Star Wars: Triumph and Despair

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned before, so forgive me if it has:

When using the Star Wars dice roller, the site doesn't tally results properly if a Triumph or Despair result comes up. In Star Wars (and Genesys), a Triumph equals both a Triumph result and a Success result. Conversely, a Despair equals both a Despair result and a Failure result. However, the site fails to account for the Success and Failure aspects of those respective symbols coming up.

Is this something that could be fixed? I'm no programmer, but it seems like it might be a very easy fix.

Thanks for your attention!

This has come up a few times, but for a bunch of reasons I can't remember, I ultimately decided that it would show the count of faces, not the tallied outcome. I'm happy to bring this conversation back up though: should I do the sum, or the face count?

From a practical angle, I have to constantly remind my players to do the mental addition of +1 Success or +1 Failure to tallies that turn up Triumph or Despair. I've also often heard other Star Wars/Genesys GMs talk about this as if it's a bug in the site's dice roller. So, from my admittedly limited experience, it seems that most Star Wars/Genesys GMs would prefer the sum be prioritized.

Then there's the argument that the faces and the sum aren't actually at odds, since the rules spell out that Triumph is also a Success, and Despair is also a Failure. The graphic design is even such that the Triumph and Despair symbols are modified versions of Success and Failure, respectively. So it's both. :)

My 2 cents. Hopefully other Genesys/Star Wars players and GMs can weigh in.

Not sure how this is designed within the internals but I thought the image was simply associated with the results and if that is the case then its just a image that means nothing to the internals (which is how it ought to be I would think) then its just a matter of adjusting the internal values to accommodate these values so that the final counts are correct.

@Keleth what language are you programming all this in?

@emsquared, @SavageBob, @mcneils5, @szemely - you're the leading active Star Wars FFG GMs on GP (according to the db).

What's the correct answer for this issue? What should it be doing?

Star Wars FFG is a very active game on GP, and I can't help but feel it's been a little neglected.

Thanks for bringing this back up, Adam! My feeling is that the Triumph result should be tallied as 1 Triumph and 1 Success, and the Despair result should be tallied as 1 Despair and 1 Failure. The rules of SW FFG/Genesys are quite clear that the Triumph symbol ALSO counts as a Success, and the Despair result ALSO counts as a Failure, so the software should account for that in my opinion. (As it is, GMs and players always have to do mental math when these results come up, which is less than ideal.)

Also note that the Success part of a Triumph and the Failure part of a Despair do get canceled by other rolled Failures and Successes, respectively. However, the Triumph and the Despair parts never get canceled. Let me know if this needs better explanation.

Couldn’t have said it better.

Cool. I'll just wait for one more to get a consensus of three.

In the meantime, are there any sheet-integrated dice rollers you'd like me to add? They'd need explaining because those character sheets and weird dice are a mystery to me (they look cool though).

Cool, hopefully emsquared or mcneils5 will weigh in.

As for integrated character sheet rollers, there's actually not much rolling in character generation. I think the only thing you roll for is pocket money, and that's a simple d100. I can't think of anything that might be worth adding, but thanks for asking!

Not a GM, but SavageBob has explained it spot on.
IF there was a Star Wars wishlist, it would be nice to have the font's/symbols available. Also can the web link for the publisher go to Edge Studios instead of Fantasy Flight?
Dice rolls linked to the character sheets would be great, BUT since most rolls have 2 parts, (the 'good dice' based on the characters skill level, and the 'bad dice' based on the difficulty of what they want to do) we would still have to be able to add the 'bad dice' to the roll. I think this is how roll20 works.

Hey, yea, Bob and szemely and birdman have it right.

When a Triumph is rolled it should "tally" a success (cancelable by a failure, as per "normal" successes on other die "sides"/roll results), in addition to the Triumph (un-cancelable).

And the Despair tallies a failure (cancelable by success, again as per "normal"), and a Despair (un-cancelable).

Thanks for picking this up, Adam!

These are the rollers used in-game. They reduce typing and make it easier for new players.

e.g. In 5e - if I click my character name, I see their abilities, skills, weapons etc. If I click athletics, then it fills in the dice roll.

