Stat Block Organizational Tool

Friend of the blog, map maker, and adventure writer Will Patterson has pulled together one of the great resources found here at Triumph & Despair and has taken it to the next level. The link below provides you with the Stat Blocks featured here, but in an easy to use Excel Worksheet with quick pull-down menus to easily look up and bring up an array of stat blocks.

• Will Patterson’s Stat Blocks

Related, I have been asked by some, “will you update your Age of Rebellion stat blocks to reflect the Core Book? Will you provide Force & Destiny stat blocks from the Beta?”

1. Probably not. The core books differ so little from the Beta’s that it really doesn’t spark my interest. I hate minutia and boring things, and this seems like an exercise in both. I feel like a great many of the fans of Star Wars RPGs are in it to fulfill some need to codify everything in the Star Wars galaxy in some sort of weird encyclopedic fashion, this being an example of such. I really dislike that attitude, I find it constricting and limited, and so I will not be adding fuel to that fire. Go do meaningless tasks yourself.
2. Maybe! Keep on the lookout. I have a copy waiting for me right now and, if the stat blocks are new and different enough from previous Beta’s, then it will pique my interest and I’ll do it. I only blog about things I enjoy, let’s see if Fantasy Flight can pull the hat trick.

Critical Cards

As Galaxy Master, I like to run a very face-paced game of Star Wars. I don’t sit down. I treat my GM Screen as a clipboard and little more than a hard surface to help jot down notes on paper. I drink coffee and energy drinks at 6:00 PM just to get amp’ed up for a game. I don’t stop the game to discuss or analyze rules in a book. I listen to thrash metal and hard-beat industrial.

I cannot be bogged down by rolling on a critical injury table.

This function of FFG Star Wars has long been a speed bump in my GM’ing style. To get around it and keep the game pounding at my preferred breakneck speed, I devised a clever little system of Critical Cards (click to download) to replace the drudgery of rolling d100 and looking up the results in a chart. I implemented this first in FANE of the SITH LORDS and it worked amazingly well. Wow, it has been a long time since I’ve made them. Jeez, why didn’t I post these sooner?

Galaxy Masters wishing to use these instead of the traditional system should print out several copies, two at the least, and shuffle them up. Create one deck for Critical Injuries, those affecting an individual Crew Member, and Critical Hits, those affecting vehicles and starships. Whenever something or someone would suffer a critical, roll just a d10. Previous criticals held by the target, the Vicious weapon quality, and Wounds or Hull Trauma suffered above the target’s threshold all add a +1 to the roll, similar to the rules-as-written critical mechanics.

• If the total of the roll is 8 or lower, use the end of the Critical Card that has a white background; a Minor Critical.
• If the total of the roll is 9 or higher, use the end of the Critical Card that has a dark gray background, a Major Critical. Disruptor weapons always use the Major Critical end of the card.
• If the total of the roll is 15 or higher, the subject is completely destroyed or instantly killed.

This system is intuitive to use, quick to deploy, and gives the players physical reminders of their debilitating conditions. It also opens up an avenue for customization for the Galaxy Master, tweaking the composition of the Critical Cards deck to suit his or her desired level of lethality. For example, during my CRUSH the REBELLION campaign it was made well known that the Critical Cards deck would be stacked with an overabundance (about three times as much as normal) of Maimed critical injuries. What can I say, I like my games of Star Wars to have a lot of lightsaber amputations.

The Critical Cards as presented do not fit the percentages and ratios presented in the rules-as-written charts exactly. I do not care and neither should you. This system overall is a little more swingy, risky, and dangerous; an injury of Dead can theoretically be applied on just the first critical injury delivered. If you’re uncomfortable with that, tweak the die roll thresholds (9 and 15) to be a little higher, or remove those offending cards from your deck.

CtR PreGen Character Sheets

I will be running some local one-shot games using the FFG Star Wars at some local cons and MeetUps in the coming weeks. Naturally, I went with what I am excited and passionate about at the moment and put together a quick little adventure related to my CRUSH the REBELLION campaign. When running adventures like this with strangers in the mix, or any one-shot game really, I always prepare a set of easy to use pre-generated characters.

My ultimate goal with these character sheets is to have something available so that any player can sit down with one of these, grab a pen, and start playing immediately. Everything should be easy to read and work in an intuitive fashion. Additionally, I wanted jaded fans of the Star Wars lore to be immediately become enraptured and excited at the audacity of the characters I was providing. These aren’t nameless Imperial lackeys that no one cares about; these are the big time movers and shakers within the deep core of the Empire’s machinery. I want every character to inspire someone to say, “Whoa, this person is such a badass!”

