I see alot of discussion on "what will/should FFG do" ideas and predictions, but not alot on player/GM application. Let's get a discussion going about what home brew mechanics, settings, and ideas we've either used or toyed around with and want to bring into our Genesys campaigns. It can be both things we've tried and loved, or things that have been lukewarm and need some work.

Any and all ideas/homebrews welcome for discussion, including cool stuff you've seen in the EotE/AoR/FaD forums and wanted to try.

Double posting so as to not conflate my idea with the opening post.

I have this idea for simulating "pushing it to the limit" where a player shoulders risk for the hope of a reward.

The player chooses to upgrade the opposition dice pool a number of times and in exchange add a number of green dice to their roll.

Is that too much, either way? What's a fair upgrade to a player's pool in exchange for wilfully adding/increasing the chances of a Dispair into the check?

Thanks!

Working on a Lifepath system. Inspired by Star Trek 2d20.

57 minutes ago, dresdinseven said:

Double posting so as to not conflate my idea with the opening post.

I have this idea for simulating "pushing it to the limit" where a player shoulders risk for the hope of a reward.

The player chooses to upgrade the opposition dice pool a number of times and in exchange add a number of green dice to their roll.

Is that too much, either way? What's a fair upgrade to a player's pool in exchange for wilfully adding/increasing the chances of a Dispair into the check?

Thanks!

In general adding dice to a pool is way more than adding upgrades, good or bad, so unless a purple is turning red with your upgrade pattern, you are getting way more benefit from adding a green. The dice are already weighted to the positive and success, so adding yellows with reds is a far more balanced approach.

Depending on how character creation works, I'm interested in experimenting with different types of magic systems.

On 7/4/2017 at 11:53 PM, Forgottenlore said:

Depending on how character creation works, I'm interested in experimenting with different types of magic systems.

I've had the idea for a while for a magic system in which you have some sort of magic threshold which represents your casting ability: derived from a sum of your physical attributes with talents that act like Grit and Toughened for their respective thresholds. Specific careers would cause specific Characteristics to boost your magic threshold by double its score (differentiate Wizard, Bard, Sorcerer, Druid, etc.). Rather than a long list of spells as in D&D (wide and shallow), have a shorter list of spells which can be upgraded like Force Powers (narrow and deep). Casting a spell at its basic level is like a cantrip, but using the upgrades adds points against your threshold like accumulating wounds or strain. When you hit the threshold you start taking strain to cast, double whatever the magic cost would have been. Maybe blood magic lets you take wounds to cast at a reduced cost versus magic 'points'. Careers could offer unique upgrades to the same list of spells available to all casters.

8 hours ago, sfRattan said:

I've had the idea for a while for a magic system in which you have some sort of magic threshold which represents your casting ability: derived from a sum of your physical attributes with talents that act like Grit and Toughened for their respective thresholds. Specific careers would cause specific Characteristics to boost your magic threshold by double its score (differentiate Wizard, Bard, Sorcerer, Druid, etc.). Rather than a long list of spells as in D&D (wide and shallow), have a shorter list of spells which can be upgraded like Force Powers (narrow and deep). Casting a spell at its basic level is like a cantrip, but using the upgrades adds points against your threshold like accumulating wounds or strain. When you hit the threshold you start taking strain to cast, double whatever the magic cost would have been. Maybe blood magic lets you take wounds to cast at a reduced cost versus magic 'points'. Careers could offer unique upgrades to the same list of spells available to all casters.

That sounds a lot like Sky Wars implementation of the FFG Star Wars RPG.

8 hours ago, sfRattan said:

I've had the idea for a while for a magic system in which you have some sort of magic threshold which represents your casting ability: derived from a sum of your physical attributes with talents that act like Grit and Toughened for their respective thresholds. Specific careers would cause specific Characteristics to boost your magic threshold by double its score (differentiate Wizard, Bard, Sorcerer, Druid, etc.). Rather than a long list of spells as in D&D (wide and shallow), have a shorter list of spells which can be upgraded like Force Powers (narrow and deep). Casting a spell at its basic level is like a cantrip, but using the upgrades adds points against your threshold like accumulating wounds or strain. When you hit the threshold you start taking strain to cast, double whatever the magic cost would have been. Maybe blood magic lets you take wounds to cast at a reduced cost versus magic 'points'. Careers could offer unique upgrades to the same list of spells available to all casters.

it also sounds a bit like Rollmaster. As much as that system redefined crunch, the 1-50 level spell lists were amazing to play (As far as the top end of some of those spells were just mind-blowing). I could see something of a combination of the Sky Wars system and RMSS's improving spell level design... hmm, I might have to take my RMSS books and convert them over...

EDIT: Void law might be back on the menu boys! because as much as I like the rest of the system, it's too clunky for modern TTRPG stuff.

What are some fun things a designer could do with generic number dice?

Bonus points if it's something more than "add the number to X outcome."

23 minutes ago, dresdinseven said:

What are some fun things a designer could do with generic number dice?

Bonus points if it's something more than "add the number to X outcome."

Other than tables?

