I think my main issue with the article is summed up right here:

Quote

It's not always intentional, but given the lethality of starfighter combat in X-Wing , the risk of having a player lose his or her character is far greater in a blended X-Wing and Age of Rebellion game than in your standard Age of Rebellion campaign. That's part of the charm.

No, it's not part of the charm, it's part of the problem .

When you are running little plastic army men around a map, you're not really attached to them. They die, they respawn next match, the game continues like nothing happens. Big deal. In an RPG, that's a significant amount more emotional investment in a character and a concept. Some people get less attached, some get more attached ( some get WAY more attached ) but the reason that you play the same character week after week is that you have a connection. When it's way too easy to get blown out of the water space, then something needs to change.

And yes, when a ship is brought to 0 Hull, you can just say that the ship is disabled or that the pilot ejected or whatever, but that still doesn't change the fact that it's stlll way too easy for a ship to get disabled, putting the player on the sidelines for the rest of the combat.

It's an advanced PC that can survive in a fighter in this game. A lot of the 'defense' is pushed to deep in the various pilot trees. You have to use the squadron rules and have a lot of throw down 'Biggs' to burn when PCs are in fighters.

45 minutes ago, Desslok said:

I think my main issue with the article is summed up right here:

No, it's not part of the charm, it's part of the problem .

It's neither, main characters don't die in random explosions, they eject in time; at least most of the time.

Another article and my comments on page 1 still hold true. You cannot merge two separate systems together just because they have "Star Wars" in the title and expect it to turn out great.

Just use the minis for visual aides and use the RPG books for the rules... Or don't use the minis at all. That's even easier because it's less out of your wallet, less time to setup, less time taken to explain to players, less effort in general to just use one or the other. If the entire point of this RPG system is that it is supposed to push the narrative, then there should be no need for visual aides in the first place. Just be descriptive.

My thought on the issue is to have the big fleet battle not involve the PC's directly, but have it impact their actions. Like the Battle of Endor. The main PC's never spent a second in the air battle, they had their own issues to deal with. Buuuut, you could easily run a game of X-Wing, and have the players control the fleet that is defending the system where the PC's are currently in. Then, depending on the outcome of the match, that would inform how the main campaign would play out. If the Rebels are able to fight off the Imperial fleet, then the PC's end up having an easier time of things, as the Imperial forces are now cut off from reinforcements, and are going to be less effective.

Or, if they lose, then the PC's are now under a time crunch, and have to evacuate quickly, perhaps having to abandon whatever plan they had in the works.

I think the rules of the two systems are just too fundamentally different to gel well, but that's not the same thing as saying you can't incorporate it into a campaign.

4 hours ago, Desslok said:

I think my main issue with the article is summed up right here:

No, it's not part of the charm, it's part of the problem .

When you are running little plastic army men around a map, you're not really attached to them. They die, they respawn next match, the game continues like nothing happens. Big deal. In an RPG, that's a significant amount more emotional investment in a character and a concept. Some people get less attached, some get more attached ( some get WAY more attached ) but the reason that you play the same character week after week is that you have a connection. When it's way too easy to get blown out of the water space, then something needs to change.

And yes, when a ship is brought to 0 Hull, you can just say that the ship is disabled or that the pilot ejected or whatever, but that still doesn't change the fact that it's stlll way too easy for a ship to get disabled, putting the player on the sidelines for the rest of the combat.

Funnily enough that was the one bit of the article that resonated with me. If I were to run an AoR campaign with my players I would emphasize that the missions will be hard and characters will die. I think that expecting a long and happy career in the rebellion would be unrealistic. I mean we saw how they got mowed down in the opening scene of ANH

i don't think that for either EotE or FaD, but for AoR having characters die regularly seems like it would be appropriate.

And I guess Rogue 1 backs me up on that

Rebels die, in substantial quantities, in all three original films. Many died on Hoth. Vastly more died at Endor. Each MC80 cruiser the DS made go poof killed tens of thousands. Battle is dangerous, and the weapons aren't set to stun.

Yeah, but those are all faceless, nameless mooks. Minions die by the hundreds, PCs are significantly more resilient.

