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The Force Attribute

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jtanzer
Lieutenant Commander

Joined: 01 Mar 2023
Posts: 125

Posted: Tue Dec 17, 2024 8:22 pm Post subject:

Basically, I disagree with pakman's assertion that if one PC is a Force-user, than all PCs need to be a Force-user. I also believe that the balance types I described are equally applicable to Force-users and to races. _________________ The best villians are the ones the PCs create.

CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering

Joined: 05 Apr 2010
Posts: 16371
Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.

Posted: Tue Dec 17, 2024 9:09 pm Post subject:

jtanzer wrote:

Basically, I disagree with pakman's assertion that if one PC is a Force-user, than all PCs need to be a Force-user. I also believe that the balance types I described are equally applicable to Force-users and to races.

I got that. I was just asking you to pare your quote down to the specific sentence/s where he said that, because I’m not seeing it.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

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jtanzer
Lieutenant Commander

Joined: 01 Mar 2023
Posts: 125

Posted: Wed Dec 18, 2024 6:47 am Post subject:

pakman wrote:

But yes - as CRM states - all the force stuff needed to be done together (have five force users in our game) if the force is going to be a major part of a game.

Here you go.
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering

Joined: 05 Apr 2010
Posts: 16371
Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.

Posted: Wed Dec 18, 2024 8:15 am Post subject:

jtanzer wrote:

pakman wrote:

But yes - as CRM states - all the force stuff needed to be done together (have five force users in our game) if the force is going to be a major part of a game.

Here you go.

But all he’s saying is that he has five Force users in his game, not that he forced them to.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

jtanzer
Lieutenant Commander

Joined: 01 Mar 2023
Posts: 125

Posted: Wed Dec 18, 2024 4:58 pm Post subject:

CRMcNeill wrote:

jtanzer wrote:

pakman wrote:

But yes - as CRM states - all the force stuff needed to be done together (have five force users in our game) if the force is going to be a major part of a game.

Here you go.

But all he’s saying is that he has five Force users in his game, not that he forced them to.

Well, that was the impression I got.
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The best villians are the ones the PCs create.

DougRed4
Rear Admiral

Joined: 18 Jan 2013
Posts: 2292
Location: Seattle, WA

Posted: Thu Dec 19, 2024 3:09 pm Post subject:

I think his players just all wanted/chose to be Force users. And that he felt - if he was going to do some work on how The Force works - it made sense to overhaul the whole system. _________________ Currently Running: Villains & Vigilantes (a 32-year-old campaign with multiple groups) and D6 Star Wars; mostly on hiatus are Adventures in Middle-earth and Delta Green

jtanzer
Lieutenant Commander

Joined: 01 Mar 2023
Posts: 125

Posted: Thu Dec 19, 2024 7:20 pm Post subject:

The impression I got was that he forced them to all be Force-users. That, at least to me, is the plain-text reading of his statement. _________________ The best villians are the ones the PCs create.

garhkal
Sovereign Protector

Joined: 17 Jul 2005
Posts: 14290
Location: Reynoldsburg, Columbus, Ohio.

Posted: Fri Dec 20, 2024 2:57 am Post subject:

Sounded to ME more like THEY were the ones pushing "we need to all be force users" angle.. _________________ Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

raithyn
Lieutenant

Joined: 24 Jun 2023
Posts: 93

Posted: Fri Dec 20, 2024 4:21 pm Post subject:

jtanzer wrote:

The impression I got was that he forced them to all be Force-users. That, at least to me, is the plain-text reading of his statement.

I believe your misunderstanding comes from an assumption that the statement you quoted is about the players needing to use the Force together. Saying the Force stuff needs to be done together is in reference to revising Force rules/mechanics, not who does and doesn't interact with them.

Whill
Dark Lord of the Jedi (Owner/Admin)

Joined: 14 Apr 2008
Posts: 10465
Location: Columbus, Ohio, USA, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way Galaxy

Posted: Mon Dec 23, 2024 3:12 am Post subject:

raithyn wrote:

jtanzer wrote:

The impression I got was that he forced them to all be Force-users. That, at least to me, is the plain-text reading of his statement.

Ding ding ding. Yes, he was talking about the need to overhaul the entire Force system all at once for this campaign instead of only applying tweaks, because all of his players wanted to be Force users...

pakman wrote:

jtanzer wrote:

I would disagree with the assumption that if one PC is a Force-user, than all of them need to be one as well.

