Star Wars: Edge of the Empire, Digitally Remastered SWRPG - March GOTM!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Star Wars: Edge of the Empire, Digitally Remastered SWRPG - March GOTM!

Hubis: May 18, 2003; Boy, I wish we had one of those doomsday machines...

I don't really understand the need for the Force Die. The rest of the dice pool system works so well for providing a spectrum from "Great Triumph" to "Qualified Success" to "Advantageous Failure" to "Total cock-up", wheras force powers are basically "you succeed or you fail (or you make yourself a little more evil for some reason)". To what end?

# ¿ Aug 14, 2014 18:19

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 01:13

Hubis: May 18, 2003; Boy, I wish we had one of those doomsday machines...

homullus posted:

I think this is a really good question. My guesses:

1) Force dice have no blank sides. All the other dice do. If "nothing happens", it's because the player chose not to spend dark points.
2) It's easier to Commit dice, even setting them on the Talent cards (if you've purchased them), if they're different from the ones for the central mechanism
3) The nature of the check is different -- the light and dark are additive for Jedi making power checks, rather than subtractive like the regular check. The kind of check is related to the kind of dice.

So it was kind of a leading question because I have my own theories, but I'm very eager to hear other people's thoughts.

I kind of feel like it reflects a bit of a narrative problem with The Force. Basically, The Force is Magic, and EotE is exactly the opposite of a "Magic" setting. If this were Fantasy, Star Wars would be Tolkein-esque High Fantasy while EotE feels a lot more like your sword-and-sandal low-magic Low Fantasy setting. Once you start adding space wizards, the focus drifts away from the mundane struggle of the everyday folk and towards the more existential issues surrounding Destiny and Supernatural Powers and Things Mortals Could Not Possibly Understand. In order to make that work in EotE and AoR, they really toned it down by forcing the characters to not be able to rely on their "Space Magic" consistently. Essentially, it was something they could only really leverage if Fate (die luck) was in their favor. Now if you want to add full-blown Jedi, that dynamic suddenly has to change a lot.

Unlike shooting, or negotiating, or slicing, "The Force" has no real direct analog for our mere human players and GMs to extrapolate successes and failures from. Moreover, since the force is "Magic", there is a tendency to not want to throw mundane setbacks into the mix. A Force User who rolls a despair can't have his gun break, or alert the guards to his presence by triggering the alarm he was trying to disarm, or accidentally start a brawl with the bouncer he tried to bribe (ok maybe that last one). Maybe you could tie it into the Strain mechanic better, but in general The Force kind of ironically feels very alien to the rest of the Star Wars world. It's a thing that only works because the rules say it does.

There's also really very little example of "average" Jedi, because the Jedi are all portrayed as supernatural bad-rear end samurai-sorcerers who are essentially untouchable by the non-attuned, even when they are defeated (usually by some form of betrayal or "unfair" tactic). Luke is maybe one of the few examples of someone who's a real novice with The Force, and even then he never really "fails" so much as just has greater or lesser degrees of success.

e: All if this is by way of saying that The Force has it's own dice because they feel a need for it to be set apart from the rest of the system because Jedi are set apart from the rest of the universe in the narrative; however, I'd argue this is neither necessary nor desirable.

Hubis fucked around with this message at 20:25 on Aug 14, 2014

# ¿ Aug 14, 2014 20:22

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Star Wars: Edge of the Empire, Digitally Remastered SWRPG - March GOTM!