On ‎6‎/‎15‎/‎2020 at 8:14 PM, micheldebruyn said:

Not a fan. Does anybody else feel like getting 18-20 more books?

It would strongly depend on what those books were.

But a whole slew of new career splats? Heck no. In terms of specializations, we've pretty much got the tools to make just about any character one could conceive, and the only "benefit" to having even more in-career specs added is to cater to that crowd of folks that don't want to "waste" precious XP on buying additional specializations so as to attain their "ideal" character with a single specialization. Plus the fact that about half the material in each of the career books simply goes unused, making them something of a waste.

Similar issue comes with adventure modules. From what I understand, most of the adventure books that FFG has published for this line were mediocre sellers, with the two F&D ones fairing a little better simply due to having new Force powers that players can acquire. I saw someone reference Curse of Strahd (the 5e revamp of the classic Ravenloft module) as a possible approach, though what makes CoS replayable is the random element of where the three major treasures are and where the final battle takes place, though CoS does expand the setting of Barovia quite a lot in comparison to previous versions of the base adventure (original module was pretty much one giant dungeon crawl through the castle, 3e's Expedition to Castle Ravenloft had filler quests to pad out the adventure, while 5e's version is a full out campaign). I don't know if you could quite get the same element of randomness in a Star Wars adventure so as to prevent people who've played the adventure previously from knowing exactly what's going to happen next and where the plot-important events/items are located.

Now, sourcebooks on various eras, such as the New Republic/Resistance and High Republic eras? I'd be down for those books. Same with books detailing regions the way that Suns of Fortune and Lords of Nal Hutta did. Probably not enough material for as many books as Elias posited, but you could easily get a couple of books from just eras, and probably a half-dozen fairly easily with notable regions.

Another solid idea that was suggested is to publish books containing adventure modules, which a GM can pick out and use as needed. I've read through some of the Star Trek Adventures books that Modiphus has published in that vein, and having a slew of options that can be run either as one-offs isn't a bad idea, especially for us GMs that have gotten along in years and have a greater degree of responsibilities than we did during our younger years. I'm pretty decent and coming up with adventure ideas at the spur of the moment (especially if I know the characters involved), but not every GM has that gift for improv.

7 hours ago, Bellona said:

Creature/animal compendium (with a chart ordered by silhouette size, to help those looking for suitable pets/animal companions/mounts).

A chart for terrain types would be good as well.

On 6/16/2020 at 1:16 PM, SEApocalypse said:

First Edition reprint will never come, 2e never gets finished and a lot of time and money gets spend into a product with replaces a perfect fine product in the hopes that it will sell better than the 1e. And if does not it might get canned before it is even close to being finished.
There are certainly a few issues that a 2nd edition would bring, just like there are issues with just releasing a new book here and there and doing maybe a revised first edition core books to improve rules clarity.

I mean sure, a 2nd edition would be a great chance to make the system less bloated and the adventures more epic, but how likely is that? And getting completely campaign sets with branching paths would work just fine for 1st edition too. They just need to be good enough to be actually sellers.

Yes, I too remember Dark Heresy 2e. It's a great example of FFG's ability to do exactly what we are both talking about (the good and the bad sides).

8 hours ago, Daeglan said:

A chart for terrain types would be good as well.

"Boosts and Setbacks" charming title 🙂

Oh and some vehicle cards would be super handy.

11 hours ago, Rimsen said:

"Boosts and Setbacks" charming title 🙂

I was more refering to creatures being categorized by terrain types. IE Dewbacks are desert creatures.

To the Original Thread Title Question...my answer...

"Any Update at all"

:)

15 hours ago, Daeglan said:

I was more refering to creatures being categorized by terrain types. IE Dewbacks are desert creatures.

Misunderstanding on my part then. The thought of a general terrain guide for boosts, setbacks, threats, advantages, triumphs and despairs sounded good. Though might not be enough to fill a book. Maybe with adventure hooks and planets tied to those environments could be enough for a sourcebook.

4 hours ago, Rimsen said:

Misunderstanding on my part then. The thought of a general terrain guide for boosts, setbacks, threats, advantages, triumphs and despairs sounded good. Though might not be enough to fill a book. Maybe with adventure hooks and planets tied to those environments could be enough for a sourcebook.

Seems like the sort of thing they coild include in an Expanded Players Guide.

I thought of something... a book of force tradition universal specs (one spec) each for zeizon sha, matukai adepts, baton dao sages, gand findsmen, wardens of the sky, jensarri (sp?), white current adepts, etc.

