OOC General Chat

Welcome!!

General discussion goes here.

If it's about character creation and your group's origins, please post in the Character Creation Discussion, via the Character and Group Info subforum.

I'm new to the technical aspects of running a PbP game, so if you can't do something you think you should be able to do (create a thread, post, etc) please let me know via PM. I'll be checking frequently to help move things along for you.

For those less knowledgeable of Star Wars species (alphabetical order, pasted from other websites):


Chiss (Tejanna):

The Chiss were a blue-skinned, humanoid sentient species that possessed red eyes and dark blue hair.



More Chiss Images




Gank (Hawke):
The Ganks were a sentient humanoid species of fur-covered carnivores. The typical member of the species had a face that was squared-off and yellow in color, the expression trapped in a perpetual snarl that non-Ganks found unattractive. Small, mean-looking eyes peered from above the maw, and ears facilitated the sense of hearing. The head sat atop a thick neck, which emerged from between broad, strong shoulders. These capped two thickset, powerful arms, which terminated in hands with five fingers each. In contrast, their legs were relatively short; over all, the average member of the species stood 1.6 meters (4.5 feet) tall. Their heavy build afforded Ganks great strength, yet they were also spry runners. They augmented their bodies with cybernetics, making them a species of cyborgs. These implants allowed Ganks to engage in silent communication with their fellows.



Good luck finding any real variety of Gank images, there aren't many.




Trandoshan (Tashal):

Trandoshans were sentient humanoids with smooth, scaly skin. Trandoshans ranged from being tall and fairly gaunt, to being short and more rotund. Trandoshans were powerful beings, and had long thin arms that ended in either three thick digits, or four thin digits, including a thumb. Trandoshans had a pair of eyes set back on a pointed skull, and a maw filled with pointed teeth. Trandoshans often walked barefooted, and had feet with three digits each. A Trandoshan's skin color could vary wildly, and Trandoshans could be found with green, red, orange, brown, or yellow skin. Some Trandoshans, such as one named Smug, had brownish-orange skin with red stripes on his face.



More Trandoshan Images




Twi'lek (Lissewa):

Twi'leks were a species of tall humanoids whose skin spanned a vast array of colors, including white, orange, yellow, green, pink, blue, purple, and red. Their most distinctive feature was the pair of prehensile tentacles that sprouted from the base of their skulls, known as lekku, or headtails. Although Twi'leks normally had two of those tentacles, some individuals had four of them.

The species had two sexes, male and female. While males had ears with lobes resembling that of humans, females had cone-shaped hearing organs.

Twi'leks were usually thin, although corpulent individuals were known to exist. Under normal circumstances, they had a higher body temperature than other humanoid species



More Twi'lek Images

In answer to the question that you asked about Hawke hearing his parents voices on the prologue thread, on every level besides an intellectual one they sound like actual voices coming through his implant. Intellectually he knows that his parents are dead and that's what lets him ignore them for the most part.

EDIT: I've found 2 newer gank pictures online, both from Lords of Nal Hutta.

Got it. They sound like absolutely real comms to him, but he knows they're not. Cool.

For those who are interested:

I already have some species based image links earlier, so I thought I would post a link to some Sith images. I know many of you may be experienced in finding images, but for those who may be less inclined, here you go. Keep in mind that clicking on images can also take you to whole new sets of images.

Female Sith, Multiple Species

Male Sith, Multiple Species (keep in mind that some armor may cover your character thoroughly, allowing you more choices, which is very possible for Tashal and Hawke).

You know, I found that one, but wasn't sure if it was a Gank based on the 'broad' part of the description. That works though.

NOTE ON CHARACTERS AND RECORD KEEPING

Whenever you make any change to your character sheet, please announce it as either part of your OOC in the narrative or in the OOC thread. I keep copies behind my GM screen to make sure there's never any confusion or doubt on what's accurate.

I will try to minimize posting from my phone from now on since it doesn't seem to want to cooperate and function normally, leading to duplicate posts

As far as the first player handout, I don't typically post 'walls of text' like that (in fact, that would be extremely rare). However, I find thorough posts with a lot of depth very useful and meaningful to the players as part of my role in setting the stage.

In the future, for those especially averse to that much text, don't worry. My primary goal will be to bring the game to life through your actions and descriptive flavor as needed. We're making this story together, after all.


With that in mind, a reminder below. Perhaps the most important rule for posting in the narrative:

The most important thing is that you do not control another person's character or an NPC. Even if it is something simple; they respond to a simple question or give you a high-five, whatever it is, it isn't for you to control. In your own posts, only describe the actions of your character and what is going on in his/her mind.

Similarly, do not describe the results of your actions. You may think lighting a fire should be easy, but the story may say that the fireplace you are working at has sticks of dynamite in it. If your character has got a nice blaze going and is happily warming her hands it makes it seem a bit weird and arbitrary when I suddenly blow you up!

To clarify, this specifically pertains to ANY changes in: credits spent and equipment/gear changes (including adding/removing to and from storage, etc). Any time you want to make a change of any kind on any of your character sheet's posts, detail it here or in the OOC portion of your narrative.

There is, as you know, a separate thread for XP awards and XP spending.

Re-posting this for increased visibility.

Just a friendly reminder:

We're gaming this week starting Monday, December 5th 12:00 PM GMT through Friday December 9th 12:00 PM GMT.

A convenient link below in consideration of the global neighborhood:
Greenwich Mean Time Clock paired with my time zone

For those in the United States like me, that means the game starts early Monday morning (6:00 AM for me) and goes through late Thursday night/early Friday morning. This gives us 4 days of actual game time that also allows for the late night gamers to post into the early hours of Friday.

I've enjoyed reading about your trip through hyperspace btw. Good stuff. Really looking forward to getting things going plot wise Monday!

Squeeks:

I'm not opposed to Dutybound for an Obligation, but it seems a little redundant given that we're using Duty, which already implies a sense of being Dutybound on its own. Is there anything else that you think would fit your character well?

I'm fine with you keeping it, but thought I'd mention it, considering that you may even have chosen Dutybound prior to the introduction of Duty into the game. If you do decide to keep it, there would have to be something that really sets it apart from your standard Duty as pat of the Sith Military.

Question: Is the false transponder code already in place? If not would it be a Computer or Mechanics check?

The false transponder is actually your only transponder, and STRAT-COM recognizes it as a friendly ship. To the rest of the galaxy it is a ship that belonged to a freelance explorer named Vekis Leed. It was put in place by the Military Engineering Corps.

To be fair, there may be a better way of putting it. She is there because of the agent that scouted her after she gained her freedom, as part of her background story. They knew what it was she did and instead of arresting her they recruited her. So, it's sort of like blackmail but not really because they aren't holding her hostage or anything. But they expect great things from her since she was scouted specifically.

Okay, but the more I think about it, the more it just seems to overlap Duty. At the simplest level, finding success in the Sith Military will be succeeding at your Obligation as well, so they don't feel separate; your character will always be killing two birds with one stone. And the way Obligation was set up, it doesn't take into account someone using Duty with it. The Dutybound Obligation also mentions being legally obligated to an organization, which is already covered by Duty.

If we weren't using Duty, I'd be fine with Dutybound. However, given the above, after some consideration I've changed my mind and would like you to go with something else for Obligation. Reading your backstory again, a singular person helped in Lissewa's situation. As such, it seems that Favor or Blackmail would be a good fit, but it doesn't have to be one of those.

Anyway, please detail it on your character sheet under the Notes section (anyone else who hasn't done this shuold do so as well). When I roll Obligation I want to be able to put it to work seamlessly without having to ask questions mid-game.

And away we go!

OBLIGATION AND DUTY

I'm refraining from rolling Obligation and Duty until all characters are completely finished.

Forgot to do this over the weekend. Changed the obligation to favor as she got help from the staff of her former master. They will likely request favors in return. Perhaps even to aid them in their own attempt at freedom.

REMINDER:
POSTING WITH DICE ROLLS

When making skill checks feel free to roll your dice pool at the bottom of your post. Do not assume the difficulty level of the check and add red or purple dice. I’ll add them in another post. Do not describe your actions or the results of your actions. By doing so, you make assumptions and will, sooner or later, clutter the narrative with events or results that didn't actually happen.

You may add boost (light blue) dice to the pool if you think it is appropriate, simply explain your reasoning via OOC text after the narrative part of your post. For example: "I’m adding a boost to my Coercion check because I’ve got a blaster pressed up against his forehead". Then go ahead and roll the dice with your post. If I don’t think the boost makes sense (e.g., he knows blaster's not loaded), I’ll just disregard it. Also, you may adjust your dice as your talents allow.

Considering the above, it is worth emphasizing that any time you think there is something worth mentioning that is in your best interest or favor, please do so, in any situation for any check, action, social, or otherwise. For example, this would be posted just above the dice roll in OOC format:When you roll in that situation, add the boost to your roll. I'll negate it if I think it doesn't make sense. Always roll the dice pool that makes sense to you, without adding difficulty (purple) or challenge (red) dice, and I'll make any necessary adjustments and describe the results. Do what you can to help your character succeed.

For those of you who may have missed it in the Library:

SKILL CHECKS: IMPROVED AND SIMPLIFIED

For our game we'll be using a modified dice pool check system as described below. I've playtested it thoroughly, and it has improved the enjoyment of the game for everyone in my table top game immensely.


The Rule, Plain and Simple

[b]A Triumph can cancel a Despair, or count as three Advantage, if the individual making the roll (player or GM) so chooses. If choosing to use Triumph in this way, you must declare so via post.

Detailed Specifics

If a Triumph is used to cancel a Despair, they both fully cancel one another out in the exact same fashion as Success/Failure and Advantage/Threat. The Success component of the Triumph cancels the Fail component of the Despair, in addition to any additional effects that can result from either.

If a Triumph is converted to 3 Advantage, then it does not lose the Success component of the Triumph, which is still applied to the results of the roll. The 3 Advantage gained from the conversion can be used just like any Advantage.

The above mechanics are optional every time a player makes a roll. This allows the player to let the results of the dice be applied using the Rules as Written, or they can use the new mechanics mentioned above, canceling out Despair, or converting Triumph to Advantage to use in any way Advantage may normally be used (cancel an equal amount of Threat, recover Strain, etc).


Reasons for the Change and How it Improves the Game

I’m a huge fan of player agency. I'm also a huge fan of allowing the game to flow more smoothly by not forcing any of us to always feel like every Triumph, Advantage, Despair, and Threat has to have some special meaning applied to the narrative, as this can become tedious, and even boring, over time. This modified dice mechanic expands possibilities and just generally simplifies the dice pool results, at the roller's discretion, facilitating a smoother and more enjoyable game experience overall.

And that’s actually the main reason I adopted this kind of system from a home brew dice mechanics rule I found on the internet, to help the game flow more smoothly. With starting and low level characters the dice are very simple and clear to interpret, but as characters leveled up, more and more red and yellow dice became part of the action. Consequently, we found ourselves spending more and more time interpreting dice rather than enjoying the story. More and more frequently, dice rolls contained multiple Triumphs, Despairs, and Advantage/Threat. It even began to feel stale and boring, as the Triumph and Despair effects began to feel far too common, rather than something special.

I’ve tinkered around and play tested this extensively in my own table top game for months, somewhere close to a year. It took very little time for everyone in our gaming group to fall in love with this home brew dice mechanic. In the simplest terms, the individual making the roll can have Triumph cancel out Despair (demonstrating that role play wise they simply want their Triumph to be a job well done), or they can have Triumph count as 3 Advantage to be used as normal. The great thing about this is that it comes down to player choice. The player making the roll can, for example, risk the Threat or Despair and choose to keep the Triumph as some other narrative fireworks, or they can keep things a little simpler and opt for the job well done, which can still come with a variety of effects depending on the rest of the results in the dice roll.

Also, even with this dice mechanic, interesting combinations of dice still happen, and sometimes the players have an idea of how they want to use Triumph, so they don't cancel out Despair or Threat, risking the consequences. This home brew dice rule takes nothing away from the game, and allows things to flow more smoothly, or be more exciting, depending on the players' choices. Some players like the idea of high risk/reward, whereas some prefer to be smooth operators and get the job done. With the modified system detailed here, more than ever you can play a character closer to your vision.

