So I've been moseying around the EotE forums here, and everybody keeps talking about how "combat isn't everything" and the narrative dice and so forth. And it got me thinking...

How much fun is Genesys going to be when it comes to Dungeon Delving?

I don't just mean combat, but a fair amount: players going into a whole in the ground, searching for treasure. Encountering puzzles and traps and a few key role playing moments, and a good amount of monster slaying.

Thoughts from those with EotE experience?

EotE combat can be very tactical, and the chars tend to be durable. Combat has always been a integral part in my groups, I prefer exploration to social adventures like intrigue and politics. Compared to classical D&D Dungeom delving it feels different, not that static like D&D (though I still love D&D). I am curious how they will handle scaling, for example ogres, giants, wyverns. If Genesys fantasy is anything like Conan 2D20 from Jay Little, then combat should be a ton of fun.

30 minutes ago, DarthDude said:

EotE combat can be very tactical, and the chars tend to be durable. Combat has always been a integral part in my groups, I prefer exploration to social adventures like intrigue and politics. Compared to classical D&D Dungeom delving it feels different, not that static like D&D (though I still love D&D). I am curious how they will handle scaling, for example ogres, giants, wyverns.

This I have been curious about as well. Also, tons of dudes with special abilities. Star Wars doesn't feel like it's full of enemies who can regenerate, or petrify with a gaze, or go insubstantial, etc.

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If Genesys fantasy is anything like Conan 2D20 from Jay Little, then combat should be a ton of fun.

I want to glimpse into 2037 when Jay Little's doing an AMA retrospective, and see which system (Narrative Dice or 2d20) he feels defined his career.

12 minutes ago, CitizenKeen said:

This I have been curious about as well. Also, tons of dudes with special abilities. Star Wars doesn't feel like it's full of enemies who can regenerate, or petrify with a gaze, or go insubstantial, etc.

You'd be surprised. Quite a few of the creatures in the books have weird abilities and the like. Nothing quite like petrification, but it's doable.

What do you mean by scaling? Because there are rules for larger creatures in game, and there are quite a few larger creatures. So a larger-than-human dragon or something can exist fine with the rules as is. The only scaling is human to vehicle, which shouldn't be an issue for dungeon dives.

3 minutes ago, CitizenKeen said:

I want to glimpse into 2037 when Jay Little's doing an AMA retrospective, and see which system (Narrative Dice or 2d20) he feels defined his career.

Both are pretty similar to me, 2D20 Momentum is handled by Advantages in narative dice system. I hope the handling of talents in Genesys will be close to 2D20 (skill related little talent trees) and not like the static specialization trees of EotE. If this is the case, Genesys could be the perfect blend of the best from 2D20 and narrative dice, a dream come true.

1 minute ago, Blackbird888 said:

What do you mean by scaling? Because there are rules for larger creatures in game, and there are quite a few larger creatures. So a larger-than-human dragon or something can exist fine with the rules as is. The only scaling is human to vehicle, which shouldn't be an issue for dungeon dives.

I was not aware of this (it's some time since I played EotE), the only scaling I remember is the difference between star ships and human size, 10 times the weapon damage and 10 times the armor strength. A more refined scaling would be great, like human sized vs ogres, human sized vs giants, etc. If this already exists, in which SW books can I find these infos?

4 minutes ago, DarthDude said:

Both are pretty similar to me, 2D20 Momentum is handled by Advantages in narative dice system. I hope the handling of talents in Genesys will be close to 2D20 (skill related little talent trees) and not like the static specialization trees of EotE. If this is the case, Genesys could be the perfect blend of the best from 2D20 and narrative dice, a dream come true.

I have a lot of fondness for 2d20 (I haven't seen Infinity yet), but the whole "complications from more d20s, which are supposed to be good" thing feels... Off. But I do like the system a lot.

Just now, DarthDude said:

I was not aware of this (it's some time since I played EotE), the only scaling I remember is the difference between star ships and human size, 10 times the weapon damage and 10 times the armor strength. A more refined scaling would be great, like human sized vs ogres, human sized vs giants, etc. If this already exists, in which SW books can I find these infos?

I feel like rules for fantasy creatures involve more than just size. But honestly, I'm not super familiar with EotE - the glances through the books that I have seem to have lots and lots of humanoids.

