I have a player who does not like how the Force Die works. It seems most of the time she rolls she gets dark side pips and doesn't want to use them. I understand mechanically that it is okay to use them occasionally without falling to the dark side but how do I explain it to her as far as the narrative goes?

The Dark side has always been the quick and easy path to power hence why there's more on the die. Using the Dark side you can generally get more reliable activation of powers.

The thing to keep in mind about the Force is that it basically works like Buddhism.

There is suffering in the universe, that is the dark side.

Suffering comes from wanting and attachment.

To avoid the dark side one has to live a life free of wants and attachments.

So, using dark side pips doesn't mean your character is doing something evil, it means they are overwhelmed by their emotions. Their attachments, wants and cravings are fueling their power, rather than the nirvana state the Jedi try to attain. These feelings don't have to be hatred and anger, they can be things like fear or awe, or even positive feelings like love or friendship.

Fueling a power with love isn't evil in itself, the reason it causes you conflict is because if you love something you are also afraid to lose it, and fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering, and suffering is the dark side.

Let's say a friend of yours is in trouble and you have to use the Force to save them. You roll nothing but dark side, and have to use those pips to fuel the power. That's not you doing an evil thing, that just means that in that moment you are too afraid of losing your friend to clear your mind and let it all go. What turns a character evil is when they let their fear take over, when they become so obsessed with protecting their friends that they become willing to hurt innocents to do it, that they are prone to abject hate against anyone they consider a threat, and they are constantly wanting for more power to protect themselves with. A character doesn't have to go down that slippery slope to have a brush with the feelings that can drive a fall to the dark side.

Don't explain it as the dark side. Explain it as giving into emotions. She gives into her fears. She got angry. She was selfish. A negative emotion momentarily took over and she acted on it. A lot of players tend to play their characters as if they are 100% in control of their emotional states. However, this isn't true. Emotions do in fact get the better of us. We sometimes lash out in anger. We sometimes say things we truly don't mean. We sometimes do something selfish without thinking. Using a dark pip is just that, giving into a negative emotion momentarily for power.

In the long run, if we do this to much, it will corrupt us. However, it happening from time to time is a normal experience.

As the character gains experience and gets more Force dice the character finds themselves in fewer and fewer situations wherein they need to give into negative emotions to get what they want. They become more intune with their better half. But in the beginning, while still learning, they are more prone to get mad and act on negative emotions than they are to just let it pass.

1 hour ago, JinFaram said:

I have a player who does not like how the Force Die works. It seems most of the time she rolls she gets dark side pips and doesn't want to use them. I understand mechanically that it is okay to use them occasionally without falling to the dark side but how do I explain it to her as far as the narrative goes?

Statistically, there are more dark side faces than light side faces, so yes, this is how it works mechanically. The first question I might ask this player is "How reliable do you think your force powers should be?" Because in previous iterations of Star Wars roleplaying, especially at low levels, using Force Powers was anything but reliable. In fact, in the FFG system, as long as you are willing to take conflict, strain, and have a destiny point to tap, many Force Powers can be successfully activated every time.

Furthermore, as others have stated, Dark Side pips generate conflict. Only when the conflict earned at the end of a session is greater than the D10 roll does morality actually drop, and morality is what determines if a Force User is a Light Sider or a Dark Sider.

Finally, the developers are on record saying that players are expected to generate some conflict from using dark side pips. That is how the system is supposed to work. If a player is expecting to be able to always activate force powers without ever having to use dark side pips, especially at low levels, they are going to be disappointed.

The major problem is that the cost of using them usually isn't worth it. Strain, conflict, and a destiny point, especially when this is going to be happening over half of the time for most new-ish characters?

Ditch the destiny point requirement and the player will have a far more usable option.

I think it's really important to remember that the Force in this system doesn't work anywhere near the same way as it did in previous games. Falling to the darkside isn't a matter of collecting points. To be honest you don't really need to describe a character tapping into the darkside except for when they are specifically using a power like Harm or Unleashed. Otherwise, the game gives you a great amount of latitude in regards to what happens when you are using darkside pips and gaining Conflict. I think that latitude should be used in order to build a deeper and more intimate relationship with the use of the Force instead of just tracking how much darkside points one is gaining.

As such I think players and GM's alike should focus on what a character feels when they make use of the Force. Where their heart and mind are at. What they are feeling. What the character is unaware that he is feeling.

Also, I agree that the rule on flipping a DP should be ignored. I found that rule to be silly.

