A little more news and info for the masses, people.

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2017/9/15/craft-your-character/

Get hype!

Except they encourage you to pre-order the game, but don't actually have it available for pre-order. Talk about a roller coaster of emotions.

But hopefully this means we're one step closer to release. Maybe before Thanksgiving?

Man, that would be a nice treat after the next 2 months of my life...

Yeah, but to include a link to pre-order at the bottom of the post, when pre-orders aren't available is kind of crappy.

I think someone either jumped the gun, or dropped the ball.

interesting! i haven't been following a lot of other threads, so maybe its all known stuff to others from the gencon preview, but moving talents out from under careers and making them something you buy with XP, so that careers can be fan made is REALLY cool to me.

also confirms the core will be a modern, human only book. hopefully they put out some setting books hard on its heels.

2 minutes ago, cielago said:

interesting! i haven't been following a lot of other threads, so maybe its all known stuff to others from the gencon preview, but moving talents out from under careers and making them something you buy with XP, so that careers can be fan made is REALLY cool to me.

also confirms the core will be a modern, human only book. hopefully they put out some setting books hard on its heels.

I think the idea is that you can use the archetypes to mimic a species/race. The laborer for example seems like it can be used in place of any number of brawny/tough species, i.e. orcs, wookiees, dwarfs, etc., but new settings will include new species.

32 minutes ago, DarthGM said:

<snip>

*Not sure if like*

44 minutes ago, DarthGM said:

But hopefully this means we're one step closer to release. Maybe before Thanksgiving?

Man, that would be a nice treat after the next 2 months of my life...

Yeah dude. I think you're due some good times.

29 minutes ago, cielago said:

also confirms the core will be a modern, human only book. hopefully they put out some setting books hard on its heels.

Where do you get that idea? The character-generation preview focuses on modern humans, but in previous press releases, they've mentioned the core will cover several settings, including sci-fi, fantasy, and steampunk.

28 minutes ago, cielago said:

also confirms the core will be a modern, human only book. hopefully they put out some setting books hard on its heels.

That's not what I took away from it at all!

I would be mildly surprised if we didn't see two or three genre-specific race/archetypes for each genre. Elf, Dwarf, and Orc for Fantasy. Felinoid, Cyborg, Empath for space opera, etc. Maybe we won't, but this didn't give me the impression that the four archetypes were the only ones in the core book.

The Core is definitely not human/modern only. They've said it will have Fantasy, Steampunk, Weird War, Modern, and SciFi. It does sound like Genesys will be pretty similar to Star Wars, with a couple key differences. If they're splitting talents up from careers, that could be interesting. I personally like the talent tree's, but understand why they might do away with or change them.

I didn't see any mention of obligation or the like. Perhaps that's somehow worked into the Background system. Every character has to pick a flaw, so that could fill in the roll of obligation. I'm just wondering if they'll have some way to get extra XP or cash.

1 minute ago, Split Light said:

The Core is definitely not human/modern only. They've said it will have Fantasy, Steampunk, Weird War, Modern, and SciFi. It does sound like Genesys will be pretty similar to Star Wars, with a couple key differences. If they're splitting talents up from careers, that could be interesting. I personally like the talent tree's, but understand why they might do away with or change them.

I didn't see any mention of obligation or the like. Perhaps that's somehow worked into the Background system. Every character has to pick a flaw, so that could fill in the roll of obligation. I'm just wondering if they'll have some way to get extra XP or cash.

Given that the Runescape characters at GenCon had Strength, Flaw, Desire, and Fear, but no Obligation/Motivation, I don't think we'll see it in Genesys.

16 minutes ago, Split Light said:

If they're splitting talents up from careers, that could be interesting. I personally like the talent tree's, but understand why they might do away with or change them.