I don't think anyone did have that assumption.
I certainly don't.

However - when our latest star wars d6 campaign was starting and ALL of my five players wanted to be force users - I felt my mix of house rules and other tweaks would be inadequate.

jtanzer wrote:

Well, here's the comment that prompted my statement...
I stand by what I said in my response to that post.

jtanzer, your insistence in defending your interpretation of what he said became utterly pointless when he very explicitly clarified for you that all five of his players wanted to be Force users. There was no forcing them to play Force users.

It is fairly common for people to misunderstand what someone is trying to say here. It happens. You ask for clarification or you post your interpretation, and they clarify/correct you, then you know what they are really saying. But why argue about something after it becomes null and void?
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pakman
Commander

Joined: 20 Jul 2021
Posts: 454

Posted: Mon Dec 23, 2024 12:39 pm Post subject:

TLDR: What whill said.

jtanzer wrote:

The impression I got was that he forced them to all be Force-users. That, at least to me, is the plain-text reading of his statement.

LOL - What the Fondor?

to be clear - unequivocally 100%, absolutely positively NO.

MY PLAYERS ALL WANTED TO BE FORCE USERS BY THEIR CHOICE.

We were in our session zero and talking about the type of game (gritty vs. heroes, smugglers or rebel spies, clone wars, rebellion era, old republic, etc.) they wanted to play and one of the guys said "hey, how about....." and they leaped on it (of course, reconciling all the character concepts into backgrounds that made sense and a campaign - was another task..).

If I would have only had one force user - I might have just done the basics (Force Attribute, Control not add to damage for lightsabers) but with five of them - and looking at all the areas I thought needed updating - a full overhaul was in order.

Be well my friends.
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jtanzer
Lieutenant Commander

Joined: 01 Mar 2023
Posts: 125

Posted: Mon Dec 23, 2024 4:04 pm Post subject:

Whill wrote:

raithyn wrote:

jtanzer wrote:

The impression I got was that he forced them to all be Force-users. That, at least to me, is the plain-text reading of his statement.

pakman wrote:

jtanzer wrote:

I would disagree with the assumption that if one PC is a Force-user, than all of them need to be one as well.

jtanzer wrote:

Well, here's the comment that prompted my statement...
I stand by what I said in my response to that post.

I have...personal reasons as to why I do what I do. Suffice to say that what you're seeing here is my actual behavior IRL. I'll PM Whill the details.
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garhkal
Sovereign Protector

Joined: 17 Jul 2005
Posts: 14290
Location: Reynoldsburg, Columbus, Ohio.

Posted: Mon Dec 23, 2024 4:30 pm Post subject:

pakman wrote:

We were in our session zero and talking about the type of game (gritty vs. heroes, smugglers or rebel spies, clone wars, rebellion era, old republic, etc.) they wanted to play and one of the guys said "hey, how about....." and they leaped on it (of course, reconciling all the character concepts into backgrounds that made sense and a campaign - was another task..).
.

What 'era' are they running in? Are they all hunted? WHo's their master (and is he dead?)
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cunning_kindred
Lieutenant Commander

Joined: 25 Mar 2007
Posts: 181
Location: Southampton, England

Posted: Sun Jan 12, 2025 8:49 am Post subject:

Quote:

Having Force as just another Attribute, and Control Sense and Alter as just other skills has made a lot of things more consistent and simple.

My group has been using a FOR attribute for... a while (more than a decade). But we abandoned the Control, Sense and Alter as skills very quickly. Our own experiences with the idea have been mixed over the years.

One of the things we quickly realised about making all Force-related abilities into a FOR attribute was that it allowed us to take advantage of what I personally consider the greatest strength of the d6 system in general. Namely, you describe what you want to do and then you make a roll against a difficulty set by the GM and you go from there. This really does seem to fit how the Force is portrayed throughout most of the books better than the specific powers purchased for each pip that the base system uses. You have a broad range of skill and you apply it as you wish.

