Read First: Character Creation Discussion

A NOTE ON SOCIAL SKILLS AND PLAYER AGENCY

Do not use social skills against other player's characters. Those skills are for dealing with NPC's. I've turned this over a few times in my mind since starting playing FFG Star Wars, read up about it on the internet, etc. I'm against it. It removes player agency from the game, and has the potential for some players to 'control' others. Similarly, I don't use social skills against the characters via a dice roll mechanic.

How NPC's will socially interact with characters:

Charm: If you find the NPC likeable, that's up to you.

Deception: If they're lying to you, Discipline is used to detect this. I will make a secret roll for you to detect the lie(s). Knowing the result of the roll makes no sense... they are lying. I'm not perfect though, if you're expecting a lie, feel free to make a small OOC note at the bottom of your post to remind me to check your Discipline against it. That will be your best way of looking out for a lie.

Leadership: If you feel someone is a good leader and want to follow their direction, feel free to do so.

Negotiation: If you feel the deal is a good one, accept it. Otherwise, Negotiate. For the sake of expedience, Negotiations will almost always come down to one roll.

Coercion: Slightly different. Most of the time I'll allow you to decide if you're feeling intimidated. However, when being tortured, I'm inclined to have your character make a Resilience check, which in turn will affect your Discipline check to resist the torture. Failure on your part has you coughing up some or all of what they want to know, depending on the roll.

Fear: Not really a social interaction, but worth mentioning. There will be times where you check against Discipline for fear (Vader shows up, a Rancor threatens, etc).

My first Negotiation check was made after I saw your original post about making the various starting checks. I'm not sure why it ended up being posted before your current post but it was made for that purpose, which is why I didn't redo it. I can still go ahead and add a new Negotiation to the other post if you'd prefer just to let you know I already did that roll.

And while I agree for the most part that character's should have agency when it comes to their character's reactions to others, I feel like that kind of makes certain talents a little useless. For instance, Nobody's Fool: Upgrade difficulty of incoming Charm, Coercion, or Deception checks once per rank of Nobody's Fool. While based on your rules, we'll still get to use the Deception portion and occasionally the Coercion part, but makes Charm pointless. It reduces the usefulness of talents like that. Just my observation.

Here's my social/prep checks:

GM Note: Adding Streetwise for you.

Okay, that roll is fine then, we'll keep it.
I hear you, Squeek. At the same time, those who designed this game are only human. And forcing players to role play certain attitudes because of dice has a lot of potential to screw things up. I could have someone roll Leadership on you and, despite the fact that you want to play villains, well, now you're members of the Rebel Alliance. Or some of you are. All it would take is a Triumph against your character. It

Also, yes it reduces the usefulness of talents like that. I've got a character in a game with Nobody's Fool. But all of us are much happier that we're not forced to role play this: "Well, he succeeded at a Charm check against you. Yeah, I know it's Jabba the Hutt, but now you have to RP as if you like this guy. Oh wait, you're actually working for him now because of his Leadership check's Triumph. You're just really buying into the fact that he's the guy to get behind." From a game play perspective for the player, this means forgetting everything you were doing, and your plans. You're now going in a whole new direction now. And you have to role play the part.

The thing is, most players, if not all, really don't want to be forced into RPing their character a certain way.

So, it's alright that my character's Nobody's Fool loses value, because the game is better for it. I've seen posts from GM's, especially less experienced ones, asking on various GMing forums and sites, how to handle a situation where the players feel cornered into playing a character they don't want to, or they no longer feel like they're controlling their character because a character was turned (via Leadership) or Charmed to behave in a way they really didn't want to. And the answer was universally simple, from many GM's chiming in: don't have NPC's use social skills against characters (except for torture situations, for example, where it makes a lot more sense to do so). Simply let the players use social skills as tools against the NPC's to navigate and breathe life into the game world.

Consider this: taking away the social skills would be a major change. And some players don't want to be combat oriented, infiltrators, tech types, pilots, etc. And that's where this game shines. You can make a highly socially skilled character. Which is great. But forcing players to adopt behaviors and personalities out of alignment with their interests? Not good stuff, to say the least. The thing is, the characters have a human being behind them. Taking their control of the character away could really take the fun out of the game for them.

