Star Wars Saga Edition - Imperial Espionage Recruitment

Captain_Karzak · Post by **Captain_Karzak** » Wed Apr 02, 2014 8:09 pm

Hi, Denners (Denizens?). I get the impression there aren't a whole lot of Star Wars Saga Edition fans over here, but I love this message board, so I'll give this a shot and try recruiting here anyway.

I am looking for 4 to 5 players for a Star Wars Saga Edition campaign set during, or near, the timeline of the original movie trilogy.
Duration and Frequency: 4 to 6 hours 1/week via Skype. Day of Week TBD by group availability. Monday evenings, Friday evenings and anytime on the weekends are times that work for me (all Pacific Std Time). Please be sure to tell me what times you are available.
Campaign Pitch: The players will take on the role of experienced Imperial Intelligence agents who are up for selection into the elite ranks of the Bureau of Adjustments. To determine if you guys have the “right stuff” your team must endure a crucible: Your mission, if you choose to accept it, (and by joining this campaign you are accepting it) is to help stabilize an entire Sector of the Empire.

Aparo sector, in the Outer rim along the Hydian Way, lies adjacent to the Corporate Sector. You are to displace unfavorable local regimes, reign in Imperial authorities who are prejudicing the stability of the region, root out militant movements, neutralize criminal syndicates, thwart Mega-corporate ambitions, and where possible cultivate and train system cells of Imperial Agents from the local populace to bolster Imperial Intelligence’s presence on important worlds throughout the sector.

The Bureau of Operations and Aparo Sector branch of the Intelligence Bureau will suggest particular objectives that will serve as waypoints for your team to navigate your course through this very broad and long-duration assignment. It will be up the players how ruthlessly, mercifully, and ethically you wish to behave in accomplishing your mission. For instance if you are told that the Agency believes that a local regent should be “neutralized”, your team can choose to assassinate him, overthrow him, co-opt him and turn him loyal, blackmail him into behaving better, induce constitutional reforms that leave him as a figurehead, etc. As long as you get the job done without causing massive unwanted repercussions, Imperial Intelligence will view your actions in a favorable light.

Upon completion of this crucible (successfully or not depending on the quality of your efforts), the PC’s will surely have drawn the attention of many powerful organizations. The second stage of this campaign will involve conspiracies on the galactic level, with power plays being made whose impact will echo throughout history. Much of Star Wars canon goes out the window at this stage and together we will be authoring a new destiny for the Galaxy Far, Far Away.
Character Creation Rules: 30 Point Buy, Level 6, Maximized Hit Points. Maximum attainable level of 16. Leveling progression will be slow, with levels gained at GM discretion. Destiny optional rules are NOT being used. Use all official WotC books except Scavanger’s Guide and Threats of the Galaxy. You do not have to play a human character, but please no droid characters (traumatic experience from previous campaign). Force users are okay if played discretely (dashing about while hitting people with a shiny stick is the opposite of discrete, comprende?).

Just to be crystal clear: This is NOT a Rebel campaign. You do NOT secretly work for the Rebel Alliance (or any organization that has an agenda that is virtually identical to that of the Rebel Alliance). The intended focus of this campaign is Imperial vs Imperial.

Saga does not use alignment. But this reference may help: this campaign is best suited to characters of the Neutral persuasion: Lawful Neutral, True Neutral, and maybe Chaotic Neutral (assuming there actually exist players who understand the difference between Chaotic Neutral and Chaotic Evil). Lawful Evil and Neutral Evil will probably work just fine too. Please don't be a chaotic evil dickhead.

Good-aligned characters are welcome too, as long as you are clever, and you understand that this is not a rebel campaign! You will be in a position to influence real political power, so you may be able to change some things for the better, if you care to try.

House rules: You will need to tolerate quite a lot of house rules. Will post a document later. Some rules include:
(1) All classes (including Prestige Classes and even the non-heroic class) have full Base Attack Bonus progression (like the soldier class)
(2) Any class can have any skill as a trained skill (ignore the class skill lists). Choosing Use the Force as a trained skill obviously still requires you to have taken the Force Sensitivity feat.
(3) Various small changes have been made to the hit dice, number of trained skills, and the starting feats of some of the classes to account for the game balance shifts caused by the previous 2 rules [I tried to make scoundrels not suck, and soldiers still worth choosing now that everyone has full BAB]
(4) All skill focus feats grant a scaling competency bonus of +1 per 2 character levels, rounded up, to a maximum of +5 by level 9 [so by level 6, any skill focus feats you've picked up will be granting a +3 competency bonus]
(5) All characters attacks deal bonus damage equal to their full heroic level (instead of 1/2 their heroic level per standard rules). This also applies to force powers that deal damage. If a force-sensitive character has dark side score of >0, then they must add their full dark side score (instead of their level) to damage dealt with force powers.
(6) Characters who fall to the dark side are not confiscated by the GM. You can continue to play them and the GM will occasionally mess with your character's head to represent the madness of the dark side. Wisdom checks (Wisdom mod + d20) with a DC ranging from 5 to 15 will be used to resist these dark side episodes.

