1 hour ago, copperbell said:

How did they handle loot during the demo?

Just wondering whether it's something that needs to be addressed or not?

There were some opportunities to get cash during play, and a reward at the end depending on the NPCs you interacted with, but loot usually isn't a concern for a one-shot con game.

A question to anyone who played or ran: with regards the non-combat encounters where there specific sub-systems that applied to different types of activity (like the Dual of Wits in Burning Wheel, for example) or was it more free-from where the GM just chooses a skill based on player actions?

I guess one of the things I'm particularly interested in is whether there are more 'mechanically rich' subsystems for non-combat activities.

How are Story Points handled? I know each player get a point at the beginning, but do all the points start out light side? What are each side of the point called? Does the GM get a darkside to start?

25 minutes ago, SkyJedi said:

How are Story Points handled? I know each player get a point at the beginning, but do all the points start out light side? What are each side of the point called? Does the GM get a darkside to start?

They're just called "Story Points", and there are two pools (the Player's pool and the GM's pool). The PCs start with one SP in their pool for each player at the Table, and the GM starts with one in their pool. When you spend a story point, you move it from your pool to the other pool. Mechanically, it works just like Destiny Points in Star Wars.

Man I really want this game out now. I want to play. I have two RPG groups. One does primarily FFG Star Wars, the other is Pathfinder. I don't think I'll have much trouble convincing the SW group to play Genesys using some other genre, but I'm hoping to also entice the PF group into swapping.

Probably not answerable via a one-shot at a con, but I'm curious how will character generation be handled in this system. The Star Wars systems have a class-&-specialization system that gives access to certain skill sets as well as a unique talent tree.

Similar in Genesys?

13 minutes ago, Farseerixirvost said:

Probably not answerable via a one-shot at a con, but I'm curious how will character generation be handled in this system. The Star Wars systems have a class-&-specialization system that gives access to certain skill sets as well as a unique talent tree.

Similar in Genesys?

I hope they will be more freeform. Archetypes/Templates, yes, but chiseled in stone specialization hopefully not. If you had to make up restricted specializations for every setting would be ardous, especially if you want to quickly prepare a game for an ad hoc setting. I know, Gurps and other generic systems have gazillions of sourcebooks for every genre, but my hope ist that Genesys will be so adaptable that juggling with several different settings the same time will become a cakewalk.

3 hours ago, DarthDude said:

I hope they will be more freeform. Archetypes/Templates, yes, but chiseled in stone specialization hopefully not. If you had to make up restricted specializations for every setting would be ardous, especially if you want to quickly prepare a game for an ad hoc setting. I know, Gurps and other generic systems have gazillions of sourcebooks for every genre, but my hope ist that Genesys will be so adaptable that juggling with several different settings the same time will become a cakewalk.

I read some more on the subject. It won't be just like Star Wars, similar but not identical. But the game will feature both "universal" types usable in any genre plus genre specific ones.

Nothing in the demo indicated that there were still specialization trees like Star Wars.
What I did note was that there were a lot of talents both similar to Star Wars and many new ones.
Also some of the talents had numbers after them indicating they are likely ranked.

The top talent or two also looked to be the one tied to the race of the character.

The fact the two Warriors are so different does indicate that there's still plenty of choice within careers thankfully

I have to wonder if they miscalculated Alys Raine's Wound Threshold and Thaiden Mistpeak's Strain Threshold though, either that or they don't use the same stats anymore to calculate it.

Based off the Star Wars system each race (if there is such a thing) appears to start with:
Humans - 10 Wounds / 10 Strain (or possibly you pick one Threshold at 9 and the other 10)
Elves - 9 Wounds / 11 Strain
Orcs - 12 Wounds / 8 Strain
Dwarves - 11 Wounds / 10 Strain

Huh, would you look at that, Human with Strength 4 and 2 Toughened should have 18 shouldn't they. Probably a typo but if not then perhaps there's options within character creation that we are missing. Without the Obligation/Duty/Morality systems perhaps they have:

"Reduce WT by 1 to gain 5xp or 1000cr"

Unlikely since the Motivation system could be tweaked.

How does casting magic work? Sounds like it is based off of strain.

Any details on how spells are selected in character creation? Do you select from a list of fixed spells or are little modifications (example: better range) available by spending more exp?

16 minutes ago, TechnoGolem said:

How does casting magic work? Sounds like it is based off of strain.

Any details on how spells are selected in character creation? Do you select from a list of fixed spells or are little modifications (example: better range) available by spending more exp?