The base system couldn't really allow a wide range of effects to be permissible just by buying the basic control, sense and alter skills though because they chose to make those skills incredible broad. All three of the skills, even on their own, can do so much and when used in combination, you could justify almost anything. I think they did this because they wanted a player that purchased 1D in one of the skills to have a wide range of potential abilities - as befit the then vision of the Jedi. The WEG solution was that you had to buy specific things you could do: specific powers.

But having a FOR attribute means that once you have FOR 1D you already have a broad range of potential abilities and so the skills do not need to be as broad in scope.

We tried lots of different approaches. After the Control, Sense and Alter version, we took inspiration from the system outlined for Dathomir witches and the Ta-Ree system from the DarkStryder Campaign and made each power a skill. This quickly proved itself to be too limited. All the powers were far too expensive for our tastes.

So then we started to combine similar powers into skills. This eventually led to a system where we divided what the Force could do into six aspects: Ambient Force, Energy, Living Creatures, Matter, Mind and "Space & Time" and then had a control, sense and alter skill for each.

I like patterns like that so I really liked that grid of skills, but the feedback from my players had me slowly morph the skills around so they don't quite fit the grid anymore. We've been playing with the current skills for a long time though and we really like the mix. All my right-ups still insist the Jedi at least consider each skill to be a Control, Sense or Alter discipline, even if they don't quite all fit. Injure/Heal for example used to be Injure/Heal yourself (a control skill) and Injure/Heal another (an alter skill) but this just did not play well, so we have just Injure/Heal and insist that Jedi consider this to be both a Control and Alter skill.

Some effects, obviously, needed to be separated out and made "special" for certain factions or force traditions or because we felt we were drifting beyond what a Jedi should be able to do. How you do that would have to depend on your own system. Our own system has a talent system (think Feats from 5E) that deals with that, but you could use Advanced skills, or Boons or Merits if that is deemed appropriate. For a time, we just said you could use the skills to do whatever everyone deemed appropriate to your Force tradition.

Our current system allows us to make a lot of effect innate to the skills we use. In the end, FOR ended up with thirteen skills. We've play-tested them a lot and haven't felt the need to change them at all in some time. They are all worth buying. All cinematic and fun. One or two are not really suitable for Jedi, however.

If its of interest, the thirteen skills (which can be combined as you do control, sense and alter in the RAW) are Attention (focusing on things), Create/Dissipate Energy, Emptiness/Rage, Expand/Obscure Senses, Farseeing, Influence Mind, Injure/Heal, Manipulate Space and Time (generally not known to the Jedi), Revel (a dark side skill), Sense Force (sensing the livig force and living creatures), Telekinesis, Telepathy, and Weave Force (messing with the nature of the Force itself. Not known to the Jedi. Very Sith and Dathomir).
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pakman
Commander

Joined: 20 Jul 2021
Posts: 454

Posted: Wed Feb 12, 2025 2:21 pm Post subject:

cunning_kindred wrote:

Fascinating take.
Sounds like you put a lot of work into it. A different path than my group chose - but still interesting to read. Side note: I put in some very basic weak abilities for the main force skills (Control, Sense and Alter) to represent the simple stuff we see in various stories before formal training.

thanks for sharing.

garhkal wrote:

pakman wrote:

What 'era' are they running in? Are they all hunted? WHo's their master (and is he dead?)

Great questions!

What ERA?
- they wanted to play in the early days of the rebellion - kind of between bad batch and rebels - as they wanted very few rebel resources out there and the opportunity to help build them. The official time is about 10 years after O66.

Are they hunted?
Yes. It is a bit complicated due to the story line - but they have made an enemy of Inquisitor Tremayne - who is heading up a separate Inquisitorius Project (since we voted at the beginning to not mess with OT canon characters - needed another logical villain than vader...etc.).
He is after them for specific campaign story reasons - other than just "hunting jedi" - it is part of the overall campaign arc.

Masters -
That is a bit more complicated - technically dead - their various masters died either in the clone wars, or right after. They found a holocron to help with some training, and have encountered other jedi refugees to learn other things.

Side note: Tremayne was in their backstories - and in their first adventure as the bad guy - he lived - and has been pursuing them since.

Back to Force Attribute;
The force attribute works well, as does just treating Control Sense and Alter as skills - keeps things consistent.

I toyed around with making all the powers just specializations of Control, Sense and Alter - but in the end did not go in that direction.
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Working on massive House Rules document - pretty much a new book. Will post soon....

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