My interest in adopting this kind of system is supported by the RAW combat tables, wherein it shows that a Triumph can be used to create many effects that would otherwise require three Advantage, not to mention that a Triumph can also cause a critical hit, even on weapons that usually require four or more Advantage. In a similar fashion, a Despair can have the same effect as three Threat on the combat table. In sum, the combat tables themselves showed an equivalent nature that already existed.

As a side note, not every Advantage/Threat needs to be spent either. Sometimes, if the player has no Strain to recover and they can’t or don’t care to think of a way to spend their advantage, there’s nothing wrong with just tossing it. Don't let yourself become burdened by feeling like you to find some way to spend a single Advantage when you don't need to recover any Strain.

Ultimately, I really like using the home brew dice mechanics. It still allows for some of those moments of Triumph and Despair mixed in with Threat or Advantage, but it also allows, depending on player preference, enjoyment of the game by choosing to opt out of some of the bizarre effects that can come with those rolls. It increases the degree by which the players, and the GM, can shape the game.

While I was poking around the internet, I found some updated specialization and Force power talent trees, with information that is missing on the ones linked on the Library subforum here. I thought they might be useful for anyone planning their XP spending for the long term. Here's the thread on the FFG forums with links to all of them.

Nice find! I'll update the Library. Thanks.

Also, while I like the great variety of specializations available, I am not a fan of the 'signature abilities'. They're just too much and a little over the top.

I'm not sure what's going on with Mrvain, but we're going to go ahead and get started with Duty and Obligation. Because it's fun.

DUTY, OBLIGATION, AND MORALITY

A note on dice rolls for Duty and Obligation:

While I do tend to enjoy the core rules for these game mechanics, do not expect them to be rigidly adhered to. Sometimes it just doesn't make sense to apply the more unique plot changing effects of these rolls immediately. As such, I will, at times, apply those effects when it is more sensible to do so, perhaps even combining them with another character's if necessary. Also, do not assume the rolls will take effect exactly as described in the book (e.g., doubles may not always trigger double strain effects or plot changers, while regular rolls may introduce plot changers at my discretion). Ultimately, I like the system but use it more like a guide, with the dice roll primarily being used to determine who's Duty/Obligation takes effect.

Regardless, I will do my best to sensibly work your character's Duty and Obligation into the game, as it adds really good flavor and can make for great twists and turns in the game. Heck, it's why we're using both of them.

The chart and rolls will be posted in the Character and Group Info section.

You guys don't make the dice rolls for Perception; being able to see your roll gives far too much away regarding your success or failure to gain information out of the environment (simply stated, you shouldn't know you did a bad job of looking for clues and details in your surroundings, etc). However, you need to make an OOC note at the bottom of your post making it clear which skill you're using (e.g., "I'm using Perception to look around the room."). This is a great way to highlight your use of the skill and make sure I pick up on your desire to use it.

Also, make sure you do roll your own Force dice for chekcs, representative of your character's ability to feel and know when they're effectively tapping into the currents of the force.

As far as secret checks go and the reasons for using them, there is a thread about it in the Library.

As an addendum, feel free to add the actual rolls as placeholders; it would be very much appreciated. This will help me track you're desire to use a skill, in addition to making any requests for boost dice and other changes to your roll more more visible.

When you say add them as placeholders (just so I don't bork it all up again ;) ), do you mean to include the information in the comment:
Or actually plugging in the dice set to the dice roller and posting knowing that the result will not be the actual result?

A good question. Include the information in the comment as well as a placeholder dice roll. Some important remarks and info below.


The information in the comment is absolutely necessary, as part of knowing what you want to try to do. A major point of including the information in the OOC comment, as well as a placeholder dice roll, is that it eliminates any and all possible confusion as to what you're trying to accomplish with your character. Stealth is a good example of this. You might write that your character is "carefully moving" or "being cautious" or even "tiptoeing", but it leaves a lot of interpretation in my hands, depending on the writing, and I might miss it.

It is far simpler to note your efforts via OOC at the end of a post with (1) the Skill you're using (2) The intent or purpose of the check (3) any changes to dice via talent etc, or boosts you'd like, if any (4) and the placeholder dice roll, providing an immediately clear representation of your character's dice pool for the check.

Ultimately, the idea for having placeholder dice rolls came to me as I made the secret checks for your perception rolls; it was far easier to refer to your posts and look at the 'placeholder' dice rolls than it was to sort through character sheet threads. So, for those of you who forgot the secret rolls, thank you very much.

The placeholder dice roll is extremely important to me. It makes your intentions much more visible, including any requests for boost dice as part of your pool. Additionally, it allows me to see what dice to roll for your various skill checks, of which there could be six, or more, for every post I write. This is much easier than sifting through all of your character sheets, looking for the proper characteristics and skills to combine for your skill checks.

Excellent, that works for me! It would be wonderul on the site if there was the option of a signature or something of that nature that could be tagged onto your posts where things like dice pools, prepared spells, etc could be kept.

Addendum to my most recent post above:

I know adding placeholder dice rolls may seem redundant, but in a PbP setting they are extremely useful as a means of addressing and organizing the actions that all of your characters may or may not attempt, success or failure. And yes, I know that there will be times when your placeholder dice roll extraordinarily well for some of the secret checks, and the dice mock you with their Triumph results on the screen. However, there will also be times when your placeholder rolls are exceedingly poor, and my rolls turn out to be a boon. The dice are random, and in the end it will all balance out.

There was some mention of something like that in one of the site discussions, directed at allowing GM's to save dice pools that were often and repeatedly used for convenience. It's a great idea, and I think Keleth may very well be working on it, or doing so at some point in the future.

In an attempt to avoid potential confusion, I think the statement below might help:

When posting, whether a secret check or otherwise, always do so as if there were no secret checks in our game. Post your intentions for the skill check via OOC comment at the end of your post, along with any desire for boosts or dice pool changes due to talents, etc. Then, simply post an attached dice roll with it, making sure the dice roll itself has a label (Perception, Lightsaber attack, Sense Force Power, etc). The only difference with secret checks is that your roll will be a placeholder, making it easier to see what kind of dice pool you expect me to roll, along with saving me the time of looking for the right characteristics and skills on your character sheet threads.

Using the above method will work whether you're using Sense in pitch black darkness (secret check), or attempting to decapitate someone with your lightsaber (regular check). Also, to make sure you're aware, combat rolls will never be secret checks. You'll always be able to see why you're dying or dead.

Yeah, I saw that one. I also put my own suggestion up for something more like adding info into the text.

Don't know what happened, but I lost the ability to edit Hawke's thread-sheet. My guess is that locking a thread prevents edits as well as new posts.

Yeah, I locked them while I was cleaning them up to make them more uniform. I think I'm actually just going to leave them locked.

If you guys want to make changes to backstory and such, just place a post in the Character Discussion thread and I'll take care of it. Otherwise, form here on out I'll handle the character sheets as far as inventory, etc. It'll eliminate any potential confusion regarding what's what. Just let me know what you want to change (XP spending, backstories, notes you'd like to add, etc), and I'll take care of it.

I've already added the weapons to Lexi and Hawke's character sheets, in addition to removing a stimpack from Kronus' inventory as well.

Also, I'm thinking of creating a "Group Notes" thread; a journal of sorts that I've noticed groups in some other games have, allowing you to organize and track vital info and such. Based on what I've seen so far, I think at least some of you would put it to use.

SKILL CHECKS AND FORCE POWERS

Some of you are missing this so please read it carefully. For those less experienced or entirely new to FFG Star Wars RPG, once you get the hang of the game mechanics, many of you will find that it is an absolutely wonderful and easy to use system. I've played many RPG's, and I believe the FFG Star Wars dice system is my absolute favorite.

Whether the skill or force power check is a normal check or a secret check, you should always post your character's intentions and your dice roll (adding your green, yellow, and potentially some blue boost dice) without added difficulty dice (I'll add those later when your actions are resolved). For secret checks (Perception, Stealth, etc) your dice rolls will serve as useful placeholders, allowing you to help ensure I roll the proper dice. Regardless of the type of check, posting your dice roll will also save me the trouble of potentially looking through six character sheets for characteristics and associated skill ranks to form your dice pools for you. Simply put, treat every check as a normal one, with all attached dice rolls (whether it's a secret check placeholder or not), and I will take care of the rest.[/b]

If you don't know what skill to roll for regular checks, see the Library thread Links to Useful Resources and Reference Sheets, under the link A Wealth of Diverse Knowledge; what you need starts on page 15 of the PDF, detailing Skills and their associated Characteristics. For force powers, look in the Library under the thread Force Powers and Associated Skills. And, if don't know how to put together a dice pool for a Skill Check or Force Power Check, whether you're new to Star Wars RPG or just forgot, you can look in the Library under
Basics: Dice Pools and Skill Check Mechanics. Also, a thread in the Library detailing specifically which checks are secret checks: Secret Dice Rolls: Skill Checks and Force Powers.

My bad, I usually just load threads at their last post, and I completely missed the whole discussion here about placeholder rolls for secret checks. I'll make sure I add them in the future.

Also, the Episode One gameplay thread is currently locked, if that's unintentional.

It was intentional, to stop additional posts that were occurring 'out of time' (e.g., there was no need for Krosus to pick up the Neimoidian yet). I'm going to roll the dice for Meribson and CCL's checks and then post resolution so the plot can advance.

Yeah, I just noticed that you'd made a post on the first page of the game thread stating that. I was just about to edit my earlier post when you replied.

Personally, I've been trying to get my posts in early to avoid missing the daily deadline (I'm normally too rushed in the evening to guarantee enough time and mental energy to write a good post), apologies if I've also been overloading the action queue. Hopefully the new placeholder rolls will make it more obvious when an action has yet to be resolved.

I can appreciate your time constraints, and your efforts to post; we'll work the kinks out over time. If everything is going smoothly, I should be able to have a post up in the narrative every day by 4:00 PM GMT (10:00 AM my Chicago time).

Also, there may be times when, if everyone has already posted for the day, and it's not too late for me, that I can post the night before our next game day, allowing those of you who want to post as early as possible to do so.

Trust me when I say that I want to help keep things as easy as possible for everyone involved and help make the entire experience enjoyable for all. Again, with a little time and some more experience all around as a group we'll get it down.

EDIT: I may occasionally post at other times of the day as well, to resolve actions, further allowing the plot to move forward for those more involved, as long as it doesn't leave other players behind or feeling left out.

NEXT WEEK'S GAME AND ANNOUNCEMENTS

This message will frequently look the same, but please pay attention to it as I will make the occasional announcement outside the norm.

Announcements: None

A friendly reminder:
We're gaming next week from: Monday, December 12, 12:00 PM GMT - Friday, December 16, 12:00 PM GMT.


A convenient link below in consideration of the global neighborhood:
Greenwich Mean Time Clock paired with my time zone
For those in the United States like me, this means the game starts early Monday morning (6:00 AM for me) and goes through late Thursday night/early Friday morning. This gives us 4 days of actual game time that also allows for the late night gamers to post into the early hours of Friday.

I will always do my best to post as early as possible in the morning, allowing the rest of you to have the remainder of the day, and the late night/early morning of the next day to post at your discretion.

Again, as described below, conversation is different and allowed at any time, within reason.

If you like, feel free to post in the narrative outside of our regular active game time, keeping your posts on the less action-oriented side of things. More specifically, focus on conversation, dialogue, and your character's inner voice, avoiding actions and movements that would distort and stretch the narrative timeline. The reason for this is that conversation, dialogue, and your character's inner voice fit very easily and neatly into the timeline of the game's narrative, due to the fact that the words your characters exchange, and especially the thoughts they may have, can happen in a very short period of time.

As such, any time outside of our active game is a great chance for you to RP a little more if you like, especially as an opportunity for your character to socialize with other characters, whether it's planning ahead or just bantering back and forth. Of course, posting like this has to be done with some discretion and within reason. Your character wouldn't be able to have full conversations within structured time situations (combat) while they likewise wouldn't be able to have an entire conversation in the middle of a dispute with local authorities (depending on how much the officer was willing to hear before interjecting). They would, however, be able to have short exchanges in those situations.

Ultimately, if you do decide to post outside of our active games, you' are more than welcome to do so. It will add color and depth to the game while helping it, and especially your character, come to life. Just be sensible about it.