I’ve already established a method that I enjoy for showcasing skills, talents and the like. For this adventure, however, there was another wrinkle to consider.

Secret Agendas

A core mechanic for any CRUSH the REBELLION campaign, the thing that makes it really unique, is the use of Secret Agendas. To foment an atmosphere of tense, cold-war style manipulation and intrigue, I needed to have each character with something to instantly focus their disdain on, something for the character to hate; and also a seemingly simple end goal with an added complication of needing to rely on someone, perhaps another Agent, to be able to accomplish. The tension between the Agents competing against each other in the macro scale, but also needing each other to survive the micro scale, is what defines this setting.

These characters are each built with an additional sum of experience points above starting level (I think I ended up with +100Xp for each), basic gear, and one special equipment; a gift from The Emperor that defies the normal order of Imperial dogma and gives that character a special advantage.

In the rare chance that you might be involved in any of the local Baltimore games that I am running, please do not read these character sheets until after your game. No spoilers!

Downloads

• Mara Jade
• Maarek Stele
• Thrawn
• Prince Xizor
• Natasi Daala

I’ve made a huge mistake.

… and messed up the rules for vehicle weapon attack difficulties. Why didn’t anyone tell me earlier? What am I supposed to be doing here, reading the rules?

I think part of this is that I often mentally confuse the rules for the Edge of the Empire Beta with those that changed throughout the Beta Updates and the final Core Rulebook. This issue came up at my home game just the other day (thanks, Steven) and, suffice to say, I am embarrassed. In general, almost all the attack difficulties listed in my popular Starship Cheat Sheets need to be increased by 1.

As a service to my fans, I’ve not only updated all of the sheets to be accurate, but I’ve also added an impressive list of never before crafted Starship Sheets for some of the more popular Imperial and/or Capital starships, all the way up to the massive Imperial Star Destroyer. Enjoy!

STARFIGHTERS & SMALL CRAFT

• All-Terrain Personal Transport (PDF) (Word)
• All-Terrain Scout Transport (PDF) (Word)
• Aratech 74-Z Military Speeder Bike (PDF) (Word)
• Storm IV Cloud Car (PDF) (Word)
• Incom T-16 Skyhopper (PDF) (Word)
• TIE/LN Fighter (PDF) (Word)
• TIE/SA Tactical Bomber (PDF) (Word)
• TIE/IN Interceptor (PDF) (Word)
• TIE/D Defender Multi-Role Starfighter (PDF) (Word)
• RZ-1 “A-Wing ” Light Interceptor (PDF) (Word)
• T65B “X-Wing” Multi-Role Starfighter (PDF) (Word)
• BTL-S3 “Y-Wing” Attack Starfighter (PDF) (Word)
• A/SF-01 “B-Wing” Heavy Fast Attack Starfighter (PDF) (Word)

FREIGHTERS & MISCELLANEOUS

• Firespray System Patrol Craft (PDF) (Word)
• Ghtroc 720 Light Freighter (PDF) (Word)
• Sorosuub Luxury 3000 Space Yacht (PDF) (Word)
• Wayfarer-Class Medium Freighter (PDF) (Word)
• YT-1300 Light Freighter (PDF) (Word)
• YT-2400 Light Freighter (PDF) (Word)
• YV-929 Armed Transport (PDF) (Word)
• T-4A Lambda-Class Long Range Shuttle (PDF) (Word)

CAPITAL SHIPS

• CR90 Corvette (PDF) (Word)
• EF76 Nebulon-B Frigate (PDF) (Word)
• Imperial I-Class Star Destroyer (PDF) (Word)
• MC80 Liberty Type Star Cruiser (PDF) (Word)
• Victory Star Destroyer (PDF) (Word)

Heist Dashboard

I’ve received another great guest contribution this week, this time from Peter Holland. Peter gives us a sampling of a Heist Dashboard he has created for his home group, a clever little PowerPoint Presentation file that interactively allows the Crew to review their current heist options, peruse various details, and select their next impetus for adventure.

• Download Example Mission Board
• Download Blank Template Mission Board

I think this is a great idea, and brings nostalgic memories back to me from playing Privateer as a kid. As an adult in the 21st Century, I look forward to hearing from the computer-savvy Triumph & Despair readers who take this idea and create their own interfaces, similar to this, for their own groups. As I’ve talked about before here, this is a great jumping point for creating meaningful choice; presenting the players with transparent information, allowing them to make informed decisions on the course of the campaign, and holding them responsible to both the rewards and the perils of that decision.

