Right, my book is still pending shipping, so I won't have in another 12 to 14 days at least, being a scandinavian and all.

In the character creation feedback thread some, me amongst them, have uttered a wish for more species in the core book, one in particular, the Duros. This probably won't happen, which is fine.

What I'm wondering is how easy or hard it would be to create ones own species for this game? I have not seen the entries, since my book isn't here with me … yet. Considering the amount of information available freely on wookiepedia, and my collection of swrpg books I should be able to conjure up something of course… but basically I'm wondering how the species are made up.

I don't have the book either, so I can't help you, but I just wanted to say I see no reason not to add the Duros to the final product Please, FFG!

Do we know whether or not the 2nd and 3rd rulebooks will feature the same, or different, races to play? Differing available races seems like a good way to go, as it allows FFG to provide you with 32 races (including human once) without even touching upon expansions. Of course, this does have some drawbacks: if all the new products only provided new races, then you'd need to get a different rulebook in order to play a preferred species (like Rodian, or Gand), even if your original intention was to only purchase one.

While certainly, the rules can (and should), be written to cover species as they are depicted in Star Wars, building it from scratch isn't that difficult (while realize, adding a new species requires artwork and page space, which could be limited in this book).

For example, your "average" species has 100xp, thresholds of 10+brawn/willpower, and 2 in every attribute except 3 in one of them, and 1 in another. Then just pick a skill that gets a free bonus rank. The "quality" of the skill does seem to provide some bonuses (bothans/twi'leks have a strain threshold of 11+willpower, and their attribute/skill tends to fall under social/influence skills. Whereas the Rodian doesn't have a bonus to any threshold, but has a boost to the Survival skill and a boosted agility/decreased willpower), where combat skills are weighted more heavily.

If I recall, Duros are supposed to be good pilots, right? So maybe one rank in Pilot(Space) or Astrogation, a bonus to… honestly I'd call Duros one of the fairly "standard" races and not give them a bonus/penalty to any attribute. Maybe just go the route of human and give them 110xp for not having that bonus.

The nice thing is that more often that not the races add up roughly equally (certain traits have "unknown" costs, and really the game just can't account for if/when a skill you're getting is a career skill or not (which is only a matter of 5 xp anyway)).

To really get the feel of Star Wars, I'd like to see a tool for building your own species included in the core rules / first book. Not having seen the book yet, I don't know if this is already included or how difficult it would be to do. Would also be nice for folks who really want to play something not yet published.

Shakespearian_Soldier said:

It would also be nice to see a slightly different human species bonus. Right now it is cool, but could in theory be less useful to a player who wants a broad swath of specializations.

(humans have a generic statline, and their bonus is they start play with a free specialization, but it has to be from the same career as their starting specialization. Which means you're not going to see a human Technician/Smuggler/Bounty Hunter who hasn't wasted their resources by abandoning the specialization (which is what I guess you would have to do to avoid this)).

So basically to create a new species, or tweak an existing one should be too hard. Its pretty obvious how its done and how they consider balancing the species?

Nice. Since I don't understand most mechanic talk yet, as I have no experience with any previous FFG games, I don't understand your ideas for tweaks, but it seems that it shouldn't be too hard to perform ones own, if they don't appear in the finished product some time next year.

I also think Chiss should be included, mainly due to the "edge of the empire" theme, and forays into the unknown regions should/could easily be part of this kind of game and campaign… but I understand the reasoning for not including it. At least as a player species.

I would feel 100% confident in creating a new species.

The majority of humaniods seem to have one stat above 2 and one stat below 2 around 100 xp and a free skill rank.

EDIT: Personally I think a discussion of species creation would be better suited for inclusion in the GM screen supplement.

Wulfherr said:

This. Plus Ithorians.

They chose the Gand… which seems an odd race, but I guess they are hunters of sorts. I would have liked to seen the Duros also.

Really as explained by another above the rules are so simple you could really put anything in there if you have some info about them… even easier if you have the WEG info on the race. I need to device Duros, Cathars and Chiss for my campaign.

^ I found gand to be a logical choice considering the content of the book. It does deal with bounty hunters, thus including some of the most "iconic" seems to fit.

As far as species as a whole goes… I'd be willing to bet that each line of books comes with their own core set, while future books in the line expand upon them. For instance in this EotE book set, I would expect to find traditional "seedier" races like the weequay, and nikto. Pretty much anything from Jabba's palace, or the Cantina from the first movie.

In the Jedi set, I would expect to see the more "force" and jedi associated species, like the Cerean, and Nautolan. While the soldiers books would have the duros (pilots), and gammorians (sp).

I would love to see a "species of the galaxy book", doubt that is going to happen, as SAGA pointed out that the species stats are a major selling point for the games, so I can see them putting a few in each book to sell them.

Web releases of a few species would be cool, and be a great way to get more people to visit the forums/website, and get the word out.

I would want to see a "make your own" species creator ordeal, but I don't want to see it any time soon. There are two reasons for this, the book line is rather small (one book as of today), so there is no real base to start stating them from. Two, in my experiences, players who create their own races tend to over power them to a degree.

I am not saying don't do one ever, but get a better pool of official races prior to that. Now, something akin to a "near- human" creator, would be cool, and available alot sooner.

