Oh look, a new article! With just a much hype and lack of hard details as previous articles.

But what excites me is the tool kits mentioned. Build-Your-Own-Stuff seems to be a central theme to this project, which is exactly what I want. Most "make your own stuff" chapters in RPG manuals are so vague and counter intuitive (looking at you DnD 5e DMG) it feels like the publisher is saying "don't really try, just wait for more stuff to buy from us," but this makes me only more hopeful that this will be the tool kit (I almost typed Cool Kit, which would still be accurate) that it claims to be.

What did you all gleam from it?

Also

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However, as much as we wanted to dive wholly into our own settings, such as Android , Twilight Imperium , and Runebound , we recognized that if we wanted to cover even one of our settings properly, it would take a whole book to do so!

Soft announcement for all three? I think so.

Edit for wild unsubstantiated speculation: is this also a release schedule? Note that they aren't in alphabetical order. It would be a smart move, since the cyberpunk genre has no good rules systems, then space opera that isn't Star Wars (may be a way to do a back-end 2.0 patch for some of the wonky rules that are stuck for SW), then finally onto fantasy which is a bit of an overe saturated marked (people probably already have their DnD/PF/ect books and need to be "hooked" on the core book with other expansions).

Yeah, this was a bit of a letdown. It’s not even fluff, it’s a teaser of fluff. Show us some **** crunch already! If they’re going to include “build your own” sections, show us an example! If there are going to be sample monsters, let us see a few across genres or sub genres.

And can we get some idea about release schedule (even if just an estimated quarter)? I’m kinda interested in the setting for Twilight Imperium, knowing nearly nothing about it other than it’s space opera and I’m hoping to create a space opera campaign (was going to adapt Starfinder, but perhaps I shouldn’t be too hasty...)

I think you are right about the soft announcement for those settings. Eventually.

I like the approach they are taking with giving examples and tools for creating your own stuff. And yes I want yo see a taste of those examples. Give us the ogre stat block.

13 minutes ago, fjw70 said:

I think you are right about the soft announcement for those settings. Eventually.

Eventually...

However, it pretty much "confirms" that these three settings won't get Lot5R'd with their own proprietary shenanigans. Which makes the entire worth it, to be honest.

I did like the picture of Sam in the Space Marine armor

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Finally, we present a group of adversaries , ranging from basic animated skeletons to horrifying ogres. Again, we didn’t try to be exhaustive here, instead presenting a diverse collection of monsters that you can use with our “invent your own adversary” rules to create even more NPCs and creatures to populate your world.

Good to read.

2 minutes ago, 2P51 said:

Good to read.

In my mind, this book should be chock full of this manner of information. It's fine to have some examples to prime the pump so to speak, but at the end of the day it's all about what we create, not what they give us, that's important to me. Seems like they are thinking the same thing.

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Adventures await!

Now in our fourth article more about the book itself. The book consists of pages. Each page has a unique number either on the top or the bottom of the page. And they are ordered in an ascending fashion! But no, there's even more to each single page. Rows of letters cover each page, Each sentence beginning with a capital letter! Most of the time those letters will even form words.

In our coming article we will describe in more detail how paper is made of woods.

What's especially frustrating is seeing how many of FFG's product news articles actually HAVE crunchy details and tons of examples. Look at any of their board games or LCGs.

1 minute ago, Dragonshadow said:

What's especially frustrating is seeing how many of FFG's products actually HAVE crunchy details and tons of examples. Look at any of their board games or LCGs.

Just look at their X-Wing line, they have full scans of various cards that can come into play, the SWRPG line has sections of talent trees. Are they afraid that we'll backwards engineer a whole book from an item creation table?

Yep a nice PR piece, but not really informative.

Point of comparison: this article came out immediately after the Genesys one. Again, keep in mind that Genesys is on the boat, so there is no page of that book that is still subject to last minute revision and can't be previewed at this point.

Black Stars Rise

From the article, just one comment:

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(You can do this using the “invent your own items” rules that we’ve also included in the book!)

(...)

“invent your own adversary” rules to create even more NPCs and creatures to populate your world

The key point here is the use of the word "rules", not guidelines, or orientation, or ideas,... the use of "rules" means hard definition,... a mechanic to complete define and compare between creations,...

For monsters I can imagine to have it based on the XPs used to build the stats,... but for items ?? I really cannot imagine how to rule the difference between longsword, katana or elven thinblade,.... or plasma gun, rail gun and disruptor gun,...

I hope there will be some supplements and world books soon. I don't mind building out my own equipment to a point, but I don't want to have to stat out every Battle Axe vs Hand Axe vs Great Axe myself. I'd like a fantasy sourcebook with a few pages of listed equipment. Same with Spells and adversaries. I'd like more examples then I'm guessing will be in the core book. That said, that's the nature of core books in generic systems. Just enough to get you started and wanting more.

