Of Jedi, Vidoe Games, and Fallen Orders

Greetings programs!

Yeah, been a spell since my last post here.  Mostly that's been due to having been rather busy with real life things (nothing worrisome, just time consuming).

So a little over a week ago, I opted to take the plunge and pick up EA's latest offering, Star Wars: Jedi: Fallen Order.  I'll be honest in that I was largely skeptical about whether I'd enjoy this game or not, given the less than stellar experiences I had with Spider-Man and Kingdom Hearts 3.  Still, I'd been hearing lots of good things being said about this game, both from reviewers and especially from one of my friends whose opinion on video games I generally trust.

And I have to admit that the game is generally pretty fun, being an action-adventure "metroidvania" style game.  Now admittedly I'm playing the game on Story Mode (aka Easy Mode) as at this point in my life I play video games as a means of relaxation and am not looking for a serious/frustrating challenge.  The game's not perfect, as the combat controls feel like there's a bit of lag between button input and result, especially when there's a lot of enemies on the screen.

So that said, I got the inspiration to work up some stats and such of people and things that appeared in the game.

Cal Kestis, Jedi Fugitive (as of Escape from Bracca)
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Cal_Kestis 
The protagonist of Jedi: Fallen Order, young Cal is a survivor of the purge that was Order 66, and has spent the five years since that fateful day hiding on the planet Bracca, where he works as a scrapper alongside his Abednado co-worker and friend Prauf.  Circumstances arise that causes Cal to reveal his Force abilities and subsequently coming to the attention of the dreaded Imperial Inquisitors.

I built Cal using the Jedi career and Padawan specialization from the Rise of the Separatists supplement, as it not only fit his background, but also allowed me to get him up to Force Rating 2 rather inexpensively and thus acquire the Bind power, which is what I'm using to represent his Force Statis ability both to slow down enemies but also to briefly freeze various obstacles to allow him to progress.  I also gave him the benefit of the Mentor shared background resource from Force & Destiny to account for the his proper training prior to the events of Order 66.

 

Psychometry (New Force Power)

So this was a Force power I had originally taken a crack at years ago as part of my old Ways of the Force fan supplement.  At the time, the only example of a Force user that was skilled with this ability was Quinlan Vos, but now that we have Cal demonstrating the power, I've got a somewhat better handle on what the power can accomplish.  It's fair to warn GMs that this Force power very much has the ability to unravel adventure plots that center on discovering things, so that end many of the upgrades for this power are expensive to purchase.

Kudos also to FFG forum user Nytwing, whose on take on Psychometry helped inform a fair bit the above.  You can read his take on the power on his website here.

BD Unit Droid
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/BD_unit
Serving as Cal's companion through much of the game, BD-1 is the game's exposition fairy, and has been likened to an intelligent puppy in terms of how he acts.  The stat block presented here presents more of a "factory model" version of the droid.
Cost/Rarity: 4500 credits/6

Abednado

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Abednedo
While the species was introduced in The Force Awakens, I thought it'd be fitting to include my take on a species write-up given that the character of Prauf plays a pivotal role in pushing Cal to undertake the grand quest that is the game's focus and for the young man to embrace his destiny as a Jedi.  I did use the character sheet for the Abednado Colonist Bormo from FFG's The Force Awakens Beginner Box set to help inform my choices on how to design this species.  It of course goes without saying that FFG ever does an official write-up of the Abednado, it's going to look rather different than what I'm posting here.

Starting Characteristics
Brawn 2, Agility 2, Intellect 3, Cunning 1, Willpower 2, Presence 2
Wound Threshold: 9+Brawn
Strain Threshold: 12+Willpower
Starting XP: 90
Species Abilities: Abednado being with one free rank in Resilience.  They still may not train Resilience above Rank 2 at character creation.
Gregarious: Due to their affable and friendly nature, Abednado characters add an Advantage to the results of all Charm and Negotiation checks the character makes.

S-161 "Stinger" XL Luxury Yacht
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/S-161_%22Stinger%22_XL
The game's principle method of getting Cal and company from planet to planet on their quest, the Mantis is fairly sleek ship design.  There's not a whole lot to go on apart from the comments of Greeze, the ship's captain and pilot, about how the Mantis is fast but not much good in a fight.

We don't get to explore much of the ship in the game, but I feel safe in presuming that there's more interior space than what is shown, enough to warrant putting this vessel in the Silhouette 4 category and with a decent amount of space for passengers and cargo.  I also decided to price the vessel as something that an Edge of the Empire group could begin play with, though it is out of the initial reach of a Force and Destiny group.

You can find PDFs of most of the above (everything save the write-up for the Abednado) in a zip file located here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/696xqpegf7c2eut/Jedi%20Fallen%20Order%20files.zip?dl=0

Hopefully you've enjoyed reading this, and may even find use for some or even all of this material in your own games.

So until next time, remember.... persistence reveals the path, and trust in the Force.

And the Road Goes Ever On...

Well, it's certainly been longer between updates than I'd originally planned.  Most of that was due to distractions of other things, mostly gaming and work in about that order.

So firstly, another birthday has come and gone, leaving me a little bit older and hopefully a little wiser than I was.  In spite of some annoying incompetence on the part of the Arkansas Postal Service, I did at last get the last of my birthday presents from Clan Whitson, including a cool geek t-shirt and some yummy home-baked chocolate chip cookies.

In terms of gaming, in spite of some unexpected shake-ups in the routine, I've been fairly active on that front.  A Star Wars campaign using FFG's system in which I played a youngish minor Jedi (Sentinel/Shien Expert/Padawan) named Colwyn Morningfire just recently wrapped up; with the GM saying it might be possible that we'll return to that group of characters at some later point, but that he wanted to run a different system and style of campaign for a little while.

In lieu of that Star Wars campaign, the GM started off a campaign using Cubicle 7's Adventures in Middle-Earth, which is there d20 version of their award-winning The One Ring game, set several years after the events taking place in The Hobbit.  We're starting out as 3rd level characters, and have a notable lack of Elves or Dwarves amidst our company, and with having 32 points to use to purchase our ability scores, each of us is generally pretty competent in our areas of respective expertise.

The GM has already said he's not running the game as being entirely "rules pure" and has adapted a couple elements from D&D 5e for the characters.  The first of these was importing the Inquisitive archetype from Xanathar's Guide to Everything for our Hobbit Treasure Seeker (C7's slightly reworked Rogue class) as neither of the existing AiME archetypes (Agent and Burgler) really seemed to fit the character concept she had in mind.  So we now have a Hobbit who's quite cheerful in spite being so far from the Shire, overly curious about most everything, and having the common sense of a Took; nobody's called her a "Fool of a Took!" but that may just be a matter of time.  She is however very good at Riddles, something she proved in the first session by getting into Middle-Earth's version of an impromptu rap battle by engaging in a riddle-contest with a bunch of bar patrons and trouncing the handily; likely helped that the player has researched and typed up a bunch of riddles to have on hand to recite.

The other house-ruled bit in this game is our Woodwoman Scholar has the ability to use actual D&D-style magic, having used her starting virtue/feat and 3rd level class archetype feature to gain a limited number of spells, most of which are cantrips with a single first level spell.  Narratively, her background is that she was taken in as a sort-of apprentice by Radagast the Brown (she really enjoyed Sylvester McCoy's portrayal in the Hobbit films, and felt having Gandalf as her mentor would have been too cliche).  Helpfully, Cubicle 7 listed a number of 5e OGL spells that fit the general themes of Middle-Earth, from which the character made her selections, most of them being various utility spells, with only one spell (Produce Flame) having offensive capabilities, and even then it's not that great.  The player (who is the youngest of the group) seems pretty content with what she's got for magic, and even with her primary experience of the setting being the Peter Jackson films grasps that D&D style spellcasters are not a thing in this setting, and that magical effects are far more limited, so not sure if she's going to try to finagle more spells or not.

Another imported D&D 5e elements for this group is a reworking of the Totem Warrior Path for our Beorning Slayer, with the spell-based abilities removed and a couple other abilities tweaked.  He's already stated that he intends to go full-on Bear Totem.