The DP rule is just fine if your table keeps the points flipping at a good rate. In combat the GM should pretty much immediately flip back after every point the players flip. Destiny Points are only a problem if the GM treats them as a rare resource the players have to manage. What the GM should do is simply make it their mission to always keep the destiny pool in balance, so players are never afraid of running out of DPs, the rate at which they use them just causes more upgrades for the GM.

There's a fan made short called "Knights of the Old Republic: Rescue Mission" on youtube about Revan post KOTOR but before the novel. He makes a statement to a Jedi to the tune of "There is no power a Sith has a Jedi cannot use, you must be strong enough to master the Force in it's entirety." after a brief duel "The force does not control you, young one. You saved your guardian using something you thought was abhorrent, but, your motives are still aligned with the Jedi code." In this case she used force lightening to stop Revan (no chance of a win, it was to prove a point) from killing said guardian. She did give in to her emotions, anger in this case to use the power in question however she did it for a good cause. I've decided in my game to use this rather than just light v dark pips.

I was kinda torn on the Destiny Point rule, but I ended up keeping it. For beginning characters, the Conflict cost is going to be negligible, even if you're trying to hit Light Side Paragon. A point of Strain to see through walls, grab the jail keys from a wall hook, or pull a "these aren't the droids you're looking for"? Pshaw! I think a 58% chance of having to spend a DP is a fair price to pay. Destiny is spent all the time to upgrade checks, you're spending it to do things that should be impossible.

So long as the GM isn't being forgetful (or worse, stingy) about spending those dark side Destiny Points, then there should always be at least a couple of light side Destiny Points available to be used.

I think another thing to keep in mind is that in contrast to WotC's various d20-based Star Wars RPGs (where starting out as an actual Jedi was a character option), using the Force isn't really meant to be a "surefire, always on" sort of thing. In a way, it's akin to WEG's D6 system where a starting Force user had no assurance that if they tried to do something with the Force that it would work, and that it took a lot of time and training (aka experience investment) for a Force user to become a capable enough Force user that they could have some degree of certainty of pulling off what they wanted when using the Force.

Of course, FFG's designed the entire dice system so that there's no such thing as a "sure thing" when the dice are rolled, mostly as Jay Little is a believer in that if you're rolling dice, then there should always be some chance of failure no matter how easy the task, and some chance of success no matter how daunting the difficulty, in effect making it so that each dice roll is important, and that dice shouldn't be rolled for "trivial" tasks.

Mechanically, requiring the flipping of a Destiny Point is a means to keep Force users from being too capable in the early going, especially as EotE and AoR didn't have the Morality/Conflict system. But, so long as the GM's okay with Force users being far more capable since Force usage will be more reliable (strain/conflict really isn't much of a cost), then dispensing with the DP flip shouldn't be problematic.

17 hours ago, Kael said:

Don't explain it as the dark side. Explain it as giving into emotions. She gives into her fears. She got angry. She was selfish. A negative emotion momentarily took over and she acted on it.

I know this is how it's supposed to work, but I really don't like it. The amount of emotional flip-flopping from one moment to the next due to the randomness of the dice is ridiculous, and something we never see in the media. They don't have a panic attack or a psychotic episode every time they want to grab their fallen lightsaber. In fact, the only time emotions are really involved is when it's based on a story element or the character is pushed to some physical or emotional extreme. The rest of the time they are just doing what they do.

I prefer to explain simply that the Force is difficult to connect to, especially in a clean way. The Strain (and DP if you enforce it) just represents the Force user clearing their mind to make the appropriate kind of connection. So in a way, the Force die are kind of like the skill dice: the more you have, the more likely you can create that clean connection...but you can always spend the penalty to keep your mind in the right place. There doesn't have to be any kind of other residual effect, especially if it doesn't serve the story.

Just now, whafrog said:

I know this is how it's supposed to work, but I really don't like it. The amount of emotional flip-flopping from one moment to the next due to the randomness of the dice is ridiculous, and something we never see in the media. They don't have a panic attack or a psychotic episode every time they want to grab their fallen lightsaber. In fact, the only time emotions are really involved is when it's based on a story element or the character is pushed to some physical or emotional extreme. The rest of the time they are just doing what they do.

I prefer to explain simply that the Force is difficult to connect to, especially in a clean way. The Strain (and DP if you enforce it) just represents the Force user clearing their mind to make the appropriate kind of connection. So in a way, the Force die are kind of like the skill dice: the more you have, the more likely you can create that clean connection...but you can always spend the penalty to keep your mind in the right place. There doesn't have to be any kind of other residual effect, especially if it doesn't serve the story.

