As I normally tune out to anything Star Wars related (nothing against it but just not my area of interest) I've realised I could actually do with having the Star Wars RPG that Genesys was developed from but FFG seem to do several SW RPG's. Or I may just be confused by things that are expansions for it.

The reason I may get it is with Genesys being developed from it a lot of people are using it to answer 'how do I do this with Genesys?' by answering 'how would you do that with SW or what's similar in SW' so it could be a good approach to solving some of my own 'how to...' questions.

So which is the specific core system Star Wars RPG Genesys was developed from?

The answer would be "the narrative dice system"

Starwars is 3 core books or lines but they are similar in the basic mechanic. I think they where developed together but the first to release was edge of the empire then Age of rebellion and finally Force and destiny.

Besides the common mechanics each brings a unique theme to a star wars campaign. Edge is like your space western criminal/detective stories (lots more but you get the idea), age of rebellion is more military focused and force and destiny is well about the force and mysteries etc.

For each line of books there are a number of supplements, career books, source books etc. Alle of these both the core lines and supplements can be mixed and matched. Many use mixed party from the different lines in one game. So

from a purely RPG mechanics perspective it really docent matter which one you get. They do bring a unique mechanic to the player and GM in form of Obligation, duty and morality for edge, age of rebellion and force and destiny respectively.

I think if i should recommend one it would be the force and destiny one. Its the most pure in its mechanic and feels most refined but tbh. all are good. Obligation from edge is a great mechanic for any game some say we might see similar stuff in Genesys with Android and the favour system.

Do realize that a lot of the times when someone answers "this is how its done in star wars" it might be from a supplement book. Like i answered a unarmed parry question the other day its from no disintegrations(bounty hunter source book) so you will not find this in any of the core books.

The mechanics are primarily the same between the three line, with the primary differences being in flavor.

Edge of the Empire is smugglers and rogues, scum and villainy...Star Wars Firefly. Its unique mechanic is the Obligation system, which allows for built-in character story hooks that can be triggered at random or selected by the GM. (Ex: An obligation of "Bounty" could be taken by a PC, and if triggered, someone tries to collect on that bounty, which may be a subplot of the adventure, or the basis of the entire adventure.)

Age of Rebellion focuses on the fight between the Rebels and the Empire. Being focused around military encounters, its unique mechanic is Duty. If a character's Duty is triggered during a mission, and that character succeeds, they gain duty points, which can be applied towards promotion and, at certain total group Duty levels, grant group rewards of materiel, ships, etc.

Force and Destiny focuses on the Force-related aspects of the lore. Its mechanic is Morality. In addition to selecting a moral/emotional strength/weakness combination, the character has a Morality rating that is tied to their Force use. If they perform immoral actions (theft, murder, etc) for their own sake and not in service to the greater good or draw upon the dark side to use the Force , they suffer Conflict, which subtracts from their Morality score. At the end of each session, they roll a d10, which determines how much Morality they gain for that session. (If Conflict is taken in a session, they can still result in a net negative Morality for the session.) A player that drops below 30 Morality becomes a dark side Force user, with specific rules that apply; if they rise above 70, they become a light side paragon, contributing an automatic light side Destiny point (in Genesys, player Story point) to the Destiny (Story) pool. (Worth noting, unlike the Genesys Story pool, the SWRPG Destiny pool is randomized with rolls at the start of the sessions.)

The system is the same, but Star Wars isn't "generic", so they need some modifications.

Spells vs Force Power : In SW the casters are Force users and the system use the Force dices. Genesys used the same pattern from skills to do something more generic and easy to adapt to every scenario.

Motivation : SW has something that works well, with three kind of motivations per core rulebook. Genesys use that to create the four aspects in a generic approach, to be used everywhere.

Skill Trees : in SW there are classes, and each class has three specializations. Each one has its own skill tree with 4 talents per tier (4 T1, 4 T2, 4 T3, 4 T4, 4 T5). As far as I know, the only way to get talents outside that tree is buying another class (like multi class), sou you gain access to the new skill tree. In Genesys they did a different approach with no skill trees.