I imagine someone might say something like

a niman-disciple and armorer makes a passable, jensarri... but it niman-disciple doesn't quite capture ballistakinetics

OR

A steelhand adept plus force adherant makes a decent matukai... but there really aren't any talents related to combining martial arts with a melee weapon... one could argue unarmed parry and overbalance but unarmed parry doesn't work with a strictly 2 handed weapon (at least not without another talent to let you wield 2 handed weapons in 1 hand)... but a matukai adepts ought to have the witchcraft talent... and a talent to let you two weapon fight with melee and brawl one each without normal two weapon fighting penalties

I believe similar arguments for the other force traditions could similarly be made, but I haven't taken the time to think of them.

If you don't think there are enough traditions to fill a book

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Force-based_organizations

On ‎6‎/‎21‎/‎2020 at 10:05 PM, EliasWindrider said:

I thought of something... a book of force tradition universal specs (one spec) each for zeizon sha, matukai adepts, baton dao sages, gand findsmen, wardens of the sky, jensarri (sp?), white current adepts, etc.

Yeah, that's a hard pass here, and in general a bad idea.

I get that you've got a major obsession with the "one spec shopping" mentality of having the majority of what you need for a given concept in a single specialization, but creating a unique specialization for a bunch of Force traditions (especially if they're all universal specs) isn't the best way to go about covering Force traditions. Especially as more and more folks are leaning towards the Genesys approach of deep-sixing the talent trees entirely and simply purchasing talents ala carte.

The only reason the Nightsisters got their own spec is because of the book they were included in, which was a "system neutral" supplement that was designed so that groups that didn't have the F&D cprebook wouldn't need to fork over even more money to get said book, and could just go ahead and play a Nightsister using either EotE or AoR if they so desired.

There's also the simple issue that by adding more and more "unique" specs, especially for something like Force traditions, you're running headlong into system bloat, something that these three game lines is already suffering from. It's not as bad as past editions of D&D (5e hasn't gotten too bad, at least when compared to 3e and 4e), but it's started to get pretty bad, and the lack of PDFs for easy searching/referencing only adds to the problem (and not everyone is aware of or even uses online resources such as OggDude's or the various data archive wikis).

Since the design intent for the RPG seems to be "books that can be used by all three lines," a better approach would be a sourcebook that details various organized groups outside of the big names (Empire, Alliance, Jedi Order, Hutt Cartels), providing background info and suggestions for how to build characters (what careers and specs to utilize) that fit within a given organization, be it a crime group like Crimson Dawn, a resistance group similar to Saw's Partisans, or even a Force tradition.

Other problem is that the bulk of the Force Traditions are in Legends, and for the past several books, FFG has been largely steering away from using Legends material as the core foundation for the RPG; there might be a blurb or occasional sentence in the descriptive fluff that comes from Legends, but that's about it.

2 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

The only reason the Nightsisters got their own spec is because of the book they were included in, which was a "system neutral" supplement that was designed so that groups that didn't have the F&D cprebook wouldn't need to fork over even more money to get said book, and could just go ahead and play a Nightsister using either EotE or AoR if they so desired.

I believe the Nightsister talent tree has several unique talents. While you can play Nightsisters with regular FaD specs and you can play Death Watch/Mandalorian characters with regular AoR/EotE specs, I think those universal trees are worthwhile because they fill the niche well and have unique talents that really fit the theme. I am more interested in Mandos, so my preference for the Death Watch Warrior tree may have a bit of bias involved, but I think it is the better of the two and an exceptionally good tree for playing a Mandalorian. The jetpack talents are on point and the other talents fit the concept well and add flavor.

I agree with your broader point about not needing a bunch of talent trees for the force traditions. Most of those can probably be made or approximated with just one or two FaD talent trees and probably don't have a ton of potential for unique talents unless it's just a minorly flavorful twist and/or a fluffy name.

Curse of Strahd... twas me. I'm using the Summer break to try and write least a sandrailboxroad jaunt.. (wish me luck.) My basic plan is to first thumbnail point A (start) to B (BBEG - using A&A as inspiration) and then plot in two Obligation sidequests per player...that may or may not have consequences later on. I'll have at leaat two McGuffins (yes 2!!!)

We were EXTREMELY luck when we played CoS, we just happened to take the best choices bar one which we made '...A Tactical Retreat...' (i.e we ran away). I'd heard of CoS for years and I'm so grateful of my GM for taking the time to run it. For those thinking of running it, just be aware that it takes a lot of real world gaming time when sometimes in Barovia the players have just spent only 6-12 hours doing something but it's worth it, I got into the habit of bullet pointing each session the morning after for recap.. some hilarious moments and some Oh **** moments.

But back to books... Modular encounters really, I like the splat we've got already and A&A is always a go to for off the cuff NPCs when needed.

