The "Cinematic Combat" sidebar on EotE CRB page 199 provides some helpful tips on getting players involved in the narrative. A good GM tactic is disallowing any action to your players without proper narration.

GM: "What are you going to do?"

Player: "I will roll a Ranged (Light) attack."

Sometimes I feel like I need to re-read the EotE CRB because it seems I've forgotten about some things.

Never, ever, ever let them just say "I use my 1 Advantage to pass a Boost die to the next player." That is death to the cinematic setting. Have them describe what the Advantage does, then give them the Boost die (or whatever else is appropriate).

And yet, this is exactly the case in latest order 66 podcast live play? Players either get boost die for advantage or give setback to npc's for threats. Hardly any explanation is given from PC's.

I'm pointing this out because I've requested from my PC's on several occasions to explain why they would like to get a boost die or how they intend to help a team mate to warrant a boost die for him - to my surprise I saw they're actually getting irritated by this : 'I just help him out man'.

More importantly an Attack is not one shot but the result of around a minute's worth of combat, that's two commercials and nearly four times as long as the average American brushes their teeth, so the target may very well have taken several grazes before going down (or running or however you narrate the fight). If you want a more per-shot/swing combat system you will have to do some serious adjustments to the damage/defence balance.

When you are just starting this system it's important to reinforce this around a minute concept, especially if you are coming from D&D and such, because so much of how the combat rules work are based on this paradigm and will often not make sense without it.

As much as I agree that an attack isn't one shot etc, the whole "a turn is one minute" thing is ridiculous. In a gun fight (and in Star Wars fights) a minute is a looong time. It was daft in OD&D and it is daft in Star Wars. I am happy without having a definition of the length of a turn, allowing it be flexible (it is meant to be narrative and all), but saying a turn is roughly a minute breaks all suspension of disbelief in my mind. If you are having turns mapped to time periods then no turn should be more than 5 seconds long (I think this can be stretched to 10 seconds if you are doing a medieval and/or fantasyesque game where people don't have guns). They should be long enough for something worthwhile to be achieved, but not so long that a fight should have ended in the length of one turn.

Im just saying that regardless of how combat is supposed to work, in practice its always a "I shoot at this guy. You hit him for 3 points of damage" type thing. Nobody ever or rarely considers your "attack" to be several shots, swings or what have you. They certainly don't imagine you were being shot at too during your turn or were perhaps picking different targets, moving around, etc.

We do. I find you kind of have to in order to explain all the other events that get triggered by advantages, threat, etc

As much as I agree that an attack isn't one shot etc, the whole "a turn is one minute" thing is ridiculous.

I think people are misquoting this. It's the "round" that is "about a minute", not each turn. Everybody takes their turn within that round, and there is some overlap across turns to keep things fluid. If you have a "normal" sized party with normal opposition, you do end up with a turn being only a half dozen to a dozen seconds. If you have a smaller or larger party you should feel free to adjust the "round length" if it's important to the narrative.

Edit: now that I'm not AFB, quote from F&D p204: "Rounds can represent roughly a minute or so in time, although the elapsed time is deliberately not specified."

IMO too many folks base their expectations of a fast combat round off of what they've seen in movies and video games. I can't blame them though, that's the only examples they have to base their expectations on. From my observations of real combat, not actually being there but watching from above, firefights can go on for several minutes as shots are exchanged, covering fire is laid down, people are maneuvering, etc. I would happily concede to someone with real combat experience, but the EotE system doesn't break reality for me.

It's narrative, so people need to just consider when you roll it's not for each shot, it's to determine if out of the fusillade of 15 shots you are exchanging with the stormtroopers you managed to land a hit. The time includes the running and ducking and peeking you are engaging in.

The time frame is kept loose to take everything into account that might occur. A round between two combatants in a gun fight might be 3 seconds long with two shots exchanged. It might be 60 seconds long with combatants 150m from one another running for cover and trying to spot exactly where a target is.

The game engine leaves a lot of what occurs to narrative expression, and is not attempting to simulate every single physical action that occurs. It's not going to give specific guidance on time frames and how to precisely describe things when it already tells you come up with your own description of how long things take and how they unfold on your own.

IMO too many folks base their expectations of a fast combat round off of what they've seen in movies and video games. I can't blame them though, that's the only examples they have to base their expectations on. From my observations of real combat, not actually being there but watching from above, firefights can go on for several minutes as shots are exchanged, covering fire is laid down, people are maneuvering, etc. I would happily concede to someone with real combat experience, but the EotE system doesn't break reality for me.

Yes, real combat can last a long time, but 1) this is cinematic Star Wars combat we are talking about, so expecting it to reflect the source material isn't bad and 2) real fire fights have long periods where there isn't "combat" as an RPG defines it. Lots of waiting around, moving etc, which are really best dealt with in narrative time. Combat rules are really only for the high intensity moments where people are engaging in close range exchanges,the moments where you are storming the enemy position etc, which do tend to be over very quickly. One game I have (but haven't played), Aces & Eights actually breaks down turns into 10ths of a second (but it doesn't have a traditional turn structure, so you don't game out each 10th of a second), as it makes the point that time in a gunfight is actually a big deal, if you react a split second faster than someone else it could be the difference between life and death. For example, the Gunfight at the OK Corral was over in 30 seconds.

