Hi everyone,

I need to spell it: I like this dicing system of SW EotE.

When I learned about it the first time, I was like "Huh? Wtf bbq???". Then I saw the intimidating huge amount of pages in the core-rulebook only speaking about how the dice-pool was set-up and how the dice-rolls were supposed to be resolved - and not enough this first section of the core-rulebook also referenced another section within the corebook, which did the same etc ... So my initial impression of "Huh? Wtf bbq???" established a certainty and certain prejudice that this would not work in any way to create a fun and awesome gameplay ... Why bother with such a complicated and so much different dicing system, if there are so many other more or less good systems available out there in the vast universe of gaming systems - from simple d%- to d20-, dicepool- and wild-die-systems to complex iterations like the ones using all kinds of dice for all kinds of different rules ...

Regardless of that prejudice I have started playing the game SW EotE, I did (not) listen to the Order 66 Podcast explaining a lot about the dicing in SW EotE, and I finally have started to dig through the core-rulebook of SW EotE. And I need to confess:

This dicing system is incredible and awesome. The "Huh? Wtf bbq???" has changed it a "Wow"-effect.

Now, why do I say this? I say this, because I compared the dicing of SW EotE with my experiences in so many other, different roleplaying games, which basically use dice to resolve binary situations based on the rules - either a die-roll was successful or not. Ok, there were wild-dice, and some games used the means of dice-pools in order to gather amounts of successes displaying a variety of degrees of success; but all those dicing-systems had one single characteristic in common: They were about solving this one particular question: will the character or npc be able to solve the task or not? And in terms of some games: how successful (only!) would he/she/it be? Nothing more - success or failure, period.

SW EotE makes this different. A lot different. Let me do the comparison with a couple of examples I experienced again and again as a GM as well as a gamer:

1. Gamer Moira wants her character to do something. The way Moira describes the action it really sounds cool, incredible, and would even suit the gaming-situation very well. But, alas, how to resolve it rules-wise, because it is kind of "special" or "individualized? The first-line defense of the game was: there is no rule for something like this; the second line of defense was: ok, you might do this by applying this and that rule adding these and those modifications, and then, with some luck, you may do so. But how actually would we want to resolve it?

The big deals here are two things:

a) on the one hand special moments cannot be easily resolved ruleswise; if neither the GM nor the group has a very detailed understanding of the rules, you start digging; if thinks go haywire, everyone has a different opinion about it. The flow of the game gets disrupted, the complete excitement of the game-situations dissolves into nothingness. And the at first awesome action described is rendered pointless, when the gamer's character simply is not successful, because the application of the rule made it very unlikely that the action would succeed; and the dice told the most likely outcome: "You failed." And what would you do then? The character failed, and what now? What would happen to the character? How would the other characters react to it? How the opponents? Questions like these were not answered, instead the common sense was to be applied - in an heroic game with magic and sh*t with sky-high monsters or mutants where common sense and scientific findings would be more or less misconception incompatible with the game-setting?

b) On the other hand reading the rules, trying to wrap your mind around it, and finally getting into some serious research and applying of the rules may discourage the gamer from doing what he announced to do and most importantly will discourage him from doing so again. The game gets "reduced" to the game-mechanics and hinders narrative and especially cool and entertaining moments. Who would like to see the gaming sessions again and again interrupted by huge rules-research and -discussion just to make special things work which were not covered in the rules on first sight? There is not much fun for this, unless your onception of a gaming group is the same as wanting to have a debate club on senseless things ... I mean: what is the point about discussing rules of a game?

2. The GM decides that a certain task of a gamer has a certain side-effect. And at least one or two gamers revolt: "How would this be possible? What rule did you use?" "Er, I decided to do so, 'cause I think this is cool, and after all: I am the GM. Also: this is in favor of you! Why do you complain?" "No, there are no such rules ..." A variation of this would be: "The last time we had this, you decided a special side-effect. How comes we don't have it now?" "Well, 'cause back then it was a special situation, and now I don't see such a side-effect to work well." "We want clarity: resolve the rules as written and don't be arbitrary on applying rules!"

a) Rules as written. Besides rules being there to simply regulate standard situations, rules as written often are understood in the way that special moments are rarely acceptable. The GM pretty often has to explain himself in order to prevent an open revolt at the game-table. This is especially interesting, if all or most of his decisions are in favor of the gamers, actually.

b) This sub-topic also covers the "secret modifiers" a GM may wish to apply to certain scenes in order to allow certain benefits or some more tension in the game. All of a sudden a gamer who knows the rules and especially tables pretty good starts quoting the entries in the rules and tables and asks: "Where do the extra -2 come from?" "GM's decision. Call it a secret modifier ..." "On what ground do you base that ...?" "Er, well. I am the GM? Also not all effects are obvious to your characters ..." "*whine*whine*whine" ... You get the point ...