And you'll note that while countless Rebels were dying during ESB and RotJ not one single hero suffered more than a flesh wound. You can have gritty space combat. just make the PCs exempt. Not that you really need to, as the RPG RAW already treats them very differently than it does those faceless, nameless mooks.

BTW, Biggs Darklighter was neither faceless nor nameless. Just to pick the exception to the rule.

3 hours ago, robus said:

Funnily enough that was the one bit of the article that resonated with me. If I were to run an AoR campaign with my players I would emphasize that the missions will be hard and characters will die. I think that expecting a long and happy career in the rebellion would be unrealistic. I mean we saw how they got mowed down in the opening scene of ANH

i don't think that for either EotE or FaD, but for AoR having characters die regularly seems like it would be appropriate.

And I guess Rogue 1 backs me up on that

16 minutes ago, ShadoWarrior said:

BTW, Biggs Darklighter was neither faceless nor nameless. Just to pick the exception to the rule.

While both of these are true, they are almost always nameless rebels or rebels we met five minutes ago (like Biggs). It's never Han or Luke or Leia, or even Lando. Heck, once Wedge survived one movie that was enough to grant him immunity as well.

The fact is, the players aren't "Nameless Rebel #321" and this setting isn't Warhammer 40k, at least not by default. Even Rogue One, a glimpse into the horrors of war in the Star Wars Universe, had the protagonists going out in blazes of glory, accomplishing incredibly important things before dying heroically. In X-wing, meanwhile, you die like a chump because someone looked at you funny.

Now, if your players are fine with "Only War with a Star Wars skin," that's great. But that's a pretty big thematic change from a game that makes it pretty difficult for a character to die, and there not much way to integrate X-Wing (or heck, use even the starfighter rules in the game as is) without bringing that theme into play.

I guess you didn't read my post immediately above yours.

2 minutes ago, ShadoWarrior said:

I guess you didn't read my post immediately above yours.

Are you talking to me or Desslock? You posted while I was writing mine.

4 minutes ago, Benjan Meruna said:

Are you talking to me or Desslock? You posted while I was writing mine.

You. You quoted me to prove a point I already posted that I agreed with. You misunderstood the intent of the post that you quoted. That's why one should read new posts before pressing 'submit'.

4 minutes ago, ShadoWarrior said:

You. You quoted me to prove a point I already posted that I agreed with. You misunderstood the intent of the post that you quoted. That's why one should read new posts before pressing 'submit'.

Well, that's why God made edit buttons. Fixed.

Though honestly, I'm not sure what the point of your first post was, if you actually agreed with what Desslock was saying.

19 minutes ago, Benjan Meruna said:

Now, if your players are fine with "Only War with a Star Wars skin," that's great. But that's a pretty big thematic change from a game that makes it pretty difficult for a character to die, and there not much way to integrate X-Wing (or heck, use even the starfighter rules in the game as is) without bringing that theme into play.

And some players would love to see Star Wars: Empire At War with a roleplay skin over it. I suspect many of those that would like to merge X-wing and AoR. Or, perhaps, a Star Wars RPG with a space combat system that isn't "rules lite" and has more meat on the bones. Something designed to be able to handle mass combat without abstraction, something that has sensor rules that make sense, and shield rules that actually reflect movie canon as to how shields work in Star Wars. Something that doesn't look like space combat was included as an afterthought.

14 minutes ago, ShadoWarrior said:

And some players would love to see Star Wars: Empire At War with a roleplay skin over it. I suspect many of those that would like to merge X-wing and AoR. Or, perhaps, a Star Wars RPG with a space combat system that isn't "rules lite" and has more meat on the bones. Something designed to be able to handle mass combat without abstraction, something that has sensor rules that make sense, and shield rules that actually reflect movie canon as to how shields work in Star Wars. Something that doesn't look like space combat was included as an afterthought.

That's fine, but that's not this system. Trying to integrate X-wing INTO this system takes that mindset and shoves it right up against the Hero-centric mindset of this system, and the two don't mix well. Which was Desslock's point.

And my point is that you can have a hero-centric system and also have it be gritty. Those two concepts are not mutually exclusive. Does it take more rules? Yes. Please don't conflate hero-centric with rules lite. The first does not require the second. A gritty, hero-centric system would just take more effort on the part of the game designers, and more effort for new players to learn.

