Just curious if anyone has mixed X-wing battles with miniatures-based games like IA or RPGs.

My friends and I play a really rules-light mashup RPG we made that uses all kinds of miniatures. I use a lot of old SW ones and some IA along with D&D and Pathfinder.

Twice I’ve mixed a preloaded X-wing skirmish into the game. The first time it worked really well playing with my son, but my friends don’t know the X-wing rules well so we fudged it when I tried with them.

Has anyone else tried mixing their ship battles with their RPGs?

Makes a poor game experience.
Though imho making an RPG miniature base makes a poor game experience as well. Your experiences may differ. ;-)

In my experience, X-Wing can be really good, but it takes a ton of custom rules to make it work well and let people customize their ships as much as they will want to.

I'm working on some rules for using the West End Games RPG with X-Wing minis, but both rulesets (and customization) are so complicated that it's going to be a while before I have anything playable...

Heroes of the Aturi Cluster may be sort of what you've got in mind, if you haven't already checked that out.

A crude conversion from RPG could probably be to say that every X points of Pilot-Related skills from the RPG = Y Points of HotAC X-Wing points to buy PS, abilities, and upgrades (EPTs).

There was this series of articles...

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2016/6/24/were-going-in-full-throttle/

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2016/9/2/the-decoder/

3 minutes ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

Heroes of the Aturi Cluster may be sort of what you've got in mind, if you haven't already checked that out.

A crude conversion from RPG could probably be to say that every X points of Pilot-Related skills from the RPG = Y Points of HotAC X-Wing points to buy PS, abilities, and upgrades (EPTs).

Most RPGs have a Gamemaster, so it's unlikely you need the HotAC AI, or the HotAC story, so all you're left with is the HotAC XP=Squadpoints=Unique Pilot Abilities, at which point you might as well just come up with your own rules that work better and fit the money+XP system of whatever RPG you're running.

X-wing is a very unforgiving game where loses on both sides are expected and millimeters count. The Star Wars RPG is a very narrative and free-flowing game where the players are heroes and take out entire swaths of goons with relative ease. They don't really mesh well, unless you are attempting to run a very brutal version of the RPG where total party wipes are expected, which is not how that game is designed.

You could use mini's to mark range bands and relative position in space combat (I bought the YT-2400 expansion specifically for this, since our Edge of the Empire party has one) but I wouldn't use the X-Wing rules handling combat.

13 minutes ago, kris40k said:

X-wing is a very unforgiving game where loses on both sides are expected and millimeters count. The Star Wars RPG is a very narrative and free-flowing game where the players are heroes and take out entire swaths of goons with relative ease. They don't really mesh well, unless you are attempting to run a very brutal version of the RPG where total party wipes are expected, which is not how that game is designed.

You could use mini's to mark range bands and relative position in space combat (I bought the YT-2300 expansion specifically for this, since our Edge of the Empire party has one) but I wouldn't use the X-Wing rules handling combat.

Yeah, that's part of why the custom rules are so hard. Basically, the PC ships have to have the ability to be damaged rather than destroyed, the ability to crash-land, the ability to hyperspace, the ability to rescue stranded pilots from other ships, insanely huge amounts of hull, etc.

It's doable, and the whole idea of rolling for character death upon ship destruction (like in HotAC) is a good place to start. But it's still kind of a pain.

The time I ran it and it worked well, the PCs were on a YT-1300 and had a small squad of x-wings in support. They had to stop a bounty hunter in a Firespray who was attacking a refugee transport. I think I may have thrown a few Tie in with the Firespray but things were very tilted in favor of the PCs. The first half of the quest they had to pursue the bounty hunter on foot and find her at a spaceport before I transitioned to the space battle.

So I’m thinking more along the lines of keeping the two separate. I think it would work best for people who already love x-wing. Picture something like an epic battle run simultaneously with a mission to board an epic ship and then a battle going on inside the ship that could affect the ship itself. I’d obviously need a full day to run something like this.

1 hour ago, RebelRogue said:

There was this series of articles...

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2016/6/24/were-going-in-full-throttle/

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2016/9/2/the-decoder/

These articles were definitely what I was thinking of - thanks!

If you use the old D6 RPG (IMHO the best SW RPG):

Maneuvering

Use the flightpath system from X-Wing. The characters have to make piloting checks whenever they take a red maneuver. If they succeed -> No Stress.

Maybe use piloting skill checks to let them try to take two actions. If they fail they gain one stress.

Attack values and defense as per RPG Rules. Firing arc as per X-Wing rules.

Difficulty level for Shooting rolls:

According to the D6 Rules:

Very Easy

Easy

Normal

Hard

Very hard

Heroic

Range 1 shots are easy, range 2 normal and range 3 hard.

0-30 degree divergence between the ships flightpath give the attacker a slight advantage (If you are on his 6 it's easier to hit of course).

