1 hour ago, Edgookin said:

I really don't see the problem.

It's a matter of scale. If you want to have a game where throwing 2 purple dice at the players is somewhat terrifying, go for it. There aren't many minions who won't completely own you, but have at it.

I confess find it weird when people try to low-ball the iconic characters. It takes them completely out of context. There's what you see in the movies, but there's also what is assumed these characters are capable of within their universe. You can't expect a 2 hour movie to showcase the sum total of their abilities. Luke's supposed to be a good pilot, stifled by his life on Tatooine. Leia is supposed to be this amazing cunning and resourceful leader, she's been doing missions for quite a while already. And Han and Chewie already have a reputation before Obiwan approaches them. You don't exactly get to be Jabba's favourite smuggler if you suck. All his other smugglers must have a 1 in Agility and zero ranks.

Pretending you can shove them into little boxes so you can make your imaginary numbers barely eke out a movie result is a classic case of missing the forest for the trees.

I have never been a fan of big disparities between characters' power levels. Buffy and the Scoobies is not a game I would enjoy playing. This is why games predicated on this concept are few and far between. And I have never seen one become inordinately popular except as corner cases. Much as many gamers enjoy playing the adventures, growth of characters is one of the rewards they enjoy along with success. Early on in this games genesis there was talk about playing uber-Jedi with other characters and a vast majority of players had no interest. Most enjoy the equivalency of the current game. Not that you couldn't run a game with powerful high XP Jedi (Force users) and common low XP characters. It's just a matter of handing out different amounts of XP to the starting characters. So if that is your cup of tea then go for it as this game does allow for such concepts.

When creating characters based on their movie counterparts you have two ways of doing it. You either do a minimum build so they are not all powerful and consider them characters that had a particularly successful night of roleplaying and rolling, or you overbuild so their characters have little chance of not succeeding at all their tasks. Personally I find the latter to be a bit boring. But many build characters in such a way to account for every action taken in every medium. Games are not preordained fiction. I like the idea of creating a representation of a concept rather than a replication, which, to me, is all but impossible.

15 hours ago, whafrog said:

It's a matter of scale. If you want to have a game where throwing 2 purple dice at the players is somewhat terrifying, go for it. There aren't many minions who won't completely own you, but have at it.

I confess I find it weird that you think starting characters find Average difficulty checks terrifying. Unless they spent all their starting experience on Knowledge skill ranks and Underwater Basket Weaving, they're going to have characteristics at 3 or even 4, and they have free skill ranks from their career and starting spec. That means Average checks are no sweat, and Hard checks in their field of expertise will succeed more often than not as well.

This isn't a game where starting characters are benighted dirt farmers who have to worry that they're going to be killed by a kobold with a crossbow. Starting characters are pretty competent without dumping a bunch of extra experience on them.

35 minutes ago, Kaigen said:

Starting characters are pretty competent without dumping a bunch of extra experience on them.

Yeah, but they aren't ready to start flying through asteroids where even nimble TIEs can't keep up. There are a lot of Talents that are required XP-wise to make that possible.

I never said chargen characters are weak, I was responding to the idea that all the iconic figures can be represented by such.

3 hours ago, mouthymerc said:

I have never been a fan of big disparities between characters' power levels. Buffy and the Scoobies is not a game I would enjoy playing. This is why games predicated on this concept are few and far between. And I have never seen one become inordinately popular except as corner cases. Much as many gamers enjoy playing the adventures, growth of characters is one of the rewards they enjoy along with success. Early on in this games genesis there was talk about playing uber-Jedi with other characters and a vast majority of players had no interest. Most enjoy the equivalency of the current game. Not that you couldn't run a game with powerful high XP Jedi (Force users) and common low XP characters. It's just a matter of handing out different amounts of XP to the starting characters. So if that is your cup of tea then go for it as this game does allow for such concepts.

When creating characters based on their movie counterparts you have two ways of doing it. You either do a minimum build so they are not all powerful and consider them characters that had a particularly successful night of roleplaying and rolling, or you overbuild so their characters have little chance of not succeeding at all their tasks. Personally I find the latter to be a bit boring. But many build characters in such a way to account for every action taken in every medium. Games are not preordained fiction. I like the idea of creating a representation of a concept rather than a replication, which, to me, is all but impossible.