Thank you for reading this far. I hope you can join me in this campaign!

RelentlessImp · Post by **RelentlessImp** » Thu Apr 03, 2014 2:35 am

Huh. I'm a big fan of Saga Edition (more so than d20 and d20R, less so than d6), and would probably be down for this. I'll wait for a full list of house rules before giving final say, though. Who knows, might be something distasteful in 'em.

EDIT: Also, available Friday evenings and weekend mornings/afternoons. Weekend evenings and Monday evenings are consumed by raiding.

Dean · Post by **Dean** » Thu Apr 03, 2014 7:39 am

I might be onboard for this. I'd definitely read the house rule doc and check it out. Also as 6th level characters how much money would we be starting with? I don't recall Saga having above 1st level starting fund rules.

PS: Also Denners or Denizens works fine. Denizens is the acknowledged pun title we have.

RelentlessImp · Post by **RelentlessImp** » Thu Apr 03, 2014 6:25 pm

deanruel87 wrote:Also as 6th level characters how much money would we be starting with? I don't recall Saga having above 1st level starting fund rules.

There was a FAQ about that shortly after Saga's launch. I'll see if I can find it, but from memory, starting funds are ((Level*(Level-1))*2000) credits, similar to D&D 3.5's Wealth By Level formula (or identical).

EDIT: here it is. Level*(Level-1)*2000 credits, double for a Noble with the Wealth talent. Merc_1's post is a quote from a dev.

Dean · Post by **Dean** » Thu Apr 03, 2014 7:16 pm

Nice, so 60,000 creds. Alright I'll see if I can cobble something together at work today.

Captain_Karzak · Post by **Captain_Karzak** » Thu Apr 03, 2014 8:12 pm

No that's not quite right. I have the FAQ saved to computer. Lemme see if I can attach it to this post...

nope have to use a link instead:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/gfe58 ... Thread.pdf

Basically at least half of that amount is supposed to be in totally non-liquid form, as in property(real estate), favors, and allies.

Anyway, it is largely irrelevant? The first part of this campaign is essentially a selection course to become Imperial Adjusters: You will start this assignment with only basic civilian gear and you are supposed to use your wits and skills to acquire what you need.

I mean with Full BAB, maximized HP, your entire level being added to damage, how hard could it be to go up to some non-heroic NPCs (d4 hit dice) and tell them "I need your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle speeder." ?

(uh just to be clear you will start with clothes, obviously)

FYI Standard Operating Procedure for Imperial Intelligence system cells is to siphon resources from the ISB (Imperial Intelligence basically provides no direct funding, and very little setup equipment). After all, if you can't outwit the fucktards at the ISB, you have no business being in Imperial Intelligence.

As covert agents of the most powerful government in the Galaxy Far Far Away, you are going to steal, build, or requisition what you need over the course of this campaign. If the mission requires the use of a 250,000 credit skipray blast boat or a 1,000,000 credit Theta-class luxury shuttle, then that's what you get and you aren't going to be paying out of you own personal finances for it!

Regarding house rules: I'll provide a rough draft of my house rules document by Saturday. If there's anything in there you just hate, we'll see if I can make some kind of accommodation. I hoped to have this document ready for you by now, but my latest bout of insomnia is killing my productivity.

I'm posting to other message boards to find more players, and I think there's a couple RPG meetup groups in my city that I can go to tonight and this Saturday to find more people. There's another guy on a different message board who is interested, although there are scheduling difficulties due to him being 9 hours ahead of me.

Hopefully I can scrape together enough players to start this game before the middle of this month (or whenever it is my midterms start). Thanks for your patience.

edits: speling an grammer

Dean · Post by **Dean** » Thu Apr 03, 2014 10:49 pm

Wait. So to be clear, of the 60,000 they suggest you start with you want 30,000 to be in non liquid assets like property (which is a liquid asset) and favors. But we aren't actually being given 30,000 in favors and property. Also of the remaining 30,000 we also dont get any of and start the game with clothes and no weapons and are expected to brawl the first people we meet for a knife or something. Is this hunger games? I would play Hunger Games or Twin Peaks but it seems like a strange and counterintuitive mandate for a Star Wars game.

If they are planning on us overthrowing militant regimes and assassinating targets they should probably give us the equipment to do so. It seems circuitous, were supposed to build and requisition things costing potentially millions but we aren't allowed any requisitions and we have no allowed items even if we could construct them

Captain_Karzak · Post by **Captain_Karzak** » Fri Apr 04, 2014 1:15 am

It's not what I suggest, nor is it a house rule of any kind. It is an official clarification by the actual game developers that at least half of that wealth is non-liquid [and no, real estate property is NOT a liquid asset] or intangible (as in favors and allies).

