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Raven Redstar
Rear Admiral
Joined: 10 Mar 2009
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Location: Salem, OR
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 Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2011 9:51 pm Post subject: Re: Official vs. Home Brew Stats.... |
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| Naaman wrote: | I'm just curious:
I just read some of the RoTS sourcebook thread and came across a pretty heated discussion about how powerful characters would be in a given era...
But, why is it so important to use official or semi-official stats (in this case) for NPCs that are not likely to ever need to make a skill check in a game session at your table? Or, for that matter, are not even likely to show up in the campaign? |
Honestly I think it comes from a deep seeded need that most of us have to be right. Most of us have been playing and running D6 Star Wars for 10 or more years. When you get that degree of experience under your belt, you like to think that the way you do things is the right way, and wonder how someone else could disagree, or be right. I believe, more now than ever, that everyone can be right, and wrong at the same time. What might be right for one group, will get abused by another. It doesn't really matter in the end, consensus is irrelevant.
I like a lot of the Conversions that we've done here, some stats I've disagreed with, some I haven't. For the ones that I don't like, I change, which is my right to do as GM. I strongly encourage everyone to do the same. Keep what you like, and change what you don't; that idea goes for the official WEG stats as well. I personally loathe the fact that the "official" Storm Troopers suck. In my games, they've been "beefed up" a few dice in their skills that I feel are not up to snuff. I want my starting characters to be afraid of Stormies. Not everyone agrees with me, and I'm fine with that.
| Quote: | I mean, if they can make it up, so can I. If it doesn't match up with what I think (and it usually doesn't), I just use my own stats.
Now, I'm genuinely grateful for the time and effort that goes into the conversions and fan-based material, as it provides a wealth of useful info and insight that I wouldn't have, as I have not explored the EU at all.
But, I always take the stats of characters with a grain of salt. |
I'm right there with you on this point Naaman. Take what you like, change what you don't, I think some people get heated because who wouldn't like "their version" to be all nicely packaged in a pretty PDF like all the work that Gry and Chesh have done for the community? I certainly would love it if my version of Cortosis Gauntlets, or my slightly altered Taung stats, or any other number of slightly changed bonuses from Aliens, Equipment, Droids, or Weapons were in the final releases. A little bit of it is wanting the ego stroke, a little bit is just wanted to feel like you've contributed to the community in a sort of permanent way.
Passion breeds disagreement, and we're all passionate about this subject. It's why I habitually check the forums 4-5 times a day, it's even become built into muscle-memory, sometimes I click on my bookmark without even realizing what I'm doing. I love Star Wars, and I love WEG's system, just like everyone else does, some of us even have a love/hate relationship with the system, but that's why we come here, to try to bounce ideas off one another, and sometimes to have someone else try to remind us that something might be a little unbalanced, or perhaps a little too difficult.
After a few disagreements on the board, I have come to the decision that you share you opinion; If no one seems to agree, or if arguments brew, you state your reasoning, and let it be done. If I can't bring something that I feel will positively contribute to the discussion, I avoid clicking on the little reply button. Heated arguments can be avoided by a little discretion on both sides of the disagreement.
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RR
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Fallon Kell
Commodore
Joined: 07 Mar 2011
Posts: 1846
Location: Tacoma, WA
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| Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2011 10:39 pm Post subject: |
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| cheshire wrote: | | Call me naive, but I don't think he sincerely meant to come out and call us all retarded 5-year olds. |
Well, I'm a crack-brained reactionary, so retarded 5-year old may be a promotion for me! 
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cheshire
Arbiter-General (Moderator)
Joined: 04 Jan 2004
Posts: 4834
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| Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 9:48 am Post subject: Re: Official vs. Home Brew Stats.... |
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| Raven Redstar wrote: | | I'm right there with you on this point Naaman. Take what you like, change what you don't, I think some people get heated because who wouldn't like "their version" to be all nicely packaged in a pretty PDF like all the work that Gry and Chesh have done for the community? I certainly would love it if my version of Cortosis Gauntlets, or my slightly altered Taung stats, or any other number of slightly changed bonuses from Aliens, Equipment, Droids, or Weapons were in the final releases. A little bit of it is wanting the ego stroke, a little bit is just wanted to feel like you've contributed to the community in a sort of permanent way. |
Honestly, anyone who criticized the work I did really did contribute. From the beginning I really wanted this to be a collaborative work. I never wanted it to be seen as "Cheshire and Gry's thing." I'm only disappointed that more people didn't go through my pre-release and tell me the things that should be changed. And even then, when it went to the final editing Gry really had the last say. I was sometimes a bit surprised to see that things were different than what was in the earlier drafts.
But in the end, I think that you have the right idea. It's packaged nice and pretty, but what you don't like, you should change. If it serves as a baseline for you to make whatever GM decisions you feel need to be done, then I'm happy.