One of you had a question about the OOC General Announcement/Game Plan post I'll be putting up weekly (usually on Thursday mornings, toward the end of our weekly game session; again, I'll try to be routine and predictable as possible for everyone's convenience).

Every week I'll copy the weekly Announcement/Game Plan post, make changes to the dates, add any important announcements, etc., then simply paste it as a brand new post, keeping it in time with whatever else is going on in the OOC General chat and our game. As such, when posted, it should draw your attention to its 'newness' much like any other new post does.

Also, I know that it is very likely all of you already know this, but I try not to assume that everyone's knowledge base is the same (some people are newer than others to forum posting or GP, etc).

When checking for what's new in our game, or anywhere on GP, the best way to get to the most recent new post is to the left of the thread title; if there is a new post you haven't seen or read, a little black 'page' kind of looking icon appears, notifying you as much. Hover your mouse pointer over that icon and it will read "View new posts." Clicking on that will take you to the first post in the thread that you haven't read, making finding your place when resuming posting or reading easy, while also making it hard for you to miss anything.

Yeah, all of you probably knew that. I'd bet the house on it. But, I allow for the possibility that someone might be new to using forums and, if so, it's really no trouble to help.

Not 100% sure that this should go here, but Hawke's looting an arm and a leg from the cyborgs and sticking them in Engineering until he has a chance to look over them more thoroughly.

Added to your character sheet.

Just as a learning point to help you along, Lissewa just used Deception on Zhaff, and succeeded. Granted, it was a subtle Deception, but was playing along with the running lie of 'we've called for medical help.' There were no setbacks to remove via her Convincing Demeanor talent, as Zhaff recognizes and appreciates your help, which actually earned a boost die for Squeek's roll, which was further modified by a boost die from the lingering effects of Krosus' Influence. All in all, with Lissewa being a decent liar and the extra boost dice, she was convincing.

Something else to add: Lissewa won't have to pass a check for that specific lie with Zhaff again, unless Zhaff came across something that made him question her. However, other characters would likely have to make the check if they talk with Zhaff about 'calling for medical help.' This would reflect the potential that he can discern something in the interaction that gives away the lie. However, seeing as Lissewa, with Krosus' aid, has sold Zhaff on the fact that help was called for, the rest of you would get a boost dice if you talked to him about it again, as he firmly believes, for now, that help was called.

Again, I'm outlining the above to help you guys get a feel for the game mechanics and better idea for when rolls might take place, as a way of helping you be aware how you play your character. And yes, *IF* Zhaff lied to you, I rolled your Discipline checks to detect the lies.

The space we're in, is there a point large enough to get the ECUL out? I will point out IC that Lexi will pilot the ECUL, just figuring out if we have space to use it here or if we have to take a different tack.

As far as preparing to leave the Spear and take the ECUL into Kraspen, we don't need to RP that out unless you really want to.

All I really need to know is that everyone is on the same page and ready to leave. For my post tomorrow, I'll assume those of you who don't voice an opinion on where you think the group should go next are fine with the group's consensus, which seems to be Zhaff's suggestion of heading to see his contact at the Kraspen Espos Station (FYI, an 'Espo' would be a singular member of the planetary police).

If you are ready to go, you can use OOC General to describe what you'd like to do to prepare: what you'll take with you from storage, what you'd like to put on the ECUL, etc. Feel free to discuss anything you need to as a group. Again, I don't see a need to RP logistical considerations and prep, unless you want to. Ultimately, if we were sitting around the table, you'd simply go over your character sheets and make any necessary changes. Let me know and I'll make them for you (I'll keep taking care of the character sheets from here on out, as it simplifies things for me).

And yes, you can take the ECUL via the same way the Spear docked (the hangar doors provide a horizontal point of entry, rather than descending into the hangar from above).

After last week's hiccups things are going well. :)

Just remember to follow the posting etiquette (don't describe other character's actions, etc) and you'll be fine.

STARTING CREDITS

I've given everyone 100 credits, representing STRAT-COM's doling out some cash to help your squad make its way. I know I'm making the changes on your character sheets, but moving forward I encourage you to check my work. I do occasionally make mistakes.

Since I imagine most of the planning will be done here, I would imagine that we will bring everyone along but BS-10, name of my security Droid btw, will stay behind since there has been an established threat to us at this point. I would suggest bringing anything along that might prove useful, but we should avoid being to well equipped since we are heading to the police station and we aren't fully aware of the laws and stuff here. With that in mind, when Lissewa gets a chance she will be downloading any relevant information regarding the laws of the planet and such to upload into her droid.

BS-10 has already interfaced with planetary law, and reminds the group that weapons are permitted as allowed by the owner of the property or business, etc. Weapons are not permitted inside the Espos Station, but Zhaff points out that the group can simply drop him off. Remember, at this point Zhaff's understanding is that you're taking him to a safe place, that's it.

At the same time, he has a basic understanding of your situation as far as (1) You're not the usual types, so to speak. The guns and such give away that your group is, at the least, more than civilian, and that you work, to some extent, in and around conflict and (2) You might want to get your bearings and meet his contact, given the what happened in your hangar bay with the body count and such. Zhaff gets the fact that you may have questions and be looking for leads, etc. As such, he mentions that he can arrange for his Espos contact to meet you after he gets patched up at the station doc.

WEAPONS AND PERMITS

In addition to private establishment laws, you need a permit to carry weapons at all on Bonadan. Zhaff tells you that Espos have the authority to do random checks in public.

250 credits per light ranged or melee weapon, 500 credits per heavy ranged type weapons.

Tajanna will bring her entire kit, sans ACP Repeater. She'll also recommend to Lissi that she bring her Wilderness Survival Kit, Fusion Lantern, Medpack, and possibly her toolkit and extra Stimpacks.

Well weapon-wise Hawke's leaving his new blaster on the ship as well as the knife, but he's bringing his lightsaber. Now just need to figure out a justification for carrying around part of a femur on his belt.

As for everything else, he's taking his stimpacks, emergency med kit (assuming that it isn't a one use item), and his armor as well as helmet.

I'm going to assume that everyone wisely conceals their lightsabers, not wearing them where they are visibly seen. Especially when the hilt is made of a bone. However, if any of you want to do otherwise and wear it on your belt, hoping that it passes for some harmless tool, let me know. I mean, it depends who's looking, so maybe it would.

Maybe.

A NOTE ON CONCEALED WEAPONS

Concealing weapons is essentially based on the encumbrance of the weapon and the character's Stealth skill. Weapons with an encumbrance value of 1 can be easily hidden on a person (assuming you actually make an effort to hide it), and can only be detected via a patdown type search. Larger weapons would require some sort of place to hide them that makes sense (e.g., a trenchcoat) and each additional encumbrance over 1 adds a boost to the searcher's Perception roll against your Stealth, wherein your Stealth would be the difficulty rating (wherein your green dice would be treated as purples, and your yellow dice would equate to reds).

Oh Hawke is most assuredly going to be concealing his lightsaber. Given how I'm assuming that he gets weird looks for a bone lightsaber on Akrulta, it's a safe assumption that it would be a no-no in the wider galaxy.

Depends who is looking. Some bounty hunters, for example, would see it as a trophy. Of course, if they found it that it was one of your dead parent's bones...

Squeeks:

I know you have a lot of gear stowed on the Spear. Let me know exactly what you're bringing, what's going in the ECUL, etc.

Based on this, I've got you carrying everything with you but the pistol and the SKZ rifle (stowed in your room on the Spear). I'm assuming you're wearing the backpack when you leave the ECUL.

I've adjusted inventories as requested.

That's the right of it Ezeriah. Short of the obvious weapons, her data pad and such she'd take with her. As for wearing the backpack when she leaves the ECUL, it will depend on why they are leaving it.

Got it. I took another look, and you wouldn't need the backpack anyway without the guns. However, your encumbrance will be maxed without the backpack (8/8). Of course, nothing new for Lexi as with the guns she's maxed with the backpack (12/12).

I guess a minor adjustment then that I internally just lumped it in with the guns but realized I didn't specify. If I'm not hauling the guns with me, I'm also not hauling the reloads with me. No sense having the slugs without their throwers :) Which should put me at 4/8 on my person. Still 12/12 total when I'm using my backpack.

Which raises an interesting question regarding encumbrance: the encumbrance value, is that our total allowed ownership including storage space aboard the Spear or would we have additional "stowage" encumbrance aboard ship and the encumbrance value is our max "on person" gear?

The encumbrance threshold is how much you can carry on your character. You can, of course, store gear on the Spear. In this case, your weapons and some ammo could easily be stored in personal storage in your sleeping quarters.

Also, I allowed for the possibility that you might actually want to bring the ammo, for some reason. They could be useful, depending on the situation, however unlikely it may be (e.g., a bartering tool, reloading a gun you found during a battle, etc). I won't make assumptions when it comes to your characters, especially given that everyone's idea of what is/isn't useful will vary.

Lissewa will conceal her blaster on the ECUL, where she will also place the majority of her gear. The tool kit, med kit, wilderness survival kit and fusion lantern and several stimpacks and blaster reloads. Her scatter gun and ammo will remain on the ship.

I've placed the extra stimpacks in the ECUL (the ones that are usually stored). In the future, be specific and avoid words like 'several' please.

NEXT WEEK'S GAME AND ANNOUNCEMENTS

Announcements: Looking past next week (19th-23rd), the game is 'on' for Monday, December 26 - Friday, December 30. I know it's the holiday season, but those dates are very conveniently between Christmas and New Year's, and I'll be available to game during those times, so... why not? I know some of you may have holiday plans, but if you can still game, that's great. If you're not going to game, please let us know via the Absences thread, so we know what to expect.

A friendly reminder:
We're gaming next week from: Monday, December 19, 12:00 PM GMT - Friday, December 23, 12:00 PM GMT.

A convenient link below in consideration of the global neighborhood:
Greenwich Mean Time Clock paired with my time zone
For those in the United States like me, this means the game starts early Monday morning (6:00 AM for me) and goes through late Thursday night/early Friday morning. This gives us 4 days of actual game time that also allows for the late night gamers to post into the early hours of Friday.

I will always do my best to post as early as possible in the morning, allowing the rest of you to have the remainder of the day, and the late night/early morning of the next day to post at your discretion.

Again, as described below, conversation is different and allowed at any time, within reason.

If you like, feel free to post in the narrative outside of our regular active game time, keeping your posts on the less action-oriented side of things. More specifically, focus on conversation, dialogue, and your character's inner voice, avoiding actions and movements that would distort and stretch the narrative timeline. The reason for this is that conversation, dialogue, and your character's inner voice fit very easily and neatly into the timeline of the game's narrative, due to the fact that the words your characters exchange, and especially the thoughts they may have, can happen in a very short period of time.

As such, any time outside of our active game is a great chance for you to RP a little more if you like, especially as an opportunity for your character to socialize with other characters, whether it's planning ahead or just bantering back and forth. Of course, posting like this has to be done with some discretion and within reason. Your character wouldn't be able to have full conversations within structured time situations (combat) while they likewise wouldn't be able to have an entire conversation in the middle of a dispute with local authorities (depending on how much the officer was willing to hear before interjecting). They would, however, be able to have short exchanges in those situations.

Ultimately, if you do decide to post outside of our active games, you are more than welcome to do so. It will add color and depth to the game while helping it, and especially your character, come to life. Just be sensible about it.

I pasted this from the narrative to make sure everyone sees it (in case some of you already read the narrative post, this will appear as new in the OOC):

None of you clarified whether or not you wanted to meet Zhaff's Espo contact, so he's officially asking. I try not to make assumptions as to what you'll choose to do, while also allowing multiple paths to success, or failure. I'm not sure what everyone's RPG experience is like, but I'm not going to try to keep you on a path and follow 'my' story (aka as keeping you 'on the rails', as some GM's are prone to do). My goal is to make a galaxy for you to game in as you like.

In the future, I'm unlikely to mention the following, but from the space port hangar you had three decent options to explore: The Espos station, The Runoff, and Space Port administration (if you figure out who the DF's contact is there). Perhaps some of you considered all of those options, but I want to make sure players of all experience levels and backgrounds are aware of the varying degrees of possibility in our game. It's not a threat, but a promise: I'm not going to hold your hand and guide you toward success.

