Yeah, it's still a bad idea!

By Desslok, in Star Wars: Edge of the Empire RPG

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.

Edited by EliasWindrider

Even if the two rule sets could be merged, I don't see the point. It's taking a game that focuses on narrative and story outcome and bogging it down with extremely granular combat resolution.

I've never completed a D&D or Pathfinder campaign. My tolerance - and from what I can tell, my players' tolerances - for hour long segments of weird chess interrupting story flow is very low. Total party kills are treated like minor blessings. However, I've completed two full FFG Star Wars campaigns and prepping for a third. That has to mean something.

Edited by Concise Locket

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.

Actually I think the two games could be joined together for a rich gaming experience....but not using the rules for the RPG. Just, incorporate the fleet battle into your campaign. Let them play other characters that are in charge of the fleet, while their regular PC's run around doing the storyline. Return of the Jedi is a good example of this. Let them play the B Rank support characters. Let them play the dashing scoundrel Lando Calrissian in the Falcon, and Wedge in an X-Wing, and Ackbar in one of the capital ships, and play out a big fleet battle that just happens to be taking place while the party are all doing the other stuff (fighting Emperor, taking down the shields, etc).

Seems to me like that could be hella fun if done right. Obviously if you've got a player who is the "Ace Pilot", this causes complications, but not every group has that makeup, so it's possible to just let everyone do their own thing, which happens to have nothing to do with being in space fighting. You can have a nice "Meanwhile! In orbit above the battle to save the Delegate's daughter!" *pew pew pew laser blasts!* :D

While on the surface, I'll agree that dividing the two games up into "Main RPG PCs" and "Starfighter/Fleet furball" sounds fun, the only problem I see is that it takes FOREVER to play a round of X-Wing. A combat in the RPG lasts - maybe what, 10 rounds if you are really throwing down hard core? Certainly not more than that. Worst case scenario, the combat will take an hour of real-time.

On the other hand, I've played sessions of X-Wing that last all night, 4 hours easy. I wont use Armada as a metric, since I'm still pretty new at the game and I realize that we're not playing optimally - but X-Wing is not a fast game.

I'd much rather do one or the other all evening and not feel rushed at either.

If I were really going to host an X-Wing game as a proxy for an RPG scenario, here's how I'd approach it (* and **):

1. First and foremost, it has to be a high-stakes situation. The X-Wing game must represent some critical turning point in the campaign in order to give it the gravitas worthy of all the prep-work and the time spent not playing the RPG.

2. Make sure your players are good with it, and have played X-Wing at least a few times before. They need to had a decent eye for judging ranges, understand the various benefits of bumping, blocking, when to take stress, etc. This is not a situation where you want newbs who end up bumping their own ships and losing opportunities, or wasting their koiogran turns slamming into asteroids.

3. Reassess 1 and 2 until you decide it's not worth it :) If that fails...

4. Spec out the pilot. The base pilot skill is 2, and each rank in the RPG adds 1.

Talents the PC has might translate to certain elite pilot upgrades (this is not an exhaustive list, I just looked at the Pilot spec). Don't worry about having multiple elite cards, you just can't shoehorn all a PC's abilities into one card.

Ranks in Skilled Jockey also add +1 to the pilot skill, or 2 ranks can add Barrel Roll if the ship doesn't already have it, or Push the Limit if the ship does.

Dead to Rights adds the Deadeye upgrade. Improved Dead to Rights adds Expose.

Full Throttle adds Adrenaline Rush. Improved Full Throttle adds the Boost action if the ship does not have it, or Daredevil if the ship does.

Tricky Target adds Elusiveness or Expert Handling (player picks).

Natural Pilot adds Stay on Target.

Master Pilot adds Veteran Instincts.

Agility 4/5 adds +1 Shields, even if the ship has no shields in its stat line. This is worth 5 points.

5 (optional). Adjust for player. Let the player swap any single card for another card of equal value that makes sense for that ship.