Though it would be nice to have more people with Gry's talent for layout to give more motivation to some of our fan projects. It seems like very little has been done that can match his visual quality, and presentation has quite a bit to do with how "official" the fans like to take the stats. Rightly or wrongly, looking pretty biases human beings.
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Raven Redstar
Rear Admiral
Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 2648
Location: Salem, OR
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| Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 10:11 am Post subject: Re: Official vs. Home Brew Stats.... |
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| cheshire wrote: | | Raven Redstar wrote: | | I'm right there with you on this point Naaman. Take what you like, change what you don't, I think some people get heated because who wouldn't like "their version" to be all nicely packaged in a pretty PDF like all the work that Gry and Chesh have done for the community? I certainly would love it if my version of Cortosis Gauntlets, or my slightly altered Taung stats, or any other number of slightly changed bonuses from Aliens, Equipment, Droids, or Weapons were in the final releases. A little bit of it is wanting the ego stroke, a little bit is just wanted to feel like you've contributed to the community in a sort of permanent way. |
Honestly, anyone who criticized the work I did really did contribute. From the beginning I really wanted this to be a collaborative work. I never wanted it to be seen as "Cheshire and Gry's thing." I'm only disappointed that more people didn't go through my pre-release and tell me the things that should be changed. And even then, when it went to the final editing Gry really had the last say. I was sometimes a bit surprised to see that things were different than what was in the earlier drafts.
But in the end, I think that you have the right idea. It's packaged nice and pretty, but what you don't like, you should change. If it serves as a baseline for you to make whatever GM decisions you feel need to be done, then I'm happy.
Though it would be nice to have more people with Gry's talent for layout to give more motivation to some of our fan projects. It seems like very little has been done that can match his visual quality, and presentation has quite a bit to do with how "official" the fans like to take the stats. Rightly or wrongly, looking pretty biases human beings. |
I wish I had the programs or skills necessary to help out. I love doing D6 stats. And just so you know Chesh, I like more of the converted stats than I dislike, there are just a few bits here and there.
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cheshire
Arbiter-General (Moderator)
Joined: 04 Jan 2004
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| Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 11:22 am Post subject: Re: Official vs. Home Brew Stats.... |
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| Raven Redstar wrote: |
I wish I had the programs or skills necessary to help out. I love doing D6 stats. And just so you know Chesh, I like more of the converted stats than I dislike, there are just a few bits here and there. |
From your comments in the past, I'd guessed that you do. But even from the outset there are issues with converting at all. There are some that I know dislike the idea that we converted, rather than presented new stats that were representative of the idea, but were more consistent with what WEG had done in the past. For example, the Sith starfighter is absurdly fast given the era. Though there is retcon to sort of explain things away, the hyperdrives are absurdly fast in the KOTOR era, and the like. People that I consider good friends on these forums dislike the way it was handled because they think WotC had a bad design philosophy, and conversions can only be representative of that bad philosophy.
In the end, I think that supporting the fan demand was worth the trade-offs. And I'm just happy that people like you can enjoy what you have, change what you dislike, and use the ideas for your D6 games.
Just don't count on there being enough energy for when FF starts their own games.  At the very least, I'll take a look at what they have, and maybe do a conversion guideline chart if that's even possible.
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Raven Redstar
Rear Admiral
Joined: 10 Mar 2009
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Location: Salem, OR
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| Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 11:31 am Post subject: |
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Would it make more sense to update the older drive systems in WEG ships to their WoTC counterparts to form some degree of consensus in the stats?
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Bren
Vice Admiral
Joined: 19 Aug 2010
Posts: 3868
Location: Maryland, USA
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| Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 12:04 pm Post subject: |
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| Raven Redstar wrote: | | Would it make more sense to update the older drive systems in WEG ships to their WoTC counterparts to form some degree of consensus in the stats? |
Since there are different stats in different eras, I assume that the stats cannot be directly compared. So a speed of 10 in the Clone Wars era is not identical to a speed of 10 in the Rebellion time period. If I want to mix vessels from different eras, I convert to the vessel types drawn from the majority era. Not much of a problem. |
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cheshire
Arbiter-General (Moderator)
Joined: 04 Jan 2004
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| Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 12:22 pm Post subject: |
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| Bren wrote: | | Raven Redstar wrote: | | Would it make more sense to update the older drive systems in WEG ships to their WoTC counterparts to form some degree of consensus in the stats? |
Since there are different stats in different eras, I assume that the stats cannot be directly compared. So a speed of 10 in the Clone Wars era is not identical to a speed of 10 in the Rebellion time period. If I want to mix vessels from different eras, I convert to the vessel types drawn from the majority era. Not much of a problem. |
One could try to harmonize stats by saying that they are just relative to each other within an era, and not to an outside objective standard. That would make a quick fix for GMs. Though the kmph records as well as other flavor texts indicate that Wizards had every intent of the stats meeting an objective trans-era standard. Further, I'll sometimes give Rebellion era traders and Clone-Wars era ship, just to make things interesting, and making sure that they're trying to work with an old jillopy of a ship (complete with quirks).
