FFG's take on combining X-Wing and the RPG

Well, for starters, the post really doesn't get into any solid ideas how a GM would incorporate the two games. It's pretty **** vague, in fact.

And it still doesn't address the fact that Die codes for piloting are not the end all and be all of starship combat. Any schlubb with 25 experience points can get three yellows, but the talents are where the true skill of a pilot lie, where all the fun bits happen.

Agreed.

When I first read this article, my thought was "this author just found out that there is both a Star Wars RPG and a Star Wars miniatures game"

Like they were completely new concepts.

I'm surprised nobody else mentioned this poor excuse for an article.

The general consensus seems to be that they are both good games, but they are not remotely suited to being merged. Y'know, seeing how they have entirely different stats and everything, and how the RPG goes out of its way to get away from the detailed tactical combat that is the basis of X-Wing. Not so much like mixing 'peanut better and jelly' as mixing steak with ice-cream.

Added to which as the penguin says, there's no actual suggestions made as to how they could be combined anyway!

It's as bad as the 'article' we had that was basically 'err, Ahsoka is great isn't she? Maybe you could make a character like that? Or, um, an NPC? Or something. Have I hit my word count yet?'

It feels like they have nothing to tell us, but feel obliged to write some puff-piece anyway tangentially related to the game. Then gave it to the Work Experience Guy to write.

Or maybe I'm just cranky because I'm ill Either way, I'd like to see some proper articles. A preview of the soldier book would be just dandy.

Aww, I'm sorry you're feeling ill, Marcy. Get better soon! Seems like you've been some kind of sick for near a month now .

When I read the "article" in question, I was initially excited: I don't play X-Wing, but I know people who do play both, and as a sucker for fun and interesting mechanics, I thought they'd found a way to merge them in a fun way.

But "Use the Destiny Pool," was the only thing I saw that actually had any substance. Umm...what? That's pretty much a given, isn't it?

All in all, very disappointing. But I might be biased: ship-to-ship combat has never been my favorite part of Star Wars - I've always preferred the spiritualism aspects the most.

Not so much like mixing 'peanut better and jelly' as mixing steak with ice-cream.

Wait. you guys don't put ice cream on your steak?

What kind of weirdos are you?

I was also initially excited by the idea of the article, but...

<rant>

I thought the article was a total waste of space. "It's your job as the GM to balance things..." Yeah, no ****, that's a fantastic insight, Sherlock. So how about some specific pointers on how to do that , rather than just a completely obvious statement? Is a talent that removes setback from piloting worth +2 on the pilot skill? Does Full Throttle add a Boost or Barrel Roll action to the ship's profile, or maybe grant +1 Agility? C'mon FFG, get specific or go home.

On a different note, balancing the opposition seems to be approached from the wrong angle. The point of merging the two games is not so you can play X-Wing with your RPG character, it's so you can use the X-Wing rules to simulate a dogfight. But most of the time (speaking as a GM) I actually want the PCs to win, so I don't want equal odds. The author seems to have totally missed that point.

I also thought the comments about X-Wing's comparative lethality pretty pointless. No, I'm just not going to host a game where the PCs have to build a new character every time there's a dogfight. What a huge waste of time, why would I embrace that unless some of the pilots were throwaway NPCs? Instead, assume PCs hit the eject button or jump into an escape pod, or maybe their ship now adds "debris" to the field and they can be fished out later.

I wish they'd have given this article assignment to somebody with a clue.

</rant>

Oh, hi, I'm back and I'll be nice now

I thought someone had found some clever insight to make this work, alas it was not so.

It's almost as if they said, "You know, we haven't had any Star Wars RPG news up there in a while. Let's right a fluff piece that might encourage some of those RPG people to buy our miniature game so we can make even more money !"

That's what it is, after all. It's a marketing article. It's just not very good at doing its job.

I knew it wasn't going to really combine the rulesets in a meaningful way. You can't. At most, I would use my X-Wing Miniatures just to help people visualize the distances and relative positions of ships in space but I really don't need to if my narrative descriptions are up to par.

I don't think I will use them either, because as soon as I try to bring in one of my group's ships I'll be stuck with using an X-Wing Miniature as a stand-in for a completely different ship.

Wait. you guys don't put ice cream on your steak?

What kind of weirdos are you?

British, old bean.

"I don't have coffee, I take tea, my dear

I like my toast done on one side..."

(Well, Welsh in my case!)

And 'jelly' means something else entirely over here, so mixing it with 'peanut butter' would actually be rather bizarre...

At most, I would use my X-Wing Miniatures just to help people visualize the distances and relative positions of ships in space but I really don't need to if my narrative descriptions are up to par.

I did this, it really helped keep the range bands clear, but man it fell apart on me if the PCs were in multiple vehicles. Still, they're neato visuals.

If you do it right, dogfights in the SW RPG are already tense enough. The one real dogfight we've had in my game did not result in a single point of hull trauma inflicted to the party's ship, but it was an intense encounter.

Plus it had an unconscious Wookie flopping around the cabin as the banking droid and the Twi'Lek chased him around trying to revive him. Fun times!

I can understand that people like X-Wing, but it has entirely different goals from the RPG, so the very concept of combining the two is on shaky ground to start with.

It's as bad as the 'article' we had that was basically 'err, Ahsoka is great isn't she? Maybe you could make a character like that? Or, um, an NPC? Or something. Have I hit my word count yet?'

At least with the Ahsoka article, it went a bit into the philosophy of if you should use cannon characters in your game, and the methodology behind it, even if we didnt get the exact process for statting up The Main Characters. It wasn't a great article, but it was better than this and it's "Flip a destiny point if you are about to die" advice.