Yeah, just wondering what you could do with commonly available gaming objects like dice, playing card decks, ect

I will likely include Bonds from Dungeon World and the concept of Effort from ICRPG. I kinda already did include them, but now they're quantifiable as system mechanics from easily-googled games. I find the concept behind the ICRPG "magic" system intriguing and might try to adapt that. However, 6 months out from even seeing the rules I hesitate to commit to anything.

3 hours ago, Hexnwolf said:

it also sounds a bit like Rollmaster. As much as that system redefined crunch, the 1-50 level spell lists were amazing to play (As far as the top end of some of those spells were just mind-blowing). I could see something of a combination of the Sky Wars system and RMSS's improving spell level design... hmm, I might have to take my RMSS books and convert them over...

I'm imagining something like 30 spells with the approximate complexity of Force Powers in SWRPG, and a some unique twists to those spells on a per career or specialization basis. Probably something less complicated that Rollmaster and about as extensive as the number of Force Powers we'll likely end up with by the end of the Force and Destiny line.

2 hours ago, dresdinseven said:

Yeah, just wondering what you could do with commonly available gaming objects like dice, playing card decks, ect

I like the Cypher cards in Cypher System (esp. Cyphers, Artefacts, Creatures). I think I would bring those, and the play for using them, into the Genesys narrative dice system (my problem with Cypher System itself is that wacky skill generation system. Kill it.).

41 minutes ago, sfRattan said:

I'm imagining something like 30 spells with the approximate complexity of Force Powers in SWRPG, and a some unique twists to those spells on a per career or specialization basis. Probably something less complicated that Rollmaster and about as extensive as the number of Force Powers we'll likely end up with by the end of the Force and Destiny line.

That's fair, I might have gotten carried away. I'm probably still going to look at porting over the lists. I don't think adding Rolemaster level complication would serve this system. but porting the lists alone might be worth it to me, depending on how crazy I want my magic system to get...

I plan on doing some mashup of Stars Without Number psionics and Mass Effect biotics. PC space magic will be "applied space magic" - the more esoteric space magic will be for NPCs.

I think a Move tree for each will work just fine for me, but will require some homebrewing.

For Mass Effect, I like the idea of picking between 2 Career Talents (and paying that cost) each time you rank up a skill. Similar to the visual setup in ME3 and Andromeda:

5 hours ago, sfRattan said:

For Mass Effect, I like the idea of picking between 2 Career Talents (and paying that cost) each time you rank up a skill. Similar to the visual setup in ME3 and Andromeda:

That sounds similar to how Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of works.

I want to have backgrounds. Like motivations bit with mechanical effect. Adds advantages, successes, threats, or failures to certain skills based one your upbringing and background.

Like maybe a street urchin would have a bonus to deception and and negative to education, they would be minor benefits or handicaps. Also the potential to get bonus rank in this example of streetwise or underworld. Think it would help diversify characters.

I would say this would work if they remove the caps of skills and stats in GENESYS which what I was wondering as I have a couple of ideas for settings to but would not work with caps on stats and skills.I mean boost die works fine, but the bonus rank in skills would (I think) take away from the player, as they would be one step closer to maxing out in a Skill they would use frequently.

Actually and I am going to show my age is the Lifepath system came out back in the 70s with an old RPG called "Traveller" and it could be done after looking over the updates to the Traveller system from Mongoose and from FFE who is the original designer behind Traveller. I just would recommend the characters not starting off with xp to spend as they could gain xp and along with free skills also could get hurt from their experiences from the lifepath system. Looking over things that could happen to your character, you could get obligations to organizations, I will have to look into the lists of careers and see where things could be put from the Edge edition of system

With the little information that is provided about the game, I find it's a bit premature for me to start "home-brewing" things.

What I am hoping to do is run a "world exploring" campaign where the characters will travel to the different settings (yes, there will be a story arch titled "Elves in Space").

So I'm hoping the different settings are "balanced" and "compatible."

I will be adapting this to the Star Wars universes - I think the narrative dice would work amazingly in that setting.

On 7/5/2017 at 0:46 AM, 2P51 said:

In general adding dice to a pool is way more than adding upgrades, good or bad, so unless a purple is turning red with your upgrade pattern, you are getting way more benefit from adding a green. The dice are already weighted to the positive and success, so adding yellows with reds is a far more balanced approach.

Upgrading to yellows in exchange for reds doesn't seem like enough of an incentive, but Greens do seem a bit much. Would adding a Blue per added rank of "Adversary" equivalent be better?

Alternatively, would adding a Blue-Black pair be better? The two don't cancel out (I think it's 1/2 success per die compared to 1/3 failure per die) so its definitely a boost but could turn out worse if only failures show up. The thing I don't like is that it doesn't increase "critical risk" due to not adding Dispairs, it's not even as good as a "minor boost" from a Blue, and it's complicated because it's adding twice as many dice as the previous option.

Thoughts? Just trying to think of ways players can be risky and push it to the limit. And maybe it's situational and not a set amount, depending on how risky the action (upgrading to Reds) vs how much there is a a potential payoff (how many Blues could come of it).

You're mixing dice types. Adding a whole positive die to a dice pool is much better than just turning a purple to a red. The green die is gooder than the red dies badder. If a difficulty upgrade adds a purple that's equal but that's if.

Boost and Setbacks are success/fail neutral. Boost is 50% betterer on advantages.