Genesys System Dice

[souran]

So I was looking at the Genesys system (the generic for the FFG star wars). I know that this is not a super popular system here, but what is? Regardless, I am just looking at this system and wanted to get some people's thoughts besides "I don't like this because bears."


The core rulebook includes a chart that has the dice mapping. It is pretty clear that there is some needless obfuscation going on (For instance on the "ability/difficulty" dice sides 7 and 8 should be completely inverse. However they have given difficulty die side 7 the inverse symbol set of ability side 8 and vise versa.)

I have been looking but cannot come up with a simple way to describe the mapping so that you could play with normal polyhedral dice (without needed to have the chart right in front of you all the time). The dice being "custom" is a typical FFG cash grab. There has got to be a way to get these same results out of regular dice.

Secondly, I have another...quibble with the dice. I think that it's actually amazing that FFG has managed to make a whole rpg system using the damage dice from first edition descent. However, for a "narrative" game the only thing they actually explain that you can do with advantage and threat are things for combat and things for their social combat.

For most skills the advantage/threat axis of the game is non-existent, with no guidance given. So it's basically ass-pulls for everything. Since there isn't even really a decent set of things it can be compared to, there isn't' really any good way to know what he difference between a 1, 2, and 3 threat complication should be.

This isn't exactly a new problem. We all know that roll and add systems are poor at establishing the degree of success and that dice pool systems can easily identify the degree of success, but often have trouble assigning relevant meaning to all the gradations of success they can identify.

Having 2 "axes" mostly seems to exacerbate this. It seems like outside of the extensive lists for combat and "social combat" the advantage/threat dice basically end up being binary (because there won't really be additional stages of advantage/threat), or worse pointless because there won't be any obvious advantage or threat.

Can somebody who has played this speak to this a little more?

[OgreBattle]

I think most roleplay folks nowadays are looking for improv aids rather than a mechanically sound game, maybe the board game boom took all of the gameplay people.

So "never tell me the odds!" "lol I can't even if I wanted to" is the feature of the game

Here's a thread that covers the mechanics:

http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=54482& ... c&start=25

"To the extent that it is like their Warhammer system, it's fiddly as hell, has baroque and hard to calculate probabilities, resolution of actions takes a long time, it requires 3 kilograms of physical materials to play the game, and the game requires physical objects to expand so you're basically playing a board game rather than an RPG in the traditional sense. Also it costs about a hundred dollars and only covers a narrow range of character power within the context of the world with other narrow power ranges requiring other boxes that will also cost about a hundred dollars. "

[souran]

Yes, I read through that thread. It has major problems in that most of the people are talking out their ass without actually knowing anything about the system.

For instance, Frank makes that quote based on the warhammer version of the system, and clearly at the time didn't even have a good grasp of the faces the dice actually have.

I don't actually need a high level discussion of the mechanics because I have the book in front of me. I guess maybe I should rephrase my questions and simplify them.

1st) Has anybody figured out how to avoid having to pay FFG for their dumb ass dice? There is a chart you could use, but it seems like there should be a faster way (like value/2 = success).

2nd) can anybody who has played this or the star wars versions speak to how often the advantage/threat access does anything for non-combat tests?

[Orca]

There should be some online dice rollers which can handle their fancy dice. I know there are a couple which can do the warhammer 3 dice; I don't know whether these are the same as the Genesys dice.

Having said that, obviously I haven't played Genesys or the related Star Wars game.

[Username17]

For instance, Frank makes that quote based on the warhammer version of the system, and clearly at the time didn't even have a good grasp of the faces the dice actually have.

Fair. But also irrelevant. The underlying issue is that Warhammer 3 was failtastic because it's obscurantic bullshit. The different dice sizes and weird faces and tracking multiple different kinds of positive and negative things added from different die faces doesn't add anything. It's complicated, it makes calculating odds of success very difficult and interpreting results at the table virtually impossible.

The fact that the Star Wars version brings in slightly different dice doesn't make things better. The underlying issue is the same, and bringing in extra die faces makes things factually worse.

There's no reason to be tracking multiple levels of success and failure and multiple levels of advantage and disadvantage on the same action. Even having "success with threat" and "failure with advantage" is too much for many tasks where you just fucking want to know whether you succeed or not. Introducing gradations like "double success with one threat" or "one success with double threat" just makes that situation worse.

It's like the Glory Die in the latest failed attempt to get us to care about a Warhammer 40K game. One of the underlying difficulties with dicepool games is that it's already difficult to define how rolling 2 hits differs from rolling 3 or 4. Dicepools inherently give you a nice exponential curve that outputs degrees of success organically - but that does leave the MC in a position where they have to ad hoc a lot of things. Adding Advantage and Disadvantage to that means that they have three times as many outputs they are being asked to meaningfully differentiate. And FFG goes way beyond even that, by having multiple levels of Advantage and Disadvantage.

The answer to why no one takes it seriously is that it's an obvious failure of design. The authors of the system don't know what it means to get 4 Success and 2 Disadvantages on a stealth check or a piloting roll, and neither does anyone else. The entire dice system is pointless because the outputs are undefined and undefinable.

-Username17

[angelfromanotherpin]

FFG has done a lot of quality work, but at some point about half the company became the same crew that runs gaming in Huxley's Brave New World.

Imagine the folly of allowing people to play elaborate games which do nothing whatever to increase consumption. It's madness. Nowadays the Controllers won't approve of any new game unless it can be shown that it requires at least as much apparatus as the most complicated of existing games.

Centrifugal Bumblepuppy will probably be a 2021 release.

[OgreBattle]

runs gaming in Huxley's Brave New World.

I think these use these dice there: