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ebertran
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: 14 Jul 2005
Posts: 202
Location: Miami, FL
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 Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2023 5:09 pm Post subject: IAG SPEEDS/range |
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Just discovered the IAG and read through it.
I like the simplicity of it, the round structure for example, mimics my own personal house rule in the 90s with R&E, of all actions happening in the same turn instead of segmented, so I like that. I also like the lack if initiative and letting the heroes mostly act first unless they are surprised. Letting hte players decide who acts when amongst their group is a nice way for them to build tactics and teamwork... so in general I like that.
What I'm missing is the point of these ridiculous speed scores for vehicles.... 45 for an A-Wing, 33 for a B-Wing, 37 for an X-Wing? I know that number gets added to a piloting skill roll, but is there really a need for the numbers to go that high? Quick math at the table is not helped by having to add 33 or 47 to anything, IMO. I'm guessing taking those numbers, rounding them to the nearest 5th and dividing by 5 would yield the same ballpark results. An A-Wing would have a speed of 9, a B-wing 7, and an X-Wing 8... not understanding the need for those high numbers.
And weapons have no scale? So all that differentiates them is damage? Okay, I'll probably house rule that.
Otherwise, IAG seems like a solid little stripped down simple system to run a nice little campaign with. Anyone have experience running a full campaign with this box? Any major red flags? |
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Whill
Dark Lord of the Jedi (Owner/Admin)
Joined: 14 Apr 2008
Posts: 10434
Location: Columbus, Ohio, USA, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way Galaxy
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| Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2023 7:24 pm Post subject: Re: IAG |
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| ebertran wrote: | | Just discovered the IAG and read through it... I also like the lack if initiative and letting the heroes mostly act first unless they are surprised. Letting hte players decide who acts when amongst their group is a nice way for them to build tactics and teamwork... so in general I like that. |
Could you please provide the page reference for letting the players decide who acts first in their group? When I compiled/compared/contrasted the combat rounds in all WEG SW editions, I must have missed that. Thanks.
| Quote: | | What I'm missing is the point of these ridiculous speed scores for vehicles.... 45 for an A-Wing, 33 for a B-Wing, 37 for an X-Wing? I know that number gets added to a piloting skill roll, but is there really a need for the numbers to go that high? Quick math at the table is not helped by having to add 33 or 47 to anything, IMO. I'm guessing taking those numbers, rounding them to the nearest 5th and dividing by 5 would yield the same ballpark results. An A-Wing would have a speed of 9, a B-wing 7, and an X-Wing 8... not understanding the need for those high numbers. |
I think what you're missing is that dividing the speeds by 5 would actually yield significantly different results. In IAG RAW and your suggested mod, the speeds would get added to the same piloting rolls. If the speed scores were that close together, then it would be a lot more common for a B-wing to beat an A-wing, something that should be very rare unless the pilot really makes the difference. By having the higher speed score #s spread out on that larger scale, then by the law of average dice rolls, A-wings will usually win as they should. Dividing the speed scores by 5 would be adding a much greater dimension of randomness that they pointedly by design reduced.
The system presented is still a lot less complicated than the movement rules in R&E, with vehicle move values and choosing speeds. And IAG is slightly less complicated than 1e where the speed scores were actually die codes that added to piloting rolls.
| Quote: | | And weapons have no scale? So all that differentiates them is damage? Okay, I'll probably house rule that. |
I have no memory of that. If the vehicle weapons don't have higher damage and (according hull values), then that does seem like a fundamental flaw unless they is some hand wave rule that vehicles can't target characters.
| Quote: | | Otherwise, IAG seems like a solid little stripped down simple system to run a nice little campaign with. Anyone have experience running a full campaign with this box? |
IAG is actually the only official version of WEG Star Wars I haven't played.
1e was designed to be simple to attract new people to the game (except they failed miserable at the combat round - R&E is actually much simpler than 1e in that respect). After the 1e game became immensely popular, they advanced the game system with 2e to allow for a lot more nuance.
IAG was a late-stage attempt to attract new people into the game. It seems to take some of the innovation of R&E back to roughly the simplicity of 1e, so it seems like the best of both worlds in a lot of ways. However it was never intended on being its own game line. It's a one-and-done, made with the hope that people craving more would then buy into 2e/R&E (even though IAG does briefly mention expanding the story of the adventure to continue playing it, I believe).