Now, as you see: My experiences with a huge variety of games is that the rules (as written) did not allow a certain flexibility for narrative moments - not even in situations, in which the gamers would have benefited from them. Not even encouraging them to do outstanding activities hardly 'depictable' by the rules did allow a game to break out of its solid structures of rules. That was kind of disappointing. Because that led to the simple resolution of combats: "I attack that one" *rolls dice* "I hit." Special talents, skills or actions were introduced very rarely ... This also applies for non-combat situations. Instead of describing how to climb or how to shadow or how to hide, it was simply called: "I do this ... " *rolls the skill* "... I have this and that result ..." That's it.

Now, as for SW EotE: Yes, you are right - there is the Success-Failure component in rolling dice as well. Ok, granted. But each roll does a lot more than that - like Advantages and Threats and sometimes Triumphs and/or Despair asking you not only to resolve some dice-result mechanically, but especially to tell a story. You do this by setting up the dice-pool, which in return allows for subsequent and connecting story-telling, and by resolving the results displayed on the dice. You are not limited by the simulating rules of the game, you are not limited to choose from the binary structure of success and failure only aka by RAW. You may do a lot more about it. You actually MUST do so. And this is something which tingles the back of my head, and which I enjoy so much ... This for me new system of dicing allows me to understand why so often in the past some game-sessions simply went wrong, because the "narrative" behind a story was simply reduced to numbers and binaries, rules-discussions, and not much else. I see the great opportunity that situations like the ones I mentioned above won't appear as regularly as they did with "classic" roleplaying games. Am I naive? Or too naive? Time will tell ...

I just needed to spread word, why I like this system of SW EotE so much. What about you? Why do you like it?

Best wishes!

Mad

P.S.: There is no reason arguing about what I wrote up there; these are impression and real gaming-experiences. You may evaluate the "poor" performance some gamers tend to show on games, but I think: there is no bad or poor gaming, only different gaming-styles ...

I do love the system, but I have to admit that I'm getting a "seven month itch" right now. I've played it long enough that some of its flaws are really starting to bother me and reduce my enjoyment of the game. The gulf of character capabilities at 400 earned XP are big and I see them getting bigger as XP level increases. Characters are simply no longer effective outside of their specific niche. That's something I don't like too much.

No you are wrong! Heh heh. But welcome to the fold.

I've had little to no problems with the system. I find it interesting that even if you have the clear advantage in dice, there is still a chance things wont go well. There is no automatic hit which is a fun mechanic.

I do love the system, but I have to admit that I'm getting a "seven month itch" right now. I've played it long enough that some of its flaws are really starting to bother me and reduce my enjoyment of the game. The gulf of character capabilities at 400 earned XP are big and I see them getting bigger as XP level increases. Characters are simply no longer effective outside of their specific niche. That's something I don't like too much.

Can you expand on that? Are you saying you'd rather have players be more generalized so they weren't great (5 ranks) at some things and really bad at others (0-1 ranks)?

Yeah, I'm not quite sure what you mean there, HD. There's no 'levels' so difficulty doesn't inherently go up as characters earn more XP. You just get better at doing more things.

What happens at 400 XP in your opinion that doesn't happen at the start?

Meh, even characters with "poor" attributes and skills can surprise you. More so than a binary system like d20 or somesuch. Even with experience and all that it brings, characters can still fail with lots of favorable dice to roll and still win with little to roll. It is one of the things I enjoy so much.

Agree with MM.

We have quite experienced characters now, and for the most part, you don't get drastically better at doing one thing, you get better at doing lots of things. Even gaining more talents just seems to make you more well-rounded rather than vastly more powerful.

Something like 4E has more HP per level, more damage and a difficulty curve that forces you to keep up with it. EoE has nothing like that. Our 1000XP characters aren't THAT much more powerful than when they started. Certainly nothing like the difference between a 1st level D&D character and a 16th level one.

I guess if you max out your combat skills and buy a load of munchkiny mods for your weapons, it might start to tell. Or if you have silly things like 9 Soak wardroids. But if you're just increasing a few choice skills and buying talents, I don't see the issue.

