Star Wars: Triumph and Despair

The dice notation you're using - is that a Star Wars FFG thing?

1Y = 1 yellow
2G = 2 green

Are there any other colours/letters that are used?

It can get confusing, when your ranks in a skill is a higher number than the characteristic the skill it's based on.

For that same character, if they were rolling a charm check, looks at the Characteristic it's based on, Presence, they have 2. and ranks in the skill, they have 0. So take the higher number, 2, and they would get 2 Ability/Green dice. The lower number is 0, so none of those dice would be upgraded.

There are some fancy PDFs that calculate your dice pool after you fill in you character sheet. Not sure if messing around with one of those would help you, help us

But if they had charm rank 3, then they get 2 green dice (from presence of 2), but 3 of them would need upgrading to yellow - but there aren't 3 to upgrade.

That'd be 3 green dice (the higher number) upgrade two of them to yellow (the lower number)? Is that right?

You always start with the higher number. That's where it gets confusing because when you start the game, your Characteristic is always higher than your ranks. as the game progresses, you might invest enough XP that your ranks in a skill are higher than the characteristic it's based one
yeah, it's Narative diee Star Wars/Genesys thing. Well, the GM's tend to summarize that way. Technically you should use the correct terms for the dice because two of the colors start with the same letter.
Good Dice: Proficiency/Yellow, ability/green, boost/blue
Bad Dice: Challenge/red, difficulty/purple, setback/black
and the Force Die/White

Do you always roll skills, or can a character make a brawn ability check?

Yes, CBM's explained it well. In case it helps, here's how I explain it: Each skill is linked to a characteristic. When making a check using a skill, you compare the ranks in the skill to the ranks in the characteristic. Whichever is higher, start with that many ability dice (greens). Then upgrade a number of greens to proficiency dice (yellows) equal to the lower of the two ranks.

Ex.: Character has Presence 3 and Charm 2. Start with 3 greens, and upgrade two of them to yellow. Final positive pool is YYG.
Ex.: Character has Brawn 1 and Athletics 5. Start with 5 greens, and upgrade one of them to yellow. Final positive pool is YGGGG.
Ex. Characer has Brawn 1 and no ranks in Athletics. Start with 1 green. Stay there, as you have no ranks in the skill.

The shorthand we use in PbP depends on the GM and players. Looks like CBM prefers 1Y4G for what I would type out as YGGGG.

For difficulty, it's basically 1 to 5 purples:

Easy: P
Average: PP
Hard: PPP
Daunting: PPPP
Formidable: PPPPP

These can be upgraded, too, based on various factors. For instance, if you're using Negotiation versus someone trained in that skill. In that case, the difficulty is based on the same formula as above, only using negative dice:

Ex.: Jabba the Hutt has Presence 5 and Negotiation 3. The negative pool to bargain with him is base PPPPP (his Presence), upgraded three times (for his ranks in Negotiation) to RRRPP.
Ex.: R2-D2 has Willpower 3 and Discipline 5. Getting him to follow an order he doesn't want to follow begins with a difficulty of PPPPP (his Discipline) and is upgraded three times (for his Willpower) to RRRPP.

You end up with the same difficulty pool for both Jabba and Artoo, but you get there slightly differently.

Theoretically, everything is a skill check. However, if you have no ranks in the skill called for, you wind up just rolling the bare characteristic. But it's important to know what the skill is, as certain talents and abilities affect skills specifically. Like, say, "Remove 2 setback dice from Negotiation checks." You still get that benefit even if you have no ranks in Negotiation and are de facto rolling your Presence alone.

Correct 2 proficiency/yellow and 1 ability/green

In D&D we have Advantage and Disadvantage would it make sense to do a similar thing as shown here with each roll have a straight roll and then
E = Easy: P
A = Average: PP
H= Hard: PPP
D = Daunting: PPPP
F = Formidable: ppppp
Or should there be some other way as those dice can be upgraded not based of the character sheet

You just count the highest number as total dice, the lower number would be the number of those that would be Yellows (the remainder would be green)

For difficulty the base values are as follows:

Easy - 1 x Purple
Average - 2 x Purple
Hard - 3 x Purple
Daunting - 4 x Purple
Formidable - 5 x Purple

I'm not following the purple thing at all. That's like an opposed check - so the GM specifies it (either based on an NPC stats or just making something up based on difficulty)?

And how do we deal with black and blue both being B in that notation?

That would work to start, but as mentioned, there would need to be a way to upgrade those from Purple to Red, and add black die.That would work to start, but as mentioned, there would need to be a way to upgrade those from Purple to Red, and add black die.

Purple die are based on how hard what you are trying to do is. Shooting is the easiest example. Are they short range? 1 purple.Medium range? 2 purple. Long Range? 3 purple.
For notation, I would use the first letter of the name of the die, not the color, or use the first 2, nope, three letters for black/blue

Sometimes it's an opposed check, where the difficulty is based on the other persons ability. Like if I was going to try and charm another character, I would find the opposed skill, Discipline, and roll the negative equivalent of their ability dice. Discipline is based on Willpower, so if they had 4 willpower and 2 ranks in discipline, my 'bad dice' for that check would be 2 red 2 purple.

Do all systems, including Genesys, use the same names for the dice? Are they distinct in their first letter?

yup

Genesys ↑ - ↓ Star Wars


Genesys is more or less the Star Wars system with the serial numbers filed off.

Absent the serial numbers, do they still call them 'Force' dice? Or something beginning with 'f'?

An advantage of YYGGGPPB over 2y3g2g1b is that we can keep tossing new dice on the end as they are needed, and not have to go back and edit the number. This might be more achievable by clicking icons in the dice roller.

Genesys doesn't have any Force die. (unrelated but they also change Destiny points to story points. They don't want to deal with Disney's legal team at all) So you're fine there.
That makes sense. No need to select dice in a specific order then.

Ah, Genesys does not use the Force Die, so that is a distinction.

I like the current dice roller for Star Wars/Genesys, as it's basically "click a color and that goes in your dice pool. Click it in the dice pool itself and it disappears again." That said, streamlining this process via character-sheet integration would be pretty cool.

If they just got rid of the die and did not change its name than we can just keep the name here and not use it where it does not apply.