The last imported element being the GM having tossed out the Known Lands feature the Wanderer class (C7's reworking of the Ranger to remove all spell-casting) and replacing it with a slightly modified version of the Natural Explorer feature from the Revised Ranger presented in WotC's Unearthed Arcana series, done mostly so that he's got more freedom to send our party into various parts of the Wilderlands without having to worry about my Dunedain Wanderer's key class feature being of limited use, especially as we have a mage who has a bevy of at-will cantrips to her name. Though we've started out in Lake-Town, having come there separately for different reasons, I have a feeling the GM's going to have us be traipsing all about the Wilderlands during the course of our various adventures, so I admit it'll be nice to not have to worry about is the journey taking us through my character's Known Lands.  The bonuses provided aren't quite as nice, having lost the "double your proficiency bonus for Intelligence and Wisdom checks when dealing with a known land" and not getting some of the revised Natural Explorer's other abilities right away, I think it works out, trading overall potency for increased utility.  We're still fine-tuning, so I won't be posting what the current state of this revised-revised Natural Explorer is at the moment.

So far, it does seem like quite a fun group, having a Barding Warden with the Fallen Scion background having a bit of a casanova vibe and aspirations of being The Hero of the group, much to our Woodwoman Scholar's great dismay, while the Beorning Slayer and Hobbit Treasure Seeker are fast becoming the group's comedic duo.  My Dunedain Wanderer hasn't quite found his niche within the company's social dynamics, but we've only had one session so I'm sure he'll find his place soon enough.,

Sadly, the Saturday Discord group that I'm in had a disruption due to our GM struggling with various real-life concerns, leaving our Mutants & Masterminds 3e Emerald City campaign in a bit of a lurch.  Luckily, thanks the above AiME campaign, I got the notion to run an adventure using that game for the group while our GM briefly stepped down to sort a few things out.  It helped that we're all pretty familiar with the 5e rules, so we wouldn't have to try and learn a radically different new system for what was likely to be a one-off.  And so, with a company consisting of a Dwarf Fallen Scion Warrior, a Barding Harrowed Warden, a Hobbit World Weary Scholar, and a Woodwoman Lured by the Road Wanderer, I ran them through the Eaves of Mirkwood.  A couple players remarked on the oddity of playing actual first-level characters, but everyone had fun and enjoyed themselves.  Unlike a typical D&D adventure, there wasn't very much combat except towards the very end, and I think the "encounter" that the players had the most fun with was sitting and conversing with a trio of traveling dwarves over a meal of roast pig and fine mead, getting into a riddle contest and a contest of blowing smoke rings, the later of which our Hobbit sadly lost in spite of a great effort of going for a big finish.

One major change I did for the adventure was to frame it as a tale being told by Gandalf to a group of Hobbit children, with the introduction being Gandalf agreeing to tell the children a story (he was in an unusually chipper mood that late spring afternoon), which also let me set the stage for the players as to where and when they were in the timeline of Middle-Earth (five years after the Battle of Five Armies, and on the western reaches of Mirkwood).  I had thought about using Bilbo to tell the story, but decided to use Gandalf instead as I've always liked the Grey Wizard, cranky as he might get at times.  And after the adventure as written had concluded, I went back to having Gandalf conclude the tale and shoo the various Hobbit children away, with one of them hanging around just a bit longer to ask the old Wizard if indeed there were more stories of this company of adventurers, to which Gandalf told a very young Frodo Baggins that there were indeed, but those were stories for another time.  The players very much loved the use of the framing device of their adventure being a story told by one of The Wise, giving them a greater sense of accomplishment and tie to the world of Middle-Earth.  I can only hope that any further adventures I run for them are met with equal enthusiasm and appreciation, given that until this adventure, I'd had an abysmal track record when trying to run any sort of D&D game (most efforts crashed and burned by the third session at the latest, and several attempts during my 20's didn't even make it through the first session), so it was nice to have a D&D game (modified though the system was) be both successful and appreciated by the players.

I also have to say that I really like the Journey mechanics that Cubicle 7 imported from The One Ring.  It removes a lot of the "need to roll for random encounters" and the chart for Journey Events gives the GM a number of options to either roll for or choose from beyond "you run into a bunch of monsters, what do you do?"  I can see why a lot of GMs have decided to import the Journey rules into their regular D&D campaigns.

Well, that's about what's been going on of late for me.  I've got a notion for a smaller Star Wars RPG post, but that will probably wait for next weekend.

Two from the archives

I know, I know, it's been a while since my last update.  I haven't forgotten this page exists, but rather keep getting pulled in different directions and rarely have something that I really feel is worth posting here.

Well, that's obviously changed, as I finally got around to doing something I'd been meaning to do for quite some time, that being converting a pair of very memorable characters from a long ago Star Wars Saga Edition campaign over to the FFG system.

The characters in question were by far the two most memorable PCs from a Legacy Era campaign as run by Ben "Cyril" Erickson, and were the brainchildren of Kevin "Rikoshi" Frane and Nateal Falk.  I had a couple of different characters in that campaign, starting off with a Corellian near-human ex-cop (nobody but me seemed to remember that he as a near-human, and even I forgot a few times) before he had a very explosive end (something I don't think Nateal has still quite forgiven me for) and I brought in a Jedi PC from an older New Jedi Order campaign that made the transition to the Legacy Era courtesy of a very long carbonite nap (and managed to avert most of the carbon hibernation symptoms by way of Jedi hibernation trance), though sadly the campaign never really got the chance to explore just how young(ish) Alwyn handled the transition between two very different eras.  Then again, from his perspective the galaxy was still at war, just the bad guys had changed from Yuuzhan Vong to the One Sith.  I think at the end there was a remark about how my PC had a similar name and appearance to a young Jedi from the Skywalker Praxuem that had helped save the Imperial capital of Bastion from a maniacal Dark Jedi's invasion efforts, but again nothing that was explored in any depth due to the campaign wrapping up.

Now, given how very different the two systems approach things, I opted to try and decided to instead aim more for the spirit of what each character was rather than do a straight point-to-point conversion.  Once that decision was made however, the characters actually fell into place, more or less, pretty quickly.  I did have to take a couple of liberties with each of them, but I think they work out pretty well as low-end player-characters.

For both of these, I opted to grant them an additional 25XP, which was treated as "earned XP" and couldn't be used to increase characteristics, as well as an extra 1000 credits worth of equipment.  I considered going full-on Heroic/Knight Level, but found that just that extra 25XP sufficed to get the basics of the character.

The first of these two is Kirikinerry-tovante (Kiri for short), and he remains memorable to me simply for virtue of being a Squib, a meter-high species of blue-furred goofballs with a love of over-complicated negotiations and a notable lack of self-preservation instincts.  This character was played by Rikoshi, and to my view, if our campaign had been a TV series, he would have been the fandom favorite of the cast.  What really sold the character was the way Rikoshi voiced him as well as the mannerisms; given we were playing through Skype and Roll20, that he was able to convey all that with voice alone is pretty amazing.  Heck, I still chuckle at the fact that Rikoshi took the time to draw up a "contract" for the group, denoting who got what amount of any proceeds, with all sorts of adjustments based on some of the most odd factors, such as "non-koovy non-Jedi penalty" for the Caamasi Force adept.  I sadly don't have the list anymore, and I'm pretty sure the forum thread for the campaign has long been pruned for inactivity, but it was a piece of demented genius.

When writing up Kiri's stats, I opted to take two bites at the apple.  In Saga Edition, he was built using the Smuggler class, so I first opted to go the route of the Smuggler career, and settling on the Thief career.  However, that just didn't quite feel right for an "independent busyness being" like Kiri, so I did a second build using Explorer as the career and Trader as his specialization, which I honestly think works a bit better.  Obviously, there's no official write-up for the Squib as a species (a major oversight on FFG's part in my estimation), so I used the unofficial stats that I'd created for this blog some time ago instead.

At any rate, here's links to each of the versions.  Hopefully Kevin can forgive me for using the stock image of a Squib, as I sadly lack the artistic talent to create an image that suitably captures the koovy majesty of the character.

Kirikinerry-tovante, Squib Smuggler

Kirikinerry-tovante, Squib Explorer

Now, for the second character, this was Niera Kurucz, an Arkanian scientist with a rather abrasive personality when it came to dealing with organics, but had quite the soft spot with regards to droids and cybernetically-augmented creatures.  While Kiri was just that right sort of crazy-awesome that makes a character both memorable and enjoyable to have in the group, Niera was in part memorable to me for the fact she was kind of the party face while really not having the personality for it.

