Negative Nelly!

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

  1. I dont like Infiltrator. well at least i don't like the name. It sounds like a specialisation thats going to be amazing at sneaking into places to achieve an objective... yet not a single talent for Stealth or Skullduggery.

Ummmmm, it has the absolute two best Talents for both Skills.

I don't necessarily agree with this "rule". Especially new GM's can really benefit from them. And from time to time I myself like running them... Boxed text however go straight out the window.

Personally I like adventure modules. But, I always change them on the fly, to meet the needs of the game. Also, boxed text flies out of the window, because we use our native language, finnish, when gaming, and have to anyway translate everything to finnish. Often I just select the important points from read aloud text and improvise the actual words.

But back to topic. I kind of don't like that there is certain discrepancy in skills. There are Three ranged combat skills, two close combat skills, six social skills, 7 knowledge skills. But then I realized there are 5 combat skills, 7 knowledge skills, and 6 (or 7 depending on what you count) social skills, 7 technical skills, etc. They are actually more balanced that I realized. Having 36 fairly broad skills if stuff load of better than having those 135 (and count is still rising) extremely narrow skills of my previous favourite system.

But some skills are a bit too broad for my taste. For example cool. How to appear cool is also how to resist charm. Nothing huge, just minor dislike (or not favourite). And my friends pet peevee about RPG skills. Shooting with agility. He trains soldiers, and has said agility has almost nothing to do how accurately person can. Especially with artillery (gunnery). But that is kind of joke in our group, he doesn't take it seriously. Willpower or intellect would be so much batter base stat for shooting. Thankfully in this system there is no strict connection between skill and characteristic. I love it when I can for example ask PC to roll INT + ranged-heavy to recognize opponents weapon. Or PRE + knowledge to impress an NPC. It encourages players to not have a dump stat for their PC, and to suggest creative skill usage to GM.

But I have one actual complaint (still minor IMO, and inevidable). Equipments are sprinkled to so many books. Which book had the weapon attachment I need to check... Thankfully there is viluppo.net.

Unfortunately for me, as time goes on, I find that the thing I dislike most about the FFG SWRPG system is the FFG SWRPG system itself.

It's not necessarily broken, but I find that all of my subjective, specific gripes with it stem from the basic fact that it simply doesn't suit my style or thought process nearly as well as any of the WotC systems (even Saga) or WEG's D6.

I must qualify this position by saying I think that FFG has done (and continues to do) a fantastic job: the system is well on its way to being fully fleshed out, the books themselves are gorgeous, and I do believe they've made a serious and largely successful effort to capture the spirit of the setting. (LoNH in particular is a 'glorious jewel'.)

That said, though, it's the core of the system and the way it's implemented that just don't sit well with me. The whole advantage/disadvantage system, pretty much everything about how combat works, everything in space, and the Force in general. I didn't like talent trees in Saga, and I don't like them here. I dislike what I feel are the very narrow scope of each specialization, and what I feel is needless crunch in some areas and over-simplification in others.

It's a bummer, really, because I was thrilled to find out FFG was doing a new SWRPG after WotC, and I've given it an honest effort since launch (and have nearly every book in the EotE and AoR lines), but over the past few months, each time I take my still-developing campaign ideas and try to translate even very general plot arcs to the FFG system, I'm continually frustrated, and it just seems to be a case where my brain is wired differently than the mechanics of the system...so, when it *is* finally time for me to launch my campaign, it'll probably use the WotC revised core rules, or the WEG D6 system, and use the FFG material strictly for fluff and reference.

  • I dont like Infiltrator. well at least i don't like the name. It sounds like a specialisation thats going to be amazing at sneaking into places to achieve an objective... yet not a single talent for Stealth or Skullduggery.
Ummmmm, it has the absolute two best Talents for both Skills.

So 2 talents related to Stealth and Skullduggery - 1 is once per session, one reduces difficulty by 1 for 2 strain... Then there are 12 talents directly related to combat, 4 Grit/Toughened and 2 universal talents.

Where are the Stalker, Bypass Security, Indistinguishable and Codebreaker talents?

I'm not saying I dislike the Spec though, I think it's a brilliant spec and very thematic for a close combat Spy... But the name is misleading.

2 is 200% more than none. Reducing Difficulty of all Stealth and Skulduggery checks is a single Talent but without question fantastic.