There is the third option of finding the middle ground between those two extremes too though.

On 9/12/2017 at 1:23 PM, Tramp Graphics said:

There is the third option of finding the middle ground between those two extremes too though.

Regarding? Both paragraphs? First? Second?

If the first, would the middle ground be giving all the characters 500 XP instead of some none and one or two others 1000? That would certainly take care of the disparity, but that is not what I think you meant. Games with power disparities aren't terribly popular with players. You can easily play this game with disparity although how enjoyable it would be for everyone at the table remains to be seen. Movies are meant to be watched and enjoyed. Games are played and enjoyed. A power disparity in a movie may work, but in a majority of games it does not.

If the second paragraph regarding iconic builds, sure you can go down the middle, but I have never seen an iconic build that didn't invite criticism of one form or another. Whether at the low end, middle ground, or the high end, you can not please everyone. It is why FFG has avoided doing any. The one, Lando, that they did came with the caveat that this stats were only in regards to the current adventure and not a complete picture.

1 hour ago, mouthymerc said:

Regarding? Both paragraphs? First? Second?

If the first, would the middle ground be giving all the characters 500 XP instead of some none and one or two others 1000? That would certainly take care of the disparity, but that is not what I think you meant. Games with power disparities aren't terribly popular with players. You can easily play this game with disparity although how enjoyable it would be for everyone at the table remains to be seen. Movies are meant to be watched and enjoyed. Games are played and enjoyed. A power disparity in a movie may work, but in a majority of games it does not.

If the second paragraph regarding iconic builds, sure you can go down the middle, but I have never seen an iconic build that didn't invite criticism of one form or another. Whether at the low end, middle ground, or the high end, you can not please everyone. It is why FFG has avoided doing any. The one, Lando, that they did came with the caveat that this stats were only in regards to the current adventure and not a complete picture.

There is an old saying: "You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you cannot please all of the people all of the time."

And, yes, I was referring to paragraph 2.

On 9/12/2017 at 11:29 AM, whafrog said:

Yeah, but they aren't ready to start flying through asteroids where even nimble TIEs can't keep up. There are a lot of Talents that are required XP-wise to make that possible.

To be fair, that scene takes place three years after ANH, so Han's player has had some time to go on additional adventures and pile XP into his Piloting (Space) skill and the Pilot specialization, and quite possibly even spending Destiny Points like candy. There's also the matter of how tricked out the Falcon was, as that ship is a far cry from being a stock YT-1300.

Even then, he knew it was a short-term solution at best to the problem of being actively pursued by Imperial Star Destroyers. Given the TIEs were likely operated by minions, he just needs to survive a round or three of a chase sequence while hoping for a Triumph so that he can find a safe place to land. To bad he also got a load of threat on that last check, leading to picking a space worm's next to land in.

A Knight Level PC that sunk the majority of their 9000 starting credits into ship modifications to beef up their ship could possibly pull it off, though they'd still need more than a little luck on their side.

4 hours ago, Tramp Graphics said:

There is an old saying: "You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you cannot please all of the people all of the time."

And, yes, I was referring to paragraph 2.

I thought it was "fool" not "please" at least that's how I'vealways heard it

4 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

To be fair, that scene takes place three years after ANH, so Han's player has had some time to go on additional adventures and pile XP into his Piloting (Space) skill and the Pilot specialization, and quite possibly even spending Destiny Points like candy.

Well, there's still the issue of "Han, my boy, you're my best smuggler...". There's nothing in the dialogue or story that would make anyone think he's anything but the best, or at least really really good. If he's that good out of chargen, then all the rest of Jabba's smugglers are just terrible, and it's a wonder they haven't been fed to the Rancor already.

In the end I just don't see the point of the minimalist approach. It can only be done if the context is completely stripped away.

1 hour ago, EliasWindrider said:

I thought it was "fool" not "please" at least that's how I'vealways heard it

It is both Please and fool.