Niera's conversion was a lot more difficult, due in large part to her being Force-sensitive, an ability that was always present but was only slowly developed over time.  She never became a really potent Force user due to her cybernetic enhancements (Saga Edition operated under the old assumption that cybernetics interfered with one's ability to use the Force, itself based upon Darth Vader no longer having the potential power that he'd had as Anakin Skywalker), but there were some interesting moments with her trying to learn about the Force from the Caamasi Force adept; she never did quite get around to trusting my Jedi character, though she did accept his offer to let her borrow his copy of The Jedi Path: A Manual for Students of the Force (in-setting, that book was a reprint of the tome that Luke had uncovered some time prior to the NJO era, but obviously without the various in-character margin notes from different owners over the decades; said book is now Legends, but it's worth reading if you're looking to play a character trained in the mold of the classic Jedi).

Ultimately, I decided that Niera's core concept would be best served if I deep-sixed the bulk of the "party face" elements and focused on her being a highly intelligent engineering and droid mechanics expert, and settled on Technician for her career and Droid Tech as her starting specialization.  I did still give her Force-sensitivity by way of the Force Sensitive Exile specialization, though much like her original character build in Saga Edition she's lacking much in the way of actual Force abilities, though that will change over time.  I was sorely tempted to give her the Manipulate power out of Endless Vigil, but all she could really afford was the basic power and that effect didn't really jive with her focus on droids and cyber-technology.

One bit of rule-bending I had to do for Niera was to employ the droid-crafting rules from Special Modifications, and assign a certain number of advantages and triumphs from her Mechanics and Computers checks to build and program her custom personal droid PLUM.  I have no idea what sort of stats PLUM had in Saga Edition, so I built the little droid as having proficiency in mechanics and computers, with a small scientific database, with the intent that it pretty much provides Niera with a boost die on her Computers, Mechanics, and Knowledge (Education) checks.  She can also send PLUM out to operate independently, with it working a little better while following her directions.

So here's my take on Niera and her droid companion PLUM (which in my head canon at least stands for PersonaL Utility Mechanism):

Niera Kurucz, Arkanian Force-Sensitive Technician

PLUM, Niera's custom droid companion

I do have a few other ideas rattling around in my brain, but we'll see how long it takes before something viable actually shakes out.

Edit: Forgot to note, but the characters were built and the character sheets are from OggDude's excellent character generator program.

The Intrepid Fellows - a party of adventurers for WFRP4e

Wow, two posts in one week.  That's got to be some kind of record, though we'll see how long it lasts.

As you might have surmised, I was pretty darn busy over the prior weekend, what with being down in Plano, Texas for the 6th GamerNationCon and 4 Days of Gaming Goodness.

Prior to that however, I had the chance to run a one-shot for my Discord gaming group, that being "If Looks Could Kill" by Cubicle 7 for the fourth edition of the venerable Warhammer Fantasy Role Play game (aka WFRP4e).  I made a few one-the-fly tweaks to events in the module, but overall it ran rather smoothly, with my buddy Eric (who is notorious for abysmal dice rolls) having a blast simply due to his usual habit of rolling low working in his favor, even going so far as to snark that "this must be what it feels like to be Jon!" in reference to my own habit of making some pretty awesome rolls when I'm playing.

Now, while I've got the PDFs of the characters from the Starter Set, I opted to instead use a quintet of characters that I'd created myself, as I knew for a fact they were legally built starting PCs and didn't suffer from any oddities incurred by the errata.  Plus, having made these characters myself, I had a fairly solid idea of what each of them was capable of doing.  And for the most part, they did what they were designed to do and did it well.

In the interest of sharing, here are the group of adventurers that refer to themselves as the Intrepid Fellows.  You can either click on the links in the individual character's name to get their character sheet, or click here to download the entire group as a single zip file.


Cedred Laudenheim, Human Guard
The ostensible leader of the band, Cedred is actually from a noble family that has long since been impoverished and fallen upon hard times.  He's very much a front-line combatant using a sword and buckler, but is also quite sociable thanks to a high Fellowship, and hard to surprise thanks to high scores in Intuition and Perception.  This was the character that Eric played, and between his very much getting into character as a generally heroic-minded individual and his habit of generally rolling very low on his percentile dice, Cedred was probably the MVP of the entire adventure, taking down the major threat of the adventure and gradually working on building for himself a reputation as a heroic figure.

Erwin Brahms, Human Rat Catcher
Erwin is very much a salt of the earth sort of fellow, as indicated by his trade of hunting down and cleaning out vermin infestations, with his small (but vicious) dog Otto being his most stalwart traveling companion.  Despite of only having a sling, he's the groups ranged attacker, which in this system can be surprisingly effective given how a single well-placed sling bullet can undercut whatever combat momentum the target has built up for themselves.  Erwin was played by Rick, and I didn't realize it until much later that Rick and Eric had largely reversed the character dynamic they have with their characters in my Force and Destiny campaign, with Rick being the crass boor contrasting with Eric's well-mannered heroic figure this time around.

Heidric Strohmann, Human Wizard
The token spellcaster in a setting where being a spellcaster can get you into a lot of trouble with the locals (namely, being lynched and/or burned at the stake), Heidric is an apprentice at the Colleges of Magic in the capital city of Altdorf.  For a one-shot, I didn't designate which color of magic he was studying, and figured that since he only has access to petty magic that he's drawing on just drabs of magical energy rather than properly channeling and focusing the various winds of magic.  Brennen played this character, and while unaware of the consequences of being an open magic user outside of Altdorf, he did much to avoid making it was obvious that he could use magic.

Karrag Thronsson, Dwarf Bounty Hunter
A surly and rather blunt individual, as befits a dwarf, Karrag is the group's muscle and ostensibly their tracker (sadly, the player's dice rolls didn't really help in that regard).  Played by Doran, Karrag as indeed quite blunt in his dealings with others, and had made good on capturing all three of a trio of local bandits that'd been plaguing the area that the adventure took place in.  He did notably get covered in ichor, and took down two of the bandits (who'd tried to lay an ambush for him) by himself without killing either of them.

Rosalinda Dottenbacher, Human Apothecary
This was a pre-gen I made specifically for Linda, as she has a deeply abiding love for medic/healer characters.  I had debated about making Rosalinda a Halfling, and in retrospect I kind of wish I had, but that would have pushed Rosalinda too far into being the party face, a role that I know Linda is usually not very comfortable with taking most nights.  Still, Rosalinda was helpful in patching up the injured members of the group and identifying a few plot threads, though she is very much a support character and generally not much use during a fight.  Still, her staggering variety of Lore skills can certainly provide the group extra information in the right circumstances.

For those curious, for each character I used the same set of randomly rolled values for their characteristics, which amusingly worked out to 125 points.  For race, I rolled randomly with the exception of Karrag, thus winding up with a party of Humans for some extra XP.  Talents were all rolled randomly, with most of them working out for the character concepts quite well, though Cedred having Noble-Blooded was a wrinkle that I eventually made work out for the character.

Post-GamerNationCon 6

And once more, another GamerNationCon has come and gone.  As was the norm for me, I had a lot of fun, got to play a lot of games, catch up with old faces, and make some new acquaintances.  It was pretty cool to meet the members of the Dice Pool Podcast, most of whom made the very long trek from Australia just to attend the convention.  And naturally getting to see Linda and her family in person, as well as having at least a couple chances to sit down and share a meal with them.  It was a major shame that Eric couldn't make the trip, as the con's theme was superheroes and he's a big-time superhero fan.

One thing that helped the mood for me was that this year, I'd opted to spring for the MVG pledge on the Kickstarter.  Granted, it was a few hundred bucks, but the pledge got me a guaranteed seat in two games as well as first dibs on getting into scheduled games when even sign-up went live.  This was a marked difference from previous years where I wound up getting locked out of a number of games that I really wanted to play in, such as GM Phil's always entertaining Fallout sessions.

Highlights for me were playing in the Star Wars D6 1st edition session run by convention Guest of Honor Michael Witwer, who is a very enthusiastic GM, with our group having a blast all around playing through the classic module Starfall.  We had to speed things up a bit, but my smuggler did get a chance to shine by engaging the big bad in a one-on-one AT-ST duel, which ended with my character ramming into the overly chatty Imperial officer's vehicle to end the fight.