Yes, this is the bit that I most wanted the article to cover, but I guess they're keeping mum at the moment. Creating new talent trees is really hard in Star Wars (try it and see what kind of reception you get from the forum users...), so it makes sense they're doing away with specializations. I'm eager to see how they keep things from being a pure cherry pick when it comes to talent selection.

My guess would be archetype, career, pre-reqs, and xp costs.

You look at common specs in SW and they have their particular niche Talents, but they also have a lot of common ones.

That would make sense. Maybe players are expected to construct a tree as they go along to ensure they don't just keep adding top-tier talents. There would be a limited number of potential talents for the top row, perhaps tied to Career. (So, a Diplomat wouldn't be able to get Toughened for 5 XP, but a Soldier would.) Then for the particular niche talents, there would be row limitations and prereqs.

Consider the Inspiring Rhetoric sequence of talents, for instance. They would be available to Diplomats, but probably not Soldiers. Basic Inspiring Rhetoric would have to be placed somewhere on the second, third, or fourth rows. Improved Inspiring Rhetoric would have to go on rows three or four. Supreme would have to be on row five only as a 25-point talent.

Maybe for a bit of additional flexibility, you can make a winding path (putting Supreme Inspiring Rhetoric on row 2, say), provided it has talents leading up to it that total some minimum amount of total XP to get through. That lets you create a skill tree like Teacher, for instance, where Now the Master is a signature talent, but is not on the bottom row.

All of this is just spitballing on my part, of course.

I may be in the minority here, but I hope that they keep specializations. I know them, I like them, and it'll be one less thing to worry about using Star Wars stuff crossing over to other more unified Genesys material.

Quote

Experience can be spent to improve your character’s characteristics, buy ranks in skills, and purchase talents. We’ll talk more about some of the talents and skills you can find in Genesys later.

This is actually the one question (besides supernatural powers) I long to learn about. How are talents structured.

FYI, pre-orders are now available!

I wish the dice were available as well.

1 minute ago, TheMan72344 said:

I wish the dice were available as well.

Can pre-order both at minaturemarket for a few bucks more of the price of pre-ordering the book from fantasy. Would share link but not sure if against the rules?

2 minutes ago, Zorm said:

Can pre-order both at minaturemarket for a few bucks more of the price of pre-ordering the book from fantasy. Would share link but not sure if against the rules?

Are they a reliable site? Have you ordered from there before?

1 minute ago, TheMan72344 said:

Are they a reliable site? Have you ordered from there before?

Yes got things from them twice, might be later than getting them from fantasy, but you save a few bucks...

Miniature Market is a pretty reliable source, at least in the US.

The Background question system will be nice, some players don't need that but plenty struggle to get a basic concept together let alone any kind of story. Playing through those questions in a Session Zero should be fun.

The Archetypes far are less generic than i thought they would be, but the 4 fit well a typical adventuring party. With the way they went I am kind of surprised they didn't give us 7 though in the core: 6 different with a 3 in each of the characteristics and a 1 in another, then one generalist with all 2's. The Droid/Construct (all 1's) is not generic enough to fit in the core, it would come in the Themes section. But I would assume there will be some in each Theme chapter of the book, as well as new names for the 4 core ones to fit that theme. A list of suggested "special abilities" or at least guidelines for making them would be handy.

Definitely no Specialisations too, so those are either gone completely or some kind of advanced rule in the GM's chapter. This both makes me happy and sad, i love the Spec trees but creating your own is a massive headache to balance. They also take up a lot of page space. I hope there is some structure to the talents system with either prerequisites or much smaller (probably each a straight line) trees contained within each career.

The Motivations looks good, from the way they worked at Gencon these look to be a personal favourite of this system, helping players decide how to act in the sessions.

I wonder if starting Xp can be traded for additional credits, it would be fairly easy to increase the base amount of xp every archetype gets by 10 then allow 5 or 10 xp to be spent to get more money.

Bring on the next article, hopefully its not another 3 month wait!

Pre-Order XXXXXX: Confirmation