I am kind of disappointed that droid is in this book, never really been a fan of droid player characters. Mostly that stems from their being exceptionally difficult to play in a group. They can't cause harm to a sentient, with very few exceptions (IGs, HKs, but even with them something had to go "wrong" to allow them to do it.), that leads to party in-fighting because of perceived lack of contribution, by the party, in regards to the character's "programming". Couple that with the complete inability to feel/express emotion and it is difficult to stay within "official lines" and have a droid in the party.

Anyway, thats my .02,

$hamrock

Keep me posted on that BrashFink, I would like to do the same you see. Comparing notes (after whenever I get the book) would be perfect.

$hamrock said:

Though I understand why they tend to release races across multiple books, I personally hate that method. I don't mind the core book consisting of the most common races but I have to say that putting out a book specializing in races is the way to go. It worked well for Pathfinder. Put a ton of racial options in and add a race creator to the back. If the system is a simple as it appears to be, the pages of the book could be filled with flavor text for each race instead of rules text. I can all but guarantee this would sell well.

I agree 100%, I hate it as well. But if I were a business person, trying to sell my books… it's the smart way to go.

Jegergryte said:

I will. I am not really worrying about it until I finish the book. Want to make sure I have a good handle on all the rules before I decide, but here are my original thoughts:

Duros: I am planning on doing them very similar to one of Twi'liks who have a choice in 2 bonus skills. The Duros ones being Mechanics or Pilot. If I remember correctly, this is kind of similar to how the were in WEG D6 anyway.

Chiss: They have always been considered a "Human-Like Race" but in WEG D6 they have some kind of skill bonus (some kind of Sneakiness or something). I will be rereading them in WEG D6 and either just using humans or using a one skill bonus. At this point I am leaning to toward the Human-Like Option.

Cathar: Probably using the wookiee as a slight template, tailored to agility or hunting. Cannot remember their bonuses either, but simple.

Again, I need to finish the rules and re-read WEGs info. I am sort of ABSORBING the rules (reading very slowly and making notes) so that it gets into my mind better, so this will be a while. I am about half way through.

I will post some more thoughts. We should start a collective idea on what we think in here… bounce ideas, etc

Once I get the book I'm all up for bouncing ideas, I have the WEG stuff in the attic, once shelves are up in the apartment they will be in my living room then I can check that too, and compare to various the d20 incarnations.

From what I can remember from d20 your take on the Duros seems good, might also fit with the WEG version.

The human-like option for chiss might be a solution, need to read more fluff really. Same about the Cathar. I think I have them in the old Tales of the Jedi source book from WEG.

BrashFink said:

Zuckuss, one of the bounty hunters Vader gathered in Empire , was a gand. Makes sense for the smuggler/bounty hunter book to have them.

/nerd

Yeah… he and a lot of those bounty hunters were featured in "Shadows of the Empire". Still pretty obscure… one character and one minor appearance.

I suppose it is kind of odd like choosing Trandoshians when the old "Star Wars Galaxies" came out. Now that race seems more standard, haha. I guess though Bossk was featured prominently, where Zuk was not.

Ooryl Qrygg was a Gand who appeard in the X-Wing series. When learning about him and his species, he would always mention that they were great hunters, and he himself was an accomplished pilot!

-EF

There was another Gand who was on Jabiim with Anakin, part of a cadre of padawans who were left in command after Kenobi was caprtured. Skywalker thought he was dead, so there was some dark sidey-ness, including what I think was his first use of force choke, in an attempt to restart someones heart. That didn't go over well.

So with Duros, there were the 2 in the cantina, and 1 smuggler who joined Talon Kardde's cause during the Thrawn trilogy (I think), and Cad Bane from Clone Wars.

Gands had Ooryl Qrygg, Zuckuss, that padawan I just mentioned.

Well, it looks more or less even to me, but Duros look SO easy to mod from a human, heck, I might even use human stats for a ton of stuff. Or the basic "1 stat, 3 stat, 2stats, +1 skill" formula.

My player's are spoiled from the Saga books, so they'll want Fosh, Sluissi, Ryn, and many more… that might prove a it more awkward to mod.

Shakespearian_Soldier said:

I think the plan is to integrate the 3 books, but also have them as complete stand alones. That said, I would expect to find human in every book, however, the other races would change around alot, for instance Duros, in the pilots and soldiers book (though if I remember correctly they are less pilot and more navigator, will have to re-look at that), I would think Weequay to be in there too. I would expect a future EotE book to contain the Nikto, etc… Either way, the species are all pretty easy to just lift from book to book and apply the correct career to.

What I am really curious about is if we are going to see EU species, or just core canon. Will the verpine be around? What about the squibs?

I agree that the assessment that humans will be in all the books. However, the only guaranteed races in the second book has to be the Mon Calamari - They had such a huge presence in the Rebellion, that it is a no brainer.

Ithorians: Agility 1, Willpower 3; start with a rank in Perception.

… seems easy enough.

Manchu said:

Very easy. I statted up a Duros in another thread… Very easy. I'm going to post some more tonight.

Yancy

And you would probably want to add some type if mechanic to account for their concussive bellow.

Yancy