Yes but in the media they aren't rolling dice. Also in the media the characters behave in a more natural way than people tend to play their characters as. People tend to artificially play their characters as good. Honestly if more people played their characters organically we likely wouldn't need rules to enforce these kind of things.

In the media we see the charactes naturally do the things that most PC's would avoid doing. When you're not artifically avoiding both negative and positive emotions the outcome looks more natural than what dice tend to show.

47 minutes ago, Kael said:

Yes but in the media they aren't rolling dice. Also in the media the characters behave in a more natural way than people tend to play their characters as. People tend to artificially play their characters as good. Honestly if more people played their characters organically we likely wouldn't need rules to enforce these kind of things.

In the media we see the charactes naturally do the things that most PC's would avoid doing. When you're not artifically avoiding both negative and positive emotions the outcome looks more natural than what dice tend to show.

So...the dice and interpretation are there to force people to play their character in a certain way? No thanks. I would never ask my players to artificially play a character according to a dice roll. It's not the role of the game mechanics to dictate this.

The argument doesn't make sense anyway: nobody except the most psychotic person is struggling with anger issues 7/12s of the time, multiple times per day. If people play their characters "artificially good", then this just makes them "artificially nutty". If you like that kind of emotional micro-management, go for it, but I think it distracts from the larger story.

Another thought related to the media: most often the big emotional moments aren't around using the Force at all, but simply the choices the character has to make. They don't "fall" because of Force pips, they fall because of violence and murder. The pips shouldn't even enter into it, unless somebody wants them to.

The Force dice are a cute mathematical representation of "dark side is quicker, though not more powerful", but there's no reason to have it drive character portrayal.

The whole core idea of this game is that you roll the dice and then tell the story of what happens. If your character has no emotional weaknesses that represent their draw to the dark side then the game isn't wrong for telling you to play your character's darker side, your character is just shallow for not having one. It doesn't have to be anything inherently evil. Obi Wan laughs and enjoys the fighting sometimes and mocks his opponent with quick witted remarks. He's not evil, but if he was going to turn evil that's the path he would follow to the dark side. Laughing in the face of danger and unnerving your opponent with rapier wit can turn to chasing the thrill of a fight, and finding pleasure in mocking the defeated.

That said, the morality system sucks. You could kill a child for fun and stay a paragon, or you could fall to the dark side for saying mean things on the holonet too often with the system as it's written. There should be more thresholds of evil you need to cross to truly go dark side IMO.

Quote

So...the dice and interpretation are there to force people to play their character in a certain way? No thanks. I would never ask my players to artificially play a character according to a dice roll. It's not the role of the game mechanics to dictate this.

That's not the argument I made. I would also note that I already said most people are already playing their characters in an artificial way anyway. So whether it's artificial because of dice or because of the player it is still .....artificial.

Quote

The argument doesn't make sense anyway: nobody except the most psychotic person is struggling with anger issues 7/12s of the time, multiple times per day.

I don't think this is an issue in most cases. How often are you rolling dice anyway that the person would be struggling with anger issues all the time?

Quote

If you like that kind of emotional micro-management, go for it, but I think it distracts from the larger story.

I fail to see how any of this is emotional micromanagement . It would only be that case if the player were constantly rolling for Force effects. In that case it would come off as micro management. But I imagine a character that is always using the Force has bigger issues to worry about.

Just now, whafrog said:

Another thought related to the media: most often the big emotional moments aren't around using the Force at all, but simply the choices the character has to make. They don't "fall" because of Force pips, they fall because of violence and murder. The pips shouldn't even enter into it, unless somebody wants them to.

And here you highlight the folly of trying to compare game mechanics to media portrayals. Yes they don't fall due to dark side pips. They also never fell due to darkside points that could be earned in WotC version of the game. These are merely mechanics that are meant to help present the world. They will never 100% mesh with what we see in the media. It's like asking "did Yoda gain Conflict when he tossed those two guards" in III. You can argue it one way or the other but the truth is ...... no one who wrote that scene was concerned about the concept of Conflict so the matter is moot.

Just now, whafrog said:

The Force dice are a cute mathematical representation of "dark side is quicker, though not more powerful", but there's no reason to have it drive character portrayal.

I never said it should. I think you are taking things to an extreme that I never remotely suggested.

