Quote

PC: I'm much safer because I have a Missile Tube!

GM: Yeah, not so much. (Gets out harder bad guy cards)

GM: Sure, but since you only have a Encumbrance Threshold of 7, and you're also wearing Laminate Armour and carrying half a dozen items, that'll be 5 Setback Dice on all Agility and Brawn checks (EotE CR, p152). Oh, and in fact Missile Tubes have Cumbersome 3, so that'll increase the difficulty as well (EotE CR, p155).

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The narrative reasons presented above are all great, but some players need some crunch to enforce things.

I have a 3 ranks in burly ;-)

Furthermore I have a pouch and backpack for my half dozen items and and my armor has a repulsor assisted lifting system, fully modded, so my brawn counts as 7 higher for calculating encumbrance rating. Basically, what I am trying to say is that I am not carrying one missile tube, I am carrying four, together with a dozen grenades, a disruptor rifle and a minigun. ;-)
I don't think that crunch is a very effective tool against military equipment.

Now by all means, a group with military equipment will have a hard time to get non-merc / non-military tasks … at least if they hope to actually use that equipment. But certainly getting the "best" equipment is a trap many players will fall for. Though to be honest, gear is nice, but having 20 disposable minions seems more effective. And leadership, charm, deception, etc are all skills which makes it rather easy to start your own criminal network too. The beginner game might start with the challenge of overcoming Teemo the Hutt, but the game might lead into taking a position like Teemo's in the criminal underground. Imho a much more interesting goal instead of dipping into military gear and a line of work in which military grade hardware is something you may own, but rarely use, because the last thing you want is to have imperial military unites sticking their noses into the fallout of your operations.

I can certainly agree on the weapon side of things, but not so much on the armor side. The difference between heavy clothing and laminate is 1 point of soak, 2 with superior. Padded to laminate is only one point after superior.

For me armor has always been about looks. Often inspiration for my character comes from a picture I find online and often those images include armor. Had FFG halved the amount of soak from brawn and increased the range from armor I could agree with you. But considering a catch vest or even custom heavy clothes is just as good as basic laminate there really isn't much of an armor arms race.

One of the problems I’ve noticed is so many players now, come to pen and paper Roleplaying from Warcraft or some other MMO where gear and build is everything. Improving their gear is what they are used too and largely expect. Like my friend who’s first character was a modder, he was constantly trying to craft as a solution to everything.

On ‎2‎/‎1‎/‎2018 at 4:39 PM, Ahrimon said:

I can certainly agree on the weapon side of things, but not so much on the armor side. The difference between heavy clothing and laminate is 1 point of soak, 2 with superior. Padded to laminate is only one point after superior.

For me armor has always been about looks. Often inspiration for my character comes from a picture I find online and often those images include armor. Had FFG halved the amount of soak from brawn and increased the range from armor I could agree with you. But considering a catch vest or even custom heavy clothes is just as good as basic laminate there really isn't much of an armor arms race.

Yes you are right, and I should have clarified that I meant maxed out heavy armors with the talents that make them as protective as is possible. For the most part armor in the game is well designed and statted imo.

On ‎2‎/‎2‎/‎2018 at 3:56 PM, Eoen said:

One of the problems I’ve noticed is so many players now, come to pen and paper Roleplaying from Warcraft or some other MMO where gear and build is everything. Improving their gear is what they are used too and largely expect. Like my friend who’s first character was a modder, he was constantly trying to craft as a solution to everything.

Yes! The players who come from video games see this as a low-tech version of the computer games. They don't realize that they have this amazing open interface now and that all story and subtlety is available to them to distinguish things.

In MMORPGs each character model that is different costs money to make, and interface options that are not used most frequently (like shaking a character's hand for instance) are considered wasted money. I came back to TTRPGs as MMOs began to slide more and more away from RPGs and more into action combat games with a progression.

