Given the renewed interested in Star Wars d6 due to the FFG 30th anniversary release, I’m going to share out a Star Wars WEG d6 Editions Comparison Chart I made a few months ago.
Month: August 2017 (Page 2 of 3)
I’ve been thinking about pre-gens for potential Cypher System Star Trek and Star Wars one-shots. Nerdarchy has a great post which stats out the most popular characters in both franchises. This will serve as a great way to create pregens (just take the character sentences, and make them all Tier 1 characters).
The Cypher Rules System ranks character power in Tiers from 1 to 6. (For Star Wars, the Jawa that sold Uncle Owen R2-D2 and C-3PO would be Tier 1. Darth Vader would be Tier 6.)
Here is the current conversion –
STAR WARS
- Leia Organa – Tier 5 Noble Speaker who Defends the Weak
- Han Solo – Tier 4 Brash Explorer who Looks for Trouble
- Chewbacca – Tier 3 Strong Explorer who Stands Like a Bastion
- Lando Calrissian – Tier 4 Lucky Speaker who Fights with Panache
- Boba Fett – Tier 4 Sharp-eyed Warrior who Masters Weaponry
- Poe Dameron – Tier 3 Swift Warrior who Pilots Starcrafts
- Finn – Tier 4 Virtuous Explorer who Never Says Die
- Captain Phasma – Tier 3 Calm Explorer who Metes Out Justice
STAR TREK
- Jean-Luc Picard – Tier 5 Resilient Speaker who Masters Defense
- William T. Riker – Tier 4 Clever Warrior who Defends the Weak
- Worf – Tier 4 Strong-willed Warrior who Hunts with Great Skill
- Data – Tier 3 Mechanical Adept who Entertains
- James T. Kirk – Tier 6 Impulsive Warrior who Leads
- Spock – Tier 5 Intelligent Adept who Calculates the Incalculable
- Odo – Tier 3 Perceptive Adept who Solves Mysteries
- Kathryn Janeway – Tier 4 Driven Speaker who Leads
Here’s the full post.
Yesterdays announcement of a 30th year anniversary reprint of “Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game” has prompted some discussion of which Star Wars RPG edition was the best. I did some polling this last year and have some interesting insights on this topic.
Favorite Star Wars RPG Sytem (d6, d20, FFG, etc.)
I ran a poll here which asked “For those of you who’ve run or played a Star Wars RPG campaign in the last four years, what system did you use? By campaign, I mean 5 or more game sessions.” The population I polled were the few thousand people who follow me on Google+. Here were the results.
Favorite Star Wars d6 Edition (1e, 2e, 2e R&E)
I then ran a poll here looking at the different d6 editions. I asked “Which d6 ‘Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game’ edition is your overall favorite? (Whether to run or to play; I’ll assume 1e includes rules errata or retroclones, and 2e Revised and Expanded includes REUP).” The population I polled was the Star Wars d6 Google+ group. Here were the results.
Conclusions
There is probably some selection bias (for those into statistically significant polling techniques) but nonetheless the results are interesting.
Generally, even though it’s out of print, Star Wars WEG d6 still has a very strong following and is for a large population, their favorite Star Wars RPG ever.
About half the folks active in the Google+ Star Wars d6 community like Star Wars WEG d6 like the final edition (2e Revised & Expanded) the best, but the rest of the folks like the earlier d6 versions better.
Anecdotally, most of the Con games I’ve seen that run WEG d6 use the easier, simpler 1e version (which doesn’t have a Wild Die, has a much simpler skills list, etc.). I suspect casual gamers like the simpler system.
So is the FFG 1e reprint the harbinger of fuller WEG d6 support? I doubt it. It’s likely ‘one and done’, meant mostly to sell as a sourvenir.
For my part though, this one two-book set is all I need though. The rest of the material I already own or can get off eBay. My players can buy an in-print copy to play Star Wars WEG 1e, which is truly remarkable, and will enable me to run a Star Wars WEG 1e campaign, something that previous to this announcement was very hard to do!
— Stan
Cypher Intrusions and Star Trek Random Encounter Tables
Veteran D&D players have been using random encounter tables to generate adventures since the ’70s. The Cypher System has a mechanic called GM Intrusions. Usually these are events you make up on the fly. However, I think a bit of pre-planning can really give the GM ammo to use during the game. Take a lesson from old-fashioned Random Encounter tables and craft Random Intrusion tables for you game.
This is essentially what Ryan Chaddoks wrote in a blog post. Ryan lists some sample Trek-flavored Intrusions:
It’s important to customize Intrusions to the flavor of Trek. Here are a few ideas for how to do that:
- The character is taken prisoner or otherwise separated from their crew or away team.
- The atmosphere or planet surface is inhibiting a major technology (phasers, transporters, etc.).
- The character leaves something important behind.
- The character is infected with the thing that this episode is about (a gene stealing virus, radiation anomaly, sentient nano terraformers, whatever).
- The character becomes the focus of the attentions of an enemy. Now it’s personal.
- The group is somehow stranded.
- The ship stops being able to go at warp.
- A ship system being used by the character begins to malfunction.
I love the idea of having an intrusion list handy!
Check out Ryan Chaddok’s blog and also The Translation Codex for Cypher elements you can fold into your custom campaigns.
We who are about to die, salute you
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