Part of your responsibility in Aparo sector is to set up and train system cells. These are members of the local populace who you will train to conduct covert operations at the behest of the Agency. These guys have to acquire much of their resources themselves (excepting certain sophisticated communications gear) using the training they have been given, and usually do so by stealing from the ISB.

These guys might have whatever gear a civilian might possess which certainly could include basic firearms but certainly wouldn't include, say, 10,000 year old customized Mandolorian Power Armor equipped with KoToR-era personal energy shields.

As part of this selection process, you have to demonstrate that you operate under the kind of constraints that a local system cell would, because you are going to be training such cells, and throughout your career, you will be reliant on the assistance of such cells.

Now if you were given a directive (in future assignments) to, say overthrow a rogue Moff, then yes it is very reasonable to assume you would be issued far better gear than a days rations and a pack of smokes.

Let me be clear: You will NOT be starting this game in the middle of a hot zone. You will be starting on a world with a minimal Agency presence, whose loyalty to the empire is questionable, but not to the point of open rebellion (in fact they may not even be in league with the Rebel Alliance, but perhaps with a Megacorp or criminal syndicate).

Your initial job would be to solidify your cover identity, and then establish at least one system cell to support you on that world. With this local support, you will investigate local power players and determine if there is a problem and how to solve it - which may or may not require the use of force (not the Force) at your discretion.

You will use your cell(s) to acquire the resources you need to rectify the situation, unless you discover something urgently wrong - such as a Rebel Base, a Jedi presence, or a major conspiracy implicating the Sector government. Problems of that scale, the Agency will handle directly and actively. If such circumstance were to arise, then the Agency would attempt to supply you with gear appropriate to the task.

I don't understand the Hunger games reference. You are demonstrating your ability to act independent of Agency support, because as an Adjuster you be sent into dangerous situations far from the Agencies reach, where you cannot walk around dressed in an AT-AT. Why is this weird or counter-intuitive? I am not a spy IRL so maybe I am missing something....?

Returning to the suggested starting credits of the FAQ, that stuff could represent your own personal wealth - like your bachelor pad back on Imperial Center with rotating cabinets that hide your own private arsenal of modded gear behind racks of expensive beverages. But it's not always appropriate to bring that stuff with you. And really, how many cops or soldiers expend their entire life savings on equipment to bring work? You're not role playing a D&D adventurer. right?

The last Star Wars game I ran, we didn't even track credits or deal with highly modded gear and the PC's were nearly unstoppable (and none of them were even force users). Outside of spaceships, wealth =! power in Saga. There are no cloaks of resistance or stat boosting items that the game mechanics demand you have in order to be a viable character. Outside of lightsabers, there are no magic weapons, and even lightsabers aren't a money pit like magic weapons are in D&D. And heroic defenses scale so rapidly that it is totally acceptable to run into combat completely unarmored.

Dean · Post by **Dean** » Fri Apr 04, 2014 4:24 am

Ok so I will respectfully retract my name from consideration. With that said I will now talk about things you've said to try to make points about game design. If at any point you consider this thread-shitting then tell me to fuck off and I will.

Ok first of the non-liquid 30,000 rule. That rule is bullshit and you're doing it double bullshit. How much is 30,000 in property worth? How much is a 30,000 dollar favor worth? The answer to both of those things is obviously "30,000 dollars". Saying that something is valued at a specific amount of money but is also simultaneously invaluable and unknowable in value is fucking retarded. If they wanted to start you with half the money they listed then they should have done that instead. But saying a 30,000 dollar favor cannot be called in for a definable quantity of money is idiotic.
Even if we assume that rule is fine your proposed rules are still not fine. You have not written up a chooseable series of favors, allies, contacts, and homes that players will be given in order to make up half their money. You are simultaneously saying that half the players money MUST be put in Column B and then saying there was never any Column B.

Of course there's no Column A either because you want the players to be fighting for concepts like "More respected by the ISB" rather than ships and credits. What you don't realize is that's a shitty idea. There are rules for Droids and Blasters and Spaceships. I know what they do, how they interact with the environment and what I have to do to get them. The things you want the party to work for exist only in your head and gaining more or less of a completely undefined thing is a meaningless reward. So if I want to work for something or get rewarded in something you better believe any player will want the gear and creds and ships that are things I can know. That's why your campaign seems massively disempowering to me. Because the carrot on the end of the stick is just a picture of you giving me the thumbs up.

There are no rules for training up resistance cells or creating cover identities or manipulating the ISB. Your focus is things that don't exist and you have demanded the exclusion of what does. You have decided to express your campaign through the Saga game, said it will focus on things that aren't in the game, and then excluded huge volumes of things that do exist and are a focus of the game. I don't understand why you would pick up the star wars rulebook and say "Lets play with this. Except not allowing what is in this book and focusing on what isn't in it"

Captain_Karzak · Post by **Captain_Karzak** » Fri Apr 04, 2014 5:30 am

Stop calling it "my proposed rules". It's just the rules for starting wealth for characters above level 1. I'm not making shit up. You just won't read the bloody document I linked. That's official FAQ & Errata compilation.