There was of course GM Phil's Fallout session, run using the Genesys system with the theme of the PCs having adopted heroic personas in the post-apoc wasteland.  In this one, I played a Protectotron that due to a programming glitch believed it actually was the space-faring hero Captain Cosmos, accompanied by a robot companion that had a stuffed toy hanging off the front of it to play the roll of the Captain's loyal space monkey companion (and was apparently not happy about it).  Phil is probably one of the most fun and energetic GMs that I've had the privilege to play under, so any time spent in one of his sessions is sure to be a lot of fun.

Another major highlight was playing in a GI Joe session again using the Genesys system (detecting a theme for the con yet?), this one run by Dustin of the Staggering Dragon crew.  In this one, I played Spirit, who was the team's tracker and sharpshooter as our team of Joes (Flint, Mainframe, Chuckles, and Snake-Eyes) got dropped into Transylvania to see what mischief Cobra was getting up to in Castle Dracula.  Playing Snake-Eyes was my Texas friend Will, who got seriously into character and never spoke once until the session had concluded, which for those who know Will is a major achievement as by his own admission he is an incredibly chatty fellow, and communicated by way of writing on index cards.  We each got a number of cool moments, starting up with the two of us coordinating to flawlessly take down a Cobra sentry without raising an alarm, starting with Spirit timing his rifle shot (normally a very loud crack) to fire in time with a peal of thunder to mask the sound, and Snake-Eyes being right next to the guy to catch him before the sentry hit the ground and noiselessly tuck away the body.  Next was Snake-Eyes taking out a bunch of Cobra soldiers while hanging from a chandelier without scratching Chuckles (who was wearing a Cobra uniform) with his sub-machine gun.  And finally, after completing our objectives and bugging out of the castle in a stolen Cobra Stinger jeep, while being pursued by a pack of some sort of serpent-themed lycanthrope/Frankenstein's monster crossbreeds, we worked together to take down all but one of them while Mainframe got an old Russian helicopter up and working.  Snake-Eyes did most of the work with using the jeep's on-board missiles, while I got to take down the very last monster while quoting an appropriate line from Dresden Files, that being "Mother says you don't belong here. *crack of thunder* Father says you're ugly too" before putting a rifle round into the thing's gaping maw and out the back of its freakish head as it leapt to attack the group, and stopping its sliding body with my boot before we boarded the repaired helicopter and made our exit.

A couple of unexpected highlights came from a pair of pick-up games, both being Genesys games.  The first of these had the group playing members of Marvel's Alpha Flight, the Canadian government's sponsored team of superheroes, as run by Canadian Chris Hunt, which pretty much wound up with myself and another lady playing Canadian superheroes in a game run by a Canadian GM with other members of the Canadian contingent.  Also in the group was convention guest Andy Hurley of Fall Out Boy, who is a pretty chill guy and fun to game with.  We were probably one of the few teams of superheroes to shut down a bad guy's operation by way of government regulations.  It was also amusing to be witness to the Canadians dropping cultural references that we Americans are generally unaware of.

The other unexpected highlight Genesys pick-up game that I got into was Sunday morning, due to the GM for the scheduled 7th Sea game being "under the weather," which I'm sure had nothing to do with the night prior being "GamerNation After Dark" (i.e. booze being served and shared liberally).  Said game was run by Brett Bowen, one of GM Phil's longtime friends, and was using the Earthdawn setting.  Now Earthdawn is a setting that I've always liked (post-apoc high fantasy), though sadly the game's mechanics were in short a total mess.  Heck, I liked this enough that when a printed copy of the theme (signed by Brett) came up for bid in the post-con auction, I largely made sure it was mine to take home by effectively squashing the bidding war by doubling what was the current bid at the time.  I've skimmed through the book a couple times, and may well try running some one-offs for some of the gaming groups I'm in.  The look of the document is very slick, and you can tell from looking at it that Brett is not only a major fan of the setting but put a lot of work into this.

Other gaming included playing in both parts of the Android two-part module that FFG released for their Shadow of the Beanstalk Genesys supplement.  This one I didn't find quite as enjoyable, but I think that was more circumstances than anything Darren West (the GM) did specifically.  First part, we had one player pretty much commandeer the group at a critical point and effectively tell half the group (which I was in) to sod off in terms of how to resolve a particular dilemma and instead make things a whole lot worse for us.  In the second part, we got hung up in a combat encounter that the module intended for us to avoid, except that the way things played out there was no way for us to really avoid it, which in turn effectively lead for a TPK with the exception of the medic PC.

In terms of food, I got to try out a couple of places that I'd never eaten at before, which were generally good, although one of them was a Chinese place where the food smelled good was way too spicy for me to really stomach.  The pre-con barbecue feast provided by the Rayburns was just as delicious as last year's, and was a great way to start things.  I wound up not going with the majority of the remaining con attendees to the post-con dinner, and instead headed with Lin, her family, and our friend Doran to a Chinese buffet that was pretty solid in terms of food, and it was nice to have a chance to wind down after four solid days of gaming goodness.

So yeah, a whole lot of fun was had, and I've already got at least a couple ideas for things I could run for next year's GNCon, from a Genesys major cross-over using various fan-made themes to a 7th Sea adventure whose roots can be drawn from a pick-up session I played during this recent con.

Welcome to the Wizarding World, Mister Potter

So given that the second installment of the Fantastic Beasts film series (aka the "we're giving you backstory on the Potterverse!" films) has just hit theaters, as well as the fact that Chris "GM Chris" Witt has released his Harry Potter Genesys theme to the masses (link to be found below), I thought it'd be appropriate to publish a collection of pre-generated Hogwarts students that I've used for a couple of one-shots that I've run using said Genesys theme.

You've already seen one of them, a young chap by the name of Timothy Barnett, an adventurous young Gryffindor with a mild penchant for mischief.  But now is perhaps a good time to present a few of the other students in his year from various other Hogwarts Houses.

When I initially came up with these characters, I had originally figured that they would be having their adventures a few years after the events of the Second Wizarding War as detailed in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and that it had been at least a few years since Voldemort's final defeat.  With that said, for the first one-shot I ran with these characters I set their doings during Harry's third year at Hogwarts (when things were still fairly innocent and Voldemort was a not much of a threat to the wizarding world), if only for the chance for me to portray Professor Snape as the horrible person that he was to students, especially those who got into trouble.

It's also worth noting that I initially conceived each of these characters as being First Year students, fairly fresh off the Hogwarts Express and with plenty to learn.  But given how Genesys operates, they just felt too competent for a group of eleven year olds, so I opted to bump them up to being Third Year students, putting them all at about thirteen years old; this way they're capable without seeming ridiculously so, but also still have a lot of room to grow.

You can of course download the Harry Potter and the Theme for Genesys file from the d20 Radio BackerZone page, with the link located under the "2017 Content" header.

And now, on to our students...

Dedrick Bigglesworth, Hufflepuff Athlete

To put it plainly, Dedrick is a jock with a focus on the wizarding sport of Quidditch; he's not very good at casting spells, but can get by when it comes to low-end magics.  Though he's a pureblood by birth, he really doesn't have any of the more negative traits that many of the pureblood families and students are shown to have in the books.  That doesn't mean muggleborns and muggle society won't leave him as baffled as they do Ron Weasley.





Emmamanelle "Emma" Falk

So Emma is actually the second of the first series of characters I made using GM Chris' Genesys Harry Potter theme, and drew inspiration from a dear friend of mine, that being Nateal "Tariel" Falk.  Emma's big thing is her fondness and knowledge of animals, especially the fantastic beasts and magical creatures that populate the world of Harry Potter, but she's also by far the sunniest and most cheerful of the students.  She is a bit of a "squishy wizard" but can play well as support and help get people to see her side of things.

Issac Tobin, Ravenclaw Academic
Yeah, I'll admit to going with the stereotype and making the Ravenclaw representative being both a bookworm and very much the brains of the party.  He is a bit of a genderflip on Hermione, being that he's a muggleborn who is probably far more knowledgeable about the wizarding world than many of his peers who were born and raised in it, but he's much more shy and reserved than the much more outgoing and frankly bossy Hermione; he's much happier with his nose in a book thank you very much.  He's not adept at the flashier sort of magics, and works best when trying to think his way around a problem as opposed to just blasting it.