And, Nobody's Fool is still highly useful without the Charm component; you're turning their purple dice into reds, allowing the potential for them to roll Despair. Not to be overlooked. As far as game balance via the depreciation of Nobody's Fool, you still don't have to worry about being Charmed, which was part of the point of Nobody's Fool anyway.

Are you designating Smooth Talker for Negotiation? It's a permanent choice made when acquiring the talent, so please mark your choice next to the talent on the character sheet. Further ranks of Smooth Talker will be used to support this choice.

Let's see how this goes....

GM NOTE: Influence failed; requires two force points. 1 to activate basic power, another to activate Control upgrade.

Here goes nothing.

GM NOTE: Seek failed, not enough force points rolled.

The Library has a new thread on Social Skills, really illustrating the many ways they can be used. I highly recommend everyone take a look.

ON DUTY, OBLIGATION, AND MORALITY

If you haven't yet, make sure you've squared away your starting Duty (5), Obligation (10) and Morality. If you need help with this due to limited resources, please let me know.

Choosing your Duty is essentially framing what your character values and thinks is most important to the Sith Empire's success. As your group accrues Duty, it eventually allows you access to more resources, rewards, etc. Depending on your characters and events, it may also possibly lend itself to increased rank and control over the Sith Empire's Conquest efforts (target selection, resource and military distribution, where to establish garrisons, etc).

To finish character creation you need a starting Duty value of 5, an Obligation of 10 (split as 5+5 if you like) and your Morality. You can only use the Morality component to affect your starting XP or credits. The rest is to help give the characters depth and make game play more interesting.

A quick list of Duty types:
What your character thinks/believes is most important to the Sith Empire's success in the campaign. These are taken from the Rebel Alliance, so some won't fit for the Sith

Combat Victory (Winning Battles on the ground)

Counter Intelligence (preventing others from gathering intelligence on the Sith)

Intelligence (gather intel on the enemy, learning the location of vital and vulnerable targets, resources, anything bit of knowledge that facilitates victory).

Internal Security (not an option due to early time period in Sith Conquest)

Personnel (not an option due to nature of Sith military culture)

Political Support (gaining support for the Sith beyond merely enslaving and subjugating whole governments and populations)

Recruiting (enlisting soldiers, scientists, engineers, doctors, slicers and more to join the Sith; Subjugation does not count, and a good recruiter knows that every additional person in their ranks makes a difference)

Resource Acquisition (acquiring major caches of resources is considered vital; crates of weapons, medicine, raw materials, etc)

Sabotage (disrupting the enemy's weapons manufacturing, troop movements, supply chain, banking systems and other key operations)

Space Superiority (winning space battles is vital to success)

Tech Procurement (stealing the enemy's tech and/or tech designs will give the Sith the edge they need to win the wat)

Support (doesn't fit Sith culture)

Since we are not using some of the core Duty options due to their unsuitability for the campaign, are you allowing any of the possible Duties listed in the AoR supplements? Most of them should be on Oggdude's generator if you want a complete list of them, and some of them sound like they would fit the campaign.

I was going through posts to collect useful info to edit/condense for various reasons, and just noticed this.

EXPERIENCE AWARDS

You will get something in the ball park of about 15-30 XP per month, depending on two primary factors:

(1)Your level of participation. This will be most important. Not only do I have rules for what's expected out of players, but this will add a little extra motivation for you to participate. I got the idea from the concept of awarding extra XP for good role playing. And, for our purposes on PbP, good role playing will essentially come down to you participating. Players who participate as expected will get more experience. This makes sense on another level as well, as they're contributing more to the group's success, and part of becoming a more powerful player in the galaxy is to be a part of the struggle, rather than watching from the sidelines.

To be clear, the experience will be awarded for players who participate as expected; this means at the very least they join the game as expected Monday-Thursday and participate via meaningful posts. I am not awarding XP for participating outside of our active game periods.

