Input for starting a Star Wars Saga Edition game?

[Quickleaf]

I just bounced the idea of starting a Star Wars game with my irregular gaming group come July/August, and they were very receptive to the idea. Two of them have really gotten into the Old Republic MMORPG, and they were excited by the idea of a Knights of the Old Republic era game.

Any advice Star Wars Saga GMs / players can offer? Is there a good repository of online resources? The stuff on the Wizards site has all been taken down...

What books should I invest in? All I have right now is the core rulebook, but I'm looking at picking up Threats to the Galaxy (the monster book) and Galaxy of Intrigue (for skill challenge rules) once we start.

How do you run starship battles? Do you use the rules in the core book or from the Starship Battles game? What sort of map do you use for starship battles?

And what sort of rules hiccups or house rules should I anticipate making? For example, I probably would lump Climb/Jump/Swim into an Athletics skill. Overall the rules look solid, but maybe play experience reveals some flaws that my read-through doesn't?

Thanks a lot for your input

 

[Stormonu]

I don't have much advice for SAGA (I much prefer West End D6 version), but I can tell you not to bother with the Starship Battles game - it is utter crap.

Back in the early Star Wars d20 time, they did adapt the Silent Death rules for starship combat, and from what I read, it was fairly popular. There is also Star Warriors, which handled extensive starship combat for the D6 game. However, the latter could easily consume an entire session in itself to work out a decent-sized combat.

<edit> Isn't there an Old Republic book for Saga? And, while I've only played a handful of SAGA sessions, the books I would recommend would be the core book, Scum and Villainy, Threats to the Galaxy, and if you're planning a lot of space travel/battles, Starships (not the mini game, the book).

Also, we found that force powers like telekinetics, lightning and the like were far more powerful than anything you could do with a lightsaber. Especially when hero points and destiny points are factored in. It's a little to use to get the Use Force skill into the range where it's basically an autohit from level one (I seem to recall my Cerean Jedi character had at least +12, I want to say +16 to Use the Force skill checks.

 

[delericho]

<edit> Isn't there an Old Republic book for Saga?

There is, but it's hard to find and expensive. (Actually, all the Saga books seem to be quite easy to find except the core rulebook, the "Knights of the Old Republic Campaign Guide", and "Starships of the Galaxy".)

I'm inclined to suggest that a SWSE GM should consider getting "The Scavenger's Guide to Droids", "Threats of the Galaxy", and (if you can) "Starships of the Galaxy". I'd recommend those based on their crunchiness - for fluff, Wookieepedia is frankly a better resource anyway. And once you've got a representative number of stat-blocks, everything else is little more than a matter of reskinning.

(Now, that said - I have all the SWSE hardbacks, and certainly don't regret the purchase. I just don't think they're actually all that necessary. Especially once you realise that so many of the stat-blocks are very minor variations on the theme.)

As for actually running the game, my advice would be to be clear to the players right at the start that this is you're take on Star Wars, and that you're going to use some material from EU*, ignore some material from EU, and morph some material from EU out of all recognition. Because you can almost guarantee that you'll have at least one player who knows the EU better than you do, and the last thing you want is to be constantly having the "actually, in the EU it works like this..." conversation.

* Expanded Universe, of course. Not European Union.

Oh, and I'm afraid I don't have any good advice regarding starship combat. Try as I might, I've never quite been able to run a truly satisfying space battle using the system (or Serenity, for that matter). I don't know if that's because of the rules, or if it's just me.

 

[[OMENRPG]Ben]

I'm a long time Saga player and GM, and I've had a blast with it. Over the years, I've made a good chunk of house rules and on-the-fly decisions, and I think Saga is pretty forgiving for these types of things.

I would get as many of the books as possible if only for the available Talents, Feats, and other class features available to the players. I would definitely get the Jedi Training Academy book if there are going to be force players (Jedi or not) in your campaign, as it really fleshes out force powers and various force training techniques.