32 minutes ago, whafrog said:

Well, there's still the issue of "Han, my boy, you're my best smuggler...". There's nothing in the dialogue or story that would make anyone think he's anything but the best, or at least really really good. If he's that good out of chargen, then all the rest of Jabba's smugglers are just terrible, and it's a wonder they haven't been fed to the Rancor already.

In the end I just don't see the point of the minimalist approach. It can only be done if the context is completely stripped away.

Player characters are always iconoclast. They are the unusual. All of Jabba's smugglers are Rivals and minions. So yeah they are pretty bad. But they also are operating against rivals and minions.

19 hours ago, whafrog said:

Well, there's still the issue of "Han, my boy, you're my best smuggler...". There's nothing in the dialogue or story that would make anyone think he's anything but the best, or at least really really good. If he's that good out of chargen, then all the rest of Jabba's smugglers are just terrible, and it's a wonder they haven't been fed to the Rancor already.

In the end I just don't see the point of the minimalist approach. It can only be done if the context is completely stripped away.

So Jabba trying to butter Han up to make him agreeable to not pulling a runner (since Jabba at the time in the franchise wasn't so much an intergalactic crime lord as more of a local one) especially after the Greedo fiasco is completely implausible then?

Sure Han's good (two ranks in Piloting [Space], Agility 3 and a rank of Skilled Jockey is a pretty awesome pilot compared to the galactic rank and file), but just because Han might be one of the best smugglers on one specific crime lord's payroll doesn't mean he's the greatest pilot the galaxy had ever seen is going to automatically "start out" rolling with Agility 4, Piloting (Space) 3 and having multiple ranks of Skilled Jockey. For what we see Han do piloting-wise in ANH (the adventure in which his character entered play), having Agility 3, 2 ranks in Piloting (Space) and a rank of Skilled Jockey cover his aptitude as a pilot quite well.

I think it might have been on Tales from the Hydian Way that someone had mentioned that while Han was a good pilot, he was a badass astrogator, and that was where his real talents were spent. I think that sounds like a reasonable assumption to me.

2 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

So Jabba trying to butter Han up to make him agreeable to not pulling a runner...

I generally like to take the movies at face value, otherwise it's just pure invention to rationalize whatever one wants. Like I said, my only real objection is the dismissal of context...ironically you are providing some invented context to make the idea work. And once the Han movie comes out...will someone justify that he lost all that assumed XP by the time E4 rolls around?

Not that it really matters. If people want their player's PCs to outshine the iconic characters after a couple sessions of play, go for it. If people want to present the iconic characters as a "cut above", then they'll need a little more than the minimum.

2 hours ago, whafrog said:

I generally like to take the movies at face value, otherwise it's just pure invention to rationalize whatever one wants. Like I said, my only real objection is the dismissal of context...ironically you are providing some invented context to make the idea work. And once the Han movie comes out...will someone justify that he lost all that assumed XP by the time E4 rolls around?

Not that it really matters. If people want their player's PCs to outshine the iconic characters after a couple sessions of play, go for it. If people want to present the iconic characters as a "cut above", then they'll need a little more than the minimum.

You are being just as bad. Think about it. PC characters already way outshine the normals of the galaxy. So Han being the best smuggler Jabba has is not a stretch. Even if he is a starting PC. Compared to the regular folk of the galaxy he is amazing. And compared to Jabba's other smugglers he probably is way better.

Outshine the iconic character when? After a couple session sure they will outshine who they were in ep IV. And after a bunch more session they may catch up to them in empire... and after a bunch more they might do it for Jedi...And really they should. Because they are the MAIN characters in your story.

On 9/10/2017 at 8:51 AM, kaosoe said:

The advantage my group has at starting at low power levels is not having so much stuff to remember that their character can do. Of everyone in the group, I think I am the only one who has actually read the rule book.

Christ, I've read the books and I *STILL* forget what my character can do at times.

3 hours ago, Desslok said:

Christ, I've read the books and I *STILL* forget what my character can do at times.

You should try playing Exalted if you want to see how bad this can get.