---

Maybe, something similar can be done here:


Click on a skill and it does something with dice, but you then have to add bad dice yourself? Dunno. I'd need guidance.

Fonts and symbols?

How do those look? I've put the triumphs and despairs in parentheses and totalled them in.

you've put the successes from the triumphs in parentheses. That may make it a bit more confusing. I think it's better just to have the totals

yeah, instead of telling a player that they need to roll one challenge dice, two diffuclulty dice and 1 setback dice (aka 1 red, 2 purple, 1 black; or RPPB) it would be cool to post the color/symbol for those dice. Same goes the Triumph, success, etc. It would be nice to post the symbols used. Hope that makes sense.

Isn't it nice to show where the numbers come from? Especially if we're changing the calculation under people?

How about this?

It makes sense? How would it work though? Some sort of FFG BBCode thing?

Roll [FFG:RPPB]

1) I guess I compare it to an itemized receipt at a hotel (tax, resort fee, pool fee, turndown fee etc.) I would prefer ya just tell me the total. But I'll let the Star Wars GM's weight in on that one

2) Is there no symbol for a Despair? It's just invisible? That is . . confusing.

Yeah. It looks like a spelling mistake has stopped that working for the last six years!

Skulls for despair?

I have no idea :( When I'm making notes at home, I've just downloaded the font. Not sure how it work on the site. A dropdown with all the SW symbols?

Few of the SW games are public, so I have no idea how this thing is played.

I saw this character roll initiative but I don't know why two green dice were rolled.

Initiative is one of the rolls where you don't need to roll any 'bad die'. So they rolled their Vigilance, which is 2. So two Ability (of green) dice.

Maybe this helps? It's one of my favorites:

That's super helpful.

So there's (nearly) always a negotiation with the GM to work out what you're rolling?

How are y'all dealing with destiny tokens?

I totally relate to wookie girl

Some thoughts on what's come up:

OK, an integration with the character sheet might be helpful. The GM could say, "Roll a Hard Athletics check," and the player would just click on "Athletics" and "Hard" (perhaps) and come up with the dice pool. That works well for simple rolls. It gets more complicated if the difficulty is upgraded for some reason, and if there are situational modifiers represented by boost and setback die. But on the surface, the integration with the character sheet might work.

Second, how to tally the symbols? I agree with Crazy Birdman: No need to do the math longhand; just show the tally. If a player is confused, it's just one post for the GM to say that Triumphs always include a success in them, and Despairs always include a failure in them.

Third, having a symbol show up for Despair results—yes, please! Assuming we can't hack in the FFG symbols somehow, the skull works. However, a biohazard symbol might be a bit closer to the visual of the actual die: ☣

Destiny Points/Story Points: I usually create a separate thread for these that players have to post in if they use one. This works, but is not ideal. Integrating a floating destiny pool somehow into the current IC thread would be pretty cool!

It is not really a negotiation, the GM tell you the difficulty based on what you are trying to do. And your positive dice are determined by your characters abilities and skill and talents (where you've spent your XP basically)
Poorly, lol. But yeah, it's usually a separate thread that players need to remember to check. Mind you, players forget about them IRL games too. Floaty pool would be great.

Also when it comes to the symbols, if you looks closely, the Triumph symbol has a success symbol in it. Same with Despair, the failure symbol is integrated into it. Probly don't want to use the liscened symbols at all, but it may help you decide what symbols you do want to use.

So the destiny pool is a shared resource, not per character? Does the GM award tokens?

It's a shared resource. In Star Wars it's rolled for at the beginning of a session using the Force die. White pips grant light-side tokens; dark pips grant dark-side tokens. In Genesys, it's fixed at 1 light token per PC, and 1 dark token for the GM.

When the GM uses one, it flips from dark to light (thereby giving it to the PCs to potentially use later). When a player uses one, it flips from light to dark. Usually only one can be used at a time, but certain abilities require two points of the same type to be used (e.g., 2 light tokens that both then flip to dark).

Yeah, a shared resource. A roll of the dice decides how many of each Light and dark side) are in the pool at the start of a session. Once that is done, that is the amount of Destiny points in that session. It doesn't change, they just flip from light to dark or vice versa.