(2)What the group accomplishes. Par for the course in role playing games. Get stuff done, power up. The greater the accomplishment, the greater the reward.

I'm busy on multiple things for game prep. I'm very open to suggestions. Simply run them by me and I'll let you know.

I don't suppose anyone is counting everyone's results?

I'm counting. We're waiting on two more votes to be cast.

I figured you would of course. I'm just adopting a bit of a competitiveness to the rolls based on my character. I think she would make it a point of pride if she were able to acquire more for the mission then the sith lords.

Thought you meant ship name ballots. I'm tracking everything, of course. Once all checks for resource gathering are in I'll post the results.

What I will say to help you plan ahead is this:

To represent your unit's collective efforts to accrue resources, all of the resource gathering results will translate to a pool of credits for your group to spend as you wish, except for Streetwise results which will be placed into a separate pool that allows for the acquisition of Restricted items (R on gear lists), if you so choose. The basic main pool of credits can be used for anything outside of restricted items. Anything left over 2,000 credits will be lost. This to reflect the fact that many of your resources came via many different methods, and some of your resources could be financial donations to the unit.

So, in a sense, use it or lose it. Again, the main pool of funds can be used for anything, except (R)estricted items. The Streetwise pool will be separate and can be used for (R)estricted items, or regular items. These funds will be it. They will represent everything your group could gather from Sith Military Logistics, businesses, family, friends, crime, trickery, cons, salvage, tech work, and any other path that is feasible. Feel free to flesh out the game a bit by coming up with the how some of the resources were gathered.

For example, if as a group you choose to use some of the funds to buy an 8-passenger speeder utility vehicle, perhaps it was donated to the conquest by the owner of a dealership that owes Lessiwa a favor. And perhaps you got a blaster cannon upgrade Hawke put on after finding it in a salvage yard.

Use your imagination. This is it for what you're starting with. Think ahead, and keep in mind that I'm not inclined to pull punches. You've got plenty of cargo space with two bays and a storage room.

Again, do not assume that everything in every source book is a given and fair game. All items will be approved at my discretion. While I won't put specific limits on item rarity, I will make judgements on what works and doesn't. While I do try to say yes, some gear is just over the top.

Like the infrabinoculars. That's not happening. Nobody is looking through walls. That's a massive game changer that I won't allow.

If you could also direct me to the source book it comes from that would be great.

Drat, I have to change my duty then. I'm a bit surprised that internal security wouldn't be there, given a) how militant the society is and b) the massive infighting that has occurred in the past. Perhaps not security against the outside forces in the body of the Republic and the Empire, but against internal dissidents (such as non-believers). Barring that, Lexi will certainly go Space Superiority.

You know what, after what you said I've reconsidered. Go ahead and keep Internal Security. In my efforts to get things done I didn't put enough thought into it. I can make it work.

All of the additional Duties (as far as I'm aware) come from the AoR career sourcebooks (Lead by Example, Desperate Allies, and Stay on Target are the currently released ones). A quick list of all of them with their respective sources is below (by "quick list", I'm doing this at work on my phone, so I might forget one or two, or accidentally repeat one of the core ones). I'm also not necessarily saying that I think each and every one of these is a good fit for our campaign (some of them make the most sense with the "plucky rebel underdogs" that are the assumed protagonists, and some of them are probably too niche to be relevant to a secret, small strike force), but I'm listing them all for completions sake.

Camaderie [it's more akin to "keeping allied morale up", despite the cutesy name] (LbE)
Enemy Demoralization (LbE)
Loss Prevention [as in the loss of tangible equipment and materiel] (LbE)
Operation Planning (DA)
Communication Facilitation (DA)
Air Superiority (SoT)
Placard Hunter [targeting enemy aces and heroes] (SoT)

Also, on infrabinoculors, "seeing through walls" sounds a bit ridiculous, but the item description in the sourcebook specifies that it only sees heat signatures through walls (so it would only show the presence of heat-emitting lifeforms and equipment, not anything more than that), not really much better than a general scanner or the Sense power. I understand if you want to keep them out of the game, though, and I probably should have gone by you first before recommending that we purchase some.