What exactly is causing your game to break down, HD?

This is a player/GM problem, not a system problem. It doesn't matter what skills a player selects, only the GM determines what skill will be challenged. So if a player wants to build a blind nerf herder who practices martial arts..fine. GM builds campaign for that character..not vice versa.

This is a player/GM problem, not a system problem. It doesn't matter what skills a player selects, only the GM determines what skill will be challenged. So if a player wants to build a blind nerf herder who practices martial arts..fine. GM builds campaign for that character..not vice versa.

Actually, this is a co-operative game. Both players and GMs should work to accommodate each other. Neither one is more important than the other. If the blind nerf-herding martial artist does not fit the GM's campaign, then the player should consider another archetype.

When certain characters have Soak values more than twice that of the group average as well as a damage output that is similarly inflated, they create a sore spot in combat scenes. As more ranks of Dedicated - Brawn and Enduring start to stack up on certain builds (which are those likely to wear heavy armor too) you get into situations where enemies that threaten the 'hardened' character will wipe out the 'soft' characters in a single hit. Since the 'soft' characters are only marginally less dangerous, it's foolish to not target them once you've seen that your blaster pistols are having no effect on the 'hardened' target. End result is that many combats are either no (direct) threat to the 'hardened' character or else they are far too dangerous to the 'soft' characters. The reverse is also true when some players have massive damage spikes (like Deadly Accuracy with a rank 5 skill and a heavy blaster rifle) - if the enemy is going to stand any chance of not falling apart to such firepower far too quickly, then it will likely be all but immune to the members of the group using blaster pistols.

I have also noticed that if a task is planned for a certain relative difficulty - say the group is on speeder bikes tearing through downtown Coruscant - it's hard to challenge the group as a whole. If you make the task challenging for the group's designated driver (or pilot, whatever) then everyone else is likely to fail. If you make it challenging for everyone else, then it's likely a bore for the designated driver.

Melee and Brawl suffer compared to Ranged in that it only takes a single maneuver for the ranged guy to step out of melee and turn around to fire a shot at Difficulty 1. It's insulting since Melee and Brawl never get below Difficulty 2. In fact, if a guy with a blaster pistol is in melee, he's not really any worse off than if he had a melee weapon in hand, and that's just a bit unfair in my mind. Let ranged weapons rule at range, but a pistol shouldn't be the best melee weapon choice for every non-Marauder out there.

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We have quite experienced characters now, and for the most part, you don't get drastically better at doing one thing, you get better at doing lots of things. Even gaining more talents just seems to make you more well-rounded rather than vastly more powerful.

Being well-rounded is a choice, and one I like, but it's not always the best choice. Sometimes one column power dives into a talent tree for Dedication or another 'power talent' (like Deadly Accuracy) can create a very focused character that is exceptionally powerful in a narrow niche. If that niche then has to be avoided like a landmine when building challenges, the game suffers.

This is a player/GM problem, not a system problem. It doesn't matter what skills a player selects, only the GM determines what skill will be challenged. So if a player wants to build a blind nerf herder who practices martial arts..fine. GM builds campaign for that character..not vice versa.

I'm blind...

Since playing EotE, my brother calls me a nerf herder...

I'm a 2nd degree blackbelt in tae kwon do... though I don't do more than forms any more (and I fall a lot.. Real life isn't like the movies) but if I'm ever mugged by sheets of wood, those guys are going DOWN!!!

I have a lot of fun! I can recommend that character!!!

I have also noticed that if a task is planned for a certain relative difficulty - say the group is on speeder bikes tearing through downtown Coruscant - it's hard to challenge the group as a whole. If you make the task challenging for the group's designated driver (or pilot, whatever) then everyone else is likely to fail. If you make it challenging for everyone else, then it's likely a bore for the designated driver.

The pilot could break up the enemy formation, lead them on a false trail, or provide a quick scoop if one of the less skilled players falls off. If its his cup of tea then let him be a hero and help the group survive.

In my experience, if someone makes their character really good at something it is because they don't want to be challenged too often when doing it. This is why I don't concern myself much with "challenging" such a character and why other characters still get to shine. When the tank wades into battle, he wants to know that his investment is going to bear fruit. The random nature of the game still means that he can take a bad hit, but for the most part he feels awesome at what he does. Just like the Face does when he is doing his talky-talk or when the slicer slices or the pilot flies rings around their opponents. These characters will usually be challenged more when they are in situations that don't emphasize their abilities. In the end I find it all works out.