If I were doing the game design, I would do my best to represent a gradual transition from one era to the next with a progression of stats. (Kind of like what you suggested, RR.) A power creep seems justifiable, though with the understanding that there would be the occasional Copernican revolution that would change one piece of technology or another. Though even that would be substantially (and perhaps prohibitively) difficult. The idea is that games such as KotOR are trying to make playable ideas that we love about the original Star Wars trilogy. To give consumers something that is considerably more antiquated than that makes us feel like "it isn't quite Star Wars." On top of that, the RPGs try to represent what is made available in a video game. If we don't adequately represent that, then we say "it doesn't quite feel like KoTOR." Thus it puts the game designer in a difficult position of trying to smooth out wrinkles and make them work across eras.
Further, there are things that people see in games that just don't really help in RPGs. The KoTOR stealth belt is one of them. It was there in KoTOR to make use of your stealth skill, no other reason. In an RPG you just use your sealth roll. However, the idea is so cool that you have to meet some kind of consumer demand to somehow represent it, but then explain why it wasn't around in later eras, given how it was so useful before. (My joke was that they found out that the belt actually caused sterility, but we couldn't include that in any stat block.) My in-stat block representation was just to make it expensive enough that it matched other later stealth-producing items in terms of benefit vs. cost.
But anyhoo... there are just going to be issues when you're dealing with thousands of years of history and equipment.
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
Joined: 05 Apr 2010
Posts: 16180
Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2011 12:33 pm Post subject: |
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| Bren wrote: | | Raven Redstar wrote: | | Would it make more sense to update the older drive systems in WEG ships to their WoTC counterparts to form some degree of consensus in the stats? |
Since there are different stats in different eras, I assume that the stats cannot be directly compared. So a speed of 10 in the Clone Wars era is not identical to a speed of 10 in the Rebellion time period. If I want to mix vessels from different eras, I convert to the vessel types drawn from the majority era. Not much of a problem. |
I wouldn't go that far. There are plenty of Clone Wars era ships in the classic era, including Y-Wings, Z-95 Headhunters, bulk cruisers, dreadnoughts, Carrack light cruisers. IMO, any reasonable stat for a Clone Wars era starship needs to match with the official stats. One change that I did make when using the prequel-era ships is to cap the speeds on starfighters. The most glaring example for me was the V-Wing being given a Space of 14. That automatically makes it faster than the A-Wing, which is purported to be the fastest starfighter in existence. I mostly kept the stats on Republic starfighters, but changed the speeds as follows:
ARC-170 = 6
V-Wing = 8
Eta-2 Actis = 9
EDIT: But I do agree with you regarding ships from 1,000 years or more previous to the film era. Stuff from that era should be heavily penalized on all speed ratings, hard to modify, and only operable by someone who has the archaic starship piloting skill.
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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
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vanir
Jedi
Joined: 11 May 2011
Posts: 793
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| Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2011 3:35 am Post subject: |
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when our gaming group were going over exactly that inconsistency (resolving prequel, old republic ancient era, and yavin era ship technical specifications)
we straight up halved any speed rating that didn't make sense, like the V-Wing.
we ruled that old republic standards were twice as impressed with starships zipping around than the yavin era, when it all got a bit blazé you know, like tally ho, set s-foils in attack position and never mind the scenery.
everything makes sense if you halve old republic era speed ratings for some vessels. Others like the CloakShape you can keep, and the Headhunter was originally made to compete with that and works as written too.
but all the others make much more sense simply halved. Works for Tales of the Jedi Sourcebook craft too, as necessary.
And you get to see the gaps in old technology nicely in game. |
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Nico_Davout
Commander
Joined: 09 Feb 2009
Posts: 384
Location: Sevilla, Spain
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| Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2011 2:23 am Post subject: Re: Official vs. Home Brew Stats.... |
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| Raven Redstar wrote: | | Honestly I think it comes from a deep seeded need that most of us have to be right. Most of us have been playing and running D6 Star Wars for 10 or more years. When you get that degree of experience under your belt, you like to think that the way you do things is the right way, and wonder how someone else could disagree, or be right. I believe, more now than ever, that everyone can be right, and wrong at the same time. What might be right for one group, will get abused by another. It doesn't really matter in the end, consensus is irrelevant. |
That's the best text I have read here recently !
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Han Solo shot first, midichlosomething do not exist, Rebel Alliance was created as in the WEG books and indoctrination theory is the true ending of ME3. |
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