30-60 No advantage.

60-90 slight advantage for the Defender.

You could also add Advantages for every Point difference of speed in the last maneuver.

Damage

NPCs get damage according to RPG rules.

PCs May spend hull tokens to reduce the damage taken by one category. If the tokens are out, damage is taken as per RPG rules.

@RogueLeader42, I like that! I think I was trying to make it too complicated, like trying to make upgrade cards work like in X-Wing and use X-Wing Attack dice and stuff... I might have to try it just the way you have it, and add a few more things PC's can check for in various phases! Thanks!

I've considered similar and think this could be awesome for a set piece, esp. if the players also play X-Wing or are the type to enjoy it.

Less sure about regular occurrence, as it would likely consume most of a session.

A key issue though is that in RPGs, generally combat isn't meant to be an even fight, unless your group particularly enjoys TPKs.

So either the fight to be stacked in favour of the players...

...Or losing should be as interesting as winning, at least for the players not the characters, and drive the narrative.
Some players love losing and seeing their characters suffer, others really don't and feel their character's success is their enjoyment.

I use a lot of pictures in my Age of Rebellion Campaign to set up the stage- and especially for space combat situations, I have found that using X-Wing minis is quite fun- as long as you use them to represent where stuff is in relation with each other.

In short- as long as you don't mix and match rules, the fact that the minis just look great can be a great asset and a lot of fun.

58 minutes ago, Illithidbix said:

I've considered similar and think this could be awesome for a set piece, esp. if the players also play X-Wing or are the type to enjoy it.

Less sure about regular occurrence, as it would likely consume most of a session.

A key issue though is that in RPGs, generally combat isn't meant to be an even fight, unless your group particularly enjoys TPKs.

So either the fight to be stacked in favour of the players...

...Or losing should be as interesting as winning, at least for the players not the characters, and drive the narrative.
Some players love losing and seeing their characters suffer, others really don't and feel their character's success is their enjoyment.

While there are some RPG quests (like Tomb of Horror) that are designed to be super dangerous, I think any good DM knows where that balance is between just dangerous enough to make it suspenseful and killing off too many PCs. This is why I'd think you would want to tip the X-wing balance in the PCs favor as well. Have them working on objectives that hurt the enemy or give their ships advantage. Maybe they blow up half an epic ship from inside, activate weapons on a station to attack enemy ships, or recover intelligence that gives them some (stat or card) advantage in the X-wing battle.

And try to use X-Wing mechanics for Damage and combat. It is to deadly.
Use the flightpath system from X-Wing to show the relative movements and positions of the ships and combine red maneuvers with skill checks, etc. But the combat should follow the RPG rules.

14 minutes ago, RogueLeader42 said:

And try to use X-Wing mechanics for Damage and combat. It is to deadly.
Use the flightpath system from X-Wing to show the relative movements and positions of the ships and combine red maneuvers with skill checks, etc. But the combat should follow the RPG rules.

I'd agree that with certain small ships this could be deadly, but part of it is getting the PCs to look at things differently than an X-wing skirmish. If you're down to two hull, maybe you get out of the dogfight. Part of this may mean providing them with other NPC ships they don't care as much about. I wanted to keep the villain in the Firespray alive in the quest I ran, so when she got down to a few hull, I had her jump to light speed.

There's also this approach that's from the article linked above:

Quote

It’s important to remember that the X-Wing miniatures game is decidedly more prone toward fatalities than your standard roleplaying game. If you can build this into the campaign, though, why not embrace it? One of the hallmarks of how great the X-Wing books are was the fact that nearly every character was expendable. And since it was based around a squadron of pilots, there were constantly fresh faces coming into the rotation. In a roleplaying game with a consistent group of characters, it might not be a problem to run a campaign where your players know that the casualties of war will be high. If they’re clued in to the fact that they might need to create a new character at a moment's notice if the combat doesn’t go their way, they will be on board with this style of play.

This does take a certain mindset from the players. My group cares a lot when a PC dies, no matter what they say going in!

I need to find people willing to play a Star Wars RPG first, but I totally intend to use X-Wing for space combat, since it's actually more fun than RPG rules for space combat. Party should be on a Large ship, so survivability shouldn't be too much of an issue. It was my intent to give the players a floating slot on their ship(s) that can equip any kind of non-title card.

Pilot Skill would scale with character level and ranks in pilot skills. Pilot abilities would mirror existing abilities that would be appropriate for their species choice and character temperament. So a raging wookie would have FA Chewbacca or Dengar ability, while a Jedi would have Poe or Luke's ability. I would probably make them wait until at least character level 4 to get a pilot ability though.

The real issue is scaling combat to something the X-Wing rules would actually let them live through. Better to run the game like a scenario instead of straight 100pt combat. Escaping through an asteroid field, or making it to a specific location on the board (and facing a particular direction) in order to make the jump to hyperspace, etc.