade is generally never going to throw the balance of a roll desperately out of whack, they just add a little extra chance of Triumph or Despair.

The main thing I have to do is remember to use them. In our most recent game it just coincidentally came out that they all started in my GM side. Everybody rolled dark. I tried to use some early on on relatively unimportant rolls to move a couple over. It resulted in some fun of people falling into swamps or having their stubborn mount choose the most inconvenient route home, adding some levity to what started as a fairly dark game.

Flip a destiny point to have reinforcements show up to an encounter you need the PCs to run from. "You stand victorious over the fallen enemies, however, an alarm has been raised and you hear the cacophony of many booted feet charging this way."

Flip one to have something sinister happen. "The blaster door shuts behind you and you here an ominous crunch in the operating mechanisms."

Flip one when a player tries to pull "But I/you totally did/didn't said/say that!" "Sadly, in the wildness of the current events, some details were unobserved until it was too late."

Flip one when you want have an NPC do something "minor" that you don't need/want to roll the dice for. I use this one a lot to have things happen in the background in reaction to PC actions. Mostly when the PCs do something to bring attention to themselves. This would be when an informer takes notice, and passes a message along, or for later when investigators are trying to determine what occurred, having the beggar remember some scathing details. These help to mitigate the deus ex machina feel when bad guys suddenly show up at the worst possible moment.

Flip one when you realize you forgot something absolutely critical on your BBEG, then add it. This could be a piece of gear, or whatever. But since players have to use a destiny point to do this once they're involved in an encounter and it's too late to go back to the store, the BBEG should follow that limitation as well.

Whenever the GM needs to "hand-wave" things into/out of existence or lay down the "this is how it works at my table" situation, destiny points can help out to smooth things over. Especially in situations where a ruling over something might perturb a player or two, at least they'll have another destiny point or two on their side.

Flip a destiny point to have reinforcements show up to an encounter you need the PCs to run from. "You stand victorious over the fallen enemies, however, an alarm has been raised and you hear the cacophony of many booted feet charging this way."

Flip one to have something sinister happen. "The blaster door shuts behind you and you here an ominous crunch in the operating mechanisms."

Flip one when a player tries to pull "But I/you totally did/didn't said/say that!" "Sadly, in the wildness of the current events, some details were unobserved until it was too late."

Flip one when you want have an NPC do something "minor" that you don't need/want to roll the dice for. I use this one a lot to have things happen in the background in reaction to PC actions. Mostly when the PCs do something to bring attention to themselves. This would be when an informer takes notice, and passes a message along, or for later when investigators are trying to determine what occurred, having the beggar remember some scathing details. These help to mitigate the deus ex machina feel when bad guys suddenly show up at the worst possible moment.

Flip one when you realize you forgot something absolutely critical on your BBEG, then add it. This could be a piece of gear, or whatever. But since players have to use a destiny point to do this once they're involved in an encounter and it's too late to go back to the store, the BBEG should follow that limitation as well.

Whenever the GM needs to "hand-wave" things into/out of existence or lay down the "this is how it works at my table" situation, destiny points can help out to smooth things over. Especially in situations where a ruling over something might perturb a player or two, at least they'll have another destiny point or two on their side.

I guess this is the same that Lord Dynel was saying. I see the "sense" on what you say as a mirror of the PCs deus ex machina, but it feels weird to have to flip a destiny point as the GM to create a challenge for the PCs. I have been doing those sort of things as a GM in many RPGs without the need of any game mechanic. At the end, this is our roles as GM, create situations and challenges for the PCs, but ok, I guess I could try to flip a destiny point from time to time to do something extra nasty.

Don't think of it just in terms of doing nasty stuff either. You are giving the PCs back their light sides to enable heroic deeds also.

It's not a complete replacement for building fun and challenging encounters. Keep on building fun and challenging encounters. That's that we as GM's do (when we get it right). However, there are times when something odd occurs, and the encounter ends a little early one way or the other. Usually because the dice misbehave. In other systems, there is only GM Fiat. Things like fudging dice, "because I said so," etc. In this system you can also use destiny points. And using destiny points as the GM allows players to turn them right around and use them as fuel for fun and interesting stories.