In addition you can once a session sub Cunning for any stat in any skill check, and for a DP add Cunning to any damage roll. So that's 2 more Talents encouraging a high Cunning score which would certainly be helpful in Skulduggery checks.

It basically encourages and rewards a high Cunning score, which certainly helps Skulduggery checks.

So it's actually 4 talents. May not be the ones you want, but it is more than none, and they're all great.

Edited by 2P51

2 is 200% more than none.

Actually, 2 is infinitely more than zero

- The Pedant :ph34r:

Again, I like the spec, but the name is my problem. Yes it encourages high Cunning and Brawn, but Raider or Prowler would have been better considering it's clear focus on combat.

2 is 200% more than none.

Actually, 2 is infinitely more than zero

- The Pedant :ph34r:

Math jargon aside, it has more than zero Talents supporting Stealth and Skulduggery.

Again, I like the spec, but the name is my problem. Yes it encourages high Cunning and Brawn, but Raider or Prowler would have been better considering it's clear focus on combat.

Yeah, most of the Infiltrator ttalent tree is focused on being a melee murder machine than on being a sneaky SOB that infiltrates places without being observed or identified. Yes, that last part can be done with just skills, but it'd be nice for the spec to have some talents that reinforce the sneaky part as opposed to focusing very heavily on close-quarters combat.

I don't get too hung up on the names of careers/specializations or flavor wise what they intend for the player to be. To me they are just guidelines/suggestions for what the player could do with those skills and talents. In my first game, I had a Gank explorer/big game hunter, who considered himself a spy/scout. For him, it had better skills for what he wanted to do and how he envisioned his character.

To the OP, probably my biggest problem with the system as is, is space combat. When you first start reading it, it just sounds like a more complex version of ground combat, but in practice space combat is far more tedious and lacks the fun narrative pace of ground combat. I had one big space combat session in my first campaign and none of the players really seemed to enjoy it, not even the smuggler pilot. Since then I've just kept it to quick chases or small encounters.

I'll largely echo previous posts.

Smuggler name bad

Defense can be a mess

A few ships I'd stat differently.

The only thing I can add that I HATE about all of the EotE books has nothing to do with rules or really the game itself. The FONT. I loath the font with a burning passion. Being visually impaired and not having legal PDF's available the thin not dark enough font makes reading the books difficult enough for me that I no longer really read them for pleasure. I've been looking at some other system game books recently and it's so nice to be able to clearly read everything.

Smuggler name bad for generic sci-fi game. Smuggler name perfect for Star Wars emulator system.

2 is 200% more than none.

Actually, 2 is infinitely more than zero

- The Pedant :ph34r:

Isn't 2 2 more than zero?

2 is 200% more than none.

Actually, 2 is infinitely more than zero

- The Pedant :ph34r:

Isn't 2 2 more than zero?

Any positive number, when compared on a percentage basis against an initial value of zero, is an infinite percentage more than 0.

To explain a bit further, let's start with a number bigger than 0. Let's use 2 to start with.

How much bigger than 2 is 3, in percentages? Well, it's 1 bigger, and 1 is 50% of 2. So, we say that 3 is 50% bigger than 2 (or 150% of 2), because you add 50% again of the beginning number to get to 3.

If we drop our beginning number to 1 and keep our final at 3, what do we get? Well, 100% of 1 is...1, and we need to add that in twice to get to 3, so 3 is 200% bigger than, or 300% of, 1.

So if we drop our starting number to 0, what percent of 0 is 3? Huh, we've got a problem. 0 is 100% of 0, but we can add that to 0 infinitely without actually getting to three. In fact, it doesn't matter what number we're trying to get to, we'll never be able to add any number of 0s to 0 and get there. Which means that any number, even 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 (or smaller!), is infinitely more than 0, if we're considering percentages.

Hopefully that clears that up, and we can get back to doing what we're supposed to be doing: dumping on our favorite RPG system! :D

I actually kind of dislike defence. Because it can be guide a mess. Some values stack and some don't. This isn't actually real problem, just a small annoyance, and I don't know how it could have been done better.

Also some career are IMO much less interesting than others. And feel somewhat pointless.

And from my point of view certain hook (other than star wars) is missing from the game. E.g. my previous favourite game SLA industries had a hook which I really loved. Game world was basically hopeless dystopia. In the theme of "space Cthulhu who convinced everyone he is saviour, and PCs work for him." EotE is just Star wars with criminals, AoR is just rebellion era star wars, FaD is just jedi tricks. Yeah, I know, this is kind of stupid thing and the "problem" is purely in my head. But I still love this game line. Unfortunately I sometimes feel that Star Wars games go directly to "gun and mobile phone" category (term my friend uses from more or less generic scifi games, without any huge hooks in premise or system (My reason tells me that narrative dice system removes FFG SW from this category, but sometimes I'm skeptical)). As you can notice I'm not really huge SW fan/geek, even though I love those movies.