Spellcasting is a skill check using one of the magic skills. The characters came with spells, I don't know how they were chosen, but the rules reference said it was a very simplified version of the magic rules. The difficulty is determined by the base spell and then modified by additional effects and if it is an attack the difficulty is modified as if it were a ranged attack (unless it has the close combat upgrade/descriptor?)

I hope they won't limit the number of known spells too much, otherwise the chars could become single trick pony if they just have two/three spells like Leoric. The number of spells, and the choice of having high powered spells might be tied to appropriate talents.

2 minutes ago, DarthDude said:

I hope they won't limit the number of known spells too much, otherwise the chars could become single trick pony if they just have two/three spells like Leoric. The number of spells, and the choice of having high powered spells might be tied to appropriate talents.

I would expect something like Force and Destiny, the basic Spells will be easy to get with minimal xp but to make them truely epic will require a big investment. More spells also means less Talents and Skills

It would be dependend on the setting of course. You could have only humans with dragon ancestry cast spells, so normal humans - even with 5 ranks in Arcana - would be simply unable to cast spells. I see so many opportunities =) now the big question apart from magic details is, will there be static specializations or rather flexible talent trees?

Warhammer Fantasy RPG had a essentially a completely open talent system with set costs and limits for things like Wounds and Strain. It was great but also horrible, especially when trying to choose what you wanted to buy.

I hope they go for much smaller trees, there still should be a way to get Dedications for example but buying a path of talents to get it is an excellent mechanic. I think there could be thematic chains.

So in the Gencon characters the Templar character has:

Toughened 2

Durable

Templar

Improved Templar

Justice of the Citadel

that seems like a chain to me, each leading into the next, probably with one of the Toughened ranks between Templar and Improved Templar.

Its possible the trees will not be straight but just shorter, perhaps only 3 rows with 4 columns. But you only get the equivalent of Dedication buy purchasing the entire tree.

2 minutes ago, Richardbuxton said:

Warhammer Fantasy RPG had a essentially a completely open talent system with set costs and limits for things like Wounds and Strain. It was great but also horrible, especially when trying to choose what you wanted to buy.

I hope they go for much smaller trees, there still should be a way to get Dedications for example but buying a path of talents to get it is an excellent mechanic. I think there could be thematic chains.

So in the Gencon characters the Templar character has:

Toughened 2

Durable

Templar

Improved Templar

Justice of the Citadel

that seems like a chain to me, each leading into the next, probably with one of the Toughened ranks between Templar and Improved Templar.

Its possible the trees will not be straight but just shorter, perhaps only 3 rows with 4 columns. But you only get the equivalent of Dedication buy purchasing the entire tree.

In conan they have talent tiers with a base talent and from there on you have three branches with maximum three tiers. And those takent trees are actually tied to the skill and not a class. Works like a dream.

Example Acrobatics Skill Tree:

http://www.stargazersworld.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/image_thumb-5.png

Short and focused on a skill rather than a random collection of various unrelated talents.

Yeah that's a good example of how it could work. These sheets have had information omitted for sure, the source of these talents would be one such thing.

Tying the talents to skills is great, but part of the magic of Star Wars is you can be excellent at a skill without having training in it, and talents are a part of that. But tying to Skills does make for excellent expansion possibilities later on. For instance players can come up with their own career with a unique set of skills that then opens interesting story options.

SW Saga Edition had talent trees per class based on a certain core aspect of that class, like soldier had the following talent trees:

- Armor Specialist

- Brawler

- Commando

- Weapon Specialist

Together with feats you could also create a char maybe even more individualistic than FFG SW, where every specialization kind of had three branches you had to stick to more or less.

I hope for a 2D20 approach though.

The idea certainly has some support too. The Spells page of Leoric says that because Arcane is a career skill he can cast spells. It wouldn't be hard to have Profession Trees that requires one ore more skills to be career skills.

This would be a nice archetype approach. I wonder how "multi-classing" would be resolved if you want to create a versatile character like an arcane trickster for example, primatrily a thief though with profession related spells. Or an eldritch knight, actually a fighter with supporting weapon related spells.

Yeah that's the hurdle I was wondering on myself. None of the characters from Gencon had more than 8 career skills ticked, so I have no idea how cross spec would work. A possible solution would be you can pay a high xp price to get access to a tree and by virtue it's skills become career skills.

Some way to cross spec will be needed, perhaps it will be in the optional rules

It was told, there where four general templates, I assume something like a warrior/soldier, a rogue/spy, a cleric/priest and a caster/scholar. If you tie the ability to a class, would you have to start in case of the eldritch knight as a mage and branch out to combat skills? What if you start as a rogue but want to tap into spell weaving later on? Will it be barred to you? Will you be able to "purchase" another class to obtain the ability to cast?