47 minutes ago, Kael said:

And here you highlight the folly of trying to compare game mechanics to media portrayals. Yes they don't fall due to dark side pips. They also never fell due to darkside points that could be earned in WotC version of the game. These are merely mechanics that are meant to help present the world.

The difference is in WotC the GM simply assigned dark side points based on actions. With this game you're racking up conflict because of a dice roll (in addition to actions). There is potential for this *every time you use the Force*, whether or not there is anything high-stakes about the action.

I'm reacting to this:

20 hours ago, Kael said:

Explain it as giving into emotions. She gives into her fears. She got angry. She was selfish.

This was your go-to explanation for dark pip usage. Now, maybe I'm interpreting what you're saying incorrectly, but that seems extreme for something that can happen every single round in structured time. From one round to the next the person could be totally in tune, or angry/fearful/vengeful, solely based on the Force dice results. Isn't that the definition of "roll-play"?

Now, if during some encounter, the narrative stakes were high and the player rolled a dark result and *wanted* to narrate their PC being affected that way, that's all fine and welcome especially if it leads in interesting, longer-term, narrative directions. But I wouldn't be interested in hearing about it every single round, it becomes meaningless.

10 minutes ago, whafrog said:

The difference is in WotC the GM simply assigned dark side points based on actions. With this game you're racking up conflict because of a dice roll (in addition to actions). There is potential for this *every time you use the Force*, whether or not there is anything high-stakes about the action.

But gaining Conflict doesn't lead to the darkside. If you only gain a little you're actually fine. You're supposed to be gaining Conflict anyway. So this increases the odds that you do. There is nothing wrong with risking gaining Conflict from using the Force. As a beginning character this method highlights how hard it is to use the Force as a starting character compared to someone more experienced who won't use those pips nearly as often. More experience, more control.

10 minutes ago, whafrog said:

This was your go-to explanation for dark pip usage. Now, maybe I'm interpreting what you're saying incorrectly, but that seems extreme for something that can happen every single round in structured time. From one round to the next the person could be totally in tune, or angry/fearful/vengeful, solely based on the Force dice results. Isn't that the definition of "roll-play"?

It's no more different than any other emotion based mechanic. Also this game seems to not want you to be using the Force every round. Not until you're better at it at least. So most people won't be having emotional swings every round. Nor is it roll play. The dice are merely telling you that you gave in to something. What that emotion is, how that looks, is left entirely up to the player, his character, and the scene. The dice aren't dictating anything other than for a brief moment you gave in. What this looks like round to round is up to the player and GM.

This is no different than systems like WoD wherein you roll self control or fear checks to avoid doing something bad in certain situations. Sometimes it's just one check. Other times it's a series of checks if you remain close to what is causing it. No different.

Honestly I think you are painting this as more extreme than it would actually be.

13 minutes ago, whafrog said:

Now, if during some encounter, the narrative stakes were high and the player rolled a dark result and *wanted* to narrate their PC being affected that way, that's all fine and welcome especially if it leads in interesting, longer-term, narrative directions. But I wouldn't be interested in hearing about it every single round, it becomes meaningless.

This assumes an extremely unlucky player who is rolling nothing but dark pips round after round after round. And is in turn doing nothing but using the Force round after round after round. I find this unlikely.

3 hours ago, whafrog said:

I know this is how it's supposed to work, but I really don't like it. The amount of emotional flip-flopping from one moment to the next due to the randomness of the dice is ridiculous, and something we never see in the media. They don't have a panic attack or a psychotic episode every time they want to grab their fallen lightsaber. In fact, the only time emotions are really involved is when it's based on a story element or the character is pushed to some physical or emotional extreme. The rest of the time they are just doing what they do.

I prefer to explain simply that the Force is difficult to connect to, especially in a clean way. The Strain (and DP if you enforce it) just represents the Force user clearing their mind to make the appropriate kind of connection. So in a way, the Force die are kind of like the skill dice: the more you have, the more likely you can create that clean connection...but you can always spend the penalty to keep your mind in the right place. There doesn't have to be any kind of other residual effect, especially if it doesn't serve the story.

To be fair though neither are the players because you 1 don't have to spend those pips and two a few conflict from that usage could be minor emotional influence if the situation called for it. As for the comparison to media portrayel contrast we very often see padawans struggling with emotions, that's literally the entire young Anakin story arc. We don't see it in stronger force users (full fledged Jedi and the sort) and that's because they have a stronger grasp of the force just like a player with more force dice is often not going to need to rely on dark side pips nearly as often as a player with few ie have more control over their emotions when tapping into the force.