Seems a bit silly when optimized characters get too powerful?

Why do I feel that I just had this conversation with others?

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We have quite experienced characters now, and for the most part, you don't get drastically better at doing one thing, you get better at doing lots of things. Even gaining more talents just seems to make you more well-rounded rather than vastly more powerful.

Being well-rounded is a choice, and one I like, but it's not always the best choice. Sometimes one column power dives into a talent tree for Dedication or another 'power talent' (like Deadly Accuracy) can create a very focused character that is exceptionally powerful in a narrow niche. If that niche then has to be avoided like a landmine when building challenges, the game suffers.

It's also one of the inherent flaws in a mostly point-buy based system. By opening the flood gates and allowing the characters to advance how they choose, you're going to wind up with some lopsided characters, such as the combat tank that can shrug off blaster fire but can't talk their way out of a wet paper bag, or the social maven that can wrap crowds around their fingers but can't for the life of them pilot a starship, or the fighter jockey that's deadly when at the stick of a starfighter but goes down like a house of cards after getting shot only a couple of times.

Mouthymerc's got a good point too, in that part of the reason players do go for such "specialized" builds is that they want their character to be really awesome at that one given thing, enough so that when faced with situations that fall within their niche, they'll be able to overcome it more often that not.

He's also right in that trying to build encounters to seriously challenge that one build is going to lead to problems. For example, if you've got a PC that's really good at Perception (3 or more Proficiency dice), building an encounter that requires a Perception check of 4 Challenge dice might be difficult for him, but it's going to nigh-impossible for everyone else in the party.

To borrow a phrase from the Order 66 podcast, when you're dealing with a specialized character build and you want to challenge them... punch them in the dump stats. Give them challenges that are outside of their niche, and require them to use skills they've otherwise neglected. Don't do it all the time, but every once in a while give that character a challenge that's outside of their comfort zone. But at the same time, also give them encounters where they can well and truly shine within their niche.

For instance, the social maven suddenly finds themselves facing a non-lethal duel of honor (such as fighting until first blood) with an accomplished swordsman, with that duel to take place in less than an hour. Since the social maven's been reliant upon their charm and wordplay to get out of bad situations, they've now got to deal with a situation they're not prepared for, and thus are well and truly challenged. But afterwards and having fought bravely (even if they lost), the social maven gets a chance to schmooze with a wealthy and influential figure, and can now ply their formidable social skills into making this person an ally, and have a situation that's right up their alley.

This is a player/GM problem, not a system problem. It doesn't matter what skills a player selects, only the GM determines what skill will be challenged. So if a player wants to build a blind nerf herder who practices martial arts..fine. GM builds campaign for that character..not vice versa.

Actually, it's both.

As I said above, it's an inherent flaw in any system that revolves around point-buy methodology. I've seen it in Champions/HERO and Mutants & Masterminds to astounding effect, with PCs that are so focused upon their particularly niche that they border on being useless outside if it.

But it is a case where the player and GM need to communicate, particularly in this system with it's focus more on the narrative and the story being told than on tactical combat. The GM should be clear what sort of campaign he is looking to run, and the players should be willing to operate within that framework. If the GM has said that her campaign is going to be about the PCs being a group of stealthy operatives employed by Black Sun to "solve problems" and a player shows up with an idealistic bookworm that doesn't know the business end of a blaster from a hole in the dirt, that's the player's fault. But if the GM just says "bring whatever characters you want," and then reveals that the campaign is going to be a dark & gritty noir-style gangster story, the GM has only themselves to blame when the party winds up to be a grizzled combat monster with the social acumen of a rock, a prissy protocol droid, a Twi'lek swoop jockey, and a naive Force Exile socialite as characters.

Seems a bit silly when optimized characters get too powerful?

Why do I feel that I just had this conversation with others?

Edit: I removed the rest of my post because it was unbecoming and rude.

Hi.

Thank you for this rich discussion.

Just an opinion: the design of the games allows for very focussed characters with the logical outcome that such characters tend to be very good if asked for "challenges" in their focus. nd the design also allows the "riks" that gamers of such characters will more likely tend to play the game "mechanically" ... If this happens, that is worse indeed. But I ask: how likely this happens? Is it common that gamers of SW EotE (or AoR) tend to grow fond of minmaxing and of playing the game mechanically? If so, does this change anything about at least the opportunity to do it differently? And that is probably what I wanted to tell with my starting-post: the dice-pools and dice-results allow for more than just playing the game mechanically, but mechanically playing gamers cannot complain the different approach if more narratively playing gamers take the opportunity. That's the big difference between SW EotE (AoR) on the one side and many to most other rpgs on the other side.