More good hype, this Really sounds like a massive book for GM’s with some pc crunch thrown in and that excites me. The actual mechanics of pc creation and advancement are really what I want though since I have been making my own stuff for Star Wars for years.

I read the article, it left me wanting more detail on things in the system rather than saying we have this and this and this and this...

17 hours ago, Solkar77 said:

For monsters I can imagine to have it based on the XPs used to build the stats,... but for items ?? I really cannot imagine how to rule the difference between longsword, katana or elven thinblade,.... or plasma gun, rail gun and disruptor gun,...

I can't imagine that these will be purchased off of a money system. More likely they will be point buy. Buy so many points of damage, add on special characteristics with points.

Elven Thinblade - 2 points of damage plus hits, uses agility plus melee skill to hit.

A monetary system wouldn't work in a generic system very well. A point buy keeps things even yet provides some flavor. At low levels will anyone have a Elven Thinblade or a Disruptor, nope, you can afford a longsword, unless you want to give up some of those talents you bought for the Elven Thinblade.

Salivating over providing the rules to build your own. I second that this sounds like a GM book.

Really little information… I am a bit disappointed that Arkham Horror Files is not mentioned. They do have great FFG material to draw from (art, characters, history, novels, and board games). Other companies have made great source books that I will have to purchase instead of some FFG material. I wish there will be some rules about mental trauma or madness. If not, I will use some of Cthulhu Mythos hack posted by Gallows.

14 minutes ago, player1303422 said:

Really little information… I am a bit disappointed that Arkham Horror Files is not mentioned. They do have great FFG material to draw from (art, characters, history, novels, and board games). Other companies have made great source books that I will have to purchase instead of some FFG material. I wish there will be some rules about mental trauma or madness. If not, I will use some of Cthulhu Mythos hack posted by Gallows.

I'm sure they will do Arkham. They have several board games and cards based on their IP.

Mental trauma is easy enough. It goes off strain and and crits based off advantages.

If they really mean to do Cthulhu, as in based on H.P. Lovecraft's works, then it's not mental trauma as much as the degenerative spiral towards nihilism. There maybe momentary upticks (you get 1d3 SAN back for saving the baby) but the long-term direction only goes one way (Great... with the 1d3 I'm now only 7 points down from the start of the adventure).

It's not "My plucky hero is scared of the pack of ghouls but overcomes his fears with the sudden application of bullets and dynamite" as much as "My accountant remembers nothing since heading into the graveyard last night but now it's morning and he wakes up in the woods naked and covered in some sort of slime".

There's lots of sub-genre of horror and a lot of systems have temporary "that's scary" systems and that's fine. But if it carries the name Cthulhu it should really be more than that... It should terrify the player when the GM says "Your PC has learned a bit more about how the universe actually is..."

I end with a quote:

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of the infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.”
― H.P. Lovecraft , The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories

Again I will say, I doubt they are going to do anything for Genesys with settings that they don’t outright own and can fully control. I never expected them to use this system for L5R for that reason and I don’t expect them to do Arkham/Cthulhu for it either, despite a lot of it being public domain. At least, not for a few years. Maybe once the system is well established, but not right away.

23 hours ago, dlw32 said:

If they really mean to do Cthulhu, as in based on H.P. Lovecraft's works, then it's not mental trauma as much as the degenerative spiral towards nihilism. There maybe momentary upticks (you get 1d3 SAN back for saving the baby) but the long-term direction only goes one way (Great... with the 1d3 I'm now only 7 points down from the start of the adventure).

It's not "My plucky hero is scared of the pack of ghouls but overcomes his fears with the sudden application of bullets and dynamite" as much as "My accountant remembers nothing since heading into the graveyard last night but now it's morning and he wakes up in the woods naked and covered in some sort of slime".

There's lots of sub-genre of horror and a lot of systems have temporary "that's scary" systems and that's fine. But if it carries the name Cthulhu it should really be more than that... It should terrify the player when the GM says "Your PC has learned a bit more about how the universe actually is..."

I end with a quote:

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of the infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.”
― H.P. Lovecraft , The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories

I think they have little interest in doing Cthulhu. Arkham Horror, however, they might do. Arkham Horror is very much "fight demons with guns and also there's a sanity mechanic".

23 hours ago, Forgottenlore said:

Again I will say, I doubt they are going to do anything for Genesys with settings that they don’t outright own and can fully control. I never expected them to use this system for L5R for that reason and I don’t expect them to do Arkham/Cthulhu for it either, despite a lot of it being public domain. At least, not for a few years. Maybe once the system is well established, but not right away.

Why do you say they don't own L5R outright?