My two main rules for destiny point usage are "The Rule of Cool" and "Extrapolate, don't Negate."

Don't think of it just in terms of doing nasty stuff either. You are giving the PCs back their light sides to enable heroic deeds also.

Exactly. My stock phrase when I flip is "looks like you guys are going to need something to work with...here, let me help you"

The problem with this is that as a GM I don't have other ways to flip DPs, so If my only change to the DPs mechanic is removing this portion of it, my players end up without light sided pips.

There is absolutely no reason that you cant chuckle quietly to yourself, lean forward with an S-eating grin on your face, flip one or two points to the good guys side and when the players ask "What was that for?" you say "Oh, you'll see". Or really make them paranoid and dump ALL the destiny to their side - that'll make 'em paranoid!

And you need no reason at all in mind, other than restoring balance to the force destiny points. The players don't need to know that.

Of course, 100% of DPs as GM happens for upgrading dice pools since we don't have any other mechanics. This, on the paper, could be interesting. I agree with you Maelora. I guess I could put more enthusiasm each time I flip a DP and show some evil grin to my players. But truth is that each time I flip a DP to upgrade on of my NPCs pools they flip a DP too to upgrade the difficulty.... I am doing a poor job explaining myself Anyway, too me it feels a flat and flavorless mechanic.

We had that problem at first too. Every time I flipped a destiny point to upgrade either difficulty or an NPC's roll, the players matched with a destiny point of their own. So we instituted a new rule. Whoever is making the roll gets first dibs on spending a DP, then it goes to the other side. Once one side spends a DP, the other side must spend 2 DP if they want to upgrade the same roll. So one side can match the other's upgrade but it's costly. It has made the DP bidding wars a bit more interesting and made the players save the matched upgrades for times when it's truly important.

You could spend DPs like players do for plot alterations. I don't mean the usual GM fiat, the little things that the players use them on. Use them for something major. Like the players come up with an awesome plan that totally bypasses half the adventure. Normally you either have to fudge things behind the scenes (and negate their work) or you let it ride and lose a lot of your hard work. Spend a destiny point to throw in a change that brings them back on track (oh sorry, the Imperial officer saw this coming and repositioned his forces at the last minute). This way you still get to have your adventure but since you have to use a resource it doesn't totally negate their hard work.

Some new GM only options might be something like spending a DP to generate an automatic triumph or despair or adding a yellow/red die after the dice have been rolled. I'd go with the latter myself but either one adds something useful for you.

Or you could make some non-force NPC talents that use dark side points.

Flip a destiny point to have reinforcements show up to an encounter you need the PCs to run from. "You stand victorious over the fallen enemies, however, an alarm has been raised and you hear the cacophony of many booted feet charging this way." Flip one to have something sinister happen. "The blaster door shuts behind you and you here an ominous crunch in the operating mechanisms." Flip one when a player tries to pull "But I/you totally did/didn't said/say that!" "Sadly, in the wildness of the current events, some details were unobserved until it was too late." Flip one when you want have an NPC do something "minor" that you don't need/want to roll the dice for. I use this one a lot to have things happen in the background in reaction to PC actions. Mostly when the PCs do something to bring attention to themselves. This would be when an informer takes notice, and passes a message along, or for later when investigators are trying to determine what occurred, having the beggar remember some scathing details. These help to mitigate the deus ex machina feel when bad guys suddenly show up at the worst possible moment. Flip one when you realize you forgot something absolutely critical on your BBEG, then add it. This could be a piece of gear, or whatever. But since players have to use a destiny point to do this once they're involved in an encounter and it's too late to go back to the store, the BBEG should follow that limitation as well. Whenever the GM needs to "hand-wave" things into/out of existence or lay down the "this is how it works at my table" situation, destiny points can help out to smooth things over. Especially in situations where a ruling over something might perturb a player or two, at least they'll have another destiny point or two on their side.

