Star Wars RPG

[BobbieTheDamned]

Hallo all,

just wondering who if anyone from the trowbridge lot would be interested in doing a miniatures based star wars RPG? Not sure what rules yet but I'll write some based arround mortisquest if need be. Obviously set either during the rebelion or the rise of the galactic empire, the later is probably more suited to those who want to play jedi, the former probably has more ability to do differant things though.

Rob.

[MortiS-the-Lost]

Rules wise I'd recommend using the Space Crusade rules if you want it fast running (my Quest rules are not suited to a sci-fi game and would be slowed down by having to deal with lots of ranged weapons). Of course if you run a Star Wars game I think most people are going to want to play Jedi, but there are plenty of other character types you could create for the game.

Off the top of my head:

Jedi = Combat/Mage
Scout = Ranger
Wookie = Tank
Medic = Healer
Astro Droid = Theif
Protocol Droid = Bard/Useless

any more ideas for the game people?

[BobbieTheDamned]

It depends what era we go for, if its clone wars era then yeah people can play jedi, if its rebelion era then there wont be any jedi, 'cos there arn't any other than Luke at that point.

MortiS-the-Lost wrote

Protocol Droid = Bard/Useless

That sounds about right though.

I was thinking more along the lines of smugglers (han solo types) and other members of the rebelion.

[MortiS-the-Lost]

RobertTheDamned wrote

I was thinking more along the lines of smugglers (han solo types) and other members of the rebelion.

yea that's what I'm thinking too and the rebellion is clearly the best time period to set the game in, but if your going to do a Star Wars game you need to have Jedi.
I think as long as not everyone wants to play a Jedi, we can get away with twisting the background a little to make it work for the game, allowing a maximum of 1 Jedi per party.
Besides an all Jedi game would get boring quickly, what with all the players having the same powers.

[BobbieTheDamned]

perhaps having rules for latent force powers or something, or maybe set it after the films whilst the new republic is still battling the empire so you could have new jedi trained by Luke or something?

[MarkRG]

Hi Rob
 I would really like to game like D&D but more in the future. Space hulk spings to mind but instead of having Space Marines we could game as human or even the new space Dwarfs. I sure that Mortis could convert his esisting rules to do this set up.

Im in for a crack at it, You might get Bill into it as well as he likes his future stuff.

Game on

[MortiS-the-Lost]

RobertTheDamned wrote

perhaps having rules for latent force powers or something, or maybe set it after the films whilst the new republic is still battling the empire so you could have new jedi trained by Luke or something?

Yea that makes sense

Axl informs me that there is an old D6 based Star Wars so i suppose we could use that system rather than trying to come up with a new one

[Billiam Babble]

I've got the old WEG d6 swrpg.  Combat can be very clunky as its basically a lot of d6s rolled (cumulative) per character versus high challenge numbers.  You'd be better inventing from scratch or adapting mortisgamething or (shudder) using Wizard's SW d20 minis rules. (I feel very unclean now I've said that... I take it back - invent something fast and superior!)

If you need a copy of sw weg's rules I can scan in some sections for you - the 1st edition I have is a little vague on force powers -also its only Rebellion era.  My books are way too lovely and precious to actually send in the post. ;)

Blaster noises and wookie growls are compulsory!

[MortiS-the-Lost]

Hello People, I'm just going to let my mind vomit forth ideas directly into this post now

++ PREPARING MORTIS TO COMPUTER UPLINK ++

++ WARNING – CHANNEL OPEN – READ AT YOUR OWN RISK ++

Ok, so it looks the options for a Star Wars rule system are:

WotC's D20 Star Wars, which is designed for miniatures (albeit crappy pre-painted 'collectable' ones). But D20 is not a highly favoured system around here.

The D6 Star Wars RPG by West End Games. Which Axl is already familiar with and has GM'd before. But, my fellow dungeoneer Billiam, informs us that it isn't a fast playing system.

Or 3rd the option, adapt/write another system.
Everyone here seems to favour adapting a sci-fi version the system I use for the Quest games, I however would recommend you use the Space Crusade Rules as a starting point.

Whatever system is chosen I want to make it clear now before we get into this that I will being playing and I will offer advice and help, but  I will not be taking a major role in writing the game nor will I be GM-ing as I have a big list of other things I really should be getting on with. That wasn't meant to be rude or anything, I just wanted to make role in this project clear.  

Ok here's a few thoughts to get you going if you choose to write a home brew system for the games.

Classes/Character Types. The major part of any RPG is what type of characters people can play and how they work together in game. The most common character types are as follows:

Tank/Fighter (close combat specialist, can take and deal out a lot of damage, vital in fantasy games, but not so much in sci-fi)

Ranged (this class's job is to shoot things from mid-to-long distance, Ranged takes president over Tank in most sci-fi games)

Healer (the Cleric in most fantasy games, the healer patches up the other Characters during or after combat and prevents the party from dyeing, a vital, but oft unappreciated role)

Theif/Rogue (the expert on getting locked doors open and disarming traps, in a sci-fi games this often involves 'hacking' computers and overriding security systems)

Mage (stands at the back, shoots lighting bolts and supports the rest of the party. Not so prevalent in Sci-fi as they are in Fantasy, but magic-like Physic Powers are not uncommon in sci-fi)

Striker (similar to Tank, but generally able to move faster and more lightly armoured, they tend to hit and run)

Useless Bard (does little to nothing most of the time, may provide 'buffs' for other party members in certain situations or some negotiation role during talky bits, but for meat of the game does nothing)

All rounders and Duel-Classes (most other Character types are simply combinations and variants of the ones above )

I've made suggestions as to what character types might work for a Star Wars RPG in a previous post. Also the Lego Star Wars computer games might be a good reference tool here.