STOP STAYING ITS MY RULE! It's the GOD DAMN GAME RULES, okay?

And those rules that I linked to (WHICH ARE NOT MINE), do price out the monetary value for favors and allies.

Now I don't know if I am supposed to write up a list of favors or allies. It seems fair that the players should propose what they want, and then I price it according to the guidelines. I mean, unless you feel I don't have enough work to do as a GM.

But I do understand how that is less cool than buying gear to a lot of people. The only reason they have that 1/2 non-liquid, intangible rule is because the game system is trying to de-emphasize pure monetary rewards, and instead push players to think about building connections with NPCs. So instead of treasure, you earn the good will of NPC's and this good will is valued as favors or allies priced via the formulae listed in the official FAQ and errata document that you won't read.

You're right about property though. They gave me no rules for what say 15000 credits in real estate means, but I don't see how that's really all my fault.

Why couldn't you have met me half way and proposed what you want for that many credits, instead of posting snarky images?

As for the motivation angle. Well that is a good reason to bow out.

Look, most campaigns I've ever been in expected players to be more than purely mercenary. They are supposed to care about the game world, their PC's status in it, and about the NPC's they meet.

Sure, I'm here on the Den. I too enjoy making my numbers higher. I enjoy it a lot. But it is never the thing that I enjoy the most about a campaign (well except for that 4e campaign I was in... gods I hope to never be in another like it). If better gear and ships and creds are the only things that light up the reward centers of your brain, I'm not sure what to do honestly. I mean no one has ever told me this before.

I guess when I ask for players who want to be an imperial campaign I'm asking for players who are excited about actually playing a character on the side of the Empire. Someone who wants to expand it's reach, and climb the Imperial hierarchy until they have enough power to grab a part of the Galaxy and try to shape it to their desires, or something like that. Is that a crazy thing to expect? [not rhetorical, I am really wondering about this now]

I mean you still get to go up in level and you get better and more capable throughout the campaign so it's not like there's no mechanical benefit to participation.

About there not being rules for a lot of this stuff. Well I guess that's true. Do you know of any game system that handles this kind of material? I do not, and I would be very interested to know if there is a game system out there that would do this well. So please tell me if you know of one.

As far as why I would choose the Star Wars Saga System for this kind of game... that is a weird fucking question. It's a star wars campaign, so I used a modern Star Wars System. One that doesn't require me to buy weird dice.

So anyway, no you're not thread shitting, but to be honest, I coulda done without the picture and I wish you would have read the FAQ/Errata document, if for no other reason than stopping you from accusing me of making up rules or claiming that I was cheating you out of the money that your character is supposed to have via the rules.[/u]

Dean · Post by **Dean** » Fri Apr 04, 2014 6:09 am

To be clear I did read the document, every last letter of the 77 pages. I understand that you didn't write the rule I'm criticizing but as I said I was transitioning to talking about Saga's design in general. I am also talking about things you say of course but my critique of that rule doesn't impugn your writing skills because you did not write it. I'm aware you have no guidelines with which to figure out what 10,000 in favors or property or allies actually means at all. That is in fact the very reason I'm saying that that rule is bullshit. Because it is internally contradictory, nonsensical, and foists lots of additional workload onto you the DM.

Sure, I'm here on the Den. I too enjoy making my numbers higher. I enjoy it a lot. But it is never the thing that I enjoy the most about a campaign... If better gear and ships and creds are the only things that light up the reward centers of your brain, I'm not sure what to do honestly. I mean no one has ever told me this before.

It's not just that I only play for the benjamins. When I actually play in a game I form relationships and goals within the game world just like everyone else, and that is often some of the most rewarding parts of the game. However removing gear, ship modification, droids, and force powers from a Star wars game is like removing Magic items, non NPC classes, and spells from a D&D game. There's just not that much content left. I like and enjoy roleplaying but there's no reason to not use the system you are using and if someone signs up for the system you are using they will expect to use that system.

As to games that handle covert ops fairly well there's Shadowrun and Spycraft. Both are pretty good systems and both of those do have rules for things like creating cover identities. Maybe I'm wrong and Saga can actually run a good covert operatives game. Between the restriction rules, the black market rules, and the gear requisitioning rules in Galaxy at War you might be able to put something solid together. Take a look at your options and see what would give you the best game you'd want.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Fri Apr 04, 2014 6:40 am

I hate to point this out. No wait. I LIKE to point this out, because I hate Saga edition and like to point out it's endless glaring flaws and the inadequacies of it's less than third rate authors.

But seriously that "half wealth" errata is fucking hilarious what with that half of wealth being spent on "illiquid assets" includes "property" and that reads not as in "real-estate" just property as in material possessions.

So basically the entire fucking half wealth bullshit just reads "Oh and you get to say you definitely spent 50% of it already on fucking droids and space ships and blasters.