I'll be posting something when I get home from my son's holiday concert tonight. I want to make sure I do it justice rather than a wham-bam kind of fly by posting.

The only thing Krosus has on him is his robe and utlity belt. His light saber is hidden on the back side of his robe, well out of sight. On belt he has comlink, 4 stimpacks and two SYNTHETIC NEUROPARALYTIC caplets.

Sounds like you're leaving your e-medpac, glowrod, and backpack on the Spear. Correct?

Correct, sounds like your taking stock of what things you can loot from us. Maybe we should have installed force activated locks onboard.

Lol. Nope, just making sure I've got it right. Can't have you using a glow rod when it's on the ship.

Okay. I've gone over everyone's inventory. I haven't adjusted encumbrance, and may not do so unless you guys pick something else up. All of you should take a look at your inventory and make sure I've got it right. It's your chance to make changes as well, as inventories will be final as of 12:00 PM GMT Tuesday.

Inventory appears to be perfect. Thanks

Well having finished finals earlier today I should be pretty free to post. I'll be adding in a story post later on today

Copy from Narrative:

So far I've got Hawke, Lexi, and Tajanna going to Shank's Pre-Owned pawn shop, which is less than a minute's walk down the street from Charitable Charlatan's cantina. If CCL and Squeeks can confirm where they'd like to go by Monday 12:00 PM GMT, we can move on from here without delay. Just leave a short note in OOC General.

However, if you feel the need to strategize or plan, that's fine too.

Finishing finals was always a great feeling. You've got a nice breaking coming up then.

For those of you who haven't seen it... Rogue One was fantastic. Right up there with IV and V, in my opinion. Acting, writing, setting, story line... all amazing. I'll have to take a look on the net, but whoever the key individuals were in writing, directing, and producing this should be taking care of SW movies for awhile. They nailed it.

It might even be tied with RotJ for 3rd place on my all-time SW movie list (Ewoks were horrible; fun fact: originally, Lucas had Wookies at the end of RotJ, not Ewoks). The classic lightsaber duel between Vader and Luke for Anakin's soul gives RotJ the edge though. Yeah... V (ESB) is my fave, followed by IV (NH) then VI (RotJ). But, I've gotta say, Rogue One delivers on that every level with that SW feel, like Empire Strikes Back does, with a little bit of that darker and grittier vibe.

I almost feel bad about being on vacation in a tropical paradise, because I won't be able to see Rogue One until after Christmas.

Speaking of being on vacation, I don't currently anticipate having to miss any scheduled posts (if I do, I'll post in the absences thread), but I likely won't be able to make as many non-action roleplaying posts as I otherwise would.

One should never feel bad about being in warm weather around palm trees. I know I wouldn't.

I said almost feel bad. It would take a lot more than missing a movie premiere for me to not appreciate having no snow to shovel, and temperatures above zero (or above 32, for those of you who use Fahrenheit).

CCL, as far as your plans on going into Shank's Pre-Owned, that's a little too complicated on the planning ahead. You're not even in the store yet, and there are many things about the store that you may not know. Furthermore, I can't do a simple either/or' for that situation. Only do that for very simple things like Lissewa's questions of Zhaff (who was already Charmed and the questions were the basic kind), talking to a bartender ("when he gets to me, I'd like to ask if he's heard of Mr. So and So") etc. Your Influence has a check involved, and some specific things that you should decide when using it.

First off, remember: when using Influence you need to roll Discipline with it (declaring your intentions before the roll (e.g., I'm going to Jedi mind trick him with "These are not the droids you're looking for."). Every force power has an associated Skill check. Either you're going to try to improve relations (lights side points = positive emotions), cause negative emotions (dark side points), or cause confusion aka 'jedi mind trick' where you can get them to believe a lie (light or dark side points). Your use of the force here needs some role playing behind it with specifics, I'm not going to come up with your mind trick or influence choices for you. Keep in mind that the mind trick is for getting them to believe 'simple untruths', and the more unbelievable it is, the harder it will be to accomplish via setback dice and/or upgrading dice to red challenge dice.

The good news is I will let you bank those rolls for use in Shank's Pre-Owned, as your intentions are clear. Just add your Discipline roll when you actually try to use Influence on whoever it may be.

Just made some adjustments to Hawke's latest post. A little bit of 4th wall leaning and making a Perception check.

It's an RPG, no worries. By all means, role play.

Besides, the group also has a Greedy (Lissewa), Obsessive (Tajanna), Hatred (Lexi) and a Cruel (Hawke). All of you have a... dark side?

Ha. Ha. Ha.

I had to. It just came out that way.

HAH

A reminder for everyone: almost all of the Force powers have attached Skill checks that should be rolled simultaneously with your force dice. Check the Library before your roll and attach the proper skill check as needed.

As the group has split up, I've restructured the forums a bit. There's now an Operation Dark Thrall forum for the narrative, with sub forums for the group working together, separately, etc. You can't access threads which you aren't a part of; as such, Lissewa's thread where she is in Charitable Charlatan's shouldn't even be visible as a thread to the rest of you who aren't there. Also, for Squeeks, the other thread with the rest of the group going to Shank's shouldn't be visible.

Please confirm the above when you get this message. As I'm sure you've discerned, I'm doing this to give the game a a more realistic feel, as obviously you aren't aware of what is happening in different places.

Got it

If you need to communicate with one another via comlink, or some other means available to you, do so in the thread that your character is currently in. Whether it's a voice call, a holo-call, or a text message, I'll copy and paste the message to the other thread as needed.

Also, whenever the group separates, be sure to read what is in the Main thread before switching over to the thread where your character will continue their part of the story.

Also, I'm going to make OOC's for each of the narrative subforums. Do not ask questions about your part of the narrative in the primary OOC General Chat thread. We don't want to give story aspects away to characters and players who shouldn't be aware of them :)

Just to be clear, your characters are in separate places and narratives now. Don't spoil the fun by sharing across OOC. Lissewa should be clueless as to what is happening in Shank's, whereas the rest of you should be clueless as to what is happening in Charitable Charlatan's.

Again, you can communicate with each other via comlink, etc. but do so within the context of your separate narrative thread as a comlink call or what not.

Understood. Also loved rogue one, just got to see it yesterday.

Check. We went and saw it on Sunday finally (took our son for his birthday). Loved the flick.

Understood. And I'll be joining the Rogue One club a couple days after Christmas.

Would it be possible to have an additional page added to our character threads with the skill dice pools?

In Oggdude's, the skill page very conveniently has all of the skill dice images there to make quick work of figuring out the pools. As most of my posting time is usually when I'm AWAY from the computer with that information available, it'd be great (at least for me as I'm still very much learning the system at large) to have that kind of a key available here. Something like:

Lightsaber - YYGGW
Pilot Space - YYYGGW

I don't necessarily want to make more work for YOU, but for me at least it would cut down on the individual prep time for each post where I'm including skill checks.

That's a good idea. I could just flesh out the character sheet more. Basically, just list all of the skills on each character sheet, with the appropriate color code next to it (e.g., YYGG, GGG, etc) along with delineating with skills are career and specialization skills.

So, rather than a separate post, would making the character sheet more informative via the above method help?

That would work for me!

It would definitely help me whenever I'm on my phone, without my Oggdude character sheet to reference.

Okay. I'll do my best to get it done over the weekend. It is a great idea, and will also simplify things for me as far as secret checks go.

Let's see:

Yellow
Green

Nope...

Yellow
Green

Lightsaber YYGG

Looks good to me.

Busy weekend holidays and all. I'll get to the color coding of the dice pools for skills when I can.

I started to work on the next posts for our game, but the holidays and time with the family are intervening, which is more than welcome as I'm enjoying it (going out to a holiday brunch). I didn't want to hurry things and put some mediocrity down just to move the game along. I started to, and then realized I was doing so, and had to stop. I really like the writing in the game and the feel so far, and didn't want to half-ass it for everyone. Obviously, I underestimated the 'holiday effect' on our game.

So, in consideration of the holidays, and the possibility that the rest of you might encounter similar situations, let's take a break for a couple days and resume on Wednesday, December 28th at 12:00 PM GMT. So we're playing a half game for the week, Wednesday and Thursday, as I don't want the game to drop off completely. It should also fit in nicely before the weekend and New Year's celebrations.

As far as XP goes, everybody counts as having posted for today and tomorrow :)

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

So, I finally got around to seeing Rogue One. It was pretty good, but there was no opening crawl. Barely even qualifies as Star Wars, completely ruined the franchise, 0/10.

Merry Boxing Day, everyone!

I personally liked Rogue One but I'm not sure I agree with the as good as the originals and such. I just thought it was good and would continue to watch movies like it.

NEXT WEEK'S GAME AND ANNOUNCEMENTS

This message will frequently look the same, but please pay attention to it as I will make the occasional announcement outside the norm.

Announcements: XP Day next Monday!

A friendly reminder:
We're gaming next week from: Monday, January 2, 12:00 PM GMT - Friday, January 6, 12:00 PM GMT.

A convenient link below in consideration of the global neighborhood:
Greenwich Mean Time Clock paired with my time zone
For those in the United States like me, this means the game starts early Monday morning (6:00 AM for me) and goes through late Thursday night/early Friday morning. This gives us 4 days of actual game time that also allows for the late night gamers to post into the early hours of the morning.

I will always do my best to post as early as possible in the morning, allowing the rest of you to have the remainder of the day, and the late night/early morning of the next day to post at your discretion.

Again, as described below, conversation is different and allowed at any time, within reason.

If you like, feel free to post in the narrative outside of our regular active game time, keeping your posts on the less action-oriented side of things. More specifically, focus on conversation, dialogue, and your character's inner voice, avoiding actions and movements that would distort and stretch the narrative timeline. The reason for this is that conversation, dialogue, and your character's inner voice fit very easily and neatly into the timeline of the game's narrative, due to the fact that the words your characters exchange, and especially the thoughts they may have, can happen in a very short period of time.

As such, any time outside of our active game is a great chance for you to RP a little more if you like, especially as an opportunity for your character to socialize with other characters, whether it's planning ahead or just bantering back and forth. Of course, posting like this has to be done with some discretion and within reason. Your character wouldn't be able to have full conversations within structured time situations (combat) while they likewise wouldn't be able to have an entire conversation in the middle of a dispute with local authorities (depending on how much the officer was willing to hear before interjecting). They would, however, be able to have short exchanges in those situations.

Ultimately, if you do decide to post outside of our active games, you are more than welcome to do so. It will add color and depth to the game while helping it, and especially your character, come to life. Just be sensible about it.

NEXT WEEK'S GAME AND ANNOUNCEMENTS

This message will frequently look the same, but please pay attention to it as I will make the occasional announcement outside the norm.

Announcements

Game Start Times: We're making a slight change to our start times for gaming. Now that I've got a fairly good routine down, I've noticed that I rarely get to posting before 1:00 PM GMT. However, I usually get to it before 2:00 PM GMT. As such, I'm bumping our daily start time up to 1:00 PM GMT. While it may not be a big difference, and I don't know your time zones, perhaps it will give some of you that like to post in the morning an extra hour to do so.

Game End Time (on Fridays): Also, as we play it's become obvious to me that we could have some extra room at the end of the week. As it's the last game day for the week, we could allow some extra time as I don't need posts done by Friday 1:00 PM GMT since I'm not going to post again until Monday. However, I do use some time on the weekend to plan as a GM, making adjustments as necessary to the game environment, etc, as predicated by your choices and actions, so having the Thursday post finished by Saturday mornings would be great. So, in an effort to simply be pragmatic about things, from now on I think we can just give that Thursday post an extra day. As such, I'd like to change the end of the game week, which will really only affect the Thursday post, to Saturday, 1:00 PM GMT. I want to give more room where it makes sense to do so, and in the off chance one of you is pressed for time on a Thursday, or simply don't feel like posting, this will help. I'd like to add that during combat, please be considerate of the fact that others might be waiting on you to take your turn.

Also, if for any reason this you guys don't like this idea (game feel/flow is the only reason I can think of), let me know. If everyone is opposed to it, we can leave things how they are.


A friendly reminder:
We're gaming next week from: Monday, January 9, 1:00 PM GMT - Saturday, January 14, 1:00 PM GMT. Remember, our Thursday post has an extra day now. We're not adding a fifth game post (Friday) to the week.