1 minute ago, CitizenKeen said:

I have a lot of fondness for 2d20 (I haven't seen Infinity yet), but the whole "complications from more d20s, which are supposed to be good" thing feels... Off. But I do like the system a lot.

Infinity looks very crunchy, at least as crunchy as Conan but very fitting for a scifi setting. The current 2D20 versions I know, MC3, Conan, Infinity lack the typical high fantasy magic like D&D offers. Sorcery in Conan is intruiging but very restricted because Hyboria is rather a low magic setting. I hope the manufacturing of spells in Genesys will be handled like item/weapon qualities in EoeT. At least it looked like regarding the Runebound chars.

Size (silhouette) has been there since the beginning, though damage doesn't scale against larger animals. A thing like the rancor, for example, is a nemesis, has a high wound threshold, high soak, and is pretty dangerous if it gets its hands on you. There are a few specific silhouette rules depending on size, but most of it is hardwired into the design of the adversary themselves. You can create a pretty terrifying nemesis-level monster without having to account for any kind of vehicle-like scaling.

One thing, though, is that this system currently doesn't lend to creating very interesting 1-on-multi boss fights. If you make them human-level (as in the same level as the PCs) they can be outnumbered and overwhelmed. Inflating a monster with massive wound thresholds and soak can turn into a slog fest that may be more irritating than fun.

30 minutes ago, Blackbird888 said:

One thing, though, is that this system currently doesn't lend to creating very interesting 1-on-multi boss fights. If you make them human-level (as in the same level as the PCs) they can be outnumbered and overwhelmed. Inflating a monster with massive wound thresholds and soak can turn into a slog fest that may be more irritating than fun.

Savage Worlds, my previous medium-crunch-generic system, had the same problem.

Multi-form bosses solved the problem there; I have high hopes they'll solve it here.

1 hour ago, CitizenKeen said:

So I've been moseying around the EotE forums here, and everybody keeps talking about how "combat isn't everything" and the narrative dice and so forth. And it got me thinking...

How much fun is Genesys going to be when it comes to Dungeon Delving?

I don't just mean combat, but a fair amount: players going into a whole in the ground, searching for treasure. Encountering puzzles and traps and a few key role playing moments, and a good amount of monster slaying.

Thoughts from those with EotE experience?

I think it will do pretty well but to get the most out of it you will definatly need some planning ahead on the gm side.

The biggest issue with the dice has been what do those advantages/threat actually do. Outside of combat doing a dungeon dive they will start doing things like finding more loot, bypassing a trap without disabling it, getting a good idea of the lay out (map) of the current area of the dungeon, etc. Extension of regular preception, knoledge, survival rolls and such. They can be a little hard to do on the fly so it is, in my opinon, a good idea to write that stuff down before hand so you can use them their full extent. Also of note is not making important things based entirely on a roll. Need to find the switch to continue forward in the dungeon dive all it should need is 'i look for the switch'. If you do make it a roll it should only be for what boneses or penalties come with that discover, not if they switch is found or not since if it isn't found the game stalls. Do /not/ rely on stats. 5 yellow dice and a dificulty 0 and people can still roll only advantage and not succeed at the perception roll or what have you.

Silhouette size in monster encounters in fantasy Genesys will come into play more than they typically do in SW.

I'd expect some sort of rule for huge creatures like dragons similar to Massive for starships in SW.

Some of the large creature types in SW are able to do melee scale attacks at longer than engaged range.

I have a feeling the somewhat low crit ratings on the playtest character sheets lead me to believe the devs are intending for PCs to really use crits to overcome large sized monsters as opposed to simply beating down their Wound thresholds.

Various magical effects aren't going to be hard to incorporate. Petrification would be similar to the Triumph option on the Bola which prevents Maneuvers (you can't move) and the only Action that can attempted is to try and break free (saving throw to shake off petrification).

In regards to doing stuff other than kill and loot, I think even old school D&D can do more, 5E has the various skills it just relies on DMs and PCs to do the work and agree to use them more creatively than is needed in this system. The various specs in SWs provide tangible uses for non combat skills that can be used both tactically, as well as, to overcome obstacles or aid in exploration. Mechanic and the related specs in SW have a fair amount of Talents like Contraption, Utility Belt, and Bad Motivator, that in fantasy form would be very helpful in dungeons.