If the GM uses one, it gets flipped/goes to the PCs. If the PCs use one, it does to the GM. So it's a bit of tug of war.

edit: SavageBob explained it faster and betterer

Fixing the blank Despair icon would be freaking awesome! And I agree with the others - just display the final tally when done.

The negotiation aspect on how to use resolve die-rolls is actually pretty key to the game. Easier to do in real life, obviously, which means a lot of extra Advantages are usually just passed on to the use as Boost die for the next player (at least in the games that I run). Because of that, and the use of Destiny points to Upgrade dice pools. and whatever Boosts/Setbacks the GM may throw in there, having an integrated die roller with a character sheet may end up being a feature that doesn't get used.

Of course, I've never used it, if it gives a base that can be edited, then it might be pretty useful.

Like SavageBob, I use a separate thread for Destiny Points. Don't know that I can offer a cleaner solution than that.

So just to weigh in here I think the most pressing thing would be to fix the Talent/Despair adding Success/Failure to the tally. Having just the total would be fine for me, personally having too much going on in the results section would be confusing.

Would it be possible to add some logic to change some of the dice before you roll? What I'm thinking is you have the character section at the bottom and select a skill and difficulty and it then adds the defaults, then if you click on a green/purple die it upgrades them to a yellow/red respectively and then another click would remove it if needed? The dice pools can shift dramatically from roll to roll with situational changes, people spending Advantages/Triumphs/Threats/Despairs can all adjust the die pool in different ways so I can't see a way of putting too much logic in that would work in an asynchronous play style like PbP

That's a great idea, mcneils5. To make sure I'm following you:

Player: "I want to leap the chasm."

GM: "OK, that's a Hard Athletics check. I'll upgrade that with a Destiny Point. There's a setback from the high winds."

Player: [Clicks "Athletics" on the integrated character sheet/roller. Their dice pool shows up in the box. Clicks "Hard." Three purple dice show up. Clicks on one of those purple dice to upgrade it per the GM's Destiny Point spend. It turns into a red. Clicks on the black die icon to add a setback to the pool. Clicks ROLL.] "OK, 1 Triumph, 2 Success, and 1 Threat."

That would be pretty nifty if we could pull it off.

So in that scenario, how would you add another ability die, or another difficulty die? Not being negative, just trying to think of odd situations.
Like if your Agility is temporarily raised, you would need to add one green die. Or if you decide to use an ability that trades strain to reduce difficulty.

Either way, it would be pretty slick. Even if it only added the 'good dice' and you had to pick each 'bad die' manually like we do now.

Presumably one would be able to edit the dice code box and type in whatever changes are needed that fall outside the point-and-click options.

I think people are overestimating how much I know about Star Wars FFG.

Pretend I'm as clueless as a small, particularly dim dog.

Someone clicks this...


What appears in here...


..and why?

Hard means 3 purple dice (apparently), what are the other rules?

Ok. This character has 1 rank in Athletcis, athletics is based on Brawn. Their Brawn is 3

So you take the higher number 3, that how many Ability/Green dice you get to roll. Then you take the lover number, 1 (rank) and upgrade an ability dice to a yellow/proficiency dice

So they would have 1Y2G

What would happen if their rank was higher than their ability score?

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.

sorry, just thought of this, but could the Despair skull have the failure symbol behind it? Kind of like a skull and crossbones?
Also, if the triumph symbol could be combined with the success symbol, that would be great also.

Here's another useful slideshow that helps explain the rules.
Star Wars FFG Dice basics

wow. I might have to GM a game now

I just read this entire thread first thing in the morning and I just think Adam needs to try a game of FFG Star Wars now

My understanding is that bad, huh?

Not that terrible but at the same time for those of us that do play I just want to start a chant....

"One of us...one of us...one of us"

But do you know what is terrible...?

I didn’t either. I didn’t really get into it until I started playing the system - mostly so I could run good games for the Star Wars nerds that I was GMing for. Started with the cartoons and went from there.

Also maybe a generic Genesys system introduction would help? the narrative dice concepts are near identical and virtually any setting really works but I do think that Star Wars as a setting really works with the system