Selene Vale, Slytherin Potioneer
So originally, Selena started out as being more of a "social expert" who was better at getting people to do what she wanted with words and manipulation before I decided to toss that and embrace yet another stereotype of the Slytherin who excelled at potions.  However, she does still have some traces of her original concept, from being able to drop the occasional zinger to put others at a disadvantage in social encounters and a fairly strong base for most social checks she might have to make.  She does break the mold a bit by being a half-blood, since to my mind in the wake of Voldemort's defeat it made sense that Slytherin would dial it back regarding pureblood mania.  Selena's not inherently ruthless but she is pragmatic, such as having the right potion on hand at the right time.

Timothy Barnett, Gryffindor Opportunist
The first character I'd written up for this Genesys theme, Tim very much is not the typical "brave and forthright Gryffindor" that many folks would presume a student of that house to be.  Now of course, you've got the Weasley Twins and the Marauders for examples of generally well-meaning Gryffindors who managed to get into loads of mischief during their school years, to say nothing of what Harry got up to, especially during his second year, in the course of doing what was right.  So in that respect, Tim is following a fine Gryffindor tradition of getting into mischief but not doing so out of malice, and he's quite good at it, though he is a bit lacking in the raw physicality department.  Magically speaking, he's got a number of tricks up his sleeve and is broadly capable, as long as you don't ask him to do any serious potions work.  And by making a third year student as opposed to a somewhat more naive (for a given value of the word) first year, it's easier to explain why Tim has a bit of a record for getting into mischief at school, as he's quite good at getting into the exact sort of situations that more sensible students would prefer to avoid; if played right, he should be the one dragging the rest of group into whatever adventure is at hand.

And there we have a quintet of third year students of the illustrious Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizadry, each of them with their own strengths to contribute to whatever sort of adventures a group of young students might find themselves drawn into during the course of the school year.

You can download the zip file with their respective character sheets from here:
Harry Potter Genesys Pregenerated Characters

All character images were made using Hogwarts Student Maker, found on the Doll Divine website here: https://www.dolldivine.com/hogwarts-student-maker.php

Thoughts on Warhammer Fantasy Role Play 4th Edition

So to switch gears a bit (apart from the actually posting), rather than jawing about the Star Wars RPG I'll be giving my thoughts on the newest edition of the Warhammer Fantasy Role Play, published by Cubicle 7.  I won't be going into exacting details on the mechanics, just sort of an overview.

For a bit of background, I got my proper introduction to WFRP with the second edition created by Green Ronin.  I had a good deal of fun with the small handful of characters I got to play, in particular a Bretonnian Knight Errant and a Human Protagonist (i.e. professional bully).

The world of WFRP is is much darker than your typical fantasy RPG setting, with magic being (ostensibly) a very rare and unusual thing, with the general tech level being around early Renaissance with some steampunk elements, mostly revolving around gunpowder weapons.  Also, the PC are not going to be grand heroes saving the world; in fact the best summary I've heard for WFRP is "the world's finest crappy peasant simulator" since most PCs are going to start off being on the lower end of the social strata and will be lucky to have a decent weapon or a leather vest.  You can read more about the game's history and elements of of the setting here.

So now the preamble's out of the way, on to what my thoughts are with the latest edition of "the world's finest crappy peasant simulator."  Overall, I like the tweaks made between 2e and 4e (sorry, but just couldn't get into the Fantasy Flight Games edition as it felt far too gimmicky and too much like a board game than a proper RPG).  I've only played two sessions thus far, having rolled up a Human Protagonist (what can I say, I love the entire concept of the career) for the group.

One notable change right off the bat is that it's officially part of the rules that you can either roll randomly to determine things like your race and your starting career or you can pick what you want.  However, if you opt to go with the random roll method, your awarded with a bit of bonus XP for each part of the process that you go with the rolled result; it's not a huge amount, but it's a nice little bonus to allow a little extra tweaking to your PC in the early going.

An issue that plagued the first and second editions was the "whiff factor" given that for most trained skills a PC would typically need to roll under a 35 on percentile dice, meaning that unless your had circumstantial bonuses you were more likely to flub the roll, which got especially tedious with combat as you could go several rounds of two opponents swinging and missing at each other.  What 4e has done is changed skills so that they now have ranks (or Advances as this game calls them) that give you a bonus to your value, meaning that as a PC gains more XP they can get better at the skills in their career; starting PCs still won't be amazing but at least there's a definite improvement track.

Talents have gotten a significant overall, as many of them are now ranked and provide a small bonus to successful tests 

Another tweak is to combat itself, where melee fighting is now an opposed check, with the attack hitting if the aggressor gets the better degree of success.  Also changed is the introduction of Advantage, with each point you have giving you a bonus to your combat checks.  Defending against attacks have been expanded, so that a creative player has a bevy of options available to them to protect against people trying to cave their face in, which is nice.

Combat overall feels a bit more dangerous, as every successful attack will inflict at least 1 point of damage no matter how good your armor rating it, so the much maligned "naked dwarf syndrome" of 1e has been averted, though it will still take a while to chip away at the health of foes with a high Wounds total.  Also, if you roll doubles on a successful attack (or even a successful defense) you inflict a critical hit, which can lead to some really nasty injuries that will linger for quite some time if nobody in the group is a trained healer.  So much like 2e, getting into a fight can have some nasty consequences beyond losing health points even if you win, which will definitely come to a shock to those players used to a "kick in the door" style of play.

Spellcasting has gotten quite a revamp, now requiring a skill check, with the more advanced spells needing a better degree of success.  It's definitely a bit more complicated than 1e or 2e, but if you do really well on the skill check with the lower power spells, you can get a greater degree of effect.

Now I've only played a couple of sessions so far, with the GM running us through a converted 2e adventure (don't know which one), but it's been pretty fun thus far, starting off with a bar brawl to ease us into how combat worked without too drastic of consequences, leading then into a investigative segment where we had to exonerate an innocent farmer that a local (and not very trustworthy) bounty hunter looking for a quick payday by claiming the farmer was a local bandit that'd been causing problems, and leading to a rather intense social encounter between the us and the bounty hunter as each side made their case to the local road warden.  Next portion had us on the road after liberating the farmer and the disreputable bounty hunter winding up with a heck of a black eye (literally and figuratively), and then getting roped into rescuing a little girl who'd been snatched up by bandits and was apparently the illegitimate daughter of a local noble baron, only to find the bandits had been ambushed by a band of goblins that had taken the little girl as a prisoner.  Our attempts at being sneaky and distract/scare off the goblins didn't really work out so well, leading to our Halfling Rat Catcher catching a nasty head wound from the lead goblin, though we managed to flee away with a couple of horses and the rightly terrified little girl, which itself lead to an amusing situation with the Witch having to deal with calming down the little girl at least enough that she wasn't screaming as we made our speedy escape from the pursuing goblins.  Of course, now we have to bring the girl to her father, which I'm sure that given this is WFRP is going to go swimmingly.

Overall, I've been enjoying playing this system.  It's definitely a bit more on the gritty side, and I will admit it's kind of fun to play a PC that's not the typical noble and upstanding individual, and instead embracing that fact that my character in this group is a boisterous rapscallion with a penchant for punching folks in very uncomfortable places.

Y2K-class Light Freighter - A New Ride for FFG Star Wars

Firstly, to my fellow American residents, a happy Fourth of July.  While our nation's current state of affairs is tumultuous (to put it mildly), as a young nation (at least when compared to Europe) we've still managed to accomplish quite a bit for what was once derided as "The Great Experiment."  So that at least we can celebrate.  There's still a long ways to go, but I'm hopeful we'll get there sooner rather than later.

Now, while it might not be May the Fourth, it's still appropriate to say that the Fourth will be with you, so in that vein I'm posting up a little something I threw together not that long ago.

Over on the FFG Star Wars RPG forums, a thread cropped up with a newer member asking for some suggestions on how to stat up a ship design they'd found on the interwebz, jokingly calling said ship a "Falcon Junior."  Dubbed the Y2K Peregrine by Miniature Scenery, it's actually a pretty neat looking ship, and to my mind would indeed be perfect for a small group of PCs, probably no more than two or three characters as a starting ship, perhaps especially for a Force and Destiny group, who frankly don't have a lot of options when it comes to available starting craft due to the limit of a 70K credit price tag.