As far as the rules go, yes I would combine those more granular skills into Athletics, also I give everyone the ability to add their Armor bonus to Reflex or their level. This allows people to still wear the armor they want to look cool and have some other tangential bonuses (such as being able to survive in a vacuum) and not hampered because they're level 7. My good friend gives everyone the soldier talent for free at first level that lets you add half your level AND your armor bonus, but he runs really meat-grinder intense war scenarios that I tend to shy away from.

Some general advice: pick a time period that your players are less familiar with but would still enjoy. Most of my games have been in a timeline I've crafted with my friends that we call "Destinies" which is about 150 years after the "Legacy" era, which in turn is about 100-150 years after the movies.

The KOTOR period is also arguably the most "exciting" as sith and jedi are just running around willy nilly, and most of the major powers are still out and swinging (Hutts, Trade Federation, Republic, Rakata, Sith etc).

As far as resources, the starwarsrpgindex.com site is extremely valuable to find some quick rule things, such as certain weapons/talents/feats. They have a list of everything's location in which book and what page. Also on the site is a pretty comprehensive list of all of the classes and their benefits.

As far as gameplay goes, Star Wars is one of the few systems that I strongly encourage leveling rather quickly at the onset rather than slowing it down quite a bit. In D&D I like to keep things more gritty and low power, but Star Wars is pretty high up on the list for super-heroics, so I tend to level my players once every session or two up to about level 7 or 8, at which point I slow it down quite a lot (maybe level every 3-5 sessions).

Another tip/piece of advice: beware of money. Money in SW, like most high tech universes, is king. I've had players buy entire fleets of ships, man them with piloting droids, and use those ships to fly at hyperspeed and crash land into enemy fortifications, space stations, and even planets.

I've had people hack the commerce guild (spending destiny points to do so) so that they could have a billions of credits put into their account, only to plan galactic domination.

This can be very fun and really broaden the scope of play for the players, but it can quickly become a mind-boggling game of SW Mogul instead of SW adventuring.

If you do have players who wield the force, I also encourage a lot of flexibility with powers. One of my favorite characters that I've ever played as was a pacifist Kaminoan (the long - neck guys from Ep II) jedi who was very adept at Force Grip and Move Object. He would break the power supply in an enemy's weapon with a Force Grip or lift a giant piece of durasteel and use it as a shield for the party.

That being said, don't let the force users steal all of the spotlight. There should be plenty of times that a jedi or force user is either incapable of helping or they are neutralized by some other means (other force users such as sith, jedi-hunting droids, waves and waves of small enemies, or space ship/vehicle combat).

One way to help deter the super powerful jedi character is to either remove or nerf the "Skill Focus Use the Force" feat. RAW it adds +5 to UTF, and can be taken at first level. This means that a character who has an 18 Cha (from species or rolling or whatever) could have +14 - +16 bonus at level 1. When the highest DC for Move Object is 30, which moves a COLOSSAL OBJECT (think capital ship) that first level Jedi becomes a force god.

My solution is that it adds +1 per level from the level taken to a max of +5. So if they take it at level 1, it is just +1, at 2 +2 etc. Or, you can do as my other GM/friend does and just remove it entirely from the rules.

I also tend to up the DCs for UTF and Use Computer. It is quite easy for someone to hack the Death Star at even level 2 or 3, and trust me, they will be more creative than trying to stop garbage compactors.

As far as space ship combat goes, I use a modified version of my own OMEN system, which unfortunately I can't really talk about. But, to put it simply, I use just a theater of the mind with slight mini placement on a freeform table/grid just to get relative placing figured out. Three dimensionality is measuerd by placing the minis on cups or other objects to lift them up. Generally though, theater of the mind works just fine for most people I've encountered.

Sorry for the ramble, but if you have any other Saga questions, feel free to PM me. Other than just regular ol' D&D it is my most familiar system.

Have fun and just try to keep it fresh and exciting.

 

[Umbran]

And, here I am tidying up before folks arrive for our SWSE game. I'm a player, not a GM for this one.

As for resources:
Star Wars RPG Saga Edition Online Index

This has a master index for the game. The text of powers and talents are not there (for copyright reasons), but there are enough books for the game that a master index is terribly useful.

As for hint:
Some GMs are apparently strongly tempted to say, "take anything you like, from any book". My GM does this. I, however, would advise against it. Narrow down the number of books you're using for any particular game. Make powers and stuff from other books rare, subjects of quests to recover lost information, and the like.