10 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Yeah, that's a hard pass here, and in general a bad idea.

I get that you've got a major obsession with the "one spec shopping" mentality of having the majority of what you need for a given concept in a single specialization, but creating a unique specialization for a bunch of Force traditions (especially if they're all universal specs) isn't the best way to go about covering Force traditions. Especially as more and more folks are leaning towards the Genesys approach of deep-sixing the talent trees entirely and simply purchasing talents ala carte.

The only reason the Nightsisters got their own spec is because of the book they were included in, which was a "system neutral" supplement that was designed so that groups that didn't have the F&D cprebook wouldn't need to fork over even more money to get said book, and could just go ahead and play a Nightsister using either EotE or AoR if they so desired.

There's also the simple issue that by adding more and more "unique" specs, especially for something like Force traditions, you're running headlong into system bloat, something that these three game lines is already suffering from. It's not as bad as past editions of D&D (5e hasn't gotten too bad, at least when compared to 3e and 4e), but it's started to get pretty bad, and the lack of PDFs for easy searching/referencing only adds to the problem (and not everyone is aware of or even uses online resources such as OggDude's or the various data archive wikis).

Since the design intent for the RPG seems to be "books that can be used by all three lines," a better approach would be a sourcebook that details various organized groups outside of the big names (Empire, Alliance, Jedi Order, Hutt Cartels), providing background info and suggestions for how to build characters (what careers and specs to utilize) that fit within a given organization, be it a crime group like Crimson Dawn, a resistance group similar to Saw's Partisans, or even a Force tradition.

Other problem is that the bulk of the Force Traditions are in Legends, and for the past several books, FFG has been largely steering away from using Legends material as the core foundation for the RPG; there might be a blurb or occasional sentence in the descriptive fluff that comes from Legends, but that's about it.

I suppose I should have explicitly stated that if a spec doesn't add a minimum of 3 new talents it shouldn't exist... but I expressed the sentiment of why not just combine 2 specs in the examples I gave, so it wouldn't simply be the one stop shopping that you're alleging.

Regarding the "glut" our (really edges studios') choices are either a 2nd edition where we have to rebuy everything we have for little errata/revision and a smidgen of new content OR a glut of new material. If they don't do either of those they can't make a profit, and seriously the rpg title got moved from ffg to edge studios to make a profit (whoever was in charge didn't see a lot of new star wars rpg books coming out of ffg and wanted to get their money's worth out of the license) so would you rather have a glut of new material or a 2nd/revised edition because those are "our" choices. Maybe if we can suggest the most palatable glut of new material edge studios will see it and give us that instead of a revised edition.

Also, There is a second example besides the nightsister.... force adherant (from dawn of rebellion) . While it does not provide a force rating it is still a force tradition (guardian of the whills)

2 minutes ago, EliasWindrider said:

and seriously the rpg title got moved from ffg to edge studios to make a profit (whoever was in charge didn't see a lot of new star wars rpg books coming out of ffg and wanted to get their money's worth out of the license)

All of the RPGs moved to Edge. It’s pretty tough to make the same sort of claim that, for example, they didn’t see a lot of new Legends of the Five Rings RPG books coming out of FFG. I mean, there are still 2 or 3 on the schedule for FFG, in addition to at least one that came out this year before the world shut down. In addition, they’ve got the Genesys community making content and selling it for Asmodee for free. And now we’ve got the former FFG RPG Manager as Edge RPG Manager (which I see as a plus). It’s a corporate restructure, plain and simple.

3 minutes ago, Nytwyng said:

All of the RPGs moved to Edge. It’s pretty tough to make the same sort of claim that, for example, they didn’t see a lot of new Legends of the Five Rings RPG books coming out of FFG. I mean, there are still 2 or 3 on the schedule for FFG, in addition to at least one that came out this year before the world shut down. In addition, they’ve got the Genesys community making content and selling it for Asmodee for free. And now we’ve got the former FFG RPG Manager as Edge RPG Manager (which I see as a plus). It’s a corporate restructure, plain and simple.

I believe there had to be an extra reason to split the star wars miniatures and rpgs, there is potentially for cross sales there that differentiates from the other lines.

And the point remains, they want to get their money's worth out of the license... it is a business after all so we should still be expecting a lot of new books rather than the contractually mandated trickle.

3 hours ago, EliasWindrider said:

I believe there had to be an extra reason to split the star wars miniatures and rpgs, there is potentially for cross sales there that differentiates from the other lines.

FFG will no longer be producing any RPGs for Asmodee. They’ve been refocused on board/mini/card games. With Asmodee electing to put different types of games under different imprints, why would they keep a single RPG under the FFG banner? Asmodee would then need an RPG Manager for Edge, then an RPG Manager for FFG to handle a single game.

