Grading the Genesys System

[thullgrim]

I think not including tables for each skill with potential advantage/threat/triumph/despair results is a missed opportunity. Some of the fan made stuff out there published through the Genesys Foundry expands on this somewhat though.

I will there is a small bit still active community of content creators out there for the game.

The changeover between studios and lack of news for almost two years was incredibly frustrating though.

 

[Staffan]

While it is not technically part of the system, I'd like to voice my appreciation for Operation: Shadowpoint, the web enhancement for the Star Wars AOR beginner rules. The beginner rules has a fairly simple adventure, Takeover at Whisper Base, that gradually introduces various rule concepts and has the PCs infiltrating and taking over an off-the-books Imperial listening station (commissioned by a Moff to spy on his rivals). That adventure is a perfectly serviceable tutorial, but nothing special as such. But Operation: Shadowpoint picks up where that left off: now what? That base isn't going to run itself, and it's not like the Rebel Alliance is swimming in resources. So the PCs will have to recruit allies among their neighbours, both natives and colonists, figure out how to get supplies to the base, and deal with various threats and opportunities. It's sort of a semi-sandbox where there are a bunch of things for PCs to do, and just enough detail on those things to give the GM a fairly good idea what's going on, but not so much that your creativity is stifled. Running that was one of the best times I've had as a GM, and it's quite possible my impression of the system as a whole is shaded by that experience.

The system does have a few weaknesses. One of the big ones is vehicle combat – and in a Star Wars game, that's a pretty glaring flaw. The biggest problem is that since they're trying to seamlessly cover all sorts of vehicles from speeder bikes to Death Stars with a single set of rules, it doesn't leave much room for differentiating at the lower end where most of the action is. I have heard that Genesys fixes some of the issues, but I haven't looked into that.

A lesser issue is the whole thing with weapon qualities. They are a great idea, tying weapon special effects to the spending of advantages. However, you normally need 2 advantages to activate a quality, and most weapons crit on 3 or more advantages – and a crit is usually much better than activating a quality. So it's fairly rare to see those qualities actually being used. Perhaps it would have been better to only require a single advantage to trigger a quality, but to make them scale with the number of advantages spent.

 

[Kannik]

Eh, I'd argue that Warhammer 3e is a predecessor to Genesys, but isn't actually Genesys.

Hmmm, that was my previous understanding as well...

NO, THEY WERE NOT.
L5R 5E is a very distant child. More different than the other three.

This could very well be one case where wiki has laid me astray: "The game mechanics for the fifth edition of Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying Game are built using a combination of the Genesys Roleplaying System and the "Roll and Keep" system from previous editions of Legend of the Five Rings." Which is why I said the rules were 'incorporated' into L5R 5e, but perhaps you find that too strong a word?

 

[Kannik]

This is an interesting one for me. When I first heard about it, I thought I was going to absolutely love it. Dice pools are my thing (even if I’m not always keen on specialized dice), and the idea there was this double axis of resolution that included nuanced outcomes and foster narrative flourishes? Sounds great!

In practice, however, while I know many people love this system as much as I thought I would, it never gelled for us and by the end we were all more than ready to leave it behind. And most unfortunately, it was the dis/advantage system that ended up being the biggest damper on our experience.

For starters was how varied it was in use. During combat, it was a metacurrency with specific spends for specific things. But when you step out of combat it became almost purely narrative and hand-wavy… which could be fine! Except for that ‘almost’ part, where a few of the skills (but not all!) or other uses once again list specific spends for certain advantage rolled.

The second and bigger hurdle though is what has been mentioned a couple of times upthread already: how often dis/advantage appeared. Nearly every die roll would generate some amount of dis/advantage. In combat, this became repetitive and ultimately tedious. Worse though was the narrative world outside of combat where it became a huge chore not only for frequency but also to adjudicate results such as “you fail at the task but have four advantage.” And because it happened so frequently (nearly every roll) and fluctuated so much, the results ceased to feel like an interesting narrative twist and instead became banal and meaningless.

Other speed bumps were the many bits of the system that interacted with other bits but were scattered all throughout the book, such that needing to find something sent you scrambling around to find it. Also was how many areas of the system were fiddly and full of minutia, while others were the opposite and very hand-wavy or even nonexistent*, even within the same section of the rules. Or the critical hits table needing a d100 as the only d100 roll in the whole system. (Also, from a PC perspective, often the result was not useful against a soon-to-die opponent anyway, so spending your advantage on something other than a crit was a better spend.)

Alas, it didn’t work for us. I’m still intrigued by that dual-axis resolution – if dis/advantage occurred a lot less common then I think it would work much better. But on the whole (there are a few more things I haven’t mentioned) it’s not a system that offers anything compelling to me. (And I’m happy for those for whom it works great!)

 

[GuardianLurker]

@Kannik If you are interested in multi-resolution axes from a single die-roll, you might want to checkout the systems of the OneRollEngine - Godlike, Wild Talents, Reign. Speed/Initiative, Effectiveness/Damage & Damage Location all in a single roll. It's ... quirky though, and stangely enough for a primarily supers game, does not handle high power well.

 

[Wolfpack48]

(Genesis) sounds like a lot of overhead that ends up being unwieldy for some. And perhaps produces unclear results frequently?

 

[Argyle King]

I'm mostly familiar with it via the FFG Star Wars games.

I highly enjoy it.

I've dabbled in Genesys. So far, my main complaint is that the generic magic system isn't as intuitive to use as the Force system in Star Wars.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Edit: Never mind, I just figured out I'm conflating two different systems together.

 

[Staffan]

I think not including tables for each skill with potential advantage/threat/triumph/despair results is a missed opportunity. Some of the fan made stuff out there published through the Genesys Foundry expands on this somewhat though.

While it doesn't have actual tables spelling things out, Star Wars does go into some detail on each skill about what typical results of additional successes as well as advantages, threats, triumphs, and despair would be. And when specific procedures for doing things are provided, you will often get a table for how to spend things. For example, Special Modifications (the Technician splatbook for Edge of the Empire) has rules for crafting weapons and droids, and quite a few tables for how to spend various symbols when doing so.

 

[aramis erak]

Hmmm, that was my previous understanding as well...

This could very well be one case where wiki has laid me astray: "The game mechanics for the fifth edition of Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying Game are built using a combination of the Genesys Roleplaying System and the "Roll and Keep" system from previous editions of Legend of the Five Rings." Which is why I said the rules were 'incorporated' into L5R 5e, but perhaps you find that too strong a word?

It's like claiming Pugmire is based upon AD&D 1e... Technically true via indirect means, but utterly dead «bleep»ing wrong in practice, since what was inherited in Pugmire was via D&D 3e and 5e...

The only major elements from SW/Genesys are that you spend opportunity generated on the roll, and have two different kinds of damage. Everything else is different in feel. Knowledge of SW or Genesys won't help you at all in L5R5; even the scaling of abilities is different.

Genesys proper and SW differ mostly in paranomal abilities and character gen/advancement.
L5r steps FAR aside.