Whether X-wing is the right system to try to merge with EotE/AoR is another question. Probably not. It's probably better to just tweak (extend) EotE/AoR.

9 minutes ago, ShadoWarrior said:

And my point is that you can have a hero-centric system and also have it be gritty. Those two concepts are not mutually exclusive. Does it take more rules? Yes. Please don't conflate hero-centric with rules lite. The first does not require the second. A gritty, hero-centric system would just take more effort on the part of the game designers, and more effort for new players to learn.

Whether X-wing is the right system to try to merge with EotE/AoR is another question. Probably not. It's probably better to just tweak (extend) EotE/AoR.

A gritty system/setting, by default, features a high casualty rate for the heroes. Dark Heresy and Only War are gritty. Rogue One is gritty (though only by Star Wars standards, as mentioned before). This system is NOT gritty, because a GM more or less has to try to get characters killed. This only changes in space because starfighter combat is not well-balanced and the means to actually survive it are buried deep in Talent trees.

Rule light vs. rules heavy doesn't have anything to do with it. It's entirely about the philosophy behind "How easy is it for the heros to die in this system?"

And FFG already allows PCs to survive attacks that kill lesser mortals. Making the space combat system more lethal to non-heroic characters doesn't automatically make it more deadly to PCs. It can, but doesn't necessarily have to. Funny thing, the system as it is now has Destiny Points. If PCs die it's almost always a case of stupidity by the players or bad GMing. You have to really go out of your way to kill a PC in FFG. I don't see that changing if someone makes the space combat system grittier.

Oh, so you're just going with the whole "Just because your ship is destroyed doesn't mean you die" thing, gotcha.

My take on that is that this generally stretches the bounds of belief, having a system where PCs get shot down regularly but never or rarely die. It's different than just getting knocked on your rear in ground combat, because it's an inherently deadly situation that has a very low survival rate (whereas on the ground it would very well be fluffed as something falling and hitting you on the head, knocking you out).

Desslok also addressed that earlier:

8 hours ago, Desslok said:

And yes, when a ship is brought to 0 Hull, you can just say that the ship is disabled or that the pilot ejected or whatever, but that still doesn't change the fact that it's stlll way too easy for a ship to get disabled, putting the player on the sidelines for the rest of the combat.

1 hour ago, Benjan Meruna said:

In X-wing, meanwhile, you die like a chump because someone looked at you funny.

The RPG has fighters at least drop like flies too. A TIE with 2-3 successes and 2 advantages wipes an X-wing. You couldn't pay me enough to fly a fighter in this system on a regular basis.

1 minute ago, Edgookin said:

The RPG has fighters at least drop like flies too. A TIE with 2-3 successes and 2 advantages wipes an X-wing. You couldn't pay me enough to fly a fighter in this system on a regular basis.

Yeah, integrating X-wing takes a bad problem and makes it worse, but it doesn't stop it from being a bad problem to start with.

4 hours ago, Benjan Meruna said:

A gritty system/setting, by default, features a high casualty rate for the heroes. Dark Heresy and Only War are gritty. Rogue One is gritty (though only by Star Wars standards, as mentioned before). This system is NOT gritty, because a GM more or less has to try to get characters killed. This only changes in space because starfighter combat is not well-balanced and the means to actually survive it are buried deep in Talent trees.

Rule light vs. rules heavy doesn't have anything to do with it. It's entirely about the philosophy behind "How easy is it for the heros to die in this system?"

One thing to add, even with the ability to "fail" at starfighter combat without all those buried deep talents, it is still actually hard to die in starfighter combat as the suggestion for important characters to survive exploding starships still applies to PCs.

And well, that defensive driving talent interpretation gives players actually a rather strong defensive abilities based on X-Wing rules. Combine this with Master Pilot and one of those AGI 3 ships and you end up with quite a defensive ship, an A-Wing with 6 concussion missiles, chips, PS 9, a free evade token and double actions is a defensive and offensive monster on the table. And that is even without considering talents like corillian sendoff or k-turn or showboat which all make the player's ship defensively even more monstrous.