In games where combat is the only activity they build the details of the game around that, and while combat is certainly a big focus, having nothing to couch it and provide context to the combat turns it into pong in my opinion. Combat without context of consequence is just like a game of tic tac toe.

In some ways the video game players are exploring the great freedom of the imagination as an interface by trying to manufacture their own Specials Toolbar Buttons that they can press to deal with situations just like they did in WoW. I have little patience with this, especially as they try to come up with a dice roll solution for something that would be better accomplished by just talking to an NPC.

On 1/30/2018 at 1:46 PM, Vorzakk said:

The Mandalorian in my group once went out into Theed to buy coffee and got stalked by local police every step of the way.

I created a third class of weapons and gear called "Suspicious". It includes any Ranged Heavy weapons, any armor more than heavy or armored clothing, and anything else that would look shady.

For a more real life example I had a player walking around in full swat gear, carrying a semiautomatic M16, a 1911 .45 ACP hand gun, and enough medical gear to heal a small squad of soldiers while walking the streets of Mayberry. Nothing he is carrying is Technically illegal but if an average person saw that, especially if its more than one person dressed like that, they are calling the police. Whereas where I live, some guy in just a tee shirt and jeans carry a Glock 19 open or a Ruger LCP that you may or may not see probably wouldn't even raise an eyebrow.

Once I explained it like that to my players they understood and watched what they had on them for a given situation.

On 1/30/2018 at 12:24 PM, Archlyte said:

Some groups correct this on their own, and will keep to the concept of the characters (Soldier-type characters exempted), but other players are more interested in the mechanical aspects of play, and to them a bonus is a bonus. If this situation is a concern for you, how do you handle it in your game?

Talk to your players and ask them why they feel the need to constantly buy weapons. Remind them this isn't D20, where the entire focus of the game is combat, and the ever escalating nature of threats. Remind them that the movies these are based on, had one of the signature characters using the same starting pistol he had on day 1 for the entire trilogy. Remind them that Star Wars isn't about weapon creep, and stockpiling guns like some apocalypse prepper.

It's about having fun, and doing adventurous things, and none of that requires having massive stockpiles of military grade weaponry to accomplish.

If they still insist on buying all the weapons they can shove up their orifices, then smack them on the head a bit for still being stuck in a D20 mindset, and then tell them to quit it.

Also not constantly escalating the threat to ever more powerful types that require said military hardware to defeat, would help too.

On 2/2/2018 at 5:56 PM, Eoen said:

One of the problems I’ve noticed is so many players now, come to pen and paper Roleplaying from Warcraft or some other MMO where gear and build is everything. Improving their gear is what they are used too and largely expect. Like my friend who’s first character was a modder, he was constantly trying to craft as a solution to everything.

This is hardly unique to MMO's, it's been the basis for D20 for decades. 99% of the feats are related to combat, every book is related to combat and how to expand upon it. Every module revolves around combat encounters, and every gear table is a list of stuff to use to either better kill your enemy, or prevent them from killing you. It got so ridiculous that I stopped playing like 10 years ago.

1 hour ago, KungFuFerret said:

This is hardly unique to MMO's, it's been the basis for D20 for decades. 99% of the feats are related to combat, every book is related to combat and how to expand upon it. Every module revolves around combat encounters, and every gear table is a list of stuff to use to either better kill your enemy, or prevent them from killing you. It got so ridiculous that I stopped playing like 10 years ago.

I do think 5th Edition is alright so far, but I will agree with you on the bloat issues that older editions had with this problem. Particularly 3rd and Pathfinder (Truenamer anyone?).

Another thing is to just present challenges that can't be solved by shooting something in the face.

I mean, if every encounter the PC's have is combat oriented, then focusing on an ever increasing pile of weapons isn't an unreasonable reaction.

So provide social/mental encounters that have to be resolved non-violently. Or, if you HAVE to involve violence, include things like "Do NOT kill the target, bring them to me alive, and INTACT. If you harm a hair on my son's head, I will hunt you to the ends of the galaxy!!" Or have them dealing with a faction they actually like, and don't want to hurt, but they are temporarily on the opposite side of for some reason. So things like stun damage become the name of the game for the session.