The thread's OP was initially just using the stats of the JumpMaster 5000 (which still holds a place of amusement in my brain for reasons) as the baseline, but the JM-5K is designed more as a scout ship than any sort of cargo-carrying craft.  So I thought I'd take a stab at coming up with a set of stats for this "baby YT-1300" that set it apart at least somewhat from the JumpMaster.

So one point of contention in the forum thread was the Silhouette, with a few folks being rather insistent that based upon their calculation of the ship's measurements that it must be Silhouette 3 and no bigger.  However, given that Silhouette 3 is pretty much the domain of starfighters and the Y2K freighter is a lot wider compared to most starships, I felt that this fits into the lower end of Silhouette 4 and is better suited for a ship that's designed to haul cargo.  I also wanted something that wasn't a flying death trap in case the PCs wind up getting into a starship battle, so making the ship Silhouette 4 also justified a higher Hull Trauma threshold than a Silhouette 3 ship would generally have.  The initial armament isn't great, but it's serviceable and it wouldn't be too hard to swap it out for a quad laser cannon at some point down the road; admittedly I was tempted to give the ship a quad laser cannon as the default weapon, but I felt the ship had enough going for it already that it didn't need an awesome gun right off the bat.

I won't bore you with too much more of the creative thought processes that went into coming up with these stats, as if you take a look you can see where the stats for the JumpMaster 5000 had a strong influence on the stat block for the Y2K-class light freighter.

Y2K-class Light Freighter

Designed and put into production a few years after the end of the Clone Wars and the formation of the Galactic Empire, Corellian Engineering Corporation sought to create a smaller-scale version of their venerable YT-series of freighters, which were beginning to show their age.  Applying lessons learned over the decades, the design team for the Y2K-series strove to design a courier-vessel, opting to skimp on the frills and focus on functionality.

Unfortunately, not unlike Kuat Systems Engineering's much-maligned S40K Phoenix Hawk-class Light Pinnace, the Y2K-class crew compartments were considered cramped even though it was spacious in terms of cargo hold.  While most independent freighter pilots aren't overly concerned with having luxury accommodations, the Y2K-series' crew berths were certainly not a major selling point.  What the Y2K-series did have was a high-performance ion drive that was reliable and needed far less maintenance than similar models, and while the hypedrive is not exceptional it too is very reliable.  Instead of the more typical single laser cannon that ships of the YT-series featured, the Y2K-series comes standard with a twin blaster cannon, allowing it to more easily pass the Empire's increasingly strict weapon restrictions.  The Y2K-series is surprisingly robust and nimble for a ship of it's size; a Y2K-series freighter won't be doing loops around your typical starfighter, but it won't be easy prey for raiders and pirates either.  Unfortunately, even CEC's long reputation of easily modifiable craft couldn't overcome the ship's reduced size, and the Y2K-series isn't nearly as welcoming of modifications as many other CEC designs.

Unfortunately, CEC's core market weren't overly interested in what amounted to a cramped courier vessel, even at the deeply-discounted price the ship was being sold at, and production ceased after only a couple years.  While replacement parts for this specific make of freighter are becoming increasingly scarce, the Y2K-series is surprisingly accepting of parts and components made for the YT-series, allowing this small and largely overlooked ship design to continue to operate and even thrive long after CEC had forgotten about it and moved on to other, more profitable ship designs.

Some Force & Destiny rules tweaks (Star Wars RPG)

Yeah, yeah, I missed "May the Fourth" in terms of posting something relating to the wide world of Star Wars geekdom.  Still, given that Solo is officially released today here in the U.S., I figure a Star Wars themed RPG post is acceptable.

Far warning, this post is going to be a bit on the lengthy side, not due to the volume of things being tweaked, but more due to explanations of the reasoning behind why the tweaks were made in the first place.  That and the matter that the bulk of what I'd consider my rules tweaks for Fantasy Flight Games' Star Wars Force and Destiny RPG is covered in version 2.0 of my old Ways of the Force fan supplement.

Now to be clear, I consider the FFG Star Wars RPG to be a pretty solid system, one that can be run very well without a single house rule needing to be made or implemented.  I've played and run a number of games, from one-shots at conventions to campaigns of varying lengths, and not once have I been disappointed beyond a rare string of crappy dice rolls, but that's more an issue with the Star Wars dice roller apps generally not liking me than any sort of fault of the system.

That's not to say there's elements that I don't think could be tweaked a bit, such as the revised talent trees that I posted a while back for the Ataru Striker, Shii-Cho Knight, and Soresu Defender specializations (you can check them out here), or things that could be added such as the inclusion of synthetic lightsaber crystals (much as I like Dave Filoni's work on Star Wars Rebels, I disagree on the notion that synthetic 'saber crystals are emphatically not a thing in the new canon).

I've been working on most of these for a while, running a series of test combats as well as using them in live game sessions where possible.  Some of what I'm posting below is fairly minor, some of it less so.  But, enough prattling, on to the house rules...

Skills
Deception checks are now opposed by Vigilance instead of Discipline
Okay, so this isn't so much a house rule as adopting a rules element from FFG's Genesys RPG, one that I happen to like.  This change/update/tweak takes some of the value off of Discipline, which is already pretty solid since it's used to resist Coercion and fear, is the default skill for Force powers when a skill check is required, and can be used to recover strain.  As a result, Vigilance becomes a bit more than the "roll initiative" or "resist an ambush" skill.

Talents
Feint
So like I posted last year when discussing the various Lightsaber Form specializations, the Feint talent for a Makashi Duelist is problematic because given how the game's combat system works, said talent is likely to be become less and less useful.  Reason being that combat is skewed towards making it harder to avoid getting hit than it is to be able to hit your opponent.  And since as written Feint requires you to miss on a melee-based combat check, that means that the talent is going to see less and less use as your character gets better at using a lightsaber, which is bad since Feint is the Makashi Duelist's primary defensive talent.

So my suggested tweak is to re-word the talent's effects to read as follows:

F&D pg82 (short description)
Spend Triumph or 3 Advantage when making a melee combat check against an opponent to upgrade the difficulty of the opponent's next melee combat check targeting the character during this encounter by the character's ranks in Feint.


F&D pg142 (full description)
When making a Lightsaber, Brawl, or Melee combat check against an opponent, the character may spend Triumph or 3 Advantage to upgrade the difficulty of the opponent's next Lightsaber, Brawl, or Melee combat check targeting the character during this encounter by the character's ranks in Feint.

In short, make it so that Feint can be spent whether you hit or miss, but as a trade-off the effects only apply if the opponent themselves is making a melee-based attack, which makes sense for a combat form that is built entirely around dueling; Feint should be zero help if the other guy decides to draw a blaster or throw a grenade at you.

Defensive Circle
So after some pondering based upon observations of the Soresu Defender PC in my current F&D campaign, I've decided that this talent needs a bit of a tweak to make it more viable as a tactic.  While on paper it looks pretty good as written, the stumbling block comes when you've got a party where most everyone is wearing armor that provides defense or routinely takes cover when the blaster bolts start flying.  Even more so is the fact that you're rolling against a Hard difficulty, meaning you're probably not going to be getting a lot of Advantage to spend if you succeed on the Lightsaber (Intellect) check that the talent requires.  This is a rules tweak that I've tested in live play sessions, and it's worked out pretty well as it lets the PC be a "defender" for the party without having to min-max his Lightsaber skill or Intellect in order for the talent to be worth the XP.  So for this tweak, the rules text would be re-worded as follows:

F&D pg77 (short description)
Make a Hard difficulty Lightsaber (Intellect) check as an action.  The character plus one ally within short range per uncancelled success increases their defense by 1 until the beginning of next turn.  Increase defense bonus by 1 per 2 Advantage.

F&D pg141 (full description)
Force Talent: While wielding a lightsaber, the character may take the Defensive Circle action, making a Hard difficulty Lightsaber (Intellect) check.  If successful, the character plus one ally within short range per uncancelled success increases their current ranged and melee defense by 1 until the beginning of the character's next turn.  Increase the bonus to defense by 1 for every 2 Advantage.