7 hours ago, Daeglan said:

Outshine the iconic character when? After a couple session sure they will outshine who they were in ep IV. And after a bunch more session they may catch up to them in empire... and after a bunch more they might do it for Jedi...And really they should. Because they are the MAIN characters in your story.

Ah, here we go. You'll note I'm not telling anyone how to run their game, I'm pointing out the consequences of scaling and how it affects your representation of the game universe. Keep your "shoulds" to your table.

10 hours ago, whafrog said:

I generally like to take the movies at face value, otherwise it's just pure invention to rationalize whatever one wants. Like I said, my only real objection is the dismissal of context...ironically you are providing some invented context to make the idea work. And once the Han movie comes out...will someone justify that he lost all that assumed XP by the time E4 rolls around?

Or the Han movie could show that he starts out as absolute crap as a pilot and astrogator, or maybe just a bit better than the norm but not exceptionally so as some folks claim him to be. For all we know, he may well try to fly a freighter through an asteroid field and have his ship get totally trashed, which may well lead in to him getting the Falcon as a replacement.

Or could be that his boasting in ANH was just that, boasting to make him seem better to Luke and Ben (at that point a pair of strangers in need of a quick ride off-planet) than maybe he was at that point, which if you take the movie as the standalone event that it was back in 1977 is entirely possible, especially with Obi-Wan's reaction to Han's claim regarding the Kessel Run, something that got fanwanked by later authors to justify Han's claims that he was the hottest pilot that side of the galaxy, and could also be seen as a sales pitch to a couple of what he thought were local rubes to puff himself up so that they'd be willing pay a higher price than what other pilots might have charged. This is a man that prior to the special editions was a shady operator, being a smuggler (i.e. an illegal activity) that was willing to shoot first and took his first opportunity after getting paid to pull a runner instead of fighting the good fight, even going so far as to try and tempt Luke into coming with him instead of going on what he perceived as a suicide run. Those aren't exactly the traits of an honest, forthright, or entirely trustworthy individual.

Of course, it's not like the original Star Wars films are themselves immune to internal retcons, given the original script plan was that Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader were two separate individuals up to the point that Lucas was working on ESB's script, and it was only Sir Alec Guiness' fortuitous pause before telling Luke what happened to his father in ANH that really sold that particular retcon. Lucas only combined those two individuals into a single entity to save himself time and aggravation in terms of the script's plot. Had he stuck to his original plan of Anakin and Vader being separate individuals, then modern cinema would have lost one of it's most dramatic and memorable film moments.

Plus you've got Obi-Wan being trained as a Jedi in TPM not by Yoda, but by Qui-Gon, with AotC throwing in a half-assed cover-up that Yoda was involved in training all younglings, thus making Obi-Wan's claim of Yoda being his teacher in ESB still have an element of truth (he was trained by Yoda in the basics as a child, even if his full training as a Jedi was by a different person) in the same vein as RotJ retconned his story to Luke about Anakin's fate.

So yeah, I wouldn't take a character's statements in films as being the pure gospel truth. Kylo Ren might claim Poe is the best pilot in the Resistance, but we also see Poe back that claim up in the same film in three separate scenes, including one instance of becoming an "instant ace" (five confirmed enemy kills in single battle) in a matter of seconds, a feat that Finn witnessed while exclaiming "that's one **** of a pilot!" So unlike Han, we do see Poe on the screen actually back up that claim of "best pilot" (even though he never said it). Han pulls off some pretty impressive tricks of astrogation in the same film, but he's also a vastly more experienced character than the rest of the group.

Frankly, it's one of the reasons I'm glad the EU got booted over to Legends aka non-canon, as there was decades of fanwankery bending over backwards to justify Han or especially Boba Fett being far more capable than they were on screen. Going purely by the films, a case could be made that Lando is a better pilot than Han, since he was able to fly the Falcon through an incredibly cramped series of shafts in RotJ and only lost the radar dish, while skilled pilots in smaller and more maneuverable fighters crashed into the superstructure. In the asteroid field, Han wasn't nearly as hemmed in as Lando was, which could make for an easier skill check for Han.