You're right on the boost/setbacks. And I've acknowledged that Greens would be way to much fora voluntary Red. So I guess blues are what I'm looking for?

What I'm looking for is a way to reward players who want to do more than "I do the thing" and instead say "I do XYZ to give myself the risky edge".

Like in the latest Fast and Furious movie (I'll admit, the franchise is a guilty pleasure) a main character wins a street race by jury rigging a back ally nitro system to an old clunker. The engine blows out, lights on fire, it's totally insane, but it works.

I guess what I'm going for is what is the baseline response to "player voluntarily upgrades two Purples to Reds to try this stunt, what's the average reward they should get?"

Am I being too 'gamist' here? Is the answer always "well, it depends". I want to codify it so if I ever write a rules supplement hardliner GMs can't go "Lololol your five reds give you a single blue, thanks for being creative (not!)"

Ultimately it comes with the understanding that Dispairs are Really Bad ThingsTM, and not just Disadvantage+.

You're looking to codify something you already have the capability to do as the GM. A PC wants to make a major design change to a system in a less than ideal environment, under less than ideal circumstances, in a confined time frame, to use a piece of equipment in a red line fashion. You simply add Challenge/Setbacks to their Mechanics check and the results of the Mechanics check determines their level of success and whether things go badly for them. The Mechanics skill gives an examples of the various ways to interpret results with Despairs and Threat posing problems for the engine and Triumphs and Advantages providing benefits.

28 minutes ago, 2P51 said:

You're looking to codify something you already have the capability to do as the GM.

Yes, that's exactly what I wish to do. Or at least write up a side bar to give a little more structure on how to handle spur of the moment decisions by the players.

This system is built on dice rolls that have more axis of outcome than "pass/fail" (that's why we all love this system, right) so I'm looking for a way to give players a way to have some codified agency to push their own luck up the "pass/fail" axis while also pushing it up the orthogonal "threat/despair" axis. The challenge doesn't become more "difficult" but the approach to overcoming it becomes "risky" yet has the potential for overcoming the problem in a way better than the normal approach. It doesn't translate well to something such as a space opera like Star Wars (maybe for pod-racing haha), but for something high flying along the lines of The Expendables, Crank, or a super hero theme it makes more sense.

A way for players to get Blues from creativity that doesn't result from begging, because some GMs treat Blues like tooth extraction and will simply meet creativity with "have more purples".

There is already codified rules that give bonus Blues. For aiming (even with swords lol) the player spends a maneuver and gets a Blue, plain and simple. I'm just trying to think of additional mechanics that work in similar "do this, get that" for things other than combat checks and simply spending time to concentrate.

Talents like Inventor provide Boost dice. If the PCs choose not to be creative in how they describe it, that's on them, you could certainly require it. They can describe how imaginative they are being, and you decide for yourself if that warrants extra Boost dice, and them knowing you impose consequences for pushing things is what you are looking for I think. The rules already allow for it. I'd be hesitant to give them automatic upgrades mechanically, because as soon as you codify something and make it mechanical, people become less creative and narrative I think. I like it right where it is where they have to be imaginative and justify it.

36 minutes ago, 2P51 said:

Talents like Inventor provide Boost dice. If the PCs choose not to be creative in how they describe it, that's on them, you could certainly require it. They can describe how imaginative they are being, and you decide for yourself if that warrants extra Boost dice, and them knowing you impose consequences for pushing things is what you are looking for I think. The rules already allow for it. I'd be hesitant to give them automatic upgrades mechanically, because as soon as you codify something and make it mechanical, people become less creative and narrative I think. I like it right where it is where they have to be imaginative and justify it.

That's very true! Honestly, the one thing I WOULDN'T want to implement is something that would become "push button, receive Blue Dice". Although, for players who are less apt or comfortable with describing their bonuses it's a great time for prompting them to justify their dice. But if they can't even do that, then you have to ask them to drop them out of their hand, which never feels good.

You've earned yourself a Delta, because you've changed my opinion. Instead of a hard coded game mechanic, a well worded 'side bar' would bring the concepts you've talked about to the forefront, give the GM the most flexibility to represent the desires of the players with the dice pool, and encourage players to think out of the box or take exciting risks. I honestly don't think the nuance of "risk-reward" is explicitly stated in the Star Wars base games, not that it should be, but it's definitely allows for it. I'm interested in making the game higher octane, but you're right, it's already right there!

Well, I played SW for a short time, but I love the "game design" and "game thinking" aspects of RPG in general. I truly believe that we all can adapt some good things of other system that we like and maybe it's the easiest way to customize the system to our own taste.

