I do agree, and I think a lot of what is wrong with the TV shows & EU-ish stuff is the sci-fi approach to what should be simple stories…
BUT when it comes to skills and widgets for a game, are you saying you need archaic Shoe-cobblers and people who make stuff out of leather & wood? I’m strictly talking philosophy for the skill list in the area you quoted, not Nature or obstacles.
For writing skills, I think we’re still looking at more service providers rather than Medieval makers, and the Mouse Guard list is slanted very much towards craftsmice.
The skill list at least ought to be Modern IMO. This means more service rather than craft. I’m mostly talking Dancer & Musician rather than futuristic Hyperdrive Foozle Manufacturer & Droid Brain Designer.
Or do you want Starshipwright rather than Boatcrafter, Plastisteel-welder rather than Smith, and so on?
Smith, Carpenter, Apiarist… all completely the wrong context in a Star Wars hack IMO. But if you can recast them for a Star Wars hack, I would welcome the input.
I will have a look into the skill thread. I have the Mouse Guard pdf at work.
I am not really convinced of the need to change the Star Wars skills from medieval to modern. I have been sitting here refelecting on the movies and thinking about what kind of society and professions come through.
The times when modern urban society is depicted are in the more recent movies where they show the capital. There is a hive-like bustling city. However the city in those circumsyances is firmly wallpaper. It does not play a role in the drama. The drama in those circumstances is centred on the halls of power: Council Chambers, Senate, the Jedi Academy. We simply do not see the service based support of these pinnacles, even though we know they are there.
For the rest of the movies the drama takes place in either much more humble settings or on the run in guerilla warfare hiding. There are the likes of Vapor Farmers, Droid Mechanics, Merchants (both petty and grand), Bar Tenders, Starship Mechanics, Support Personnel for Military, Speeder/personal Transport Mechanics, Criminals and Bounty Hunters, smugglers and officials they avoid, medics, pilots. All of these have direct mappings with medieval counterparts. The more or less do the same thing. Just change the noun they operate on. Object substitution is all you need to do. So as you have mentioned Plasticsteel welder for Smith, Starship Engineer for Boatwright. Carpenter? Change it to Droid Mechanic since Droids work well for the wood of the medieval.
Unless you want to set your game in the base of the pyramid that supports the peak of the empire, don’t worry about it. Truthfully most of us work in that base in the “real world”. Escapism is a bit more fun. Star Wars is closer to “Beowulf” than “Death of a Salesman”
Starships are boats, Animals are covered by Insectrist. We can do this without waiting for a supplement.
Sensors are tools to make a Will test. Just like other insight/perception type rolls. Or if you want, replace Glazier with Sensor/Hologram Engineer. I would break starships, speeders and other vehicles into two uses: Combat and Non-Combat. Combat use is governed by Fighter. Non-comabt use is governed by Boatcrafter.
But a Jedi always has better light saber usage, according to Obi-Wan. It’s the difference between the common people and special people. But perhaps we can keep that as color.
…
In the movies, the Jedis make a hand movement when they use their powers. Perhaps it helps them to focus? How we reflect that? +1D if the player do that movement? Or maybe the opposite: +1 Ob if the character is disabled from move his hands.
Yeah, there will be a bunch of new Traits, plus a lot existing ones. Mechanically, they all act similarly in Mouse Guard, so being extremely particular doesn’t matter that much.
It’s more in the definitions. Capturing ideas that come up in the movies, or are specific to species in the movies.
The movies are humanocentric, and aren’t about the Star Wars menagerie except as a background… but there’s an expectation that someone can play the Twi’lek babe or the Trando knuckle-dragger when it comes to Star Wars gaming. There’s a fine line there, but I’d like to be able to keep the humanist feel while accomodating multiple species in the “Star Wars rpg” tradition.
…
Starfighters like X-Wings and Delta-7 Aethersprite interceptors… I just look at them as Tools for a Dogfight Conflict, like a Sword or Spear in a Fight.
In terms of rules, each starfighter needs to be defined, like an Axe is different from a Bow & Arrow.
Also, these things act differently in War/Commander conflicts where capital ships are involved. Maybe you just take things like Ion Cannons & Concussion Missiles and give them effects since a comparison of ARC-170 versus Eta-2 Actis maneuverability is meaningless relative to a Trade Federation battleship.