A convenient link below in consideration of the global neighborhood:
Greenwich Mean Time Clock paired with my time zone
For those in the United States like me, this means the game starts early Monday morning (6:00 AM for me) and goes through late Thursday night/early Friday morning. This gives us 4 days of actual game time that also allows for the late night gamers to post into the early hours of the morning.

I will always do my best to post as early as possible in the morning, allowing the rest of you to have the remainder of the day, and the late night/early morning of the next day to post at your discretion.

Again, as described below, conversation is different and allowed at any time, within reason.

If you like, feel free to post in the narrative outside of our regular active game time, keeping your posts on the less action-oriented side of things. More specifically, focus on conversation, dialogue, and your character's inner voice, avoiding actions and movements that would distort and stretch the narrative timeline. The reason for this is that conversation, dialogue, and your character's inner voice fit very easily and neatly into the timeline of the game's narrative, due to the fact that the words your characters exchange, and especially the thoughts they may have, can happen in a very short period of time.

As such, any time outside of our active game is a great chance for you to RP a little more if you like, especially as an opportunity for your character to socialize with other characters, whether it's planning ahead or just bantering back and forth. Of course, posting like this has to be done with some discretion and within reason. Your character wouldn't be able to have full conversations within structured time situations (combat) while they likewise wouldn't be able to have an entire conversation in the middle of a dispute with local authorities (depending on how much the officer was willing to hear before interjecting). They would, however, be able to have short exchanges in those situations.

Ultimately, if you do decide to post outside of our active games, you are more than welcome to do so. It will add color and depth to the game while helping it, and especially your character, come to life. Just be sensible about it.

A warning: there's a big storm heading my way this weekend so I may be out of power for a good chunk of next week.

That's unfortunate. Well, the group can always drag you along if need be.

I'm in the same boat Meribson. Raleigh is expecting something like 8-10" as of our last forecast. If we get that in full, I'll do my best to stay in contact and all that. I'm hoping it all stays away and we're back to proper weather soon. :)

So what you guys up to? Outside of the game obviously. Just a little lonely. :D

At the moment, watching Incorporated. :) You?

At this very moment, I've got a guitar strapped to my back and am belting out some of my wife and daughter's fave songs along with iTunes (and mine, mostly, as my 9 year old daughter has thankfully adopted my musical taste, having copied 75% of my iTunes library on to her iPod, which is docked into her new Bose Xmas present!!). And I'm somewhat inebriated. Just thankful my daughter has good taste. :)

Basically, we're having some family time. Something we call 'Guitar Night'. It's a lot of fun.

EDIT: What's Incorporated? Obv I could just look it up, but am curious.

It's a TV show on SyFy. General premise is: Dystopian future with massive caste system has split the US into two major groups, the Green Zoners and the Red Zoners. Green Zones are dominated by Corporations that rule EVERYTHING. Your promotion means you get a better house, better benefits, and a better life. Demotion means being kicked out onto the streets. The Red Zone is your standard future dystopia: Blade Runner meets iRobot meets Aeon Flux all with a dash of Mad Max.

By itself that sounds worth watching. We'll have to find it in the endless web that is TV. Me and my woman love some sci-fi (really looking forward to the next Dark Matter). Dark Matter started like garbage in the first 3 episodes or so, then evolved into an amazing sci-fi delight.

Bout to head out to do some board gaming at the local store. Wasn't really doing anything yesterday so I waited until today to respond. :D

Sending this from my phone, power is out so my posts will be on the shorter side for the immediate future.

What a drag. Hopefully it's not too rough and doesn't last too long.

NEXT WEEK'S GAME AND ANNOUNCEMENTS

This message will frequently look the same, but please pay attention to it as I will make the occasional announcement outside the norm.

Announcements

A friendly reminder:
We're gaming next week from: Monday, January 16, 1:00 PM GMT - Saturday, January 21, 1:00 PM GMT. Remember, our Thursday post has an extra day now. We're not adding a fifth game post (Friday) to the week.

A convenient link below in consideration of the global neighborhood:
Greenwich Mean Time Clock paired with my time zone
For those in the United States like me, this means the game starts early Monday morning (6:00 AM for me) and goes through late Thursday night/early Friday morning. This gives us 4 days of actual game time that also allows for the late night gamers to post into the early hours of the morning.

I will always do my best to post as early as possible in the morning, allowing the rest of you to have the remainder of the day, and the late night/early morning of the next day to post at your discretion.

Again, as described below, conversation is different and allowed at any time, within reason.

If you like, feel free to post in the narrative outside of our regular active game time, keeping your posts on the less action-oriented side of things. More specifically, focus on conversation, dialogue, and your character's inner voice, avoiding actions and movements that would distort and stretch the narrative timeline. The reason for this is that conversation, dialogue, and your character's inner voice fit very easily and neatly into the timeline of the game's narrative, due to the fact that the words your characters exchange, and especially the thoughts they may have, can happen in a very short period of time.

As such, any time outside of our active game is a great chance for you to RP a little more if you like, especially as an opportunity for your character to socialize with other characters, whether it's planning ahead or just bantering back and forth. Of course, posting like this has to be done with some discretion and within reason. Your character wouldn't be able to have full conversations within structured time situations (combat) while they likewise wouldn't be able to have an entire conversation in the middle of a dispute with local authorities (depending on how much the officer was willing to hear before interjecting). They would, however, be able to have short exchanges in those situations.

Ultimately, if you do decide to post outside of our active games, you are more than welcome to do so. It will add color and depth to the game while helping it, and especially your character, come to life. Just be sensible about it.

As requested (and a great idea), I've finally had the time to put together the color-coded skill portions of the character sheets. For added convenience and ease of play, I added additional info to the dice pools shown regarding adjustments from Talents and the like. Furthermore, rather than leave them simply alphabetized, I've arranged them into sensible categories, as I think this will make it a lot easier to consider options when similar/related skills are grouped together.

If you find any errors, or think something could be added that wouldn't be too obtrusive to the character sheet's format, don't hesitate to let me know. Any method we can find to streamline play for the PbP format is welcome, as long as it works.

Your character sheets will be updated shortly :) Enjoy!

We're going to bring the group together and back into one forum, which is pretty awesome.

Aw yiss!

Right?! I'm pretty stoked about it. It was like GMing two games there for awhile.

Everyone, Chapter 1.2 of Operation Dark Thrall, is now open, with the thread The Spear of Akrulta: Plotting ans Scheming, now available for your RPing enjoyment!

Milestone! 5 extra XP for all, immediately rewarded and spendable!

Also, if your characters are willing to share their experiences, now that they are together, we can hand wave it and save some time. If one of the Shank's group is willing to tell Lissewa the story, I can open up Chapter 1.1b to Squeeks so that she can read it at her leisure. Likewise, if Squeeks is willing, I can open up CHapter 1.1a to the rest of the group for their reading pleasure.

I'm a big fan of doing this, as it will allow us to fast forward a bit past some unnecessary posting to share the experiences in-game, and if I was you guys, well, I'd be curious to know the other side of things. Your choice, though.

The Player side of me says "sure, why not."

Character wise, Lexi would likely need to have some info as to why Lissi went dark before too many details were shared out.

Either way: I'm good with either decision.

As a player, I would love for you all to see what happened but I think at the moment, it may be best that she keep the exact details of what happened to herself. She will explain what needs to be said and leave it at that. For now at least. Ezeriah, I will let you know when Lissewa is willing to open up about the events that took place.

Okay. However, at some point, we are definitely opening this one up, as it would just be a shame for the rest of the group to miss all that. Perhaps I'll open them both when the group has a good chance to sit down for a moment, with some privacy, and share.

Well, that's good news. A cold is way better than a dam breaking.

Welcome back!

Making some changes to the character sheets. Did a test run on Krosus, liked it, so doing them all.

What I'm doing is making each section on the sheet into a 'spoiler', so that when your sheet comes up, there will be multiple categories to click on, making it easier to access the sheet and find exactly what you need. For those who don't know, simply click on the 'spoiler' for the section you want to look at, and it will open up in a convenient boxed in area. If you go into your character sheet and open them all up, this has the bonus feature of separating all of them into nice, boxed in groups. Also, if you're using a mobile device, this should make navigating your character sheet easier.

I love that spoilers are getting such love now.

This game was one of the reasons I put the suggestion in. The character sheet format just SCREAMS "put spoilers in me, please". :)

Noticed that and liked it.

Thanks. I'm a big fan too. Nice and tidy.

Btw, our game is public now!

Available for all members of GP to read. Personally, I enjoy reading along with some of the other public games, and thought there might be others on GP who might enjoy following this one. You guys write some good stuff, and so far I'm thoroughly enjoying the game.

Really looking forward to what you all do for your next step toward carrying out Operation: Dark Thrall.

OBLIGATION AND DUTY

For those less familiar with the game, the way the rolls turned out for our Obligation/Duty check today, it's fairly simple.

Lexi's Obligation: Her Oath to Vhrall Akrulta, and role as an Eye of Akrulta, has her worrying about her responsibilities, duties, etc regarding her role as an Eye of Akrulta, including worrying about the Oracle, the Cathedral, etc. The narrative flavor of Obligation in this case is relatively minor, as we don't have a major event such as Lexi finding out about some negative plot twist wherein something bad happens toward the Eyes of Akrulta, the Oracle etc. Here, she's just worried/stressing.

Drama, if you don't mind playing that part a bit, that would be cool. No need to get overboard with it, but your Obligation has your character stressed about her responsibilities outside the current mission. Hawke is also an Eye of Akrulta, so he would be able to relate to and share her concern.

In sum, Lexi suffers -2 Strain Threshold, while everyone else suffers -1.


Lissewa's Duty: Coincides with her recent efforts, as she has established a connection, of which I'm sure the rest of the group will learn more about. Either way, the group is bolstered by this success, Lissewa gaining +2 Wound Threshold, while everyone else gains a +1 Wound Threshold.

These bonuses are temporary, lasting until the next time we roll Obligation/Duty.

not sure how you guys want to proceed especially after what i learned. Can't discuss here because of meta gaming, but would like some feed back on what the plan is. I'm half inclined to drop a NEUROPARALYTIC in this guys brandy.

Tajanna is currently inclined to cooperate with Nash, or at least not antagonize him unnecessarily.

And I agree, our crew needs a chance to chat privately before any final decisions are made.

Lexi kind of wants to poison him just for being a sleaze. She also would be fine making him gargle lightsaber. But totally agreed that we need a chance to confer as ourselves without observation before we sign off on anything.

This is the info i needed and i agree with him gargling a light saber. Of course after we have discovered everything we need from him.

I figured we would take Ezeriah advice and try to get most of the discussion out of the way over the weekend before Monday, if anyone else has anything else they wish to talk about. I will assume that the first official DM post will probably cover the resting portion since we could all use a rest.

Agreed, we should get everything that we want done before our characters go to sleep out of the way before Monday, and ideally have an agreed-upon plan of what to do when our characters wake up.

I think it would be easier to hash out our "group consensus" OOC than IC, and Ezeriah recommended doing so earlier, so I'll start that discussion here.

I think our main three options right now boil down to "cooperate with Nash", "politely decline to cooperate with Nash", and "initiate hostilities with Nash". Of course, there are nuances to each of these options ("cooperate with Nash" could be either "cooperate with Nash in good faith", "cooperate with Nash with the intent to betray him later", or somewhere in-between), but those differences won't really impact our characters' short-term plans.

As of right now, I think Tajanna and Lissewa both lean towards "cooperate", Krosus leans towards "initiate hostilities", and Hawke and Lexi possibly also both lean towards "initiate hostilities", but I'm not as sure on those two. We probably should try to get a plan that all of our characters are willing to go along with (even if only grudgingly), otherwise our characters are likely to literally be at each others' throats next week, or just spend the whole week bickering and sabotaging each other and get nothing done.

Also, a consensus about opening up the 1.1 threads to viewing would be nice, too (I vote yes, unless someone has a compelling argument otherwise).

Lexi is just antsy. She's kind of borderline between cooperating and being hostile. She's pretty well ruled out "don't cooperate" because that leaves someone out of their control with knowledge of what they are. So it's either cooperate and use him or kill him outright. Likely, she'll go along with a cooperation plan, so long as the plan is to keep him on a short leash with no real power truly making him a puppet.