I am not really sure if this Brian Young ever played X-Wing competitively, as his idea for defensive driven creates defensively monsters and just recently a more restricted version of that, which only applied as a title to Defenders was deemed overpowered and reduced in power, now Brain is offering a even stronger version of that as a 15 point talent avaible in all ships, meanwhile the common enemy for players are TIE-Fighters which have just 2 attack dice, exactly the kind of attack which is pushed out of the x-wing meta because it useless against highly defensive agi 3 evade+focus ships.

Add in PC astromechs and now everyone has R2-D2 or similar forms of shield regen with auto-evades + focus + TLs … E-Wings are no monstrous and a single ace player has a good chance to kill 12 academy pilots in an overly long and drawn out X-Wing match with tons of resets for regen. So I am not really sure if the issue is really with survivability of ace players at least. Now no one wants to fly Y-Wings or X-Wings anymore, because those suck explose 2nd turn into the game, but hey, who ever would want to fly an X-Wing in star wars?

11 hours ago, Edgookin said:

The RPG has fighters at least drop like flies too. A TIE with 2-3 successes and 2 advantages wipes an X-wing. You couldn't pay me enough to fly a fighter in this system on a regular basis.

I think the easiest fix is to just give all ships more Hull Points. I mean, your average Wound for a PC is enough to eat about 2 hits in most cases, even for the wimpiest builds (yes I know there are exceptions, but I'm talking about averages here). So, if your average PC (and in most cases NPC combatants) can eat 2-3 hits in a typical combat scenario, why not just bump up the Hull Points to allow for this? Like maybe, an additional 50% HP based on the baseline stats? Or maybe just a +10HP across the board, to reflect the "eat at least one hit" thing.

Another thing that seems relatively easy to implement, is the "Unconscious" rule for PC's. IIRC, when a PC drops to 0HP, they aren't dead, they are just knocked out, unconscious. Well, why not just implement that for starships? If the HP, or HT, whatever the term is, I forget (don't mess with ships much), drops to zero, the ship doesn't insta-pop, it just goes dead, and is floating powerless in space. The occupant is still alive (for now), and able to do some actions, like try and fix the ship, but they aren't instantly spaced and sucking vacuum.

I mean, this issue of "space combat is super deadly" has been around for years now, ever since the game started. But I don't really see why it's such a difficult thing to fix. Or if it even needs to be fixed. Does it actually SAY in the RAW that when a ship hits zero HP, it blows up? Because I don't recall it saying that. I think that's mostly just a player inferred "fact" that has now colored the way most people play the game, without it actually being supported by the rules. So, it's possible, that we, as the player base, have created our own problem out of smoke and mirrors. If the books don't actually SAY the ship explodes when at 0 HP, then just do the same as you would with a PC, have it just go dead in space, helpless, and easy pickings for anyone who feels compelled to be a jerk about those things, but still "alive". And able to be revived with a stimpack (repair check), or at least protected by allies until the fight is over, and they can get it up and running again.

12 minutes ago, KungFuFerret said:

Another thing that seems relatively easy to implement, is the "Unconscious" rule for PC's. IIRC, when a PC drops to 0HP, they aren't dead, they are just knocked out, unconscious. Well, why not just implement that for starships? If the HP, or HT, whatever the term is, I forget (don't mess with ships much), drops to zero, the ship doesn't insta-pop, it just goes dead, and is floating powerless in space. The occupant is still alive (for now), and able to do some actions, like try and fix the ship, but they aren't instantly spaced and sucking vacuum.

If the books don't actually SAY the ship explodes when at 0 HP, then just do the same as you would with a PC, have it just go dead in space, helpless, and easy pickings for anyone who feels compelled to be a jerk about those things, but still "alive".

The RAW (ECRB 242-243) already suggests that at the GM's discretion an NPC ship of silhouette 3 or smaller does not have to automatically blow up if it exceeds HTT, and the RAW specifically states that the "it blows up" doesn't apply to PC ships or ships of silhouette 4+. By RAW you have to really work at trying to blow up a silhouette 4+ ship as no amount of damage can destroy one, only critical hits can (eventually) do so.