In our game, *everyone* is force sensitive (it was one of the game conceits - we're rebuilding the Jedi Order after one of it's historical falls, some 5000 years before the movies). I would also recommend against this - when everyone is a force user, the GM is tempted to make every enemy a force user. The power of battles ramps up quickly, and they all start looking kind of similar, and you start losing space for folks who *don't* want to spend an entire session flinging force powers in fights.

 

[Quickleaf]

So what character sheets do you guys recommend? Right now I'm looking at one of these two:
Tam's sheet: http://saga-edition.com/wp-content/tams-se-character-sheet-113.pdf
Emma's sheet: http://dawnofdefiance.wikispaces.com/file/view/Star+Wars+Saga+Character+Sheet+1.0.pdf

I'm a long time Saga player and GM, and I've had a blast with it. Over the years, I've made a good chunk of house rules and on-the-fly decisions, and I think Saga is pretty forgiving for these types of things.

Did it ever seem like players were strapped for talents? They only get one every odd level, and with all the new talents introduced by sourcebooks I'd think players would feel a little shortchanged? Would making the feat at levels 1, 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, and 18 instead be a feat OR talent be a reasonable house rule?

I would get as many of the books as possible if only for the available Talents, Feats, and other class features available to the players. I would definitely get the Jedi Training Academy book if there are going to be force players (Jedi or not) in your campaign, as it really fleshes out force powers and various force training techniques.

I'm considering making a master list of talents for the 5 base classes. Would a good list of player options include the 5 "class splats" (Jedi Academy, Galaxy of Intrigue, Galaxy at War, Scum and Villainy, Unknown Regions) plus whatever campaign book we decide on (probably Old Republic) ?

As far as the rules go, yes I would combine those more granular skills into Athletics, also I give everyone the ability to add their Armor bonus to Reflex or their level. This allows people to still wear the armor they want to look cool and have some other tangential bonuses (such as being able to survive in a vacuum) and not hampered because they're level 7.

Wait I'm confused how armor works. I thought armor always gives you an armor bonus to reflex? And characters without armor add their heroic level to reflex (as well as all defenses)? Is what you're saying different somehow?

As far as resources, the starwarsrpgindex.com site is extremely valuable to find some quick rule things, such as certain weapons/talents/feats. They have a list of everything's location in which book and what page. Also on the site is a pretty comprehensive list of all of the classes and their benefits.

That's a great resource, thanks

As far as gameplay goes, Star Wars is one of the few systems that I strongly encourage leveling rather quickly at the onset rather than slowing it down quite a bit. In D&D I like to keep things more gritty and low power, but Star Wars is pretty high up on the list for super-heroics, so I tend to level my players once every session or two up to about level 7 or 8, at which point I slow it down quite a lot (maybe level every 3-5 sessions).

Is that a natural product of the XP progression and nature of challenges, or is it something you bend the rules to accomplish?

Another tip/piece of advice: beware of money. Money in SW, like most high tech universes, is king. I've had players buy entire fleets of ships, man them with piloting droids, and use those ships to fly at hyperspeed and crash land into enemy fortifications, space stations, and even planets.

Wow Besides starting credits, is there some resource with "appropriate" wealth by level?

One way to help deter the super powerful jedi character is to either remove or nerf the "Skill Focus Use the Force" feat. RAW it adds +5 to UTF, and can be taken at first level. This means that a character who has an 18 Cha (from species or rolling or whatever) could have +14 - +16 bonus at level 1. When the highest DC for Move Object is 30, which moves a COLOSSAL OBJECT (think capital ship) that first level Jedi becomes a force god.

My solution is that it adds +1 per level from the level taken to a max of +5. So if they take it at level 1, it is just +1, at 2 +2 etc. Or, you can do as my other GM/friend does and just remove it entirely from the rules.

Actually a colossal object is DC 35 with the Move Object force power, at least according to the core book without errata. But with the ability to burn force points to increases the max size, it's a scary power.