1 hour ago, CitizenKeen said:

Savage Worlds, my previous medium-crunch-generic system, had the same problem.

Multi-form bosses solved the problem there; I have high hopes they'll solve it here.

What do you mean by " Multi-form bosses"? I e had similar problems with big creatures in savage Worlds and haven't found a solution. (Though I wouldn't call SW "medium crunch", it's about as rules light of a system as you can get and still be considered an actual system instead of just guidelines).

To this point; can anyone tell me how much soak the paladin-esque character in the Gencon module had?

6

4 hours ago, Forgottenlore said:

What do you mean by " Multi-form bosses"? I e had similar problems with big creatures in savage Worlds and haven't found a solution. (Though I wouldn't call SW "medium crunch", it's about as rules light of a system as you can get and still be considered an actual system instead of just guidelines).

When you take out a multi-form character, instead of dying, it just transforms into the next character. You chain together a view bosses.

You think you kill the sorcerer, but when you strike the mortal blow, you find out they're a vampire. When you finally kill them, it turns out their death ushers in a demon possession. Et cetera. Or a dragon becomes an enraged dragon becomes a wounded dragon. Akin to how old video game bosses used to work.

And while we don't need to get into details here, I view games like Fate, Cortex Plus, the PbtA games, and so forth as relatively light. Any game with as exhaustive a list of edges/feats as Savage Worlds is at least medium. In my opinion.

On 9/20/2017 at 3:02 PM, Blackbird888 said:

One thing, though, is that this system currently doesn't lend to creating very interesting 1-on-multi boss fights. If you make them human-level (as in the same level as the PCs) they can be outnumbered and overwhelmed. Inflating a monster with massive wound thresholds and soak can turn into a slog fest that may be more irritating than fun.

I swear I remember reading something in one of the Star Wars books about being able to give Nemesis level characters multiple initiative slots. I've searched and searched, and for the life of me, I haven't been able to find where I read that. I think it may have been in one of the career books or an adventure or something. Anyway, I do think that giving a big boss with a more reasonable wound threshold an extra initiative slot could make a big difference. I think it would simultaneously make the boss more dangerous and make it less of a slog fest. I'm not sure if this would be game breaking though.

p. 421 gray box in F&D an option for Inquisitors.

I believe the concept was introduced for the Nemesis bounty hunter in Under a Blacksun.

Thank you. It was starting to drive me crazy. Hahaha

Driving people crazy is a different option.....

1 hour ago, arMedBeta said:

I swear I remember reading something in one of the Star Wars books about being able to give Nemesis level characters multiple initiative slots. I've searched and searched, and for the life of me, I haven't been able to find where I read that. I think it may have been in one of the career books or an adventure or something. Anyway, I do think that giving a big boss with a more reasonable wound threshold an extra initiative slot could make a big difference. I think it would simultaneously make the boss more dangerous and make it less of a slog fest. I'm not sure if this would be game breaking though.

I believe that it is also mentioned in the EotE GM Kit. It has a section all about crafting Adversaries.

39 minutes ago, salamar_dree said:

I believe that it is also mentioned in the EotE GM Kit. It has a section all about crafting Adversaries.

Yup, EotE GM kit. Look there too.

Could have sworn the EotE GM kit was one of the first places I looked. Guess I didn't look hard enough. Thank you!

Kicked off my campaign last night with session 0 CHARGEN and intro play. The crew all liked it alot. I've never done anything but Star Wars with the system and the feel in a fantasy setting was really cool. Felt like a lot more play/character depth than 5E imo. I'm relying all on homebrew character stuff until the book, but honestly with OggDudes app I am fine just sticking with what I made myself. I am mostly hopeful for content with items, adversaries, and the new Skill descriptions. Dunno how much specificity there will be in regards to fantasy though in the CRB.

I'm fine with minimal crunch when it comes to various settings and items as long as Genesys comes with enough tools for me to create my own. Generic systems sometimes have a habit of not giving players and GMs tools to customise and tinker and I sincerely hope that Genesys does not fall into that trap.