17 hours ago, Nytwyng said:

FFG will no longer be producing any RPGs for Asmodee. They’ve been refocused on board/mini/card games. With Asmodee electing to put different types of games under different imprints, why would they keep a single RPG under the FFG banner? Asmodee would then need an RPG Manager for Edge, then an RPG Manager for FFG to handle a single game.

Arguable, but you could get both by moving all rpgs under ffg. That way you don't give up collaboration, even if the collaboration isn't limited to cross advertising.

If a company gives something up (and star wars is an expensive license) it's probably to make more money for another reason. I'm speculating that the plan to make more money is to publish a glut of books. What's your hypothesis for how they're going to make more money by moving ffg's rpgs, particularly star wars, to edge studios?

Apparently, Asmodee is technically the license holder, not FFG, otherwise they couldn't just shift the RPG part to Edge Studios.

Therefore, it doesn't matter if FFG or Edge Studios is the one actually producing the content, as Asmodee still reaps the benefits.

1 hour ago, EliasWindrider said:

Arguable, but you could get both by moving all rpgs under ffg. That way you don't give up collaboration, even if the collaboration isn't limited to cross advertising.

They had all of their RPGs under FFG. They chose to refocus FFG entirely on board/mini/card games. Meanwhile, they also had Edge for European translation/distribution.

1 hour ago, EliasWindrider said:

If a company gives something up (and star wars is an expensive license) it's probably to make more money for another reason. I'm speculating that the plan to make more money is to publish a glut of books. What's your hypothesis for how they're going to make more money by moving ffg's rpgs, particularly star wars, to edge studios?

They didn’t “give up” anything. The same parent company - Asmodee - still has the license. I don’t really have to hypothesize. In an interview at GAMA, Asmodee openly stated that, among other things, the restructure allows them to keep staff focused on one (type of) project, rather than being pulled from (for example) X-Wing, to work on the RPG, and back. (To illustrate, Max Brooke has worked on both the Star Wars RPG and X-Wing. The new structure would presumably keep him on one or the other, at least if on staff.) But, if you want me to speculate wildly: by actually producing the RPGs rather than translating FFG product and distributing in Europe, Edge will already make more profit (on paper) than they were. (It also has the benefit of keeping all phases of the RPGs under one roof, rather than producing a book then firing it off to a different Asmodee imprint for foreign translation and distribution.) Meanwhile, by losing the expense of the RPG department (as new content for the various board/mini games ramp up - Clone Wars content for Armada and the hints of new Imperial Assault content hinted in that same interview), FFG also stands to show a higher profit margin (on paper). That’s what corporate restructuring is usually all about: shuffling duties around to make the margins for different divisions look better, whether the parent company as a whole is making significantly more or not. For more pure speculation, Asmodee has a want or need to keep Edge in existence as a corporate entity; this move helps better justify its existence.

I wouldn’t be surprised or upset if there’s a flood of new content for any of the RPGs, but I’m also not going to expect that it must happen because of a corporate shuffle that keeps the same RPG production infrastructure intact (or, more accurately, puts it back in place) but changes the division name on the cover.

12 hours ago, EliasWindrider said:

Arguable, but you could get both by moving all rpgs under ffg. That way you don't give up collaboration, even if the collaboration isn't limited to cross advertising.

If a company gives something up (and star wars is an expensive license) it's probably to make more money for another reason. I'm speculating that the plan to make more money is to publish a glut of books. What's your hypothesis for how they're going to make more money by moving ffg's rpgs, particularly star wars, to edge studios?

They can very well keep up the current pace, granted they trim production/logistics costs and make the whole operation more efficient. The profit could increase without higher income

The problem remains no digital copies which hurts the rpg for Star Wars.

4 hours ago, Decorus said:

The problem remains no digital copies which hurts the rpg for Star Wars.

Well, get to work convincing three companies to sit down and change the terms of two contracts to benefit one of them.

2 hours ago, Nytwyng said:

Well, get to work convincing three companies to sit down and change the terms of two contracts to benefit one of them.

Can you stop beating this dead horse? We've heard it at least 17 (thousand) times by now. You don't have to bring it up every time someone points out that the lack of PDFs hurts the line or that they'd like to see PDFs for the game.

1 hour ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

Can you stop beating this dead horse? We've heard it at least 17 (thousand) times by now. You don't have to bring it up every time someone points out that the lack of PDFs hurts the line or that they'd like to see PDFs for the game.

If they’ll stop beating theirs.

We’ve heard at least 17 (thousand) times by now that they’d like to see PDFs for the game.