The main issue I see with running a whole campaign with IAG is that you as the GM would have to convert a lot of material for it. That would not be that hard for a lot of GMs. That may seem easy to you. Many GMs would rather just play the game that has a lot more instantly-usable published material.
| Quote: | | Any major red flags? |
I feel all weapons having the same exact range to be a wacky over-simplification of all editions. A heavy blaster pistol and a blaster rifle are basically the same weapon. Unless I am extremely misremembering what I read.
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ebertran
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: 14 Jul 2005
Posts: 202
Location: Miami, FL
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| Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2023 9:26 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | Could you please provide the page reference for letting the players decide who acts first in their group? When I compiled/compared/contrasted the combat rounds in all WEG SW editions, I must have missed that. Thanks. |
That is an assumption on my part given there are no rules. Logic dictates this would be the way to do it. For example, the brilliant Shadow of the Demon Lord does the same thing, players act first, then enemies, but players among themselves decide who goes in any given round.
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I think what you're missing is that dividing the speeds by 5 would actually yield significantly different results. In IAG RAW and your suggested mod, the speeds would get added to the same piloting rolls. If the speed scores were that close together, then it would be a lot more common for a B-wing to beat an A-wing, something that should be very rare unless the pilot really makes the difference. By having the higher speed score #s spread out on that larger scale, then by the law of average dice rolls, A-wings will usually win as they should. Dividing the speed scores by 5 would be adding a much greater dimension of randomness that they pointedly by design reduced. |
Yeah, I guess... but man, those numbers sure are oddly random... 45? 33? Strange. There has to be a way to break them down into smaller numbers.
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I have no memory of that. If the vehicle weapons don't have higher damage and (according hull values), then that does seem like a fundamental flaw unless they is some hand wave rule that vehicles can't target characters. |
I misstated what I wrote. I meant that weapons have no range limits. So a heavy blaster and a rifle are the same crap. I guess RP possibilities come into play, walking around armed with a rifle might attract more attention than a heavy blaster on your holster.
But yes, I see no scaling rules. Shouldn;t be too hard to add scaling rules from R&E though.
Really, I'm looking for a less fiddly d6. Condensed skills and actions all in the same turn might be enough for me. |
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KageRyu
Commodore
Joined: 06 Jul 2005
Posts: 1391
Location: Lost in the cracks
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| Posted: Sun Nov 19, 2023 8:45 am Post subject: |
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I would look over the sections on damage and combat very closely as I am fairly certain IAG has a ruling similar to 1E pre Companion. That is, Character Scale weapons role half damage against Vehicles scale targets, and Vehicle Scale weapons roll double damage against character scale targets. I not longer have access to IAG to verify this or provide a page number, but I am fairly confident it was there, and is easily missed.
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Whill
Dark Lord of the Jedi (Owner/Admin)
Joined: 14 Apr 2008
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Location: Columbus, Ohio, USA, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way Galaxy
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| Posted: Sun Nov 19, 2023 3:28 pm Post subject: IAG |
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He meant to say range and not scale, but maybe you are correct. 1e definitely only had two scales and IAG could have just went back to that. But ebertran read it recently and said he didn't see scaling rules, so maybe they just didn't bother with worrying about a speeder shooting at a character (even though that happened in RotJ).
| ebertran wrote: | | Whill wrote: | | ebertran wrote: | | I also like the lack if initiative and letting the heroes mostly act first unless they are surprised. Letting hte players decide who acts when amongst their group is a nice way for them to build tactics and teamwork |
Could you please provide the page reference for letting the players decide who acts first in their group? When I compiled/compared/contrasted the combat rounds in all WEG SW editions, I must have missed that. |
That is an assumption on my part given there are no rules. Logic dictates this would be the way to do it. For example, the brilliant Shadow of the Demon Lord does the same thing, players act first, then enemies, but players among themselves decide who goes in any given round. |
Thanks for your clarifications. "Logic dictates" is a pretty strong phrasing I don't agree with, but maybe I am woefully out of touch? I personally have never heard of Shadow of the Demon Lord, the game company that produced it, or any game that had players decide amongst themselves the order the PCs act in a round. Is this a current trend among RPGs in general?
