Move

By Vipersfang00000, in Game Masters

On 8/16/2019 at 7:36 PM, WolfRider said:

English is a foreign language for me, I'm French. 😉

That's no excuse! 😉

No, seriously though. I am no native English speaker as well. However, anyone with a dictionary, both in print or online, can find the entry for "object" and notice that it rarely, if ever, directly refers to a person or animal (i.e a living creature). Other entries in many powers, talents and rules do refer to "creature", "person", or even "character" specifically. So the use of the word "object" over other words I mentioned, or their synonyms, does seem to imply the intent of only being able to use the Force Power Move on non-living objects (blasters, lightsabers, Imperial-Class Star Destroyers, etc.).

The fact that we need developers to tell us the intent of the Force Power was to be able to use it on NPC characters as well (both droids and living creatures like Stormtroopers), made me wonder why they didn't change the write-up in Force and Destiny. They had all the time since Move appeared in earlier books, and received feedback, to change it. The complete text outside of the Force Power tree also didn't include characters with objects.

On 8/16/2019 at 7:36 PM, WolfRider said:

My main problem with using Move Force Power on sentient beings is that means using it on minion groups is allowed too. Then if a character wants to remove all the blasters in the hand of the guys in the minion group and move them away, he / she'll need many (strength or magnitude or both) upgrades. But if that character wants to move the minion groups away, he / she'll need just the upgrade to move silhouette 1 target. Perhaps another one if the GM rules a minion group counts as one silhouette more than the base silhouette of its member.

Very harsh perhaps, but I simply look at the number of participants in a minion group, or their equipment, individually if necessary. The squad rules are a step up from simply saying any minion group is Silhouette 1 because each minion is Silhouette 1 (assuming human-sized minions, not Chandra-Fans, Toydarians, or Ewoks and the likes), but that doesn't take into account the number of participants. Do I interpret it correctly when I say a minion group of 2 Stormtroopers is Silhouette 2, but a (squad) minion group of 10 minion level Stormtroopers is Silhouette 2 as well? (Regardless of whether a minion group should ever be bigger than 6 participants for adding 5 skill ranks to their minion group skills.)

As I mentioned before, squad rules may say say a minion group is Silhouette 2, but (for example) using Move to grab 5 blaster rifles from 5 Stormtrooper minions would, to me , constitute using Move on 5 Silhouette 0 targets. A character should have the appropriate upgrades (Magnitude, and Control) to do so. Likewise, using Move on the minion group itself would constitute using Move on 5 Silhouette 1 targets (assuming a group of 5, of course, good luck picking up a hypothetical minion group of 10 Stormtroopers).

On 8/17/2019 at 1:38 AM, Rosco74 said:

That's just the squad rules. Even 2 peoples together are silhouette 2 according those squad rules. Why a minion group of 6 stormtroopers would be silhouette 1 just because there is no Sergeant to squad them ?

In my opinion, we have the minion rules. They can form a squad of sorts, called minion group in the rules. Then there were squad rules, probably to also include leadership fellows, like a rival level sergeant? There are also vehicle squadrons.

What would one do if a character has all the relevant Force Rating, Move upgrades and range and magnitude and strength and control, so the player might say: " I pull the TIE-Fighter squadron consisting of 6 TIEs, all piloted by minion level TIE Fighter Pilots, down to crash it into the ground "? 1 Target (squadron), or 6 (number of TIEs)? Silhouette 1 (pilot), 3 (TIE Fighter Silhouette), 4 (TIE Fighter Silhouette, plus 1 more for the fact that there are more than one TIE in the squadron), 6 (6 TIE Pilots / TIE Fighters total)?

And no, I am not as harsh as you might think, not at all. I will never say this to be Silhouette 24 (6 TIEs, 6 Pilots, 6 Blaster pistol side arms, and 6 utility belts) or even more (all manner of other objects they might carry). Bringing down 1 Star Destroyer by means of the Move Force Power isn't Silhouette 40.000.000 or something like that.

I don't want to feel forced to listen to a podcast for one piece of information, read an online forum for the next piece of information, read a transscript from an interview with a developer for another piece of information, and so on. I do still think that Keeping It Simply Stu___ is the way to go. Give me a simple and official downloadable errata sheet, where it is clearly mentioned that Move can target " an object, droid or creature " instead of only " an object ", and that groups/squads/squadrons count as a number of targets equal to the true amount of targets, looking at the Silhouette of individual members or vehicles within that group.

Of course, that applies to any and all of the rules inconsistencies, oddities, and what not. One source on the relevant Product Page on this website is all we should need.

On 8/17/2019 at 1:38 AM, Rosco74 said:

Et je suis français aussi je comprends pourtant pas les règles comme toi ;)

Je parlez Français un petit peut. Maar ook ik heb Engels niet als mijn moedertaal.

So here's something else to bear in mind regarding linguistic disparities.

The games (and by extension, the rules for them) were written by people who speak English (the American version of it anyway) in a country where English is the primary language spoken for a market that is predominately English-speaking. It's not inherently intentional on their part, but the various authors (both professional and freelance) are writing this stuff from the perspective that the person reading it is also someone that speaks English as their native language and doesn't have to rely on self-translation.

A good friend of mine works as a freelance translator (and used to work for Sega way back in the day), translating Japanese text (book and video game) to English, and during one job he was hired for, ran into an issue with something in Japanese wouldn't translate quite right (due largely to cultural as well as linguistic differences between the two languages) into English, and when he inquired about how to proceed, was largely told by the client to just get reasonably close, as the product in question was only being sold to English-speaking markets as what boiled down to a quick cash-grab effort and that they really didn't care if the product sold all that well in the US. I would imagine it's similar (though not quite as callous) with the writers of the various Star Wars Books, their focus is on writing product for English-speaking audiences, and that customers who don't speak fluent English are a secondary market that they themselves aren't concerned with. I strongly doubt Keith Kappel or Sterling Hershey spend any time wondering "how would this sound to someone that doesn't speak fluent English?" when doing their work for FFG.

With regards to the use of "object," they also figured that the readers were smart enough to grok that we see the Force being used to lift and hurl droids, who themselves don't qualify as objects in the literal sense (they can move and have self-autonomy) that they didn't need to spell out that the Move can affect droids, living creatures, and inanimate objects. Seeing as how word count is very often a major concern for RPG books, they probably thought it was fine to use one word instead of several, and that readers would be savvy enough to not take that one word far too literally.

So if you're not from a part of the world where English is the principle language, then I hate to say it, but you're part of the secondary audience for these books. It's similar to some Japanese-centric fighting games (Dragon Ball FighterZ for instance) where the rollback net code outside of Japan is trash because the game's publisher is more focused on Japanese players and folks outside of Japan that play the game are secondary; the Super Smash Bros games have had similar issues, to the point where playing online can be an out-and-out chore simply due to the substantial frame delay, as Nintendo is more focused on the satisfaction of the Japanese player base than international ones; granted with SSB the online play is more of a secondary feature than the primary feature of the game, but it's still a matter of if you're not in Japan, then playing online diminishes the fun of the game.