(Rules for Mounts would be nice, but we’ve just gone down a paying job in this household (not me), so my gaming budget is now $0.00 per month.)
Aren’t their like, special traits for big animals, that define the different physical traits of those animals? (I recall facing off vs a turtle, and one of the highlights of the fight was using maneuver to negate a few of those traits. until then he had big dispotioning damaging jaws and a shell which made fighting him rather difficult.)
Couldn’t we hack some of those for Capital ships, maybe for fighters as well?
Solid gold, hadn’t thought about that. After a conflict, rahter than angry or wounded or bruised or whatever, your ship could be damaged. Can easily spend a check making a test to repair it. Do you recall any of the ships conditions form that game? Been awhile since I played.
Moose have Giganticness, or something. They have special “traits” & rules that Mice don’t get. Star Destroyers are like Moose, in a way.
I was thinking Starfighters share from a pool of common rules. Instead of making unique rules for the Delta-7 Aethersprite, the Eta-2 Actis, the TIE Interceptor, and the A-Wing, we can just write some basic descriptors and rules that apply across.
So, “traits” like Interceptor, Agile, Rugged, Shielded, Gunship, etc.
The same can be done for Capital ships.
Those ideas for ship’s conditions sounds like a good start. We were also considering the same for starfighter squadrons… but that’s still on the drawing board.
…
Also, in terms of Recruitment, who commands what? What is the typical Clone War command responsibility of the “Patrol Leader” equivalent?
I’m thinking the Captain equivalent would have (at minimum) command over a Venator-class Star Destroyer, with all the associated starfighter wings & Clone troopers at his or her disposal.
I’m thinking the Patrol Leader should be more or less equivalent to Anakin’s position in the Clone Wars cartoons, but I don’t watch those regularly since I’m not actually a fan of them.
In the game, when you win a Maneuver for a Margin of Success of 3, you Disarm your opponent. He can’t recover his weapon for the remainder of the Conflict. But, in Star Wars movies, so often a jedi can recover his lightsaber in the middle of a duel. How we fix this? Or we just leave it as it is? This bothers me a bit.
Luke Skywalker loses his lightsaber quite a bit. He’s not just disarmed, but also dis-hand-ed by Darth Vader.
Of course, he recovers. So we need a mechanic for that, I think, rather than removing the rule entirely. Maybe spending Arthas, pushing Nature or the Dark Side, or something.
I dunno. “I disarm you!” seems like a Maneuver. If you win and get 1 success to impede your opponent, they have +1 Ob as they scramble to recover their lightsaber. If you win and get 2 successes to gain position, you’re standing over them as they grab it, poised to strike with +2D. If you win and get 3 successes to disarm your opponent, you “unhand” him. As it were.
What about grabbing the gun of a fallen comrade? Maybe I can recover my master’s lightsaber after Dark Whatever killed him for the back. Is that possible? Can I grab the blaster of a fallem soldier for example in the midle of a fight? I’m thinking about the last fight between Grievous and Obi-Wan in the third novie.
Hm. Good question. This may be heresy and is almost certainly a rules drift, but if you got enough Maneuver successes to inflict a disarm, I’d be totally cool with allowing you to instead pick up a piece of gear or something. I mean, you could be screwing your opponent over instead, so it seems like you’re short-changing yourself to snag a lousy +1D to something (and probably -1D to something else).
I’m not sure about it, though. Seems like, taken too far, it might allow you to recover from a disarm an earlier Manuever inflicted, and I dunno how much we want to encourage Maneuver tug-of-war.
And then you have Blasters being Missile weapons, and the template from Bow & Arrow granting automatic bonuses to Maneuver already… And lightsabers need to deflect blaster fire, plus Jedi can just eat it up/absorb it (like Darth Vader did when Han Solo shot at him on Bespin), so using Attacks against Jedi might be extra difficult for most opponents as compared to Maneuvers… Perhaps as it should be?
Plus, Luke doesn’t just pick up his lost Lightsaber. He tries to strike down the Emperor (but Darth Vader stops him). And Obi Wan has to pick up Qui Gon’s fallen Lightsaber, having lost his in one of the ubiquitous bottomless pits. (Let’s just ignore the dumb thing Obi Wan did to General Greivous for now…)
I’m kind of feeling like you need to burn Fate or even Persona, plus play into a BIG in order to retrieve a lost Lightsaber. It has to be a serious story moment if we’re going to override an existing Mouse Guard rule.