I mean as a wealth limitation at worst the only actioan limitation that text actually applies to your possessions is that it implies that no more than half your wealth is permitted to be in unspent cash or savings.

It actually reads as a direction that you MUST have already spent at least half of it on stuff (which might I note you still own) and that can include anything that counts as fucking "property".

And then on the side it inexplicably and laughably throws in some pricing for favors that you CAN spend up to 100% (but as little as 0%) of your wealth on.

Which might I note is entirely fucking crazy pricing.

Because if you guys are 60,000 credit characters that means you can apparently afford ONLY 1 permanent level 1 ally each with only a 1%chance of them turning up any time you need them. (WOW that is stupidly stingy, especially for 66% of your total wealth).

BUT you can have 20 single use level 1 allies who seem to have a 100% chance of turning up then denouncing their friendship and never helping you again. So you just go for the second one and burn 1 per encounter for a 100% chance of a level 1 ally for 20 fights (or 20 of them for 1 fight).

Or screw it you can have a single use 100% chance of a level 20 ally for the same price too.

Seriously Those prices are fucking totally unbalanced stupidity. They don't give sane outputs for almost ANY desirable game outcome.

So you ignore the insanity of the "allies" text because fuck it anything you pull out of your ass will be better than that. And the rest of it goes back to reading "You must spend at least 50% of your wealth in advance on whatever stuff you feel like. "

Captain_Karzak · Post by **Captain_Karzak** » Fri Apr 04, 2014 8:59 pm

deanruel87 wrote: It's not just that I only play for the benjamins. When I actually play in a game I form relationships and goals within the game world just like everyone else, and that is often some of the most rewarding parts of the game. However removing gear, ship modification, droids, and force powers from a Star wars game is like removing Magic items, non NPC classes, and spells from a D&D game. There's just not that much content left. I like and enjoy roleplaying but there's no reason to not use the system you are using and if someone signs up for the system you are using they will expect to use that system.

Okay. I'm sorry if I jumped to conclusions.

Where I'm coming from: I've played a lot of Shadowrun 4e. I've had long, seemly endless spreadsheets of modified gear. After a year of gaming, it amounted to so much fucking minutiae that it stopped being fun to track. Even worse, when I GM Shadowrun I have to deal with that same fucking minutiae for every single npc that supposed to represent the slightest threat to the PC's - it's just a huge amount of extra work.

So when I run or play Saga, I am super-duper not excited to see all the droid modifications or those blasted rules in Scum and Villiany for creating and modding your own gear. It gives me Shadowrun flashbacks.

In the Star Wars films, hardly anyone important has gear (even non-jedi). Usually like a gun and clothes and a vehicle and bam! they're ready to save the Galaxy. That's what I want. A game where the gear is waaaay less important than the character's abilities, and I think the Saga can pull that off.

deanruel87 wrote: As to games that handle covert ops fairly well there's Shadowrun and Spycraft. Both are pretty good systems and both of those do have rules for things like creating cover identities. Maybe I'm wrong and Saga can actually run a good covert operatives game. Between the restriction rules, the black market rules, and the gear requisitioning rules in Galaxy at War you might be able to put something solid together. Take a look at your options and see what would give you the best game you'd want.

Cool! Thanks, I'll put Spycraft at the top of my list of new game systems to learn. I think a lot of these covert things in Saga are handles as Deception checks and Knowledge Bureaucracy checks. Abstracting system cells would require me to use the Organization mechanics from the Force Unleashed sourcebook, or borrow some other organization system from another d20 game. As a last resort I could just take Shadowrun's group contacts mechanics.

In general, I don't share your opinion of Shadowrun, however. I think it has a good core mechanic, but it's a long way from a good system. And the relevant rules we're talking (black market availability checks, forgery) about are all extended tests (an oh so many of them), which I found to be an insipid and overused mechanic in general.

Phonelobster, are you still here? Would you answer some questions?

So first, I think you're basically right about how that "half wealth" errata was supposed to be interpreted and used. So I pissed off deanruel87 off for no reason. Uhhhh..... my bad, deanruel87.

But I still don't understand why you hate this system.

Here at the Den, there are two huuuuge house rule documents being hosted: Tomes for 3.5, and Ends of the Matrix for Shadowrun 4e.

These documents exist because (aside from Frank and K being awesome) of the seemingly endless ways in which these systems fuck things up. In fact, Frank and K were unable to complete the Book of Gears because they would have had to rewrite so much of the system, IRC. And Shadowrun, Fuck Man, no edition of Shadowrun has even been able to produce usable rules for the goddamn Matrix and the problems don't end there by a long shot .

But people like these systems anyway. So the fact that a system has a lot of flaws isn't enough to make a system bad. So why do you hate Saga so much? Why are these systems spared your vitriol?

There are 5 Star Wars systems that I know of: WEG's D6, OCR, RCR, Saga, and Edge of Empire? If you are familiar with them, and have the time, could you tell me why any of those systems are better than Saga? I only know OCR (or maybe was it RCR?) and Saga.