And your original statement was not phrased as an assumption, which is why I thought I missed something. Here is the actual IAG text that I put down for my comparison of WEG SW combat rounds:
| To Narrators, an IAG author wrote: | In fights, the players usually get to act first. The only time you go first with enemy actions is when the enemy surprises the heroes. This can happen if the characters fail a Perception or search roll to notice opponents hiding in ambush, or if they are distracted by something else.
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To help make sure every player gets a chance to act, go around your players one at a time, asking each what he's going to do that turn. Make the rolls for that player's character and resolve any weapon hits and damage. Then move on to the next player. When all the players have gone, then it's your turn to make rolls...
[IAG Narrators Booklet p. 23-24, 16] |
There is no direct "dictation" from that wording. If there is any logical inference to make from that, it would be Narrator prerogative because this is speaking to Narrators and it is telling them to go around to each player one at a time to ask what they are doing and roll the actions, the move on the next player. So the most that can be gleaned from that might be the order the players are sitting, or the GM just chooses players in their chosen order. Of course, a GM could ask the players to come up with the order and that would not contradict the text, but that method is not even slightly hinted at in the text available.
In Shadow of the Demon Lord, do the players decide at session zero and that is the order that sticks throughout the campaign? Or is it decided before each adventure or game session? Any of those could function, but if it is decided before each combat or each round, I can see this being a problem if all the players don't instantly agree. What if a player gets tired of never going first and wants to go first this time. Building tactics and teamwork is great for a group, but it is not in the spirit of Star Wars to be slowing the action down when players don't agree on who goes first. Having an initiative order removes that from the equation. The GM just choosing also removes that from the equation, but with a chance of player resentment if the player doesn't agree. Having a rule up front that is explained to the players in session zero and they accept to follow the rule if they want to be in the campaign eliminates the most issues. I will occasionally mix it up based on the situation. If one PC learns something a split second before the rest of the group and/or are more in a position to react to something first, it may make sense to have them go first that time. In my decades of running this game, no player has ever expressed any disapproval of my initiative system or occasional G-ruled exceptions. YMMV.
| Quote: | | Yeah, I guess... but man, those numbers sure are oddly random... 45? 33? Strange. There has to be a way to break them down into smaller numbers. |
You seem to have two issue: the numbers seeming arbitrary, and the numbers seeming too large. I'm not going to take the time to really look at the numbers, compare it to R&E, and try to reverse-engineer their conversion process. Have WEG game writers ever come up with games stats that are totally arbitrary? Yes, I feel they have. But that doesn't mean that anything you can't see the pattern for was totally random. I think there is a chance those particular numbers were derived from based on some conversion system they invented to design that.
I have a degree in mathematics and I aced a college level Probability and Statistics course. The movement systems are totally different between these two game editions, but if AIG speed scores aren't totally random then that means they are concerned about the general odds of an A-wing beating a B-wing, etc. With the huge randomness factor from character skill (a 4D+2 pilot can roll results anywhere from 6 to 26 not counting the wild die), you would have to add a significant non-random, constant factor to keep faster ships generally faster and slower ships generally slower in chase scenes. Just glancing at the numbers you shared, they seem at least ballpark correct to maintain some semblance of correlation to the R&E stats/system. Rounding the numbers off to the nearest 5 might not change things much, but significant reducing the speed scores is going to have faster ships win races a lot less often than they should.
But of course, you should do it however you see fit. Let us know what ou go with and how it works.
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ebertran
Lieutenant Commander
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| Posted: Sun Nov 19, 2023 4:39 pm Post subject: |
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If the assumption is the GM assigns initiative to the players based on seating order, then there is an initiative order to the game, seating order. They left that out of the rules.
Shadow of the Demon Lord is a d20 based D&D clone designed by a former 3e-5e D&D designer named Rob Schwalb. It's a love letter to dark fantasy/Warhammer.