I've heard folks on the Internet say force users in SWSE are the most powerful characters. I don't know whether that's true or not, but is that what your tweak to Skill Focus (Use the Force) is meant to mitigate at lower levels?

I also tend to up the DCs for UTF and Use Computer. It is quite easy for someone to hack the Death Star at even level 2 or 3, and trust me, they will be more creative than trying to stop garbage compactors.

So now I've got to ask about DCs - are they balanced overall? I mean the Death Star would be a "secret" system (DC 30) right? So no way a 1st level character is going to hack it unless they roll a 20.

As far as space ship combat goes, I use a modified version of my own OMEN system, which unfortunately I can't really talk about. But, to put it simply, I use just a theater of the mind with slight mini placement on a freeform table/grid just to get relative placing figured out. Three dimensionality is measuerd by placing the minis on cups or other objects to lift them up. Generally though, theater of the mind works just fine for most people I've encountered.

Did you ever try running space ship combat using the core rulebook vehicle rules? Or did you jump into your own system right away?

Have fun and just try to keep it fresh and exciting.

Thanks!

And, here I am tidying up before folks arrive for our SWSE game. I'm a player, not a GM for this one.

As for resources:
Star Wars RPG Saga Edition Online Index

This has a master index for the game. The text of powers and talents are not there (for copyright reasons), but there are enough books for the game that a master index is terribly useful.

Checking it out now. Good resource, thanks

As for hint:
Some GMs are apparently strongly tempted to say, "take anything you like, from any book". My GM does this. I, however, would advise against it. Narrow down the number of books you're using for any particular game. Make powers and stuff from other books rare, subjects of quests to recover lost information, and the like.

I'd like to provide the players with a little more choice besides only the core rulebook, particularly the two very familiar with SW Old Republic. How many/which books would be appropriate? Is Core + 5 class splats + Old Republic campaign guide too ambitious?

In our game, *everyone* is force sensitive (it was one of the game conceits - we're rebuilding the Jedi Order after one of it's historical falls, some 5000 years before the movies). I would also recommend against this - when everyone is a force user, the GM is tempted to make every enemy a force user. The power of battles ramps up quickly, and they all start looking kind of similar, and you start losing space for folks who *don't* want to spend an entire session flinging force powers in fights.

Ben gave some interesting advice about GMing for force users: he recommended using waves of minions, other force users, jedi hunter droids, and starship battles. From a player's perspective do you think those types of enemies provide sufficient challenge to force users?

 

[wingsandsword]

Wow Besides starting credits, is there some resource with "appropriate" wealth by level?

No. I think the Heros Guide for the RCR d20 Edition had suggested starting wealth for characters above 1st level, but that's a pretty obscure table, and wasn't widely used.

IMO, money isn't that powerful in Star Wars. If you have hundreds of thousands or millions of credits, yeah you could buy starships and try to do crazy things with them, but I've never had PCs with more than a five-digit sum of Credits.

Until you start getting hundreds of thousands of credits (enough to by brand new heavy starfighters or buying light freighters and doing some serious upgrades), there is really no difference in practice between having a few thousand credits, and a few hundred thousand. Once your party has plenty of weapons and armor, and has a good transport with some nice upgrades, money becomes basically "just for show" typically.

IME, campaigns don't hit the point where buying capitol warships becomes even discussed I did have a group once capture an ISD, but they were New Republic Intelligence agents with stolen code cylinders and access codes, and the PC group leader was a Jedi apprentice who had disguised himself as an Inquisitor. Once it was captured (or more accurately, intentionally ordered by the PC's into a trap lying in wait where ion cannons would disable it for the waiting New Republic boarding parties to take the ship), it was handed over to the New Republic, not becoming their new base of operations.

Even if a PC manages to buy/hijack or steal a capitol starship, they'd still have to get a crew. An Imperial Star Destroyer (for example) takes a crew of tens of thousands, that even with a fortune would have to be trained and raised. Even smaller capital ships take thousands of crewmen.

There is one canonical example in SW lore of a privately owned ISD: the Errant Venture, and even the wealthy businessman Booster Terrik had a lot of trouble operating it over the years, both in maintenance and staffing, but the huge regulatory issues (the ONLY reason it wasn't seized by force by the New Republic was it was stripped of all but a small fraction of its firepower and it took many permits to get that).