Give them variety of problems, that require a variety of shaped pegs to resolve. If every problem is a square hole, it's hardly their fault for focusing on getting as many square pegs as they can.

KungFuFerret using up all of my likes today. Yeah MMORPGs seemed to distill out the parts of D&D that I liked the least, and 3.x especially because if the giant emphasis on combat. Combat is an element of these games, hopefully not the whole game lol.

17 minutes ago, Archlyte said:

KungFuFerret using up all of my likes today. Yeah MMORPGs seemed to distill out the parts of D&D that I liked the least, and 3.x especially because if the giant emphasis on combat. Combat is an element of these games, hopefully not the whole game lol.

Well to be fair to MMO's, it's not like they can code the game to accommodate lateral thinking of a player. While at a gaming table, the GM can roll with whatever crazy idea a player comes up with in the moment, a coder doesn't really have that luxury when building a very structured, defined game, where it can only do the things that the coders thought to include in the system.

15 hours ago, KungFuFerret said:

Another thing is to just present challenges that can't be solved by shooting something in the face.

I mean, if every encounter the PC's have is combat oriented, then focusing on an ever increasing pile of weapons isn't an unreasonable reaction.

So provide social/mental encounters that have to be resolved non-violently. Or, if you HAVE to involve violence, include things like "Do NOT kill the target, bring them to me alive, and INTACT. If you harm a hair on my son's head, I will hunt you to the ends of the galaxy!!" Or have them dealing with a faction they actually like, and don't want to hurt, but they are temporarily on the opposite side of for some reason. So things like stun damage become the name of the game for the session.

Give them variety of problems, that require a variety of shaped pegs to resolve. If every problem is a square hole, it's hardly their fault for focusing on getting as many square pegs as they can.

Indeed. When we expected to run into a battalion of imperials, we bought a mini gun. When we expected to run into a diplomatic social encounter on a formal dance, we bought dresses for the ladies and suits for the guys. And the gunnery weapons were all left in the armory. Only pistols and a hidden lightsaber.

13 hours ago, KungFuFerret said:

Well to be fair to MMO's, it's not like they can code the game to accommodate lateral thinking of a player. While at a gaming table, the GM can roll with whatever crazy idea a player comes up with in the moment, a coder doesn't really have that luxury when building a very structured, defined game, where it can only do the things that the coders thought to include in the system.

Larian Studios did a fine job with Divinity to catch a lot of crazy ideas of the players and roll with it. The interactions are countless and so are the player options.
But hey, they included a GM option in their latest game, just to catch even more stuff

20 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

Larian Studios did a fine job with Divinity to catch a lot of crazy ideas of the players and roll with it. The interactions are countless and so are the player options.
But hey, they included a GM option in their latest game, just to catch even more stuff

1. Divinity isn't an MMO, so they have a bit more flexibility with how they can proceed with quests in a single player game.

2. I never said they couldn't include options that aren't violent related, just that they are limited to what they actually code. And given the deadlines they operate under, it's much more reasonable to assume they will try and stick with a handful of choices, and then move on to quest number 550,734 for this faction, and make sure it's not broken.

Most MMOs are not MMOs anymore either
Persistent massively multiplayer worlds really took a backseat to the 4-6 man instanced dungeon concept.
Add to that those single player plotlines which we see since about Aion and Guild Wars … and the differences to a 4 player + GM divinity are getting significantly smaller, especially as divinity is magnitudes ahead on the persistence world as well. Literally everything just respawns in most MMOs these days. Persistence is established by mostly static worlds. The days of ultima online style words is getting realized these days more in survival and building games like ARK and Minecraft than current generation MMORPGs.


But let's stop here before I am starting to really rant about this genre which never realized it's potential, because WoW made it too popular.