RelentlessImp · Post by **RelentlessImp** » Fri Apr 04, 2014 9:11 pm

Captain_Karzak wrote: And Shadowrun, Fuck Man, no edition of Shadowrun has even been able to produce usable rules for the goddamn Matrix and the problems don't end there by a long shot.

I dunno, 3E had it pretty good with the 'leave the decker at home and NPC'd'. But that's neither here nor there, as there's a couple of Shadowrun threads already, and we're talking Saga here.

I honestly think this can work - but give us the 60k credits, there's not really a lot we can actually purchase and use but it'll give us plenty of stuff like bribe money to grease the social ladders. "Requisitioning" doesn't work for black ops because the whole point of black ops is nobody is supposed to know about the black ops, or even who the operatives are, not even their direct superiors, and certainly not some Quartermaster on some space station in orbit around some fucked backwater planet. Operatives are expected to hit the black market contacts for most of their gear, and that's not really possible if we're required to requisition shit.

EDIT: Also, Spycraft is just d20 Modern with better rules. Definitely learn it, the curve isn't steep if you're familiar with Modern.

Captain_Karzak · Post by **Captain_Karzak** » Fri Apr 04, 2014 9:40 pm

Oh yeah, no question those 60k are totally yours to play with. As Phonelobster pointed out I was not reading that FAQ response correctly.

I guess I'll let the PC's bring their personal gear with them on assignment [edit: oh I see what you are saying about black ops... that makes does make sense.]. Can we have some kinda gentleman's agreement not to have crazy items that wreck the RNG?*

I really, really don't want to have to spend a lot of time figuring out specifically what gear my NPC's need to have to remain relevant. I know it's my job to carefully select the feats for my NPC's, and talents if they have heroic levels, but fuck I really don't want to have deal with Shadowrun levels of gear.

Do you have any advice on how I should handle force using PC's? Should I just have them be totally government sanctioned, with their own Dark-side mentor overseeing their development? I think it's weird to have a PC running around lightsabering people to death during the Rebellion era, but ..... maybe I'm just being a killjoy by requiring them to be all subtle and shit.

* How much is too much of a bonus? Let's just look at items that affect skill checks: If a 20th level character gains +10 from character levels, +5 if trained, +5 if they have skill focus and around +5 for having an extraordinary attribute, how much of a bonus would you say equipment should provide compared to these modifiers?

One idea i was toying with is that any and all gear that provides a skill bonus provides a flat +5 equipment bonus. That's a big enough number that it makes a real difference in game play and is worth writing down but there's no weird stacking going on so the RNG doesn't get wrecked. It's also simple. I don't have to look up what bonus something gives: I know it's a +5. Thoughts? Too low? Too..... weird?

edits: use like too much

RelentlessImp · Post by **RelentlessImp** » Fri Apr 04, 2014 10:10 pm

One thing about about Saga to begin with is that "Equipment Bonuses" are bullshit bonuses, and don't exist. They provide the same sort of bonus that Heroic Levels give. So while equipment can provide a low-level character (or Non-Heroic character) with a more-than-level-appropriate-bonus, Heroic Levels tend to take the place of what equipment provides. Armor, for instance, not stacking with the Character Level bonus to Defenses.

Equipment is, by and large, optional and unnecessary unless you want something specific, like an EVA armor suit that provides piss-poor defenses but lets you breathe in space. More or less, "Character Level = Level-Appropriate Bonus" for almost everything.

Also, in Empire era, Force-users are actively hunted and killed by Vader, detected by the Emperor. While there may be some who escape notice (see: Yoda), government-sanctioned Force Users is not a thing. A Force Sensitive is going to have to be exceptionally careful or pathetically weak to escape notice by the Emperor or Vader, or, in a game like this, being very careful not to draw too much attention to themselves.

Something else to consider is that Vader and Palpatine operate under the Rule of Two. Vader might have had his own apprentice (Starkiller), but that was something he did on his own, in direct opposition to the Rule of Two. (Rule of Two stating that only two Sith may exist, the Apprentice and the Master, and the Apprentice is expected to kill the Master to become the Master and to take his own Apprentice.)

Captain_Karzak · Post by **Captain_Karzak** » Fri Apr 04, 2014 11:00 pm

RelentlessImp wrote:One thing about about Saga to begin with is that "Equipment Bonuses" are bullshit bonuses, and don't exist. They provide the same sort of bonus that Heroic Levels give. So while equipment can provide a low-level character (or Non-Heroic character) with a more-than-level-appropriate-bonus,

Shit that's brilliant! So you take the higher of your character level bonus or whatever your equipment bonus is, just like with armor. Thank's RelentlessImp, that's the rule I'll use!

Regarding force users: Actually the Inquisitorius and the Prophets of the Darkside (sometimes AKA the Secret Order of the Empire) both exist during this era, and with Palpatine's explicit knowledge, approval, and support. That's not movie canon, but it is canon... of some kind.