Think how real-world governments would react to a private citizen buying/acquiring an aircraft carrier or nuclear submarine. Even if you could buy the craft, keeping it staffed and supplied, and being able to defend it against professionally trained and equipped ships that will seriously outnumber you isn't going to happen.

In other words, don't be afraid to have whatever government is in power: Old Republic, Empire (ESPECIALLY the Empire), New Republic or Galactic Alliance show up and have a very poor sense of humor about privately owned capital warships. The various cartels of the Separatists (Trade Federation, Commerce Guild, ect.) had private warships in the decades before the Clone Wars, but that was full-on planet owning megacorporations combined with a corrupt and inept galactic government that let it get that far (and from the look of things, every galactic government after the Clone Wars has taken a VERY dim view of private heavy warships). The Separatists could afford it because they had gone past being businesses into being governments of entire sectors of space.

The heaviest warships that are commonly privately owned would be more like Nebulon frigates, and they still have the issues of manning and such. If PC's start being jerks with a starship, don't shy away from using Qui-Gon's "There's always a bigger fish" lesson. Even an uprated Nebulon Frigate with a full compliment of starfighters won't last long before an Imperial Star Destroyer OR an MC-80 series cruiser.

 

[Umbran]

I'd like to provide the players with a little more choice besides only the core rulebook, particularly the two very familiar with SW Old Republic. How many/which books would be appropriate? Is Core + 5 class splats + Old Republic campaign guide too ambitious?

My thoughts are mostly in relation to Jedi powers and abilities. Most of our characters are not spending many levels on non-force-using stuff, so I cannot speak to them with personal experience.

Ben gave some interesting advice about GMing for force users: he recommended using waves of minions, other force users, jedi hunter droids, and starship battles. From a player's perspective do you think those types of enemies provide sufficient challenge to force users?

You have to be careful with starship battles - if the group, as a whole, hasn't decided to put together characters who have roles in starship combat, then starship combat really only involves a couple of characters, and the rest sit and wait for the combat to be over.

In general, there's no problem challenging Force users. There can, however, be a problem challenging a combat-oriented force user that has access to any power in any book, while not steamrolling a character not optimized for combat.

What I suggest is what the rules themselves suggest - pick the books relevant to the era you're playing in, and use those (so, class spats and one Era book), and add other things *sparingly*.

 

[[OMENRPG]Ben]

Yeah I pretty much agree with Umbran if you're trying to keep the power creep down to a minimum. Era plus the class books is probably fine, as typically I've allowed talents from almost every book as long as it made sense for the character to have.

Right, 35 not 30. But with force points, still not hard to do. I do the skill focus feat nerf to help minimize super force wizards as well as master slicers for use computer.

Characters can add their level to their RD if they are not wearing armor, OR they can add their armor bonus. This sucks if the character wants to wear a light armor flight suit for its sealed vacuum qualities but is level 4, as there is no mechanical benefit now. I just let them keep the extra benefits and use whichever is higher, their level or the armor bonus for their RD.

The natural wealth progression is pretty slow, but the character driven, creative wealth progression is generally exponential. One small example was a team of my players decided to start a smuggling business. Only one guy was force sensitive, and not a jedi, and he put some serious points into mind affecting force powers.

At the onset, they were able to "convince" customs agents and the like to allow them on to planets that otherwise would not, and made a quick fortune selling illegal items and weapons that they had taken from some other pirates and the like.

In a few short weeks in game time, they were managing a full-scale business with a dozen smuggling crews, five or six hacking crews, three crews of skilled mercenaries, and a coven of assassins. All in all, with good management and the party stepping in to help on really tough jobs, they were clearing a cool 2-5 million a week.

Once they hit about level 10 (probably about 3 months in game time) they were billionaires and incredibly powerful. This made things interesting, as the level of enemies they now faced were much more powerful than they, often many levels higher. For example, they earned the ire of the Black Sun by forcing them out of some of their more profitable regions, and one by one the party was eventually targeted by various highly skilled assassins to take them out.