Edited by kkuja

And from my point of view certain hook (other than star wars) is missing from the game. E.g. my previous favourite game SLA industries had a hook which I really loved. Game world was basically hopeless dystopia. In the theme of "space Cthulhu who convinced everyone he is saviour, and PCs work for him." EotE is just Star wars with criminals, AoR is just rebellion era star wars, FaD is just jedi tricks. Yeah, I know, this is kind of stupid thing and the "problem" is purely in my head. But I still love this game line. Unfortunately I sometimes feel that Star Wars games go directly to "gun and mobile phone" category (term my friend uses from more or less generic scifi games, without any huge hooks in premise or system (My reason tells me that narrative dice system removes FFG SW from this category, but sometimes I'm skeptical)). As you can notice I'm not really huge SW fan/geek, even though I love those movies.

Are you basically saying that the game line needs metaplot? Specifically, metaplot beyond what can be utilized from the massive amounts of Star Wars materials out there?

After skimming the math posts, all I can think of is one of the scenes from the first whodunit sequence in Clue where Wadsworth the Butler and Miss Scarlet are going through how many bullets are left in the gun...

Smuggler name bad for generic sci-fi game. Smuggler name perfect for Star Wars emulator system.

If charmers, gamblers, etc. were in fact smugglers then sure. Now, not so much.

Now it is putting a coke label on a bottle of sprite.

To explain a bit further, let's start with a number bigger than 0. Let's use 2 to start with.How much bigger than 2 is 3, in percentages? Well, it's 1 bigger, and 1 is 50% of 2. So, we say that 3 is 50% bigger than 2 (or 150% of 2), because you add 50% again of the beginning number to get to 3.If we drop our beginning number to 1 and keep our final at 3, what do we get? Well, 100% of 1 is...1, and we need to add that in twice to get to 3, so 3 is 200% bigger than, or 300% of, 1.So if we drop our starting number to 0, what percent of 0 is 3? Huh, we've got a problem. 0 is 100% of 0, but we can add that to 0 infinitely without actually getting to three. In fact, it doesn't matter what number we're trying to get to, we'll never be able to add any number of 0s to 0 and get there. Which means that any number, even 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 (or smaller!), is infinitely more than 0, if we're considering percentages.Hopefully that clears that up, and we can get back to doing what we're supposed to be doing: dumping on our favorite RPG system! :D

Have you ever found the YouTube channel Numberphile? This post instantly reminded me of it, and I think you may enjoy it quite a lot.

I love Numberphile! It's one of my top YouTube channels!

I enjoy teaching, and learning, and I feel I'm generally fairly good at both. Plus I like numbers, so it's just all around good.

Quick maths joke: what do you get when you cross a mosquito and a mountain climber?

After skimming the math posts, all I can think of is one of the scenes from the first whodunit sequence in Clue where Wadsworth the Butler and Miss Scarlet are going through how many bullets are left in the gun...

I love Numberphile! It's one of my top YouTube channels!I enjoy teaching, and learning, and I feel I'm generally fairly good at both. Plus I like numbers, so it's just all around good.Quick maths joke: what do you get when you cross a mosquito and a mountain climber?

I don't know, what do you get when you cross a mosquito with a mountain climber?

Smuggler name bad for generic sci-fi game. Smuggler name perfect for Star Wars emulator system.

If charmers, gamblers, etc. were in fact smugglers then sure. Now, not so much.

Now it is putting a coke label on a bottle of sprite.

But hey, I get where you are coming from! I love broadly branded classes in other games too, in generic games. I actually mostly play class-less systems. But when I play Dresden Files or Star Wars for example, I want narrowly defined archetypes that captures the fiction and feel of the world for me! Sure, they could have gone with broader names for more open character choices, but Knight of the Faerie Court and Smuggler tells me "this is a specific fictional world that your charaster is part of!"... But as I said, bending flavour and reskinning is cool! :)

Edited by RodianClone

Nothing! You can't cross a Vector and a Scalar! *bu-dum ching*

Horrible, I know. Okay, I'll stop now...