I wonder if it could work if you did a hibred of the two. Use the rules from the RPG engine for attacks and the abilities and use X-Wing for maneuvers and angle of attack. Basically, movement and if you could shoot would be determined X-Wing style but how much damage you did, etc. were EotE rules.

Still kind of kludgy, and I wouldnt do it myself - but as an experment, it could be interesting.

I love X-Wing. The strategy and randomness combine to make for engaging, exciting gameplay that feels to me like a real dogfight. The minis look great too.

I've thought about doing what this article suggests but I agree that it's not a good idea. The starfighter combat in the RPG works just fine for the RPG and uses the skills and stats already present in the game. Combat itself isn't a dramatic difference from personal scale combat, it is just a variation that makes sense for ships trying to blast each other. So it's not so jarring for a group used to ground combat to get involved in a space fight or vice-versa, it's just a few more rules to remember. (Which is great for a group like mine that rarely gets into ship battles but does every now and then.)

Shoehorning a totally foreign system into the RPG seems unnecessary and counter-productive. Just use what we have. I could see maybe house-ruling some new maneuvers or other rules borrowed from X-Wing if you think it will make combat more exciting or realistic, or to just add more options in combat, but I wouldn't take it any farther than that.

We like to use the minis from X-Wing as props on rare occasion and I've thought about making stats for my EotE PC as a pilot in the X-Wing game but that's the extent I've been inspired to mix the games. And again, I love X-Wing so I'm not just being a system snob or anything.

Meh. Even if this article had had some clear pointers on how to merge the two systems (which it clearly didn't), I think I would still pass. One of the things I like about this RPG is the fact that it doesn't involve moving miniatures around on a grid map. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy playing Pathfinder with it's tactical combat and emphasis on details and precision, but I wouldn't want every game I play to be like that.

One of the things I like about this RPG is the fact that it doesn't involve moving miniatures around on a grid map. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy playing Pathfinder with it's tactical combat and emphasis on details and precision, but I wouldn't want every game I play to be like that.

That seems to be the case for a lot of people. The RPG doesn't deal with minis and that whole combat-on-a-grid thing.

I'm not really a minis gamer but everyone who plays X-Wing or Armada says how great it is, and I don't doubt it. In fact, I like that X-Wing and Imperial Assault exist for those who want that kind of detailed combat system. There are so many Star Wars boardgames, card games, mini games and RPGs for exactly that reason.

But the RPG hand-waves a great deal, as it should - at its heart, its trying to replicate the action and flow of a pulp movie, rather than getting bogged down in the details.

I hate ripping FFG articles. They are a good company with great products. I just feel that the RPG seems to be in the doldrums at the moment. I'm not saying 'the sky is falling!' and I'm sure new stuff is on the way.

But these kind of articles just make me wish there was some new product we could talk about.

Hey hey, hold on a minute! I remember another thread that started with you saying something like that, and I ended up having to type up five pages of statistical analysis!

No no no, I'm not falling for it this time! Read your Savage "Species" thread if you want my most recent analytical musings!

I don't t need the crunch for my RP tastes. X-Wing is a fun game I'm sure, but I don't need them integrated.

The only real reason I'd entertain a crossover is because the space combat in the RPG kind of blows (at least for dogfights, chases are handled pretty well). Only my opinion, of course, some people seem to like it.

I use the X-Wing minis to represent relative location on a 2-dimensional plane but I don't integrate the games. The dice are different and the rules are different but we all know that. Maybe someday FFG will give a good, balanced way to integrate the two systems. Until then, how i use them is good enough.

I cant see any way of smoothly putting the PC's into the X-Wing game, and the article sucked. But i think for the right Campaign some parts could be resolved using X-Wing/Armada. So lets say our PC's are members of the Rebellion and are working to influence major battles, using the Mass Combat system to influence the battle. Well every now and a gain you drop a game of X-Wing/Armada into the mix, the size of each force and the actual objectives would be more determined by the RPG story, but the outcome of those games would provide modifiers to the Mass Combat check. The PC's could still engage in the occasional vehicle combat, but thats going to be so you can leverage the much more narrative nature of an RPG. Obviously it would be preferable to not have a group of Aces in this campaign.

But putting PC's into X-Wing... bad idea.

One Idea I had (and shared some time ago) would be to keep the two lines separate, but have them intersect in the same story. obviously keep the personal stories to the RPG but have the outcomes of a Armada/X-Wing/Imperial Assault skirmish affect and influence the story. The PCs could be experiencing a ground mission while the X-Wing match they played earlier today is going on in the skies above.

And because the rebels lost the Armada battle they played a week ago, the imperial forces have doubled their presence in the same system and now the PCs are going to have to be extra careful when the visit to negotiate an alliance with the local freedom fighters.

See, now something like that could work! You could even use their suggestion of adding a Destiny Pool to the minis games to give them a bit more control.

One Idea I had (and shared some time ago) would be to keep the two lines separate, but have them intersect in the same story. obviously keep the personal stories to the RPG but have the outcomes of a Armada/X-Wing/Imperial Assault skirmish affect and influence the story. The PCs could be experiencing a ground mission while the X-Wing match they played earlier today is going on in the skies above.

And because the rebels lost the Armada battle they played a week ago, the imperial forces have doubled their presence in the same system and now the PCs are going to have to be extra careful when the visit to negotiate an alliance with the local freedom fighters.

This. I'm not sure why more is needed honestly.

I'll be honest I rolled my eyes when I read it. I thought it was gonna be cool and useful and dope and then was let down.