She absolutely doesn't trust him, but that's not abnormal. if he's a means to their end, so be it.

Krosus learned some things. First off I was able to read some of Nash's thoughts. One of them was about lissia and implied something was done to her. Secondly Krosus knows lissia was lying during her conversation with us, due to a really good discipline check. So he wants to know the truth about what happened to lissia and what game is Nash playing. So that is what he wants known before we plan a course of action. I have a feeling we need to deal with Nash now before we get entrapped by his mechanations. Secondly Krosus wants to investigate the ship for the missing tranciver part. It's either here or evidence of how it was dispose off can be found. If not found he thinks we should make contact flesh crawler as soon as possible to get a better perspective on what's happening on this planet

A couple of things to help you along:
Although the 'cooperation' component is clearly an important issue, beyond this, you should also try to decide your next actual move. I'm not going to have Nash spoon feed you guys as to what you should do, if you decide to cooperate with him in some capacity. Of course, if you make a decision, he can offer some who/what/where insight, locations, advice, etc, but don't look to him for 'what do we do next' type advice.

You should consider aspects of the game so far, the players involved, places, and organizations when you consider your next move, and how your group can work toward establishing power in Kraspen, and on Bonadan. As a memory refresher, below are some people/organizations/places/events you've encountered or heard of, in no particular order of importance or value.

Keep in mind this is a list to refresh your memory from the last couple of months of real-world time, which seems fair given that your characters have been in Kraspen for less than a day. Also, keep in mind that this is what I recall.

In the future, I suggest you start copy/pasting some things into the Group Journal and Notes as a way of combining your ideas into one powerful brainstorm/think tank, as I will be less and less inclined to help you along, as I naturally expect you to become better at playing the game, which is meant to be fair, yet challenging.

Each player should keep it to one post in the Group Journal/Notes, organizing that one post any way they see fit. Adding additional posts will just clutter things up. Some of you have reserved spots, some should join that thread.

Dead Floaters
Mech-Zecutives
Zhaff
MechTronics
Fleshcrawler
Nash
Espos
Labor Riots
Hawke has information on this, and we can GM handwave the search of the ship: you don't find the missing modulator part for the holo-terminal.

Some insight from your merciless GM as to how you might proceed in...

OPERATION: DARK THRALL

I won't always be so helpful, but given the political nature, intricacies, and the complexity of this mission, not to mention the newness of the group as a whole, I thought it worth providing some direction. Enjoy.

Subversion Endgame
Your squad's ultimate goal for Operation Dark: Thrall-- taking power as quietly as possible!

RP-wise, we'll assume that the group's conversation with Nash, in the Spear's lounge, included the technical aspects of taking control of the Board, in addition to the ins/outs of how power works in the CSA, rather than slogging through a lot of unnecessary gamey technical posts in the narrative.

Take Control of the Bonadan Executive Board
There are Executive Boards on key planets, in key systems, across the Corporate Sector, which control what are called 'sub-sectors' across the entire Corporate Sector. These sub-sectors make up the voting power of the CSA, and are the powers that be that control the laws, resources, and decision making power of the CSA.

In a sense, using real-world terms, you can view the Corporate Sector Authority (CSA) as a country, and the sub-sectors as states/provinces within that country. The sub-sectors are the voting power within the CSA. The Executive Board of each sub-sector is run by a handful of members, who ultimately make the decisions for, and control, that sub-sector, giving them a vote as to how the CSA itself conducts business and behaves as a larger entity.

Most of those Executive Boards, which control sub-sectors, are being threatened by Sith Spec Ops squads just like yours. Your squad, 8th Special Operations, has been entrusted with perhaps the most important piece of the puzzle: Bonadan, the distribution hub of the entire Corporate Sector, which essentially makes it like the 'capital' planet/system of the Corporate Sector.

The Bonadan Executive Board (to clarify, this is what Nash was referencing when he mentioned being placed into a position of power): Anyone who owns/controls 51% of the Board's financial power has actual control of the Board itself, as the voting power of each Board member is actually equivalent to their % ownership. This means that 51% control requires no actual vote, as the 51% is enough to win outright, giving the majority owner dictator-like power, and the control that comes with it.

To Nash's knowledge, from hearsay around the Kraspen underworld, no member of the Bonadan board has 51% control. Furthermore, this degree of control and ownership on any board is somewhat rare, as the Board members themselves are typically good at jockeying for control, working together when necessary to prevent anyone from achieving 51% control. The number of members on any board is variant, but can range anywhere from about 5, to a dozen, depending on how many 'war droids', as Nash called them, are 'patrolling the financial market.' Naturally, each Board as a whole owns the vast majority of their respective 'sub-sector' market, but not that entire financial market, making certain that the 'little guys' never gain any real foothold, as the Board itself controls when, and if, any new members will be inducted into said Board.

The endgame idea for Op Dark Thrall is to be in control of 51% of the Bonadan Board, in any way you choose to do so which would actually give full control of the Bonadan Executive Board, which controls the Bonadan solar system you're in, and the sub-sector attached to the board. All of the Sith squads like yours, across the Corporate Sector, are busy doing the same kind of missions, subverting and usurping seats on Boards across the Corporate Sector. Assuming enough of those Sith missions are successful, the puppet Board members will be able to exert enough control over the Corporate Sector as a whole to control its resources, and decision-making power (e.g., preparing for, and entering, galactic war with the Empire, New Republic, or both).

A note on Board members (again, info provided by Nash during your 'get to know you' session): They are, naturally, very secretive, and stay in the shadows, appreciating that being 'known' would make them huge targets for extortion, assassination, etc. They use pawns, and the like, to carry out their whims, when necessary. Nash suggested that the only real way to get to them was to 'follow the money, and the power'. Sooner or later, it should lead to someone on the Board, as those are the individuals that truly control Bonadan, and the Bonadan sub-sector, which would be a collection of (solar) systems, and their constituent planets.

However you choose to exert this 51% control over the Board is up to you.

Or, you could just say screw it all, abandon the mission, go where you please, and hope the Sith Empire forgets about, or forgives you, and utterly fails in their effort to take over the galaxy.

Your choice.

A SIDE NOTE ABOUT HYPERSPACE LIGHTSABER DUELS!

Recently, in a Star Wars game where I'm a player, I was challenged to take part in a cargo bay duel (sparring) with another character, as part of our group's trip through hyperspace (the fight starts on this page, in a public game).

Ultimately, this was prompted by the GM's asking "Any particular items people would like to tend to before coming out of hyperspace?"

It was a ton of fun, with some great narrative as part of the RP flavor in the game. As such, I've decided to open up a Hyperspace Lightsaber Duels sub-forum, which will serve as a place, for those of you who wish to participate, to engage in some lightsaber sparring, during those long hyperspace trips, or during any downtime on the ship when you would like to. There are no permanent criticals, or injuries of any kind, but beyond that the combat is treated like any other in the game.

The great benefit of this is that it will allow you to have some fun, RP as much as you like during the duels, and, the most utilitarian feature, gauge your character's overall combat readiness while learning the combat mechanics of the game in full! You can duel as often as you like, which will simply reflect duels taking place at an appropriate point in time, prior to the current moment in the narrative (so, at this point, any duels would have taken place during your squad's hyperspace trip to Bonadan).

To set up a duel, simply make the challenge in the Hyperspace Lightsaber Duels OOC, and then the player who accepts the challenge can create a new thread in the cargo hold of their choice. Label the thread "Krosus vs Lexi" with an attached sequel number if needed, such as "Tajanna vs Hawke: 4"

How about 'Tajanna vs Lissewa'? Gotta pad my win/loss ratio to look good to the brass.

Also, while we're on the subject of the technicalities of CSA politics, how is the percentage of each board that is controlled by each of its respective members calculated. Is it based on discrete, purchasable "shares" in the board, or something akin to total net worth?

That probably wouldn't go well for Lissewa! But you never know...
It is based on discrete, purchasable shares and ownership of the financial market. Each member's total net worth is an entirely separate value, and they alone can determine how much of their net worth they are actually willing to skin into the market, as a means of exerting financial, and political, control over their respective Board and sub-sector.

Hawke at this point doesn't trust anyone. However, he's not seeing many options. As it currently stands working with Nash seems to be the only option before them for the mission to succeed. Running away and hoping that the Sith don't send assassins isn't even entering his mind as a possibility.

Alright, not sure if this is how I wanted everyone to find out about it because I think drama like this would be best reserved for IC discussion, how should we handle this?

I was assuming that our characters don't know yet, as Krosus hasn't told them, and CCL was just explaining Krosus's decision-making process to us as players.

My comments were strictly for OCC discussion. I prefer the mystery, but my in character would have told the group my thoughts and what I learned.

Which I'm down for RP it out.

For the Hyperspace Lightsaber Duels, to level the playing field a bit, and allow Lissewa to get in on the action...

Lissewa can, of course, bring BS-10, aka Sebastian, her security droid. This includes a special rule wherein Sebastian must be defeated prior to attacking Lissewa, in a simulated two-tier assault for the lightsaber user.

Well, that's how I would prefer it go down as well. At least in this setting. I initially was against going into greater detail into what occurred during my portion. Mostly because my character would think it was messy and embarrassing. But if she is called out on it, she will not likely fight it.

Well, at this stage he might help me stay up an additional round or two. If I could actually use blasters set to stun I might stand at least a small chance.

It's all simulated, Squeeks. Use your blaster weapons as you see fit. Being able to use BS-10 is to account for the fact that everyone else is bringing Parry and Reflect to the party.

Everyone should really view this as a way to get some combat experience in without dying, learning how to play to their individual character's strengths and weaknesses. I really appreciate that this will allow you all to get a better understanding of how combat capable your character really is. And, it makes sense, because your characters, chosen for a mission to take the crown jewel of the Corporate Sector, should have a decent amount of training/experience that makes them choice candidates for the mission, hand picked and put together by STRAT-COM.

In the future, I may even open up Hyperspace tournaments for small XP awards. Either way, getting some combqt experience in and learning the mechanics can only benefit you.

UPDATED RULES AND INFO ON HYPERSPACE DUELS
There have been some changes and additions, so make sure you're aware of them...

This is the place to challenge others to a duel, whether you leave it an open invitation, or would like to challenge someone in particular!

Is your character really ready for a fight, or as ready as you think they are? Find out! Gauge your character's combat prowess, and master the game mechanics, all while having fun!

Just like 'real' combat in the game world, anything you can do in one of those fights, you can do in a duel. Force Powers, Talents, spending Triumph/Despair/Advantage/Threat, etc, it's all part of it.

A few big differences between 'real' combat, in the narrative, and duels:

(1) There will be zero permanent injuries, or death, no matter what critical hits are rolled. Critical hits, however, for the purpose of the duel, will be treated as full critical hits.

---If the critical would cause some permanent, or temporary, damage, it will do so only during the duel (e.g., permanently crippled limbs will be treated as sprains, etc).

---If the critical would be a fatal blow, you can just write it off as the attacking character 'pulling up' at the last second, lightsaber stopping at their opponent's neck, for example, in what would clearly be a finishing strike.

(2) A character's Wound Threshold/Strain Threshold will be considered fully recharged for the start of each and every duel. Naturally, this recharge does not carry over to the 'real' world in the game.

(3) No Destiny token use.

(4) Obligation and Duty modifiers do not apply; instead, use your character's base stats.

(5) Only one non-attack action may be taken prior to initiative (e.g., to commit a Force dice for a power).

(6) Duels will start at Short range.

(7) Your Defensive conditionals for abilities like Parry and Reflect will not apply. Instead, claim any Parry or Reflect incidentals you would like to perform in OOC format.

(8) Everyone has to call their combat actions/maneuvers/incidentals (Attack, Maneuver, Parry, Reflect, use of Advantage,Threat, etc) in OOC format, in addition to any RP flavor they want to add. Damage totals are to be clarified in OOC as well.

(9) If your opponent rolls and there is Threat or Despair left in their pool, you get to decide how it is spent, not the GM.

In fact, you won't need me at all for these duels, and assuming you know the combat mechanics, you can carry them on without me, at your leisure. Of course, I will naturally be watching them, and weigh in if need be.