Never, ever, ever let them just say "I use my 1 Advantage to pass a Boost die to the next player." That is death to the cinematic setting. Have them describe what the Advantage does, then give them the Boost die (or whatever else is appropriate).

And yet, this is exactly the case in latest order 66 podcast live play? Players either get boost die for advantage or give setback to npc's for threats. Hardly any explanation is given from PC's.

I'm pointing this out because I've requested from my PC's on several occasions to explain why they would like to get a boost die or how they intend to help a team mate to warrant a boost die for him - to my surprise I saw they're actually getting irritated by this : 'I just help him out man'.

I've had issues like this, but that isn't a problem of the system, but of the players. Same thing with Savage Worlds and getting my players to describe what their powers look like which may or may not have an effect on the power under certain circumstances (what happens when a bolt of electricity hits someone standing in salt water vs wearing insulated armor). They're focused on the mechanical effects and not really interested in anything else. So, try to train them by describing what is happening after the NPCs do their actions.

A general question regarding Damage. Should Damage from a personnel weapon be treated the same as a Ship's weapon? examples below are using a Heavy Blaster Pistol and a Medium Turbo Laser

Example 1: Xylen using a Heavy Blaster Pistol (DAM 7) gets 2 successes and 1 advantage against a Stormtrooper doing a 8 weapon damage, vs a soak of 5, doing a total of 3 wounds to the trooper.

Example 2: Xylen using a Heavy Blaster Pistol (DAM 7) gets 2 successes and 1 advantage against an TIE/LN Starfighter flying overhead doing a 8 weapon damage, the ship has an armor of 2, so does that shot do 6 Hull damage to ship.

Example 3: Xylen flying in an X-wing with S-Foil mounted Medium laser canons and gets 2 successes and 1 advantage against a TIE/LN Starfighter doing a 8 weapon damage, vs an armor of 2 doing a total of 6 Hull damage to ship.

Example 4: Xylen using a Heavy Blaster Pistol (DAM 7) gets 2 successes and 1 advantage against a Stormtrooper doing a 8 weapon damage, vs a soak of 5, So does the ship attacking a person do LESS damage than it would have done vs another Ship? Doing a total of 3 wounds?

To mitigate this, and some systems were great at this, there was usually two separate categories of weapon damage. So an example would be Ship Weapons would be 10x that of say a personnel pistol. However I did not find anything that like, and it is possible I missed it if it is there. That said, what have some of you folks done? I know it is rare, but my players like to attack with the ship and clear the path before engaging when they can.

I love this system. Besides, wounds do not erode your abilities like in Saga. If you're up, you're deadly

A general question regarding Damage. Should Damage from a personnel weapon be treated the same as a Ship's weapon? examples below are using a Heavy Blaster Pistol and a Medium Turbo Laser

Example 1: Xylen using a Heavy Blaster Pistol (DAM 7) gets 2 successes and 1 advantage against a Stormtrooper doing a 8 weapon damage, vs a soak of 5, doing a total of 3 wounds to the trooper.

Example 2: Xylen using a Heavy Blaster Pistol (DAM 7) gets 2 successes and 1 advantage against an TIE/LN Starfighter flying overhead doing a 8 weapon damage, the ship has an armor of 2, so does that shot do 6 Hull damage to ship.

Example 3: Xylen flying in an X-wing with S-Foil mounted Medium laser canons and gets 2 successes and 1 advantage against a TIE/LN Starfighter doing a 8 weapon damage, vs an armor of 2 doing a total of 6 Hull damage to ship.

Example 4: Xylen using a Heavy Blaster Pistol (DAM 7) gets 2 successes and 1 advantage against a Stormtrooper doing a 8 weapon damage, vs a soak of 5, So does the ship attacking a person do LESS damage than it would have done vs another Ship? Doing a total of 3 wounds?

To mitigate this, and some systems were great at this, there was usually two separate categories of weapon damage. So an example would be Ship Weapons would be 10x that of say a personnel pistol. However I did not find anything that like, and it is possible I missed it if it is there. That said, what have some of you folks done? I know it is rare, but my players like to attack with the ship and clear the path before engaging when they can.

I think your forgetting that 1 point of armour is equal to 10 points of soak.

So in this example the Heavy Blaster doesn't stand a chance in hell of damaging the Tie not without the breach quality.

You also need to take into consideration Personal V Planetary. A ships hull points are worth 10 x wound points on the personal scale..

To mitigate this, and some systems were great at this, there was usually two separate categories of weapon damage. So an example would be Ship Weapons would be 10x that of say a personnel pistol. However I did not find anything that like, and it is possible I missed it if it is there.

Yes, you did miss it and it is indeed a 10x scale, so good estimation! 1 Hull Trauma is equal to 10 Wounds, Armor rating 1 can "soak" 10 personal scale damage, and 1 planetary scale damage is equal to 10 personal scale damage.

EotE CRB page 224, sidebar "Starships, Vehicles, and Scale."

Awesome. Thank you for the response. Glad to know I was right with my 10x guess though. Lol