I guess this is the same that Lord Dynel was saying. I see the "sense" on what you say as a mirror of the PCs deus ex machina, but it feels weird to have to flip a destiny point as the GM to create a challenge for the PCs. I have been doing those sort of things as a GM in many RPGs without the need of any game mechanic. At the end, this is our roles as GM, create situations and challenges for the PCs, but ok, I guess I could try to flip a destiny point from time to time to do something extra nasty.

Well, snopes, one thing that I had to keep in mind when learning this system was that this represents the often heard explanation that this mechanic represents the "ebb-and-flow of the Force." I had to keep that in mind, or at least not lose sight of, that this mechanic was representative of an aspect of the Star Wars universe. So while I, like you, was able to give my NPC's what they needed to challenge the PCs without such a mechanic in other games, I embraced how the mechanics represented the Force in the setting and rules. It might not it be for everyone, though.

Is there a better way to do it? Perhaps. But I can't think of how one better could mesh into this system. Maybe something like the bennies system from Savage Worlds. But I like the destiny point system a lot better, personally.

The "problem" I have is that at my table my players (I have 4 or 5, depends on the session) don't use DP for anything else than upgrading their dice pool. That is mainly due to that only one of them has a single talent that uses DPs. There is also a force user who recently has started to use DPs to use dark force points, but it happens rarely as he does not want to gain conflict. Ah, well indeed, once upon a moon phase, I see a flipping of a DP for the deus ex machina. Briefly, 95% of the use of DPs by my players is for upgrading dice pools.

The most common use of DPs at my table is for when players ask if something is available, and I point to the pool and I say “I don’t know — are there?” Then it’s their choice whether or not to flip a DP and the thing they want is there, or they choose not to.

We also get DP flips for using dark side pips.

From the GM perspective, I frequently have them upgrade the difficulty of their rolls, and sometimes I remember to flip a DP to do that.

And sometimes I just flip DPs to get them nervous. I don’t actually do anything with those DPs, but I sure do get the players wondering what the heck is going on.

I love the idea of scaring the holy living crap out of the players by flipping a whole bunch of DPs. But I haven’t done that, at least not yet.

So, I think there are plenty of options there on both sides of the table. It might take a bit of prodding on your part, but you should be able to get the flow going — and have the players help you keep it going.

Really the only thing in the way of getting rid of the Destiny Points is how tied in they are with Talents and Signature abilities. If you really truly deeply madly want to get rid of them otherwise, then perhaps:

When a player wants to use a DP for a Talent or SA, have them roll a Force die. If you get a face with white pips, one DP is available to use. If you get a face with black pips, it means there weren't any in the pool (replicating a situation where the players had used them all).

You might want to let the players roll 2 dice, since less than half the faces of a single die have white pips.

Just an idea...

Really the only thing in the way of getting rid of the Destiny Points is how tied in they are with Talents and Signature abilities.

Specially after reading all the posts in this thread I am more biased towards giving it another shot

If you really truly deeply madly want to get rid of them otherwise, then perhaps:

When a player wants to use a DP for a Talent or SA, have them roll a Force die. If you get a face with white pips, one DP is available to use. If you get a face with black pips, it means there weren't any in the pool (replicating a situation where the players had used them all).

You might want to let the players roll 2 dice, since less than half the faces of a single die have white pips.

Just an idea...

When a player wants to use a DP for a Talent or SA, have them roll a Force die. If you get a face with white pips, one DP is available to use. If you get a face with black pips, it means there weren't any in the pool (replicating a situation where the players had used them all).

You might want to let the players roll 2 dice, since less than half the faces of a single die have white pips.

Just an idea...

You'll end up with players rolling the dice every single time before they make any action just to see if they can activate a Talent or not.

Not to mention this could end with either players rolling Light Side pips every time and using Talents more often than they should, or players never rolling Light Side pips and getting utterly frustrated with the game.

Destiny Points are one of the system cornerstones and, IMHO, it's shouldn't be touched at alll. The system is designed with players and GMs freely fliping points all the time, so even if every time the GM flipts a DS poin to upgrade an NPC's roll the PCs flit a LS point, the system works.

Also remember you can flip DS points to upgrade the difficulty a PC makes rather than upgrade an NPCs dicepool, and players can't upgrade their dicepool afterwards (since active character must spend Destiny first).