But in any case these are not large organizations. The Inquisitorius is in fact rather small. I know that the Prophets of the Darkside are larger, but I don't really know/haven't bothered to determine how much more so.

You are damn right about Sith. Neither Vader nor Palpatine are making any more more Sith Apprentices or Sith Lords, however they are happy to employ Dark Jedi if they have a useful temperament (at minimum they have to be less psychotic than Vader).

RelentlessImp · Post by **RelentlessImp** » Fri Apr 04, 2014 11:07 pm

I didn't know about those two organizations, but I am aware of a few Force-Sensitive organizations that exist that are neither Jedi nor Sith, but they play next to no role in the Galaxy at large. And that's the base Saga rule, not mine, so everyone's expected to be at 10+Ability Mod+Heroic Level for their defenses or 10+Ability Mod+Equipment Bonus. I'm pretty sure equipment that increases skills does exist, but it's no more than +2 or +3, and they definitely don't directly affect the important stuff (IE, combat, social combat, etc). There are situational bonuses, like a rebreather giving bonuses to toxic environments, but there's no end-all be-all "All situations get +X" equipment.

Now, there might be in some of the other books, but the last time I had my Saga collection (which consisted of tFU, Threats, and the core book) there were no such things to my recollection.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Fri Apr 04, 2014 11:09 pm

Captain_Karzak wrote:Phonelobster, are you still here? Would you answer some questions?

So first, I think you're basically right about how that "half wealth" errata was supposed to be interpreted and used.

Actually. I think that while I clearly am correct about how it is written you probably WERE right about how it was intended.

I genuinely believe they INTENDED to mean "illiquid investment real estate" and just said illiquid property because they are just that dumb (being just that dumb both to make the mistake AND to stupidly intend the first stupid thing).

But you can never be sure about intentions and the way it was written is clear, so I'd go with that.

As to WTF they intended on the favors and allies bullshit broken numbers. I have no god damn idea. I'm guessing "no intentions lets throw some random numbers at it, I'm sure it will all work out fine".

But I still don't understand why you hate this system.

Saga edition was the third iteration of d20 star wars rules.

It was to some extent the second iteration of concepts from the D20modern system (maybe a later iteration if you count all or some of the d20 modern expansions as iterations).

All it's predecessors were themselves descendants of 3.x edition D&D which had 2 iterations already by then.

It learned nothing from it's predecessors. It was an active step backwards from d20 revised edition star wars. Which was impressive because that edition was pretty messed up.

I sat down with saga edition and could not even make an interesting character. The talent system is a vast pile of boring whoppingly underpowered ass interspersed with the occasional broken exploit.

Here at the Den, there are two huuuuge house rule documents

And there is nothing in saga edition to salvage. If I was going to modify a rules set to play star wars games with that were actually fun there is no reason in hell to touch anything from saga edition with a ten foot pole. It ALL FAILED. You would instead just make a system from scratch because you gain NOTHING by importing the horrid useless boring talent trees etc... that saga edition had.

But people like these systems anyway.

But no one likes star wars saga edition. I hate to break it to you but you are a minority in a minority in a minority if you like it. As in RPG players are a minority, Star Wars RPG players are a minority in that, and Saga edition players are a minority withing Star Wars RPG players. The most active Saga edition forums I saw on the internet, even several years ago were dead. No one cares. It lacks fans and it lacks fans because it is dull as bricks and lacked staying power on the market as a result.

Why are these systems spared your vitriol?

They aren't. Shadowrun is to a limited degree spared the vitriol of some posters in some respects. But not mine, I think the whole thing is pretty shit. Even the fans here think much or most of it is pretty terrible.

D&D and the tomes are marginally different. But even the tome fans and creators recognize flaws in both D&D 3.x and in the tomes themselves. And I personally am sufficiently sick of those flaws that I don't use either anymore given half a chance. To the point of preferring the wilderness of my own home brew rules ahead of them.

There are 5 Star Wars systems that I know of: WEG's D6, OCR, RCR, Saga, and Edge of Empire? If you are familiar with them, and have the time, could you tell me why any of those systems are better than Saga? I only know OCR (or maybe was it RCR?) and Saga.

I'm only really familiar with the Saga, d20 revised and d20 original.

They were all terrible. And despite massive online nostalgia for the d6 star wars I would suggest it is probably a piece of badly aged crap just by it's era alone. There probably hasn't really been an especially good star wars system, and until the franchise is potentially revived with new movies why would anyone want to play in a franchise that includes those fucking prequels anyway?

RelentlessImp · Post by **RelentlessImp** » Fri Apr 04, 2014 11:19 pm

PhoneLobster wrote: There probably hasn't really been an especially good star wars system, and until the franchise is potentially revived with new movies why would anyone want to play in a franchise that includes those fucking prequels anyway?