The other major part of an adventuring RPG is the Quests. What kind of missions will the characters be expected to go on?
For a Star Wars game I imagine rebels sabotaging Space Ships, taking down Force Field Generators and stealing plans for fully functional Battle-Stations. But you may also want to think about rescuing princesses in kinky outfits (I know I do). Your stock enemies will be Storm Troopers, Bounty Hunters and War Droids. End-of-level-Boss type enemies will be Sith Lords, Rancors and really big War Droids.

Which reminds me ... the idea of doing a Star Wars game came out of me and Rob talking about what miniatures he'd like to sculpt and he mentioned Storm Troopers, but before that point we where  talking about a more generic no-holes-bared Sci-fi game (my suggestion was the HHGTG universe!). So  you may want to look into doing something more generic Sci-fi  like Mark suggested, before settling on Star Wars. It might also be worth going back and taking a look at this old thread:
http://n2.nabble.com/Space-Hulk-style-adventure-game-td1093670.html#a1093670 

another point worth making (which I made in a previous post in fact) is that despite it's popularity, the system I use for the Quest Games I run is not very suited to Sci-fi (these are not the rules your looking for). For a quick playing Sci-fi rule set with room for expansion I'd suggest using the Space Crusade rules for several reasons including:

It already has rules for sci-fi weapons and equipment, it's simply a matter of converting them from the 40k Universe to the Star Wars one; Light Sabre = Power Sword, Blaster = Lasgun and so on

The dice are going to be easier to replicate, the White Space Crusade Dice give the same results as D6 – 4 and the Red Dice the same as D6 -3. You can buy a bunch of red and white D6's and blank out the numbers 3 to 6 on the white ones and 4 to 6 on the red ones, use filler and then paint over it.
(Please note that only own as many HeroQuest Dice as I do because I own quite a lot of copies of HeroQuest and similar games and even then we don't always have enough combat dice to go round during a large game)

Billiam Babble posted a link to site with PDFs of the Space Crusade Rules Books Here: http://n2.nabble.com/Space-Crusade-rule-book-expansions-and-board-downloads-td4044772.html#a4044772
(the same PDFs can also be made directly available on the forum if people should so wish)

Sean Patten's - Rules Crusade which is based on the Space Crusade rules is also worth checking out
http://ironhands.com/rcintro.htm
he has done a lot of work on the basic system including an extensive weapons and equipment list covering pretty much all of the 40k universe and an advancement system for troops. This might save you a lot of time.

An XP based advancement system like the one I use for Quest should be pretty easy to tack onto the Space Crusade rules and Fate Points would be useful to work into the rules too. Reward XP for all the usual things, killing dudes, solving puzzles, ect (vast amounts of XP should be deducted from any player who dares to mention Midi-chlorians)

If you decide to work on a home brew game, whatever system you use in the end, read up on the 2 existing Star Wars RPGs so you have an idea of how they handle the different Character types and the weapons and equipment from Star Wars, this will make it easier to judge how powerful a weapon or Force Power should be in game

Confused? Over whelmed? Welcome to world of game design!

PS Rob: what ever happens to that idea of converting Bomerz Over Da Sulpha Rivers into a Death-Star-Trench X-wing vs Tie Fighter game?

[MarkRG]

Although this is drifting off abit, we could by using necromunda rules have small teams say of only heros and grouping togther for various missons.

Game on.

[Billiam Babble]

I've been thinking.  Apart from the large amounts of dice, its probably quite a fast playing system (WEG's d6 based swrpg) - I've only played it a few times a long long time ago. Make sure if you're looking at the books that you have a copy of the amended combat rules (which came free with every adventure - major erratta regarding perception when deciding initiative I think)
Also WEG's D6 SWRPG has character templates which will match your character types well.  So its not a bad starting point at least for reference (Axl is wise).  Warning: if I remember right, lightsabers are deadly!

[MortiS-the-Lost]

Any progress on this project people?

[BobbieTheDamned]

Well I keep nearly buying storm trooper minis if that counts!

I think using the SC rules will be fine, they'll only need a tiny bit of modification and some vauge expansion for more of an experiance system and maybe borrowing your luck rules. Still not sure quite how I want the classes to work though

[MortiS-the-Lost]

XP and Fate are pretty easy to add to the basic system, in fact SC already has a quazi-XP system in the form of it's victory points system. Tie this to some kind of personal advancement system and you've got a working XP system.
 
Fate/Luck can be added to any system, it just an assigned number of re-rolls a player can use in game.
Some systems hand out Fate per-game allowing a player a fixed number of re-rolls each game, that is restored at beginning of each game. The only real innovation that my system has (so far as Fate goes) is linking Fate directly to the Experience and Advancement system.

It's not so much writing a new system as it is picking rules you like from different games and combining them to form something that plays the way you want.