I was a little simplistic with its initiative. It works like this:
There is a slow phase and a fast phase. Fast phase goes first, and any PCs who only attack OR move get to go in whatever order they'd like during this phase. So if 3 players are doing something in the Fast Phase, they decide in what order they go. Then Fast phase happens for the monsters. Slow phase means they are only either moving or attacking, not both. And same thing, those PCs acting in that phase decide their order, followed by monsters. It is not complicated, not does it get bogged down, as we are talking about maybe 4-5 players.
| Quote: | | it is not in the spirit of Star Wars to be slowing the action down when players don't agree on who goes first |
This might be true, but the game gets bogged down with other things that are not that (and that Bill Slavicsek tried fixing in his house rules document).
| Quote: | | With the huge randomness factor from character skill (a 4D+2 pilot can roll results anywhere from 6 to 26 not counting the wild die), you would have to add a significant non-random, constant factor to keep faster ships generally faster and slower ships generally slower in chase scenes. |
Just as an aside, I do not believe, or I missed it on my read, that IAG has a wild die rule. I can't find it, and two of the rules examples have 6's rolled and a wild die re-roll is never mentioned (one example has the character rolling all 6s!)
FWIW, here are the speeds for a few ships from both editions:
X-Wing
R&E: 7
IAG: 37
A-Wing
R&E:12
IAG: 45
Y-Wing
R&E: 8
IAG: 35
Tie-Fighter
R&E: 10
IAG: 42
YT1300
R&E: 4
IAG: 28
Not sure what you see with your math expertise here, I'm trying to find some kind of pattern or conversion but don't quite see it. The Ywing is even faster than the Xwing in R&E. |
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Whill
Dark Lord of the Jedi (Owner/Admin)
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| Posted: Sun Nov 19, 2023 11:42 pm Post subject: |
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| ebertran wrote: | | If the assumption is the GM assigns initiative to the players based on seating order, then there is an initiative order to the game, seating order. They left that out of the rules. |
I don't make any assumptions about it as I have never played and probably never will. Let's not get into semantics here. I said if there is any "logical" inference from the language of the text, at most it would be GM determined or by seating order. No, it doesn't come out and say that, and if it did, I agree that would be an initiative order rule. But there is absolutely no "logic" that would lead someone from reading the text and assuming it is player decided or anything like you described for the kickstarter game. I conceded that maybe it would if that initiative method was popular in the late 90s and still is to this day, but that doesn't appear to be the case. What you describe is a leap of logic, an unfounded assumption.
It doesn't really matter because you are free to personally interpret it however you want, and apply whatever initiative method you want if you run this game. But your choice doesn't mean it is a logical assumption for gamers in general. We expect a certain level of correctness and honesty on this forum above and beyond average for the internet. Please keep this in mind for the future: Do not word your interpretations as facts present in the original text, even if you feel it is the only logical conclusion. That's all I was responding to, but in my first reply I gave 100% benefit of the doubt assuming you found something that I missed, which now I know what not the case.
What's done is done. Now just let it go.
| ebertran wrote: | | Quote: | | it is not in the spirit of Star Wars to be slowing the action down when players don't agree on who goes first |
This might be true, but the game gets bogged down with other things that are not that (and that Bill Slavicsek tried fixing in his house rules document). |
Sure, but it is worth noting here that Bill Slavicsek's house rules document was trying to fix 1e, not IAG or R&E. 1e has some inherent problems that even IAG doesn't have, because IAG benefited from all the sub-editions coming before it. But 1e was his baby.
| ebertran wrote: | | FWIW, here are the speeds for a few ships from both editions... Not sure what you see with your math expertise here, I'm trying to find some kind of pattern or conversion but don't quite see it. |
Like I said, I'm not going to be the one to dig into it for you. But maybe someone else will since you have posted all the numbers here.
| ebertran wrote: | X-Wing
R&E: 7
...
Y-Wing
R&E: 8
...
The Ywing is even faster than the Xwing in R&E. |
Take another look at R&E p.249. It's correct. X-wing says 8 and Y-wing says 7. You've flipped them here.
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Sun Nov 26, 2023 12:49 am Post subject: |
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Regarding weapon ranges, 1E and the IAG were a big part of my Range Band concept, where all weapons use the same ranges, just at different Difficulties. I’m stalled on it at the moment, but the personal weapons part is usable as-is.
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