So in the end it's not emotional flip-flopping it's a combination of what they said and what you like to think of it. Ie we know from the words of Yoda the force is very much tied to emotion thus a force user is more easily capable of drawing upon the force by tapping into those emotions (more black pips on the force die) but doing so is risking traversing towards the darkside if done to often. Thus a player rolling a few black pips realizes they won't be able to draw upon the force in that situation without giving into those emotions.

This is even less emotion or outcome based on roll than a failed charm, intimidate or nearly any kind of social check let alone something like a fear check.

From my experience bad die rolls can take you down to Darkside in a single session if you have no choice but to use dark side pips.

I've earned in early games 13+ dark side pips in single sessions just from bad die rolls and choosing between letting the other players die or me dumping massive conflict totals.

Now its almost impossible for me to go darkside, because I have enough force die to ignore a few black pips and still be able to fully use my powers and I have the slow auto walk up to Paragonhood.

So yeah as currently written random dice are determining if your character is darkside or lightside and not actual roleplaying.

9 minutes ago, Decorus said:

From my experience bad die rolls can take you down to Darkside in a single session if you have no choice but to use dark side pips.

I've earned in early games 13+ dark side pips in single sessions just from bad die rolls and choosing between letting the other players die or me dumping massive conflict totals.

Now its almost impossible for me to go darkside, because I have enough force die to ignore a few black pips and still be able to fully use my powers and I have the slow auto walk up to Paragonhood.

So yeah as currently written random dice are determining if your character is darkside or lightside and not actual roleplaying.

Not really, if you're doing that bad off just rolls you must be using a ton of force powers when you're weak in the force and on top of that still have terrible luck. 13+ is about the max I've ever seen any of my players earn in a single session over 100s of sessions most lasting around 3-4 hours a piece.

Even with only 1 force rating the odds of getting 13 is very low or you're just using the force all the time instead of trying any other methods.

That said even if we took the lower average morality roll of 5 you still wouldn't be even close to the dark side in one session with that much corruption. It would take several sessions of you rolling awfully and just hammering away force powers with a small force rating to accomplish that.

When you are just starting out and have no weapons, and limited skills with Influence, move and sense being pretty much the only thing you have to really be effective.

The rest of your party is down and either you throw really big rocks, manipulate the enemy into fighting itself or leave your comrades to die you build up conflict super fast.

The system really does penalize you for force use in the early sessions especially when its your only option left.

4 minutes ago, Decorus said:

When you are just starting out and have no weapons, and limited skills with Influence, move and sense being pretty much the only thing you have to really be effective.

This seems more a problem with the situation in question than the rules themselves. I don't think most people find themselves in this type of situation long enough to push them darksider.

5 minutes ago, Decorus said:

The system really does penalize you for force use in the early sessions especially when its your only option left.

I don't think it penalizes so much as you're not supposed to be depending on the Force to begin with. The number of times the Force is the only option should be few and far between. A well balanced game will give you other options.

22 minutes ago, Decorus said:

When you are just starting out and have no weapons, and limited skills with Influence, move and sense being pretty much the only thing you have to really be effective.

The rest of your party is down and either you throw really big rocks, manipulate the enemy into fighting itself or leave your comrades to die you build up conflict super fast.

The system really does penalize you for force use in the early sessions especially when its your only option left.

Sounds perhaps like your GM might be putting you in situations that are far to harsh then. First off why don't you have a weapon? Second why is you're entire party down so often that comes to you, the guy without a weapon to save everyone? Even then you'd have to roll, at minimum, 7 checks with every single one being at least double black in a row (save 1 roll being a single black) to accomplish that.

That means you have at minimum seven rounds of combat where you choose to roll a force power and roll double black on that power with all or most of your party down and out and relying solely on you. Mind you all in, supposedly, a single session and even then you're still not dark side even if you rolled a 1 after on your morality check.

Thats not just bad luck it sounds like bad decision making. Invest some credits in a blaster or vibrio blade or at worst pick up your fallen allies weapon. Try to talk your way out of unnecessary fights or flee those that are hard for the party, etc. There's so many ways around it, and yeah a beginning force user who barely has a grasp of the force is going to have a higher risk of falling to the dark side... as one would expect.

side note why have you taken 3 force powers if you can't reliably use the force yet? You should build up your alternative options (light ranged, melee, or something) long before you decide to start investing in more force powers you can't reliably use.