Best wishes!

Mad

I do love the system, but I have to admit that I'm getting a "seven month itch" right now. I've played it long enough that some of its flaws are really starting to bother me and reduce my enjoyment of the game. The gulf of character capabilities at 400 earned XP are big and I see them getting bigger as XP level increases. Characters are simply no longer effective outside of their specific niche. That's something I don't like too much.

I think this is definitely a case of YMMV. From some of the problems I've seen you bring up, you definitely GM a far different game than I do**, it sounds like your main concerns (at least lately) are high damage situations and having to find challenges for players that can avoid them. Maybe there's something in there that pushes players to react by focussing, and you've ended up in an arms race.

**Note: I'm not trying to say "you're playing wrong" or anything like that, everybody knows what they enjoy most.

I think there's something to Donovan's point:

To borrow a phrase from the Order 66 podcast, when you're dealing with a specialized character build and you want to challenge them... punch them in the dump stats.

I had a situation recently where the party was trying to convince someone to do something they didn't want to do. Normally this challenge would fall to the "face" character, but in this case I had already set up the NPC as someone smarter and more capable, and in a position of relative power, so he felt free to ask every character's opinion. So rather than make everybody roll, the task fell to the character with the worst Deception score. The NPC basically identified the weak link in the situation and decided to exploit it. Yes, the face was able to "assist", and there had been a couple other things that allowed a boost die...that plus a Destiny flip resulted in 1 success and 2 threat, which the character took as strain for being out of his element.

The net result of that (and a lot of other game events) is that the players are specialized, but still fairly well-rounded.

So don't be afraid to find the weak link and lean on it. Sure, the characters want to shine in their areas, but save those for the end of the session or the high-drama moments.

My job is to defeat the players within the context of the story. I hit them with the Dark Side...

In a fight... melee monster gets a lot of unluck. He once tried to jump through a window and into a fight... critical fail... He was hung up in the window with an atomic wedgie. He's a very unlucky fellow.

Last session was strong on negotiation, so I gave 'face' all the Dark Side and then some. You should have seen the looks on the player's faces. "You can do that?" "uhhuh" Even funnier, the opponent rolled a critical success. After seeing the looks on my player's faces... That was a good day to GM let me tell you.

Again only the GM creates the challenge, if he/she chooses to create a challenge that the characters are not proficient in...then I guess he wins..yay. I create challenges for a group of EoTE the same way I would create a challenge for a group of 2nd lvl characters from Ad&d 1st edition...back in the 70's we didn't have a tank or dps lol...uhh we had 5 friends at a table who had fun. If my party had 3 clerics and 2 wizards...fine lets roll...i'm not going to bury them in melee. If I have 4 non combatants in EoTe I'm not going to shoot them to death....I'll challenge their characters. I'll create a world in which they want to have fun in and roleplay, not me. I'll get my turn in creating a completely inferior character at some point in the future and then it's on, I'm going to play that rodian outlaw tech that I've been daydreaming about lol.

Madduck you aren't the only one who has had such an epiphany. I first discovered this system when I shelled out the money for FFG's Warhammer years ago. At first I over-analyzed the rules and didn't get it being a veteran of d20, d6, Twilight 2000, and Traveller primarily. Someone said to play it, you will see. I finally dove in. It was simpler played then explained. Since, I haven't played anything else but FFG's narrative.

From a couple years ago:

I've been a "RPG" DM/GM/Referee since the early 1980's. It is only since I discovered FFG's narrative system that I've been truly role-playing. Most of my play style has been crunchy simulations. This is fun and I've been doing it for decades, but I can't say there was much true role-playing being encouraged in my groups other then character background development. This had the effect of many campaigns being combat oriented as players game the system, move minis on maps, and try out their new gun/sword/talent. True role-playing was at a minimum even though my groups claimed to be playing an, "RPG". It was more problem solving to get past obstacles then anything else. -- How do I use my character's abilities/items to defeat this new obstacle/monster. Fun yes, but adding a role-playing narrative to that mix is much more fun. FFG's narrative system includes as much detail as a crunchy system while also encouraging role-playing with some players not even realizing it.

Seeing a very crunchy player roll Warhammer's dice, look at the results, and come up with his own narrative of what his success/failure meant was an epiphany for me after 3 decades of, "role-playing".