Well, you're at least mostly right about WEG d6, it is a poorly aged piece of shit, but its core mechanics are solid, until you start adding in the subsystems. But, speaking of who would want to play in the franchise - Star Wars was my introduction to Space Opera. I actually sort of liked the Prequel Trilogy, despite the hate it earned. I won't go into my opinions on how people blew it out of proportion by looking for offense, though.

The Prequels might have had wooden, crap acting, but the story was still okay. And the universe, no matter what people want to bitch about, is a ludicrously vast thing full of actually inhuman creatures. Sure, 90% of the species you see on-screen are some form of Near-Human, but there's literally dozens if not hundreds of Star Wars species who don't even have a basic humanoid form.

It's an alien universe, and I rather enjoy spending my time playing in a place wildly different, even if most of the differences are primarily window-dressing. And yeah, we're a minority of a minority of a minority, and our systems are always shit, but it's what we're given, and not everyone wants to come up with a system from scratch.

Captain_Karzak · Post by **Captain_Karzak** » Fri Apr 04, 2014 11:43 pm

Ah, yes. The equipment I'm talking about is not from the books that you mentioned. And RAW, equipment doesn't always provide an equipment bonus, sadly. Sometimes it's circumstance bonus or some bullshit kind of bonus and they can get into double digits even before stacking.

Yeah there are other force-using organizations during this period of time, and you are exactly right, they basically keep their heads down out of fear of Vader.

The Iquisitorius comes up several times in the Force Unleashed sourcebook (since the book covers the period of time in which the organization is at the peak of it's activity - not because they have anything to do with that video game). They help Vader hunt force sensitives and either kill them (usually) or turn them to the dark side (rarely). The Inquisitorius even has it's own talent tree in the Force Adept prestige class.

Anyway, tonight I'm Skyping a Saga tutorial session with another prospective player who is new to the system. He can also do Friday nights. If I do well, maybe he'll bring in members from his regular gaming group!?!

Dean · Post by **Dean** » Fri Apr 04, 2014 11:59 pm

Phonelobster wrote:And there is nothing in saga edition to salvage. If I was going to modify a rules set to play star wars games with that were actually fun there is no reason in hell to touch anything from saga edition with a ten foot pole. It ALL FAILED. You would instead just make a system from scratch because you gain NOTHING by importing the horrid useless boring talent trees etc... that saga edition had.

If you were just talking about the core book you'd be correct but if we include the entire run then you're wrong. Star Wars Saga produced Scum and Villainy which is the best book they made by far. The cover of Scum and Villainy is the background image of the Star Wars Saga reference site. Scum and Villainy has gear modification rules in it that allow so many incredible and interesting creations that it makes the entire game worth it. It makes you re-open every book and re-inspect every piece of equipment because anything might be a piece of the puzzle for the new thing you are creating.
The reason I withdrew from consideration for this game was because gear creation and modification is the entire reason I would play Saga and since that is not campaign's vision I'll just watch from the sidelines. If you wanted to salvage something from Saga you would just wholesale import their gear modification rules.

Captain_Karzak · Post by **Captain_Karzak** » Sat Apr 05, 2014 12:40 am

deanruel87 wrote: Scum and Villainy has gear modification rules in it that allow so many incredible and interesting creations that it makes the entire game worth it. It makes you re-open every book and re-inspect every piece of equipment because anything might be a piece of the puzzle for the new thing you are creating.

OMG Shadowrun must be like heroin for you!!!

Every thing my Shadowrun character owned was modded to the hilt. Every gun, every comlink (need more than one!), mods on every motherfucking program running on all of my comlinks, mods on every drone, on every weapon on the every drone, mods on every piece or armor, and on every piece of armor on the drones, mods on every piece of equipment on each of my bodyguards, mods on all the armor and weapons I gave my guardian spirits, Mods on my vehicles, mods on their weapons and their armor..... oh my god so many mods. Page after page after page *Seizure*

Phonelobster, thank you for taking the time to explain your disapproval. I don't really much else to add that RelentlessImp and deanruel87 haven't already said .... although I not such so much a fan of the mods in Scum and Villainy *seizure*

edit: oh I forgot to mention the mods on the Agents.

Captain_Karzak · Post by **Captain_Karzak** » Sat Apr 05, 2014 6:21 am

Hi RelentlessImp,

I've found another player to add to the game. He's definitely in, and he also thinks that he might be able to bring in one or two more people with him. Tomorrow I'm going to meet some other gamers IRL and try to pitch them on the campaign.

So hopefully this game will have wings soon.

I know you are waiting on my house rules (rough draft) document. I wanted to provide that tomorrow, but I will need to push that to Sunday or Monday now because I've been spending my gaming time budget on recruitment than I had previously expected.

Thanks for your patience.

RelentlessImp · Post by **RelentlessImp** » Sun Apr 06, 2014 10:46 am

I may no longer be available on Friday evenings, I'm afraid, but weekend mornings/afternoons are still open.