6. This is the tedious part. Scour the pilot cards and look for one matching the ship and the derived pilot skill. Judge the point value of the pilot's special ability, or see if it's already accounted for with the Talent-based upgrades. For example, if the Luke Skywalker card matches the PC's derived pilot skill, Luke's special ability (turn one Focus result to an Evade when defending) is probably already accounted for with Tricky Target. So if the PC had the Tricky Target talent, they would not be able to use it to buy Elusiveness, it's already built into Luke's card. If the PC does not have Tricky Target, then maybe the Luke card is not the right card for them and you need to find another. EDIT: some pilot abilities might reflect non-pilot skills. For example, some X-Wing pilot abilities help coordinate other allies, so if the PC had good Leadership abilities, this might be a good way to include that flavour.

Once you look at all the special cards the PC might be adding to the ship, you might see that some abilities conflict, or would only rarely come into play. Remove such cards and adjust the base cost accordingly.

Note: static cards that give a permanent effect are more useful in this context than cards that are only useful conditionally. The PC's ship is going to end up worth more points than usual, but this won't necessarily improve their survivability.

Once this mind-numbing process is completed you have the base costs for each ship.

7. Complete the ship load outs. If the ship takes missiles or bombs, I'd also give every PC's ship Extra Munitions for free. These costs are added to the base cost.

8. Buff the PCs. Assume each PC's ship is surrounded by invisible wingmen. This increases the Hull and Shields value by 50% (rounded up), and increases their attack dice by 1 (for all weapons, primary and secondary). This also adds to the final cost of the ship equal to 1/2 of the cheapest ship of that type. You now have the total cost of each PC's ship.

9. Fill out NPC allies. These are spec'd and costed normally. You now have the total cost of the PC side. By now you'll probably decide you need a 3x6 play area...

10. Determine the opposition. Use normal rules to adjust compared to the PC side's value. HOWEVER, you have to decide whether you expect the PCs to win, lose, or draw. Having a straight up points-match that grinds down to a draw is not necessarily the intent, and from a story POV is almost always the most boring. It's more interesting to, say, achieve a risky mission against a superior foe , or take a Gozanti by surprise with minimal casualties . In other words, the mission parameters should determine success or failure, not who accumulated the most points in kills.

11. Determine how to handle casualties. If the PC "dies" are they rescued later, or captured, or are they actually killed? To keep a player in the game, can they take over an NPC group? Make sure you have something for players of casualties to do.

12. Go back to step 3... :)

If you ignored steps 3 and 12, it would be nifty to hear if anybody actually play tested it.

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* note this is only for starfighter dogfights. If you start tossing in Large ships, turrets, and personnel upgrades, it's even more of a mess. You can certainly do it, but on, say, a YT-1300 you'll also want to account for Leadership (concentrating fire), Computers (hacking, navigating, extra target locking, etc), and other skills. There are plenty of cards for these effects, but it's a big task.

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** note to FFG: this took 1/2 hour to write, but at least provides a shadow of a framework. How about you take another stab at this and do a better article?

Edited by whafrog

I would think a high Agility would add extra attack dice rather than shields since it has far more offensive value than defensive in the RPG system.

I would think a high Agility would add extra attack dice rather than shields since it has far more offensive value than defensive in the RPG system.

Good point. Maybe take away the +1 from the imaginary wingmen? Adding offensive dice can easily get out of hand.

I work at a gaming bar in Seattle, and I've seen a number of my customers try to incorporate X-Wing into their EotE games. Just last night I had a group of guys working very hard on converting their existing RPG characters into X-Wing, trying to fabricate some correlation between their Piloting (Space) skill and the pilot rating on the X-Wing cards. I told them of my attempts to fuse the two games and my failures therein, but they weren't dissuaded. I wish them the best of luck, but I have little confidence they will succeed. The games are just so, so different.

Heh, I'm going down this path right now. I'm wanting to run a rogue squadron type campaign and really like the dogfighting feel that X-Wing could provide the game.