Everything else, If I'm not wrong, is the same. Skills, checks, character creation, etc. What I haven't said here, it's already done by @Nytwyng and @Archellus .

19 hours ago, Watercolour Dragon said:

So which is the specific core system Star Wars RPG Genesys was developed from?

The three Star Wars books, Genesys, and the original Warhammer all use the same narrative dice system. There are differences between the three versions (not the SW versions from each other - they use the same system) as already described above.

The narrative dice system started with Warhammer. Call it the 1.0 version. Shoved into it (without a good fit in my opinion) was a character creation system which was a relic from previous Warhammer RPG's. Warhammer also initially started with a huge amount of tokens, cards, etc which were cool but very fiddly game aids that actually made setup a nightmare. These were later tossed by many as new core books were released with cards replaced by tables so you didn't need to buy all of the tokens and cards. Completely same rules though, so call the later RPG books version 1.1.

Next came the Star Wars version which was more streamlined and tossed the old character creation system for something original for use with the narrative dice. Call it version 2.0 to Warhammer's 1.0. The core system of the dice, wounds, strain, etc was the same but there were still many differences from the original Warhammer.

Lastly came Genesys which is very, very similar to the Star Wars system except for tossing the limitations imposed by classes for a talent pyramid and a change for motivations as described above. You could call it 3.0, but it's probably more like a 2.5 version of Star Wars that is setting generic.

23 hours ago, Sturn said:

Lastly came Genesys which is very, very similar to the Star Wars system except for tossing the limitations imposed by classes for a talent pyramid and a change for motivations as described above. You could call it 3.0, but it's probably more like a 2.5 version of Star Wars that is setting generic.

and then there is version 2.75 "legend of the five rings"

1 hour ago, Terefang said:

and then there is version 2.75 "legend of the five rings"

While I suppose you can find some similarities between them, 5 Rings and FFG's narrative dice are two different systems. You can actually swap out the dice between Warhammer-SW-Genesys if you understand which symbols match up. 5 Rings uses completely different dice (just two of them?) along with "roll and keep" and "Ring" choices. Yes you can compare that the two systems both have more then just a straight fail-success axis. But, that doesn't mean they are in any way the same system.

Thank you all, so I'm thinking Force and Destiny would be helpful to get some ideas to bring a good/evil alignment (of sorts) aspect to Genesys, I want to play with this a little later in my campaign- especially once some ideas of even the good being a bit corrupted kick in- any thoughts on this if you have it, and has (or how has) the dark side bad/good aspect worked or not worked in games that could be useful adapted to Genesys (it's the same sort of actions have consequences for your alignment area), would love to hear people's experiences of/tips for this, guessing there's probably some useful stuff over in those forums so shall have a delve into those too.

For Genesys Terrinoth I'm thinking dark side would be ynfernael or death magic 'corruption' which is already covered, and maybe a third type unique to my campaign, some sort of plaguecursed status, wondering how something developed from Force and Destiny might play well into these. Each being a slight variation on being slightly morally corrupted by the very things you're trying to fight because things you may do to fight them can also make you vulnerable to their powers or expose you to their sources or other 'points of corruption'. I'd say the dark side system should present some usable mechanics for this.

Morality in force and destiny can be contentious - if you can struggle through it, there are several threads on morality and how it works in the f and d forum.

When I gm'd the issue I ran into was not assigning enough conflict to players who didn't speak up much. They earned enough to roll at the end of the session, but not enough for going dark side to ever be a real worry. Also, I didn't do a good job of distinguishing between 'gaining conflict' and 'going dark.' Gaining conflict (literally, feeling conflicted about the choices one needs to make) is expected and good. How you deal with it (mechanically, rolling at the end of the session) determines whether you go light or dark. Since they equated 'gaining conflict' with 'going dark', they avoided gaining conflict as players instead of doing what their characters would actually do.

