So to be very clear everything here is a change or house rule for the situation where players will be playing with different people in an bi annual game, which will take place at two local convention. It is meant for balance and for a lot of people to be able to run through adventures with strangers and have compatible characters easily identified by career/spec.

These are the parts I am looking for comments on. If you think you have something to add that would help I would appreciate it.

Standard Character Creation Rules will be followed with the following exceptions

There will be no duty,conflict obligation etc. Instead each player will begin the game with the +10 xp and a total of 5000 credits.

Players will not get a ship, homestead, holocron etc, but may begin play with (1) restricted item of a cost up to 2500 credits.

A Player may have 1 month (8 hours per day) of crafting at character gen.

Books Available

Players may use rules from any of the published books, but where rules conflict the most recently published book or errata prevails.

In order for a player to use a splat book he must bring a copy of the book to the game.

Dice Limits

No character may ever add more then 4 boost dice to a roll nor may they ever benefit from more then 4 defense (all seperate types of defense stack up to the 4 limit).

Purchasing/Selling Items/Crafting

Players must purchase,sell, and craft their own items another party member cannot do this for them. Each adventure will award

an amount of downtime, which can be used to craft or work a trade for additional credits.

Destiny Points

For balance purposes each group will start out with 1 ls and 1 ds point per player.

Factions

Players may begin the game with a low level of affiliation with one of the following groups

1. The Hutt Cartels

2. The Black Sun

3. The Rebel Alliance

4. The Bounty Hunter's Guild

Players may gain reputation with these factions over time through adventuring and each group will provide a broad range of benefits and responsibilities in the adventures.

Advancement

In order to take a second spec you must have made it to the 5th row in at least one column of your current specilization. You may never have more XP in a secondary spec as your primary spec.

So, I have one suggestion, and one question.

First, the suggestion — I wouldn’t allow the PCs to do crafting before the game starts.

IMO, they are NPC Rivals right up until the moment they become PCs, which means that any crafting they would have been doing would have been for employment and not themselves. They can do crafting once they become a PC, i.e., once the game starts. And no, they can’t be Anakin at age five, because there’s only one Anakin in the entire galaxy.

If pre-crafting has to be allowed, then I would put that into the same category as the one restricted item up to 2500 credits in cost.

Next, the question — Why the limitations on the second spec? What is the goal that you’re trying to achieve with these rules?

The goal is in mustering players to have a balanced group and to be able to more easily tell what someone's role in a group would be. So you don't have someone be the sharpshooter with no real skill in it and most of his points spent in slicing and the group not having a good balance as a result.

This was much less draconian then the previous incarnation of no specs outside your career.

As to the crafting I have been playing with the idea from 1 week to 1 month of time and haven't made a definite decision. I may also max the number of items they can make at 4 total. I want crafty characters to build their own land/air speeders/droids/armor and weapons with mods. I want the characters to be very different and this is one way of doing this at the start.

The max limit of gear is the character's encumberance rating and for droids its encumberance +3

So no one will be starting with 20 blaster pistols or any nonsense like that

The goal is in mustering players to have a balanced group and to be able to more easily tell what someone's role in a group would be. So you don't have someone be the sharpshooter with no real skill in it and most of his points spent in slicing and the group not having a good balance as a result.

This was much less draconian then the previous incarnation of no specs outside your career.

The issue, as I see it, is that this doesn’t really solve the underlying problem.

It’s entirely possible for someone to have a just a single specialization, and yet have little or no skills or talents that related to their official career.

In fact, as I see it, many PCs tend to have a career with one name and in fact what they’re really good at is unrelated to that career. It just so happens that the career/spec in question is the easiest way for them to get the build they want, so that they can go do the thing they want.

IMO, you’re better off just having a common sense rule that clearly identifies for each PC what they’re actually good at (or want to be good at), and have that be how they are identified to the other players.

So, it doesn’t matter what the official career or spec is of the “Sniper” in the group, or the “Slicer” in the group, or whatever. They take the career and specs they want, get the talents and skills they want, but none of that changes how they are represented to everyone else.

Game mechanics are game mechanics, and how things appear from one character to another during role-playing may have little or nothing to do with actual game mechanics.

So, my suggestion is that you don’t even try to use game mechanic limitations to fix those problems of appearance.

yeah its pretty unfair to the other players at the table if the adventure requires a doctor or someone skilled at computer hacking, people are split based on spec and you find out that your team can't succeed because your doctor put all of his points into agi and shooting and has int 2 medicine 1.

I don't want to do pregens but if I can't find a compromise thats what its going to have to be.

yeah its pretty unfair to the other players at the table if the adventure requires a doctor or someone skilled at computer hacking, people are split based on spec and you find out that your team can't succeed because your doctor put all of his points into agi and shooting and has int 2 medicine 1.

I don't want to do pregens but if I can't find a compromise thats what its going to have to be.

I completely agree. That’s why I think you want a more general description of the problem and the rules to solve that problem, as opposed to getting bogged down into specific game mechanics on this issue.

Is this your groups own private event at a con, or is this for other random con-goers as well?

Basics are this: running several slots of 2 adventures I have written part 1 and part 2 for we hope up to 20-40 ish players. It's both for experienced players to meet new people and to introduce random con goers to the system and initially we were thinking all pregens but maybe have a character gen system for those who have played before or may be interested in learning and sitting with us between sessions and learning to make their own characters.

With all pregens I know all the needed roles will be filled but players are less attached to their characters and I want to start linking the adventures I write from convention to convention.

The dice limits are for balance The destiny points are for balance as each scenario scores a certain amount of possible points and in the past we have given away dice/core rule books etc as prizes for top scoring groups. (not looking to disclose award system though)

Also wrote in faction subquests in these adventures and trying factions out for the first time this jan

This was much less draconian then the previous incarnation of no specs outside your career.

Ah, that's what makes 'house rules' really isn't it?

I've never permitted multi-classing in over 30 years of GMing, through our three-year SW game and numerous D&D campaigns.

Harsh, sure. But my game, my rules. There are always things that compensate.

Also wrote in faction subquests in these adventures and trying factions out for the first time this jan

I built our entire SW game on a faction war. Let us know how it goes, anyway. And don't be afraid to amend your house rules if you feel they're not working as you wish.