I realize It will drag out combat duration quite a bit, but this is OK with me, there will be plenty of interludes between dogfights to fill in the RPG aspects.

I'm taking the approach of fitting X-Wing to the RPG framework. Great care is being used to maintain the skills and talents a player has even over into the fighter combat. There are a few talents that are giving me a headache, since now that movement and range are tangible relative things, they just don't work. Shortcut and Corellian Sendoff are examples of such talents that may have to be tweaked. I'm also trying to use the RPG stats for ships and upgrades over the X-Wing equivelants. This lead to some interesting problems, as a pilot with Improved Full Throttle and an engine upgrade can almost double the speed of any X-Wing ship. The solution here was custom move templates to allow this additional speed.

The Fly/Drive manuever is replaced by actual manuevering. Inititive will still use the RPG style, but in a round the lowest initiative slot will move first and perform any manuevers and each slot up the chain will do the same. Then, starting from the top initiive and going down, actions will be performed. This is much more like how X-Wing controls things, and simplifies buff effects, since they will all be manuevers that will be in force for the action (attack) portion of the round. Speed is much more linear in the RPG, X-Wing basically lets you jump from any speed to any other speed each round. What remains to be seen, is how difficult will it be to get someone in your sights to fire using these hybrid rules. The actual distance of the range increments will help balance this out, but that work is yet to be done.

There is lots for me still to work out, but I have been amazed at how much of the RPG rules can translate across as is.

I get this isn't for everyone, the narrative approach to the RPGs is a huge selling point. But in my group, I think we'll be able to pull this off. I'll be posting out here in the future, once we've play tested some of this and seen how it works. Perhaps, you'll be watching me crash and burn as those before. I do have the advantage of an experience group who have both role played and played X-Wing. If anyone has a chance, I think we will.

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!

Definitely click bait. I have to admit though, I liked the pretty pictures...

Although it is a vastly different system, you all may want to take a look @ the Mechwarrior RPG. They switch to the Battletech system for mech combat. Long and short in that case, with the rules written with it in mind, it still slows the game down and is clunky.

Although it is a vastly different system, you all may want to take a look @ the Mechwarrior RPG. They switch to the Battletech system for mech combat. Long and short in that case, with the rules written with it in mind, it still slows the game down and is clunky.

I played both BattleTech and Mechwarrior quite a bit when I was in college. That was always a lot of fun. This is what originally sparked the idea of combining the two.

A combat in the RPG lasts - maybe what, 10 rounds if you are really throwing down hard core?

If a combat is lasting more than 3 rounds, I pretty much always shift to One-Roll Conflict Resolution... (unless it's a Boss fight, and even then sometimes)

I still shudder regarding D&D 3.5 and 4E, when you knew who was going to win after a few rounds but it took another hour of rolling dice to get there... 4E was a particular offender, with the monsters having hundreds of hit points that took ages to whittle down.

Edited by Maelora

A combat in the RPG lasts - maybe what, 10 rounds if you are really throwing down hard core?

If a combat is lasting more than 3 rounds, I pretty much always shift to One-Roll Conflict Resolution... (unless it's a Boss fight, and even then sometimes)

I still shudder regarding D&D 3.5 and 4E, when you knew who was going to win after a few rounds but it took another hour of rolling dice to get there... 4E was a particular offender, with the monsters having hundreds of hit points that took ages to whittle down.

Still, your point is valid, combats will take much longer. And that is contrary to how this RPG has been designed. Narrative means hand-waving over esoteric details to keep the game fast paced. So, it certainly will not be everyone's cup of tea. All I am saying is that to some of us, the methodical trudge can be entertaining as well, which will make this approach worth while.

A combat in the RPG lasts - maybe what, 10 rounds if you are really throwing down hard core?