After three of the six party members were killed, the other three burnt up all of their resources, bought a bunch of war ships and battle droids, and basically declared war on the Black Suns. It was not a pretty fight, and by the time the three original PCs and the newly rolled up additions (from the three earlier casualties) they all died around level 15, separated, broken, and broke.

Even though they definitely lost, it was a good lesson to be learned on all sides, that if you grow in money too quickly, you also grow in power, and therefore enemies, too quickly too.

As wingsandswords says, money in Star Wars can pretty much mean nothing for certain campaigns based upon the character's principles and your reaction as a GM. Buying a used freighter in the books is about 50-100k, with buying the necessary 2-10 piloting droids costs another 5-30k. So let's say 130k and they have a capable freighter ship, which, in and of itself, isn't that dangerous. It is just the exponential growth of turning a little bit of money and power into a lot of money and power that is dangerous.

I never had any issue with such a thing when my parties were "heroes," just when they decided to go the smugger/mercenary route. If you have a team of republic soldiers accompanied by Jedi, then they should have all of the resources they need simply given to them by the republic anyway (within reason/balance, of course).

As far as DCs, I think they are a little on the easy side. Especially for really key things, and the 5 + 1/2 Level Force Points every level, makes it possible for characters to do really large scale stuff, especially force users.

That being said, ultimately the GM has a lot of leeway with what effects happen with a success. I like large-scale, epic set piece battles and things for my SW games, and so I pretty much follow the DCs as written and elaborate quite largely on upper degrees of success.

For example in a particular space battle, the party's leader who was a Jedi Consular (very high UTF) was standing on the bridge of their warship, and using Move Object to shove objects at other nearby enemy ships, or to physically move his ship or the enemy ships away/into danger. It made him feel important and useful, but not overpowerful as the rest of the party manned weapons / systems vital to the ship combat.

As far as Umbran said with the ship combat, I would typically disagree but it is a matter of GMing style. I always find things for my PCs to do unless they are just being a poor sport and want to sit tight and hang on (their own choice.)

Some things I've had non-tech / non-starship combat oriented characters do:
- Roll perception to assist in incoming attacks/formations
- Roll perception to "insight" enemy intentions /future formations
- Knowledge tactics to assist with flanking maneuvers / positioning
- Various lore/knowledge skills to help with enemy tactics, weaknesses, combat types
- Use computer to help run systems and sensors to locate incoming attack types, jam communications, lower enemy shields, make cyber attacks on enemy command structure, or overall just hack the enemy ship to try to take it over/cause damage
- Force users can hurl objects (all they need is line of sight/effect but force powers can go through walls and long distances a la Vader force choking over a screen) or use other powers at distance to assist with the ship's maneuvers/combat
- Soldier types can use their own attack roll (this is a house-rule I've created) as opposed to the ship's when manning manual-fired guns
- Leader types can roll Persuasion and other checks to boost the overall speed and efficiency of the crew, the accuracy of its gunmen, and the capability of its defenders
- Try to do boarding operations so the melee/soldier types can actually get onto another ship and do some damage (or the reverse, have bad guys board their ship)

In all but a handful of ship battles (maybe hundreds) I've only had a few players not engaged in some way. I'm sure you can come up with lots of creative ways to keep everyone focused on the battle, even if nothing else, if the ship gets damaged and parts start decompressing or having power failure, simply just surviving is a skill challenge in and of itself.

Again, have fun and I'm sure you and your players will be doing lots of improvisation.

 

[Lwaxy]

Our SW games usually had most of the groups as Froce users of some sort, or at least Force sensitive. However, we didn't encounter too many Force users but a lot of intrigues and puzzles, and the occasional starship battle on smaller scales. I kept this up when taking over as GM and I think the sessions where the PCs have to puzzle out conspiracies or find out who did what and why are the most fun for the players. Sure there are enough situations where Force abilities make all the difference but skills are picked from all over and at least we didn't get any power creep.

I agree on what's been said about money. When the PCs are Jedi who don't have to pay to get from A to B it is one thing, but when the smugglers make enough profit to buy a whole planet it kinda takes the fun out of things, at least for the GM.