My plan for next time is to not assign conflict in the moment. At the end of the session or adventure, we'll talk about where the character is emotionally (what scared them, what made them angry, what actions did they take that maybe they're not proud of). Then, I'm going to ask them what they are doing when all these emotions come back and hit them (e.g. repairing the ship, exercising, making dinner). I'll then assign a difficulty with the narrative dice (2 purple if not much bothered them, 2 p and 1 red if things got kind of scary and they lashed out, etc), and have them roll a skill check associated with their activity. Failures move you toward the dark, success toward the light. Threat/adv make your next morality check easier or more difficult. The goal here is to make it less swingy and more difficult to get to 'paragon'. If you want a faster route to corruption or paragon, this probably isn't the best route.

I don't know how your magic system works, but if there's a way to incorporate star wars force dice, I love those things. You can always cast the spell, but what source do you use when you do so?

This was probably too much info. But there you go.

Not too much info- you need to dig a bit when campaign-building.

Can you explain a bit about the force dice and how they come into play (I take it they're in the star wars rpg dice pack rather than a unique product)

Some useful feedback/ideas to work with so thanks @downlobot

Oh good, I'm glad! The force dice don't come in the genesys dice packs. It's a d12 with 7 dark side faces (one black pip per face, one face has 2 black pips) and 5 light side faces (3 faces have two white pips, 2 have 1 white pip). So there are an equal number of pips, but the balance of the faces is not even.

The force dice are used to generate story points at the start of the game (mentioned above).

More importantly, to use a force power, you roll your force dice. A starting force and destiny character has a force rating of 1 (1 force die). Dice are increased via talents in the tree (usually far down the tree). Each pip you roll with force dice let's you activate increased abilities with a power. E.g. 'move' costs 1 pip to move a small object within short range. Additional pips can be spent to increase the size of the object moved, number of objects, distance, and/or velocity. So pulling the blasters out of the hands of some storm troopers at medium range would cost a good number of pips.

If you have not fallen to the dark side, light side pips can be used for free. Using dark side pips, however, costs strain, earns conflict, and costs a story point. You can always choose yo not use a power after your roll (whether that's because you dont want to use that aspect of the force, want to avoid conflict, or just dont have a destiny/story point to flip).

Certain force powers allow you to commit a force die to sustain the effect. A committed force die cannot be used for other powers until it is uncommitted.

That's a very condensed version of the rules as written, with the caveat that this elides over a lot of important stuff.

My basic plan for when I run the game next, mish-mashing genesys into the force system, is to use the genesys magic system for the force with the addition of the force die or dice. So, a force skill(s) check that costs 2 strain, and you need to roll at least one force die as part of the check. Dark or light results inform how you access the force (are you centered and calm, or frustrated, angry, and afraid)? And there are conflict/morality outcomes for repeatedly tapping into the dark side, possibly mitigated by your conflict rolls at session end.

In the real rules, you dont need to roll a check to commit a force die for a power. I'd likely change that to require a skill check to activate, but otherwise committing would remain an option. If you have a committed die, you dont need to use the maintain maneuver, but you also dont have the ability to cast with that die.

Since I'm still planning, I hope, on using force and destiny talent trees, I'm debating how to handle additional force dice over the course of the campaign. Your force rating might put a limiter on how far up you can train your force skills (breakable via story awards at minimum). And/or extra pips might add success or advantage to force power skill checks (this I think would be a great way to tempt pcs into tapping unti the dark side more often, as the dark side is explicitly billed as seductive).

Anyhow, you had mentioned magic corruption, and adding force dice could help model when your players tap into corrupting powers, or add temptations for your players if the corruption has that kind of seductive influence over people that get near it. And if corruption is something they're worried about, it can create a difficult choice in the middle of an encounter (i.e. use this power and gain more corruption, or let the power go and waste my action).

If your magic system is not dichotomous, you can create your own magic die (for spirit based magics, what kind of spirit answers your call?).

If you decide to incorporate magic dice, and would like to give players the opportunity to gain more magic dice over time, I'd put the first magic die expansion at tier 3 talent minimum, if not tier 4. Where might depend on whether magic dice are tied to magic skill progression.

@Watercolour Dragon , I hope that helps. Best of luck!