To set up a duel, simply make the challenge in the Hyperspace Duels OOC (this thread!). If two players agree to a duel, either of them can then:

(1) create a new thread, in the cargo hold of their choice (which can be done immediately by the player who accepts, just to speed things up).

(2) the thread creator adds an initiative roll to their first post

(3) then, the other player can then enter, adding an initiative roll to their first post as well.

Once a new thread is opened with an initiative roll, signalling the start of a duel, a failure to show up by the other player will be considered a forfeit.

All new threads, necessary for a new duel, are to be labelled with character names like 'Krosus vs Lexi' with an attached sequel number if needed, such as 'Tajanna vs Hawke: 4'.

Lissewa can, of course, bring BS-10, aka Sebastian, her security droid. This includes a special rule wherein Sebastian must be defeated prior to attacking Lissewa, in a simulated two-tier assault for the lightsaber user.

Gambling for credits, naturally, is allowed.

Roleplay as little, or as much, as you like during the duels and enjoy! I know I did!

So, the Hyperspace Duels are most definitely interesting, but keep your focus on the narrative.

The Hyperspace Duels are essentially timeless, so no worries there when it come to making them happen.

So I'm getting the impression that the current plan is to assist Nash

To be fair, my intent with this is to use him rather than him use us. He has contacts, assets, personnel and a general understanding of the lay of the land, all things we don't currently possess. As things continue, I expect we will find others that we will be able to use. We will keep them around as long as they are useful. I don't however think we should leave him be, he does know about us and he would not pass up on the opportunity to gain something from knowing what he does. So if we don't use him, then he must be killed. Those are the only two options in my mind. Ultimately, even if we do end up using him as the puppet, he is nothing more than a puppet to us, especially if we succeed and the Sith Empire is able to gain control of the CSA sectors with no resistance.

A NOTE ON IMPROVING COMBAT

I have been tinkering with the idea of opening up combat a little by giving the players the option to use their abilities to create defense, as a way of adding some realism, tactical depth, and personality to the game.

It's really simple, actually. When attacking, the player can choose how many of their dice they would like to use for the attack. The remaining dice are added to a pool for defending against attacks directed at them, until the start of their next turn, reflecting the character focusing a portion of their efforts on defense.

For example, say Hawke wants to shore up his melee defense this round. From his total Lightsaber pool of 3 Yellow/1Green, he might use his three yellow dice to attack, leaving one green in the pool. That one green, when Tajanna attacks, would be converted into a purple, added to the base melee attack difficulty of two purple, totaling a difficulty of 3 purple for the attack. Yellows would be converted to Purples, as I'd want to avoid trying to use these defensive methods as a means of artificially generating Despair for the opponent.

This would even allow players the choice to invest all of their dice to defense, completely foregoing any attack whatsoever, in an effort to simply survive until help arrives, or as a means of waiting for an opening (e.g., the attacker generates 6 Threat, which the defender could then convert into 3 Boosts as a counter attack on their next turn).

For ranged weapon characters, I think I would only allow this if they had cover to use, in which case their skill would reflect their character being able to line up shots in less time, or by exposing less of themselves.

Also, it seems that it might be more sensible, using this method, to reduce the standard difficulty of melee attacks to one purple, so that defense isn't weighted too favorably.

For melee, it wouldn't provide additional defense against ranged attacks. However, it would definitely add a little more of a mind game to melee duels, with the potential to generate Threat, as a result of too few dice on any attack, and the potential to create additional Threat for an attacker, by adding dice on your own defense. The best part is that, RP wise, characters would literally be able to have their own fighting style, beyond standard Melee, Lightsaber techniques (Ataru, Soresu, etc), Talents, and Skill Ranks, allowing them to put another stamp on the character's personality to make it all their own.

What do you guys think? It makes sense to me that a character should be able to decide how focused on the attack they want to be, or how long they want to expose themselves for a good shot (in this case, the Ranged skill also reflects their experience with using cover well). We could even play test it in the Duels Thread, and I think it has the potential to make combat in the SW game more dramatic, with more control over your characters actions (how aggressive they're being, how much they're using cover, etc).

The only potential issue I can see is that this may reduce the value of existing Talents, gear, and maneuvers that give additional defensive dice, and that it'll make a good dice pool even more important than it already is (someone with 4+ dice could make themselves almost untouchable to someone with 3- dice pool, just by adding one or two dice to defence each turn, while still being able to devote multiple dice to attack). It could also result in combats being drawn out further, as wounds are dealt less frequently, and thus prolong the game.

I don't think any of those are likely to be huge issues, but they might be worth thinking about before implementing those rules.

I agree with Tefmon on this one since there is stuff that exists specifically for improving defense.

What we could do is test it out in Hyperspace Duels and see how it works.

I'm fine with reducing the value of the existing talents, and the effect would be very minimal, especially when you look at those talents and realize the value they add to the combatant. The crux of it all is this: FFG made combat too simplified in some respects, and despite the fact that characters do have access to Talent, etc, combat is fairly vanilla in the game, including the maneuvers you reference (Aim, Guarded Stance). Also, a good dice pool will always be important, but making this change will not be a game breaker, not even close. Even with this kind of change, I can think of things that I would most definitely prioritize as more important for combat than adding another Lightsaber dice to the skill pool.

Yes, there are maneuvers, gear, talents, etc that can improve defense, and this extra layer of strategy will only improve upon the system, allowing players to put their own personal stamp on their character, beyond what the build allows.

Also, some combatants should be untouchable when fighting. We can draw on canon for this, and consider someone like Darth Vader going up against Luke in Empire Strikes Back: Luke never stood a chance, and, in fact, Vader wasn't even trying to beat him during that fight on Bespin toward the end of the movie, rather, he was trying to turn Luke to the Dark Side, almost toying with Luke like a cat with a mouse. Given that we can safely say Vader had something like 5 Yellow, and Luke might have been 1 Yellow and 2 Green, it absolutely makes sense that Vader should be able to own Luke, and control the combat from start to finish.

There are plenty of examples I can think of where master level force users would absolutely dominate an inexperienced Knight, or even easier, a Padawan. Darth Sidious, Maul, Qui-gon Jinn, Ep III Obi-Wan, Yoda, etc. All of those guys would be packing serious Lightsaber skills in the pool, but I still have to add this: based on the Talents available in the game to multiple Specializations, my view on this is that having a high Lightsaber skill is simply one of the important aspects of being a masterful combatant; there are a plethora of Talents that outshine the change I am talking about, and the fact of the matter is this: a true Lightsaber master is gong to be combining Lightsaber Talents from multiple Specializations, likely 3+ of them.*

What I really want to do with this change is open a little more strategy to combat, beyond "I Aim" or "Guarded Stance", and I want the change to reflect the character's skill with their chosen weapon. I want players to be able to decide how aggressive, or defensive, they want their characters to act, and over time I think it will be readily apparent that these subtle changes will also being more excitement, and fun, to the game. And, as far as drawing out combat, I think that won't happen as much as you think, and will really come into play when fighting major NPC characters, in which case the combat should be drawn out some, reflecting the importance of the event by the ups and downs of the battle.

*As a side note, I picked something up on a forum about characters picking up new specializations. A GM on that forum mentioned that he wanted to try and encourage players to diversify, and be able to build more unique characters that suit their tastes, rather than feel handcuffed by what's called the 'XP tax' for going to a Specialization outside of your career. I've got to admit, I like the idea of freeing up your characters to pursue whatever path they choose, as part of their experience in the game and learning as they go. As such, I'm thinking of doing something like this: we completely abandon the 'tax' and the incremental Specialization purchasing system, and simply calling the cost to pickup a new Specialization 20 XP, base cost, no matter how many specializations you have, or your career. 20 XP, period.

More thoughts on adjusted combat rules, excerpts from another conversation I had:

Some extra defense dice won't have a significant impact on Parry and Reflect. As someone who is a gamer when it comes to character design, I've got to say that the reliability of Parry and Reflect simply cannot be overlooked. Even if I had 6 Yellow dice for my Lightsaber skill, Parry would still be the biggest player, by far, in my defense. It's a guaranteed way to stop damage, and, if you can stop all damage on a single attack, even negate criticals. Dice are random. Parry/Reflect are constant, reliable, always there to use as an incidental.

As far as the 'all out defense' character, they still would have to expose themselves when they do decide to finally attack, committing some dice to offense; in the meantime, however, they are allowing their opponent the opportunity to land a hit, even if it is less likely.

As far as Talents like Improved Parry, that would allow the all out defense character a viable strategic option, playing defense and looking for easy openings; however, they'd have to a fairly capable combatant to utilize this strategy, and remember, those counterattacks from Improved Parry are basic damage only, no extra damage for additional successes, no potential to generate any Advantage.

On the offensive side of things, It's worth keeping mind that generating Advantage can be used in the same fashion, to add Setbacks to the opponent's next attack, or Boosts to your next attack (considering these ideas, along with the base rules already in play, it really gets me stoked for combat becoming more than build type and dice rolls, and instead becomes part chess match). All of this is takes place while the player also has to consider when/how often to replenish their stamina, using advantage they generate from attacking (mind you, the all out defender can't generate Advantage to replenish their strain threshold).

With the all out defender in mind, I took another look at the dice in the CRB, to appraise probability, specifically the potential results for each dice. Purple difficulty dice do have a significantly increased chance to roll Threat/Failure, and at this point, given that there are also defensive talents and gear, I'm considering something like this:

Yellow dice could be converted into Purples for Defense, whereas Green would be converted into Setbacks. The primary idea here being to make certain that combats don't go on forever; a bonus is that it also helps keep some more of that value for Parry/Reflect. Also, this will make converting dice toward defense less of a guaranteed lock down, and more of a supplement to defense (given that a Black Setback dice has a 33% chance to come up blank, whereas a Purple Difficulty dice has only a 12.5% chance to come up blank, meaning the Purple dice have a much greater potential to influence combat.

I think it might be a good idea to require a Maneuver, at the start of the turn, for the character to alter the Attack and Defense dice pools, reflecting a concentrated focus for the character that turn on switching gears, preventing quick changes wherein the player can stack Aim or Guarded Stance with a dice pool change too easily, unless they are willing to sacrifice some strain for an extra maneuver that turn (e.g., feeling threatened, they go full defense, and really want that Guarded Stance Setback added to their opponent's next attack).

I'll have to do some more thinking on it, but I definitely want to playtest this in the Duels forum, as I think it has a lot of potential to make the game better..

A copy of part of an earlier post, to make sure nobody misses it:

As a side note, I picked something up on a forum about characters picking up new specializations. A GM on that forum mentioned that he wanted to try and encourage players to diversify, and be able to build more unique characters that suit their tastes, rather than feel handcuffed by what's called the 'XP tax' for going to a Specialization outside of your career. I've got to admit, I like the idea of freeing up your characters to pursue whatever path they choose, as part of their experience in the game and learning as they go. As such, I'm thinking of doing something like this: we completely abandon the 'tax' and the incremental Specialization purchasing system, and simply calling the cost to pickup a new Specialization 20 XP, base cost, no matter how many specializations you have, or your career. 20 XP, period.

This is what we'll go with. I'm going to get rid of the 10 XP tax for buying Specializations outside of your Career; beyond that, we're going to use the RaW for buying specializations (XP cost = the total number of Specializations you WILL have, after you get the new one, multiplied by 10). This will prevent players from taking cheap dips into a Specialization to pick up high value, cheap Talents.

The Library has been updated to reflect this change under Buying New Specializations.

COMBAT POOLS: ATTACK AND DEFENSE

So, I've decided to officially move this forward for playtesting. As a means of motivating all of you to help playtest the improved combat rules...

I'm going to start awarding XP to those that help playtest the new combat rules: 2 XP for a win, 1 XP for a loss.

I'm giving 2 XP out for wins as a means of motivating you to try your damnedest to win, rather than just show up and bank some XP for simply being in the duel, which would be useless for good playtesting (please, don't do that). Also, please don't use this as a substitute for getting XP in the narrative, as that is still the focus of our game (if I feel you're focusing more on dueling than the narrative, you'll likely find yourself barred from dueling, at least temporarily). You can only be involved in one duel at a time, but beyond that there are no limits to how many duels you can participate in per month.

Worth mentioning is that the playtesting XP awards will not last forever, so get involved while you can.

