New Star Wars RPG!

[Donovan Morningfire]

I wonder if POTJ and DSSB reprints this summer is going to be attractive to SW d20 gamers who are already exposed to the Saga edition news leak.

They may well still be quite attractive, just for the background information on playing Dark Siders (either for GM or PCs) in DSSB, as well as some pretty nifty Force skills that still have yet to make it to a Revised edition sourcebook. And I would consider Power of the Jedi a vital sourcebook if you've got anyone that wants to play a Jedi character, since it's got entire chapters devoted to the history and methodology of being a Jedi Knight.

As for the crunch parts, unless they radically overhaul all the classes (based on the latest errata, only the Tech Specialist comes close to this by way of boosted skill points and bonus feats) and how the Force works, Saga edition would still be backwards compatible with prior sourcebooks. It'll just take a bit of work on the GM's part to get all their ducks in a row.

 

[Ranger REG]

It'll just take a bit of work on the GM's part to get all their ducks in a row.

Not a problem for old-school GMs. It's them new-school young'uns we should be concerned about.

 

[Donovan Morningfire]

Not a problem for old-school GMs. It's them new-school young'uns we should be concerned about.

Not always the case. I know some new-school "young'uns" that are willing and eager to roll up their sleeves and get to work as were, as well as some old-school GMs that can't be bothered anymore, often citing "they don't have time to waste on converting material."

 

[Belen]

As far as I know from delegate sources, this is just a reprint with errta fixes, but the program could be wrong.

 

[Plane Sailing]

As far as I know from delegate sources, this is just a reprint with errta fixes, but the program could be wrong.

I know I'm swimming against the tide here, but I'd be quite disappointed with that. I think that the way that the force is handled (and force points in particular) could do with a complete overhaul, and much else could be improved too. The idea of using up your forcepoints is completely counter to the films, as is the idea of using the force tiring you out all the time (as the vitality cost does). It really needs a complete re-imagining IMO.

Although it won't happen I think a d20 Modern based version with the Modern base classes and then the star wars specific advanced classes laid on top of that would be neat.

Cheers

 

[wingsandsword]

The idea of using up your forcepoints is completely counter to the films, as is the idea of using the force tiring you out all the time (as the vitality cost does).

Actually, there is good film evidence for Force use wearing you out. When Yoda moved Luke's X-Wing by telekinesis, he did look tired at the end. Although combined with lots of fighting, Qui-Gon was exhausted after he escaped from Darth Maul the first time on Tatooine, and Yoda was also visibly exhausted after escaping from his duel with Palpatine, and those were both full of Force use (especially the later).

Star Wars is one of those things that people will never agree on a single way to do it, it's like edition wars with D&D except with an additional layer of complexity in that you are trying to emulate a very specific source material instead of a genre on top of making it a playable, fun, and balanced game. There are still plenty of people who play D6 Star Wars, and it was a fine game too, but the current edition works fine for me. I've run year long campaigns in both systems, and they both have strengths and weaknesses, but I don't want to have to learn yet another system to do the same thing.

Also, the RCR was essentially an Episode II tie in, the same general rules, with just some errata and minor fixes, and a more broad focus on the whole of Star Wars (since we have all 6 movies, and everything from KOTOR to NJO and Legacy era and beyond now), makes sense. Just reprinting the RCR would look a little dated, with the conspicuous lack of anything from Episode III and the huge amount of Episode II pictures all over.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Actually, there is good film evidence for Force use wearing you out. When Yoda moved Luke's X-Wing by telekinesis, he did look tired at the end. Although combined with lots of fighting, Qui-Gon was exhausted after he escaped from Darth Maul the first time on Tatooine, and Yoda was also visibly exhausted after escaping from his duel with Palpatine, and those were both full of Force use (especially the later).

I'd allow for extreme effot being tiring (e.g. lifting the x-wing); being tired after the fighting would normally be a case of losing vitality from the fighting itself though.

Furthermore, they got it back. The core rules expenditure of force points to do stuff doesn't seem to have any correlation with the films as far as I can see. If you are strong in the force, you are strong in the force. In our campaigns we house-ruled them as a reusable resource to make a little more sense to us, but that is why I think a re-imagining of the whole thing would be considerably better now.

Cheers

 

[Donovan Morningfire]

Maybe one idea is to change the fundamental way Force Points work so that they are more like Action Points? A renewable resource (when you level), but not quite as powerful as they can currently be at higher-levels?

I liken the concept of Force Points to be a case of "giving it your all," and that kind of exertion of will/effort/mystical energy field should have a cost, in that once you spend the Force Point, it's gone, which makes them all the more precious. Of course, I also allow "bending of the rules" when Force Points become involved, usually since my players tend not to have a great many of them (the one player that horded them ended up in a bad way after a particularly rough adventure since she was reluctant to spend any of her Force Points, even though as a non-Force-user she'd long since maxed out her FPs.)

 

[wingsandsword]

Force Points aren't supposed to represent if you are "Strong in the Force". For the purposes of the RPG, that's represented by the Force Sensitive feat, and in very rare cases by special qualities like the Skywalker "template" for being far more powerful than normal.

When starting Anakin Skywalker in Episode I can have 2 Force Points, but Han Solo in Episode IV has 4 Force Points, it's pretty clear that Force Points don't mean strength in the Force. Force Points are a game-mechanical convention to represent those very few times when characters do the seemingly impossible. Something that only happens very rarely, but slightly more often to those who are strong in the Force (Han Solo and Wedge Antilles would be good examples of non-FS people with a good number of Force Points). Luke's shot into the exhaust port is the archetypical example of a Force Point use in any edition of the game.

As for getting them back, they were far easier to get back in the old D6 edition of the game, and they were a lot more of a problem because of that. I don't want Force Points to come back so easily, because they are powerful, and that can become very game imbalancing. The RPG is supposed to reflect Star Wars, but it is also supposed to be a game that works well. With something as abstract as Force Points, that don't directly reflect anything from the movies, making it a balanced and playable game is more important (to me at least) than philosophically reconciling game design and movie philosophy.

Also, using Force Points up does work very, very well with the rules for Force Ghosts, especially how they've been depicted in the EU, that they can only come back a finite number of times, and in the RPG a force ghost must spend a Force Point every time it wishes to appear.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

As usual, wingsandsword put it best.

Not only that, but I think the skill/feat based Force System(which also represents how strong one is in the Force by the number of skill points spent) is the best I've seen for emulating the movies/comics/books/etc and still remaining playable.

The ONLY thing I can see as a problem with it is the need for so many skill points to divide between regular and Force skills...but that's not a huge problem, from my experience.