With the most recent FAQ adding some needed clarification on defense stacking as well as a hard cap on how high a character's defense can get, the rewording of Defensive Circle now allows for the character to help out his party members who are benefiting from armor defense or cover, but not to such an extreme degree that enemy dice pools are loaded with setback dice thanks to the hard cap that's now in place.

Strategic Form
So another Soresu Defender talent, this one caught my eye as at a later date I will be entering into a friend's F&D-themed campaign using a character that has this as his starting specialization.  While he's only at Knight Level in terms of XP, I did take a look at other talents in the tree, especially since the GM is keeping things fairly close to RAW with regards to specializations.  For me, the problem with this talent is there's an entire Signature Ability called Fated Duel, which is for the Guardian career, that does a lot of what Strategic Form does (forces an enemy to attack you and only you), but does it in such a way that the Soresu PC isn't suddenly overwhelmed.  Which, given my experiences with Feint above as well as general play regarding the strain cost of Parry and Reflect, means that a Soresu Defender using Strategic Form as written is pretty much drawing aggro like crazy and more likely than not will be taken out of action before they get another chance to act, either from burning strain to fuel Parry and especially Reflect or from the sheer volume of wounds taken.

Now, as I mentioned under Defensive Circle above, one of the key tenets of Soresu is don't get hit, but is also to use those defensive motions to create opportunities for the Soresu user to make their own attacks while weathering the storm of their opponents' offense.  As written, Strategic Form does neither of these, and instead it really just paints a huge bullseye on the character's chest, making it more of a desperation tactic than something the player would want to use.  Yeah, the talent's tucked into the top corner of the spec, so the player doesn't have to purchase Strategic Form if they don't want to, but it's location does mean that you'd either need to buy it anyway or purchase and go through a second Guardian specialization if you wanted the previously mentioned Fated Duel Signature Ability.  So, my proposed revision to the talent is such:

F&D pg77 (short description)
Make a Hard difficulty Lightsaber (Intellect) check as an action, rolling Force dice no greater than Force rating.  Add 1 Threat to results of combat checks targeting the character until the beginning of next turn; add additional Threat per 2 Success.  Spend Force point to recover one strain.

F&D pg152 (full description)
Force Talent: While wielding a Lightsaber weapon, the character may take the Strategic Form action, making a Hard difficulty Lightsaber (Intellect) check and rolling Force dice no greater than Force rating as part of the check.  If the check is successful, add 1 Threat to results of any combat checks targeting the character until the beginning of the character's next turn, adding additional Threat per 2 Success generated on the check.  The character may spend Force point to recover one strain.

So with this revamp of the talent, Soresu Defender now has a tactic that lets them "weather the storm" (recoup strain used to fuel Parry and Reflect) while creating openings for them to exploit by making it more likely they'll be able to trigger Improved Parry and/or Improved Reflect, which is going to be the main way a Soresu Defender PC is able to make attacks seeing as how using this talent causes them to forfeit their action, and thus pass on attacking with what is probably one of the most devastating close-quarters weapons in the game, especially if they're using a highly-modded Ilum or Mephite crystal (which given Intellect is one of their key characteristics is fairly likely).

Equipment
Most of this is actually tweaks to some of the previous homebrew material I previously published in Ways of the Force rather than tweaks to officially published FFG material.

Adegan Crystal (Lightsaber Attachment)
Okay, so this originally began as a "starter crystal" option for GMs that were hesitant about handing out some of the potentially more potent crystals early in the campaign.  However, given the lore behind Adegan crystals over in Legends, and how they were standard for the Jedi prior to the discovery of Ilum, I felt I was underselling them.  Now granted there are a number of varieties of Adegan crystals, from the Pontite and Mephite to the lowly Katharcite, but I ultimately wanted to keep things more on the simpler side rather than have several different types of Adegan crystals.  I also wanted something that had a bit more punching power than the Athiss Cave crystals from the F&D Beta adventure Lost Knowledge, which are themselves excellent starter crystals for a group of aspiring 'saber monkeys.

So here's an updated version of the Adegan crystal, one that's more potent than the WotF version, but not as potentially potent as a fully-modded Ilum crystal:

Adegan Crystal Base Modifiers: Installing this crystal changes a lightsaber's base damage to 6 and critical rating to 2, and the lightsaber gains the Breach 1 and Sunder qualities.  If the crystal is ever removed, the lightsaber loses these qualities and reverts to its previous base damage and critical rating. Modifications: 3 Damage +1 Mods, 1 Decrease the weapon's critical rating by 1 to a minimum of 1 Mod, 1 Item Quality (Vicious +1) Mods. Hard Points Required: 2 Cost: 8,000 credits Rarity: 10 (R)

So main changes are an extra damage mod, one less rank of Vicious, a mod to get the crit rating down to 1 as well as an increase in both price and rarity owing to the increased power of the crystal.

Now, having pretty much removed Adegan crystals as a lower-end "starter crystal," that left me with something of a blank space in that regard.  I still wanted something that a player whose character was designed to be a lightsaber wielder could have that wasn't as timid as the training emitter but wouldn't give novice GMs pause by providing the Breach 1 quality.  The answer was found in the lore for the Tapani lightfoil, in particular the modern versions of the weapon, which per Legends are effectively novelty store knock-offs of a proper lightsabers, not being nearly as well made and employing sub-standard or synthetic focusing lenses.  And so was born...

Synthetic Focusing Lens Base Modifiers: Installing this crystal changes a lightsaber's base damage to 6 and critical rating to 3, and the lightsaber gains the Pierce 1 quality.  If the crystal is ever removed, the lightsaber loses these qualities and reverts to its previous base damage and critical rating. Modifications: 1 Damage +1 Mod, 1 Decrease the weapon's critical rating by 1 to a minimum of 1 Mod, 1 Item Quality (Pierce +1) Mod, 1 Item Quality (Vicious +1) Mod. Hard Points Required: 2 Cost: 500 credits Rarity: 8 (R)

So yeah, definitely a good deal more heft than the training emitter, given the potential to make this a Damage 7 with Pierce 2 weapon, but not as potent as a full kyber crystal, making a nice midpoint between the two.  I'm not 100% settled on the price, as a part of me thinks 500 credits is too cheap, but I still want this to be something a starting character could begin play with.

And much like building a training emitter as detailed in the sidebar of the Lightsaber crafting rules from Endless Vigil, it'd take an Average difficulty Mechanics check and 150 credits' worth of parts to build a synthetic focusing lens.

Force Powers
And this is the part where I'm likely due to irk some folks, as one of the powers that I've been working on tweaking is the Move power.  However, unlike a number of folks that have sought to water down the power based solely upon their presumptions of how potent Move is (9.9 times out of 10, the naysayers are using hypothetical examples of PCs with either awesome dice luck to be constantly rolling double light side pips or a few hundred XP invested in both Move and getting to Force Rating 3 or higher), what I've been testing over the past several months probably makes this most contentious of Force powers a bit more powerful, at least in the early going.  But more on that in a moment.

Enhance
Okay, full disclosure, there's been two things with Enhance as written that have irked me.  The first is that leaping horizontally and vertically are split into two separate Control upgrades.  The second is that as the effect is written (and was confirmed by Sam Stewart during one of his guest appearances on the Order 66 podcast), you can't use a Force leap to engage or disengage with an opponent, meaning that you'd have to spend at least one maneuver to either disengage and then Force leap away, or Force leap in and spend a maneuver to engage.

So, my tweak to Enhance is to address both of those points, first by rolling the "leap horizontal" and "leap vertical" Control upgrades into a single Control upgrade that reads as follows:

Control Upgrade: Take a Force Leap action to make an Enhance power check.  The user may spend Force point to jump to any location with short range, ignoring obstacles and difficult or impassible terrain.  The user may not activate this multiple times.
(if using OggDude's awesome character generator, you can label this as Control: Force Leap)

Now, that leaves an empty slot where the "leap vertical" Control upgrade used to sit.  This is easily filled in with the following:

Control Upgrade: When taking the Force Leap action, the user may disengage from or engage with another character as part of the action.  Cost = 10XP

I've not really tested this outside of a few test combats, but given that for the longest time I'd been allowing a character to use this power to engage/disengage without problem, I don't foresee any major issues with implementing this revision.