Also, to make sure everyone can be involved without too much downtime, I'll provide a sparring partner, ensuring you don't have to wait too long for your next duel. For this purpose, I'm opening up a new forum in the Hyperspace Duels called 'Sleeping Quarters: Duels in Dreamland', from which you'll be able to fight a variety of opponents, in your dreams, or your nightmares.

If you like, you can even create a future, higher level version of your character with more XP (remember, there's no 10 XP tax anymore for buying Specializations outside of your Career), then use it yourself in a Dreamland fight. If you're planning on doing this, it's probably a good idea to announce the XP value of this character's build, allowing someone else to create a build of equal value for that duel, if it will be needed.

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The official rules on how the new combat system will work
Some definitions, for the purposes of the content below:
---'Melee' within the context of the below rules will refer to the following skills: Brawl, Melee, and Lighstaber.
---'Ranged' within the context of the below rules will refer to the following skills: Ranged-Light and Ranged-Heavy.
---'RaW' refers to Rules as Written.

(1) The rules will be universally applied to both Melee and Ranged Combatants:

---Against Melee combatants, we'll assume upgrading defense is the character's effort to dodge, focus on defensive positioning/movement, maintaining separation, non-Strain inducing Parry/Reflect (the many swings/thrusts of weapons you see in the movies), etc. In this respect, I've always imagined that Reflect, and especially Parry, only used strain against the strongest attacks, as I envision that there are more slashes/thrusts/parries/etc than the dice rolls and the mechanics presented anyway.

---Against Ranged combatants, we'll assume upgrading defense is some combination of making better use of cover, moving evasively/fast, or the character's ability to make themselves 'small' when it comes to getting shot at, crouching down to an extent, etc.

---In any case, Melee vs Melee, Melee vs Ranged, Ranged vs Ranged, Ranged vs Melee, the rules will be universal. Every type of character will be able to take full advantage of these rules.

(2) The Engaged range attack difficulty will continue to be 1 Purple Difficulty for Ranged combatants (using RaW), but will also be changed to 1 Purple Difficulty for Melee combatants.
---Using RaW (F&D p.217), Ranged-Light combatants will add 1 to their difficulty against both Engaged Ranged and Melee opponents, whereas Ranged-Heavy combatants will add 2 to their attack difficulty in such cases. As it should, using Ranged weapons against Engaged combatants should be difficult.
---This change (dropping one of the Purple Difficulty for Melee combatants) is to reflect that part of the Melee combatant's efforts should, to some extent, be focused on defending themselves, depending on their actual interest in doing so. Whether your character prefers to build walls of defense, attack like a frenzied berserker, or switch up tactics depending on the situation and the opponent, it's up to you. Be the kind of combatant you want to be, and develop your own personalized fighting style.
---This change will also even things out a bit, making it a little harder to stack defense, while allowing a slightly wider range of offensive/defensive behavior for Melee combatants (e.g., going 'all out' on the offensive will be balanced against characters who are likewise going 'all out' on defense).

(3) Prior to attacking on any turn, the player may convert any number of dice* from the appropriate combat skill, depending on their equipped weapon(s) (Lightsaber, Melee, Ranged), into a defensive dice pool, increasing the difficulty of their opponent's attacks, using the conversion methods below.
---Yellow Attack dice can be converted into Purple Difficulty dice, which are added to their opponent's attack difficulty.
---Green Attack dice can be converted into Black Setback dice, which are added to their opponent's attack difficulty.
---These pools will be referred to as 'attack' (Yellow/Green) and 'defense' (Purple/Black) pools.
---Any adjustments made to a character's attack/defense pools carries over from round to round, until the player makes another adjustment, prior to attacking on any turn. Adjustments can, of course, be made without a followup attack.
---Dice are downgraded when converting from Attack to Defense due to the fact that all attacks start with at least one Purple Difficulty, in addition to preventing abuse of the new Defense pool mechanic. Also, this will ensure that defensive Talents that upgrade dice (Dodge, Defensive Stance, Side Step, etc) will continue to have value. We're going for balance here, and downgrading Attack Dice to Defense dice seems like a good fit.

(4) Characters will have a default setting for both Attack and Defense pools, recorded on their character sheet, which will be used to start combat for situations in which their character is not surprised/ambushed (meaning initiative was rolled with Cool).
---Otherwise, when surprised/ambushed, characters must wait for their first turn to adjust their combat pools, which means, except for the Engaged range Difficulty change above for Melee combatants, that combat will ultimately be played out using RaW, until your character gets a turn). I'm also a big fan of this because it lends more value to getting the drop on someone for an easy kill.

*Initially, I considered requiring a Maneuver to convert Attack dice to Defense dice, but didn't want to interfere with combat movement and some of the Talents that require a Maneuver to use (Defensive Stance, Center of Being, Saber Swarm, Side Step, etc). I'm still considering making it cost a Maneuver, as part of an effort to stop players from stacking Aim or Guarded Stance with dice pool conversions, also keeping in mind that players can spend 2 Strain on any turn to give their characters a 2nd Maneuver.

For now, let's start with conversion being free, although I'm still looking for some insight on this one. What do you guys think? Free dice pool conversion, or Maneuver cost for conversion? I'm leaning heavily toward free, simply because, like I said, I don't want to discourage the use of Talents, or characters moving around the battlefield; discouraging Talent use seems far worse than allowing players to continue to use Aim/Guarded Stance. However, I'm open to being talked out of it, so if you disagree with me, I'd like to hear it.

Excellent addition to the Group Journal Squeeks. Obviously not everyone has to be that thorough, but if everyone is contributing their own thoughts/ideas/perceptions of the narrative, it will all come together and help all of you build a better picture of what's going on in the game, which, in turn, should help when you guys try to determine how you would like to proceed when decisions need to be made.

Squeeks, I made some minor adjustments and supplemented a detail or two about the Executive Board for your notes, which are an excellent basic summary of the who and the what of Kraspen, Bonadan, and the CSA.

When I realized how important it might be to refer back to notes, I skimmed back through all the threads to pick up on anything I thought might be important as well as add Lissewa's comments about them. It is certainly not everything but I figured it would be fun to put together a more personal log.

Pilot Sith, Armour Sith, Spy Sith, and Snooty Sith. One of these is not like the other.

She doesn't know much about him. Outwardly, he doesn't even really seem like a Sith. She hasn't seen him fight with a lightsaber or use any special powers. The powers he has used are more inward or subtle. These are at this point in time, her initial takes on the crew mates and they will evolved over time.

Well, if you guys opened up your separate chapters to one another, you'd get to see... ;)

So, I've taken a moment to consider some of the group's actions regarding Morality and Conflict. Don't consider the conflict awarded below as a penalty. Rather, consider it as what it simply is: Conflict. It's not that your character(s) did something wrong, or made mistakes, it's just that their affiliation with the Dark Side makes some of their actions a little harder to swallow.

Consider this table from the Library's Morality and the Dark Side:
The full rules for how Conflict will affect your characters can be found in the link above.


COMMON CONFLICT PENALTIES FOR DARK SIDE CHARACTERS

Knowing Inaction. The PC knows that an NPC or PC will do something to oppose them and allows them to do so. 1-3 conflict. Fear, Weakness.

Self-Incrimination. Honesty detrimental to the PC or their agenda. 1-3 conflict. Fear, Weakness.

Fleeing from/Submitting/Surrendering to a Direct Threat. The PC may consider their flight as the consequence of an associated personal failure that put themselves in a position of weakness. 0-4 conflict. Fear, Weakness.

Seeking Peaceful Resolution to a direct threat of violence. 1-5 conflict. Fear, Weakness, Compassion.

Unnecessary Acts of Kindness. Helping others, unselfishly aiding them in some way. 3-7 conflict. Compassion, Justice.

Granting Mercy, especially to an enemy. 3-10 conflict. Mercy, Compassion, Justice.

Endangering Yourself Unselfishly, to help others. 6-12 conflict. Mercy, Compassion, Justice.

Self-Sacrifice. Offering to take the place of another, etc. at great peril to yourself. 15+ conflict. Mercy, Compassion, Altruism.

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Something to note is that the table above refers to 'common penalties'. As such, I'm going to interpret your characters' actions over the course of the adventure so far and dole out some Conflict as follows:
Remember, picking up Conflict only increases the chance that your Morality will swing toward the Light Side of the force, when we do finally roll to see how it affects your Morality.

To clarify what seems to be some confusion for some of you, you guys have already tried to contact Fleshcrawler on your comlinks, when you first docked (just making sure you know you don't need your holo-terminal for that, it just provided a more secure means of communicating than a comlink; the holo-terminal would be primarily to contact STRAT-COM, per mission protocol in this situation where things have not gone to plan).

You can refer to the opening post of the game and see that you came to the conclusion that Fleshcrawler's comcode was simply unregistered/didn't exist, as it should have. It should have existed, or at least that was the STRAT-COM plan.

Of course, for those of you who may already be in tune with the knowledge above, you may have considered that Nash might be able to facilitate contact, assuming that Fleshcrawler is also the man that Nash now works for, as has been theorized by some of you.

I've streamlined things and moved some threads from the 'Characters' sub-forum to the front page. It seemed like keeping the below listed miscellaneous threads on the front page, along with other useful threads, would make accessing them easier, allowing you to look in one place for what you need. Let me know if this is not the case.

Also, the 'Characters' forum has been organized, sorting the characters alphabetically by player name (much like I do everywhere else in the game).

Duty, Obligation, and Morality Tracker
Group Finances and Assets
The Spear of Akrulta (YT-2000 Light Freighter)

Your character sheets can now be found under Character Roster.

Also, if you haven't been doing so already, whenever I adjust your character sheets, adding Skills/Talents/etc, changing your inventory, you should be checking them to ensure accuracy. I manage the character sheets, as it help me keep things organized to my preference (yes, I'm picky!), but in the end, you are responsible for your characters.

I forgot about our attempts to contact flesh crawler by comlink. Seems pretty shady to me.

For those of you who haven't already, finish reading Chapter 2, then go to Chapter 3 (now up).

What I wrote above in my narrative from yesterday, where Hawke checks out the ECUL, was my way of letting you know the ECUL is fine, as I got the impression you were going to look it over (and I was trying to be 'PbP Efficient' to help the story along).

However, if you'd rather I didn't make those kinds of assumptions, that's alright too. If that's the case, trust me, I completely understand, as I'm not a big fan of having my characters moved along by GM's, or especially other players (when other players do it, it's just really bad PbP etiquette). Either way is fine, just let me know.

The following are some reminders to make sure the game goes smoothly and we don't need to retcon as much and edit previously written posts (e.g., like my removing the part from CCL's post wherein Krosus forces the prostitute to let go of whatever she grabbed in his pocket).
Okay, I can appreciate that. In the future, do me a favor and drop a short clarification as to what the dice are for in the OOC part of your post. Everyone should be doing this. No matter how obvious you think your intentions, it's better to eliminate confusion, and much like a table top game, you need to declare what the dice are for, in some way. Also, your words directed ("savvy, etc") at the Pickpocket could have used a Coercion check, if you wanted to really get it across that she should let go without further complications. Of course, maybe Lexi just wasn't at that threat level yet :)
A couple of things here, CCL, as a reminder:

The part in red above: You're controlling another character. Yes, it's the simple release of whatever her hand was on in Krosus' pocket, but they aren't your actions to control. Leaving out that part in red above, your Coercion roll makes a lot more sense, and would serve well as the Skill Check that would intimidate the green prostitute into letting go and backing off, rather than, say, trying an Athletics check vs your Resilience or Athletics to try and yank out out whatever she grabbed and run off with it. Even if it seems like the most trivial NPC, you still can't dictate their actions. Further, that NPC could be an assassin, or an Imperial agent, and not nearly as minor as you think.

Remember the following from Posting: Content, Format, and Etiquette:.

"The most important thing is that you do not control another person's character or an NPC. Even if it is something simple; they respond to a simple question or give you a high-five, whatever it is, it isn't for you to control. In your own posts, only describe the actions of your character and what is going on in his/her mind.

Similarly, do not describe the results of your actions. You may think lighting a fire should be easy, but the story may say that the fireplace you are working at has sticks of dynamite in it. If your character has got a nice blaze going and is happily warming her hands it makes it seem a bit weird and arbitrary when I suddenly blow you up!"