If a combat is lasting more than 3 rounds, I pretty much always shift to One-Roll Conflict Resolution... (unless it's a Boss fight, and even then sometimes)

I still shudder regarding D&D 3.5 and 4E, when you knew who was going to win after a few rounds but it took another hour of rolling dice to get there... 4E was a particular offender, with the monsters having hundreds of hit points that took ages to whittle down.

This. I couldn't agree more!

Although it is a vastly different system, you all may want to take a look @ the Mechwarrior RPG. They switch to the Battletech system for mech combat. Long and short in that case, with the rules written with it in mind, it still slows the game down and is clunky.

The system for Mechwarrior 2e didn't make it too bad, but the one for 3e and it's slightly evolved present form is a different story.

If a combat is lasting more than 3 rounds, I pretty much always shift to One-Roll Conflict Resolution... (unless it's a Boss fight, and even then sometimes)

My sweet spot is about 5 rounds of combat, but then I try to load them down with bush fires that need to be stamped out. "Run over there, deal with this problem, stop these things from happening, reverse what the Bad Guys are doing, lock the blast door to keep out reinforcements" and so on - on top of swapping blaster fire with the enemy. These little mini-tasks tend to inflate my turn-per-combat ratios.

Edited by Desslok

My sweet spot is about 5 rounds of combat, but then I try to load them down with bush fires that need to be stamped out. "Run over there, deal with this problem, stop these things from happening, reverse what the Bad Guys are doing, lock the blast door to keep out reinforcements" and so on - on top of swapping blaster fire with the enemy. These little mini-tasks tend to inflate my turn-per-combat ratios.

Yeah, I always make it try to feel like a pulp movie, like the original SW films or Indiana Jones. Most of those fights take place on the run - there are few instances where we get bogged down in long battles.

This system seems to want you to keep it short and dynamic.

I try to do this, but my players make it hard for me! Coming from a very heavy D&D background, they rarely run, even if I try to make it obvious that is in their best interest.

I'm slowly getting it into their heads (the swarm of 200+ TIE Fighters they encountered last session was a good start :) ), but my sessions unfortunately get bogged down in combat occasionally despite my best efforts.

Edited by Absol197

I've had a bad experience with FaD fights going on forever when Parry is involved and Advantsge is spent to reduce Strain at every opportunity. Having a character spewing out Heal/Harm and another slinging stimpacks stretched it out even worse.

I've had a bad experience with FaD fights going on forever when Parry is involved and Advantsge is spent to reduce Strain at every opportunity. Having a character spewing out Heal/Harm and another slinging stimpacks stretched it out even worse.

Are you not partially responsible for that? If you want the fight to end. All you have to do is have fighters run or drop.

Hey I've been trying to get more public feedback on this so I'll relink my conversion rules here. As you probably have figured out running x-wing combat slows down the game a lot so if everyone enjoys a big setpiece x-wing fight thats great but if not its probably not your thing. If you do however have a read below:

Being a huge x-wing fan I ran a 2 year long campaign making use of this as an outline. Its certainly far from perfect and had some technical + wording issues but it was pretty serviceable. I'd love people to take a look and see what they think. Had some basic conversion rules and then also provided a replacement talent tree. The lines in the table show where the talents link to as if it was a tree. The main issue is if you buy everything on it then you have just a tonne of stuff to keep track of but thankfully you only ever had one ship to worry about. I want to reduce the maximum number of cards you have sitting next to your ship with maybe grit/toughness/extra hull + shield stuff but otherwise it really ran smoothly . Some people might not like the flat health boost named characters/PCs get but x-wing is a game about very fragile ships getting popped so having a little buffer so players are not getting one shot constantly but can even that out later with all their bonus abilities really becomes an important part of it.

https://drive.google...1W6Ld8HvNLOexV0

To give you an example of the conversion I'll take a PC with agility 4 and Pilot(Space) Rank 3, Gunnery 2 who is flying an X-wing

Your stats look like:

Pilot Skill 7 - (Agility +4, Pilot +3)