Move
And here we go, the tweak regarding the one Force power that's drawn all sorts of concern and consternation from many folks who are going on pure speculation of how "overpowered" this power is compared to the reality where it's not nearly as potent as it looks on paper.

Now way back in the EotE Beta days, I had toyed with the notion of incorporating an inherent "attack" ability into the base Move power, much like a character trained in Use the Force could do in WotC's Saga Edition game.  That never made it past the concept phase, until last year when I was working on a bunch of Force user pre-gens for the Star Wars module I ran at this past April's GamerNationCon, when it struck me that none of the PCs (who were originally Padawans of the Jedi Order) had the ability to make ranged attacks.  Yes, most of them had lightsabers, but nobody could really attack at a distance if the situation called for it, something that I recalled happened to Chris "GM Chris" Witt of Order 66 podcast fame during one of his initial Saga Edition games, which resulted in a frustrating experience for players and GM alike. Of course, the tricky part was "how do I balance this without making Move too powerful?"  The answer proved to be deceptively simple once I stopped obsessing over it.

So, my tweak to the Move basic power is as follows:

Basic Power: The user may spend Force point to move or hurl one object of Silhouette 0 that is within short range up to his maximum range.  Hurling an object is a ranged attack using an Easy difficulty Discipline check combined with a Move power check, and deals 5 damage if successful.  The default range is short range.  May not be activated multiple times.

So, the offset is that while you can now use Move to attack as part of the basic power, it's no longer a Discipline check with no difficulty dice, meaning the attack is generally going to do less damage or not generate as much Advantage as said attack would under the rules as written.  And this change has actually seen play at the table, both in the con session I ran (though most of the players were too eager to use their lightsabers to attack than hurl small objects) and in a recent campaign a friend of mine is running.  Thus far, it's not proved to be unbalanced in the slightest, and the increased difficulty actually helps address a point of concern with throwing bigger objects (see below).

Now, with removing the "hurl objects" Control upgrade, that leaves a blank spot in the power tree, which similar to Enhance is rather easily patched with the following:

Control: The target of an attack mad with a hurled object is disoriented for a number of rounds equal to the number of Force points spent on the power check.  Cost = 10XP

I took this idea from the Bind power in that any damage the base Bind power inflicts is determined by the number of Force points spent on fueling the power, so long as at least one of them came from a dark side pip.  Yes, there is potential for a target to be disoriented for several rounds by a powerful Force user, but as being disoriented only adds a setback die to checks, and can itself be overcome with various talents or even equipment upgrades (such as the custom hilt attachment), that's not too big of a concern.

Now, by rolling the "hurl objects to deal damage" Control upgrade into the basic power, this necessitates some rewording of the Magnitude and Strength upgrades, such as:

Magnitude (add the following sentence): If hurling multiple objects or attacking multiple targets, the attack uses the rules for the Auto-fire quality.

Strength (add the following sentence): When hurled, damage is equal to ten times the object's silhouette and the base difficulty is increased by the object's silhouette.

Magnitude isn't really changed so much as relocating verbiage from the "hurl objects" Control upgrade regarding attacking multiple objects or attacking multiple targets.

Now with the Strength upgrade, this actually addresses one of the concerns with the difficulty (or lack thereof) for hurling around larger objects and doing considerably more damage.  As one of my friends put it, the increased difficulty made it so that the tactic of hurling multiple silhouette 1 objects (base damage of 10 each per hit) at only 2 difficulty is no longer an easily accomplished thing.  This change also happens to make it so that hurling anything above silhouette 4 falls under the purview of "impossible tasks" and can only be attempted by flipping a Destiny Point, which since you're limited to one Destiny Point expenditure per skill check means that you'd be stuck with whatever pips your Force dice rolled, meaning you'd be unable to convert them if the wrong flavor comes up.  This puts tossing around truly colossal objects is the realm of the very powerful among Force users, and won't be the sort of thing that player-characters will be able to pull off until they've invested a whole lot of XP into both increasing their Force rating and investing in the Move power.

Okay, that's enough of my rambling on about what my more recent bouts of incessant tinker-monkeying have wrought.

I'm off to go what Solo, which if nothing else I expect to be a fun romp in the Star Wars universe.  To be fair, I was never a huge fan of Han Solo as a kid, so I don't have any sort of emotional investment in the character for the film to trample on, and thus no real expectations for how things are going to turn out beyond Han and Chewing taking ownership of the Falcon and Lando being ticked off about them making off with "his" ship.

Revisiting the Unofficial Species Menagerie - Squibs

So several days ago, while helping a budding GM and new players build their characters for their first foray into Fantasy Flight Games' Star Wars Roleplaying Game, I wound digging up up an older entry into the aging Unofficial Species Menagerie that Ben "Cyril" Erickson and I had collaborated on a surprising number of years ago. 

The species in question was the Squib, which you can read about on Wookieepedia here.  I'm not entirely sure what exactly it is that made these goofy little fuzzballs so endearing to me, but I am certain I can blame Kevin "Rikoshi" Frane for cementing just how off-the-wall awesome the species can be in the hands of the right player.

So, in light of unleashing the Squibs on an unsuspecting gaming group, which sadly I won't there to witness the initial fallout of this action as I'm not a player (at least not at the moment), I decided to look back and reassess the species based upon what I've learned about this system and what FFG has done in terms of published species.

Overall, the Squib as originally written is solid, if not anything overly exciting: Brawn 1, Agility 3, -1 to starting Wound Threshold, +1 to starting Strain Threshold, a free rank of Negotiation, a free Advantage on Mechanics checks, and Mechanics is always considered a career skill.  A lot of this was informed by the Squib write-ups in previous Star Wars RPGs, namely WEG's Galaxy Guide 4 (which introduced the species) and Saga Edition's Unknown Regions (for which I got to write the Squib as a species), but upon further review and with the elements I'd mentioned in the paragraph above, I'd certainly tweak a few things.

First change is that I'd drop their Agility down to 2 and boost their Presence to 3.  From the further research into the species that I've done, Squibs are generally gregarious and outgoing, even if it at times they get on other sentients' nerves.  They're not Kender-levels of cheerful, but they're certainly not timid or reserved by nature.

Second change is that I'd remove the free skill rank in Negotiation, and replace it with the Savvy Negotiator talent from Disciples of Harmony, which is a ranked talent that removes a setback die from Negotiation and Streetwise checks.  This does steer Squibs away from all being expert negotiators, allowing for members of the species that maybe can't sell you a bucket of air and keep the bucket, but does let them keep a cultural aptitude for haggling while also adding in some degree of talent for sussing things out simply by asking around in what is probably a complicated arrangement of little favors that lets the Squib find out things a bit more easily simply because the folks they're talking too are off-balance from trying to keep up with the increasingly convoluted chain of conversation.  Or at least that's how I'd picture a Squib asking around as part of making a Streetwise check and paying for information, because you know full well that any Squib worth their fur isn't going to just say "Here, let me offer you a few credits in exchange for you answering a few questions!"

Third change is that to set their Wound Threshold to the default of 10+Brawn, as their lower starting Brawn already makes them a bit more frail than other species by default.

Fourth and final change is to tweak Tech Savvy so that instead of having Mechanics as a career skill that instead once per encounter Squibs can convert up to 2 Threat to an equal number of Advantage on a Mechanics check.  Reason for this is that for a tech-minded Squib, having Mechanics as a career skill isn't much of a boon, and Squibs that aren't tech-minded probably aren't going to buy more than one or two ranks.  However, if the player gets to swap out a couple of Threat results and instead add a couple advantages to the check, that's a lot more interesting even if the Squib character isn't much of a mechanic.

So with all that in mind, here's an updated version of the Squib species...

Squibs
Starting Characteristics
Brawn 1, Agility 2, Intellect 2, Cunning 2, Willpower 2, Presence 3
Starting Wound Threshold: 10+Brawn
Starting Strain Threshold: 11+Willpower
Starting XP: 100
Special Abilities: Squibs begin the game with one rank in the Savvy Negotiator talent
Tech Savvy: Once per encounter, Squibs may convert up to 2 Threat from a Mechanics check into an equal number of Advantages.

Not sure this will become any sort of recurring series, given how many of the entries in the Unofficial Species Menagerie have since been supplanted with official FFG write-ups. as the years have gone by.  There's a couple other species I've got my eye on revisiting, but time will tell when or even if I'll get around to doing so.