I liked the Background System of D&D 5th, and I believe that is something cool to adapt both to SW than Genesys. I'm thinking here in something that provide one more small size option to customize and help players to create a new character, with is the cool side of this subsystem. In D&D 5th they have the class system (Fighter, Mage, Druid, Rogue, etc.) and the background (Noble, Soldier, Artist, Merchant, Criminal, etc.). A player must choose one and receive some additional languages, bonus in two skills, a "starter pack" with some itens, tips and information about that background. In few cases it's possible to see a variant in the end, like Sailor/Pirate. In some way a career could be saw as a character's background, cause each one has skills, stories... but, it's a thing that could be improved imo. It's more about the social group where the character grown, which means some singular aspects of his formation despite the career and specialization. It's a nice way to offer an option to create different characters of the same career/specialization, helps the character with some free ranks or at least few blue dices in some tests, could provide few innitial itens (in D&D 5th classes - career - also provide a starter pack with few options), and information to help the character creation.

A more Lethal System , something small, turning possible to make easier to a character die. Maybe with a small version of the -141 critical table... idk. Could be nice to a modern or less heroic scenario, if the party agrees. Seems easier for me to create and offer as an alternative system.

An Adversary's Creator . I know it's really easy to adapt and create some new opponents in the SW, but the Genesys deserve a space in one chapter to help us to create new adversaries. A simple list of talents and abilities would help A LOT. I did once a table of reference to calculate soak, wounds and strain for nemesis, rivals, minions, being humanoids, beasts, big monsters or droids. It helped me to create a pattern cause the adversaries has theses statistics pretty random. In mooooooost cases my table reached the same of very similar stats as the books. But I've never tried to organize and create new talents and abilities, wich would be great.

12 hours ago, Bellyon said:

A more Lethal System , something small, turning possible to make easier to a character die. Maybe with a small version of the -141 critical table... idk. Could be nice to a modern or less heroic scenario, if the party agrees. Seems easier for me to create and offer as an alternative system.

I'm curious, what makes the system not lethal enough? In my experience, its been the most lethal system that I've played in a very long time. There is ample opportunity for players to be one shot, with all the high vicious and low crit weapon options lying around.

I would love an adversary creator as well. They've provided a good list of adversaries for star wars, but when departing from that list, it was sometimes difficult to figure out just what a given type of enemy should have. Especially with a generic system, though, it would be a tremendous help.

7 hours ago, Pratutagus said:

I'm curious, what makes the system not lethal enough? In my experience, its been the most lethal system that I've played in a very long time. There is ample opportunity for players to be one shot, with all the high vicious and low crit weapon options lying around.

Well, good to know. I said this cause in my group and talking with some guys who play SW, it's common to see that a character would die just vs an optimized adversary created to do this, using like you've said, a lot of vicious and low crit weapons. Of course there are more ways to kill a character than a precise hit done by a expert enemy, but... maybe i need more time playing.

On 7/22/2017 at 6:06 PM, Bellyon said:

An Adversary's Creator . I know it's really easy to adapt and create some new opponents in the SW, but the Genesys deserve a space in one chapter to help us to create new adversaries. A simple list of talents and abilities would help A LOT. I did once a table of reference to calculate soak, wounds and strain for nemesis, rivals, minions, being humanoids, beasts, big monsters or droids. It helped me to create a pattern cause the adversaries has theses statistics pretty random. In mooooooost cases my table reached the same of very similar stats as the books. But I've never tried to organize and create new talents and abilities, wich would be great.

I especially feel that Star Wars (and this may be by virtue of the universe) has a dearth of dynamic opponents. So many opponents are just listed as Stats, Skills, and Gear. I want to really dive in with cool D&D inspired abilities. Cool tackling maneuvers, teleportation, et cetera. Try to add some magic (as in the fantastical, not spells) to combat.

Also, some rules covering tech versus magic, and high-tech versus low-tech.

A while back I started creating my own roleplay.

And because I absolutely dig the SW mechanics, I created something similar.

But now that FFG creates its own framework for homebrew stuff, I can use Genesys and only need to create careers/specialisations, items, NPCs, and ofc the overall universe.

Because of that, I'm totally hyped for Genesys.

Also, I'll probably use it for other games, maybe even switch to Genesys for my Dark Heresy 2E campaign.

(Almost no one likes percentile systems. xD)

One thing I have noticed from Star Wars is just how flexible the base design of this system is. Things like Obligation / Duty / Morality are only loosely related to the core mechanics, making them more like plug-ins to drive story. The entire Career / Specialization system is also very moddable (look at Force Powers and signature abilities). Lastly, the narrative mechanics are super flexible. I may start by just mining other games and seeing what types of mechanics I can port over to Genesys. For example, I just picked up a bunch of Exalted 2nd Ed books cheap so I may see if I can port some of that game over.