Primary Weapon 4 - (X-wing base +3, Gunnery /2 = +1)

Ship Agility 3 - (X-wing base +2, Piloting 3/2 = +1)

Hull 3 - (X-wing base +3)

Shields 4 - (X-wing base +3, PC bonus +2)

Its a decent upgrade over a default x-wing purely because my group wanted the experience of Vader in his appearance in Rebels to be the baseline for what a maxed ranked super Ace should be doing. If you are getting Gunnery 6 and Pilot 6 then anyone who isnt also an Ace can't really touch you with any degree of reliability. If thats a problem you can make the bonus Gunnery /3 or even remove it entirely. Its particularly satisfying to just crush through a squad of TIE Fighters.

The free shield bump is designed to act like your luck/heroic survival kind of thing to make sure they dont get one shotted thanks to an unlucky roll. It also encourages characters who are not built to be pilots to come into the fight in their own ship. This makes them just better ships even if the player has nothing but 1 agility.

Edited by kingcom

Hey! Look at that! FFG put up another "how to mash up your games!" post: https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2017/4/3/from-one-chance-to-the-next/

While it address some of the problems I have with crossbreeding the two - slightly - like how to use the talents, I still stand by my original assertion that the idea is still f'ing awful. But at least the article wasn't a vapid waste of time this go-round.

IMO largest problem integrating X-Wing (or Imperial assault or Armada) to SW RPG is different focus. Mini games focus on tactical or strategical action and RPG focuses on personal scale narrative.

Also, range bands are abstract in nature, so I don't see a way to implement them with minis without causing more problems than value gained. Personally I have mostly even abandoned maps, because they can change PC focus to too tactical view. Currently I only use maps as visual aids. I usually don't use minis with them. Only miniature + maps combo I see working is the range band map and miniatures pointing at which range band character is. Even that sometimes causes problems. E.g. when there are multiple opponents. Though, this is usually not problem to us, because we have very few combats. Maybe five combats in almost 40 sessions. Usually PCs do everything possible to avoid combat. And I like that, because in time it takes to solve one combat we can solve multiple non combat encounters. And having families and restricted time we like to have more content over less more structured content. When we want tactical combat which takes hours, we play PF.

Probably only way I would use X-Wing with RPG is when I'd like to give players change to affect larger (?) combat which their character cannot affect. Played as normal X-Wing session. Maybe if PCs are higher commanders arranging troops, to which they cannot directly affect. So, kind on non sequitur side missions which won't affect characters directly. But that's quite a different than integrating those two gamelines.

13 minutes ago, kkuja said:

Probably only way I would use X-Wing with RPG is when I'd like to give players change to affect larger (?) combat which their character cannot affect. Played as normal X-Wing session. Maybe if PCs are higher commanders arranging troops, to which they cannot directly affect. So, kind on non sequitur side missions which won't affect characters directly. But that's quite a different than integrating those two gamelines.

Even than would the Mass Combat rules OR Armada be the better tools for the situation.

But what I totally admit is that Minis are good reminders for positioning, playing a squad/ship behind another squad/ship to show the Gain the Advantage position for example works group to remind you of positing to each other and if firing at each other is even possible. As the RPG space combat rules are heavy on crowd control effects and fire-arcs this is a decent method to remember all those.

Besides, the article is garbage. No surprise here, another try to shoehorn two money-makers together for FFG. They did not even try and as every X-Wing player knows 2 dice attacks are worthless, especially against ships which have automatically free evade tokens, which those proud rpg designers who write an article for the selling more minis should be well aware off, they still hand out free evade tokens for every pilot with defensive driving, now totally screwing up the game balance as well, as a mildly useful talent now becomes a killer must have talent which should be in every pilot spec. ;-)

It is odd that they have a guest writer who doesn't seem to know both systems, but seems to write a ton of articles for FFG, usually about cross-promoting different star wars licenced products with each other. Hurray for the marketing guy.

Edited by SEApocalypse