Adversary Cards

One of the most well-received posts on Triumph & Despair has been the invaluable Revised Stat Block Format. It takes its cues from other roleplaying games designed for maximum legibility and utility at the gaming table, expertly presenting the overwhelming wealth of information in the stat blocks for Edge of the Empire and Age of Rebellion in a way to lead a panicked Galaxy Master seamlessly and intuitively through a combat encounter. It also is a necessary component in running adventures in the SpaceCore style; utilizing the streamlined format to allow the Galaxy Master to focus on provided a fast, furious experience of maximum intensity.

Galaxy Master Eric Carltock has taken this idea to the next level, applying his artistry to the revised stat block format to create something wholly new. He has graciously allowed his work to be posted here and I could not be more thrilled. Behold!

• Download Adversary Cards (28MB)

This set of 64 painstakingly crafted stat blocks cover the range of enemies presented in the Edge of the Empire roleplaying game. They take the fundamentals of design pioneered here at Triumph & Despair and put a shine to them; creating a stat block with both elegant presentation and an artistic style to match the rest of the Core Rulebook, something to truly replace the cumbersome, unreadable blocks of the past.

For my own sake, I plan on giving these great stat blocks a permanent home in my Galaxy Master’s Binder; waiting in the wings for the times when I need to pull out a quick NPC, unprepared and on the fly while running a game.

Secret Agenda Cards

In a few weeks I’ll be starting up a brand new FFG Star Wars campaign. Determined to make something great out of Age of Rebellion, I have crafted together the framework for a campaign dubbed Crush the Rebellion, as described three moths ago here. The core element of this campaign is the idea of a Secret Agenda – a major project overseen by the Agent and hidden from the Emperor for various reasons. Secret Agendas replace Obligation and Duty and offer no mechanical effect other than the first player to fulfill all 5 steps of their character’s secret agenda wins the game by changing the face of the Galactic Empire forever.

As we progress and actually play out my theoretical ideas about this game, I’ll be posting small updates to my treatises and house rules to better reflect what we’ve learned. Already, I’ve tweaked the original Secret Agenda post to include contingencies for Destiny Points and revised the reward system.

The first of these are Secret Agenda Cards (PDF).

These simple handouts are designed to clearly show how agendas operate, how the actions dovetail into a compelling narrative, as a practical means of keeping track of one’s secret agenda, and as a handy reference guide when trying to divine the secret agenda of rival Agents.

Fane of the Sith Lords – Adventure Flowchart

I’ve long held the belief, here, that by analyzing a simple flowchart of an adventure in a roleplaying game one can quickly deduce the level of “railroading” and linear plot devices inherent to that adventure. With that in mind, I am very proud to show off a flowchart I created for the upcoming Fane of the Sith Lords Star Wars adventure.

This flowchart serves multiple purposes.

Firstly, it shows off the interesting, complicated web of potential actions and exploration that could, though doesn’t necessarily have to, occur within the advneture. All of these criss-crossing lines represent many meaningful choices that the players must make, each with their own major impact on how the adventrue unfolds.

Secondly, I am proud to show off the stunning, evocative place names within the adventure. My hope is to further whet the appetite of the Star Wars RPG for this coming adventure. Who wouldn’t want to delve into the mysteries locked away in the FORBIDDEN ARCHIVE? Or shake in terror when trapped in the PTERO-RANCOR’S CRUCIBLE?

Lastly, this flowchart serves a very practical function for the Galaxy Masters across the globe who will be running this massively detailed and intricate adventure. Knowing which spaces connect to other spaces and where those connections are one- or two-way, is vitally important. The flowchart is an invaluable aid to running a smooth, seamless adventure at the table, allowing Galaxy Masters to focus on their delivery and presentation by cutting down on confusion as much as possible.

Age of Rebellion: Beta Update

A quick word that all of my Age of Rebellion Beta Stat Blocks have been updated with the recently released first update.

In addition, I’m releasing my stat blocks for the Age of Rebellion Beta starships now. I’ve had these all done for quite some time now, but was holding back in anticipation of a beta update to help manage the huge amount if dice rolls implied by the rules as written when dealing with large capital starships. That seems to be pushed off onto the far horizon for now, so I’m going ahead and sharing with the word where I’m at in terms of large-scale, apital starship combat. Behold!

• Starships (PDF) (Word)

NOTES:

The overall goal of these Stat Blocks is to provide as streamlined an experience as possible, for the benefit of overtaxed Galaxy Masters, while still retaining the utmost in accuracy. The following notes should help explain my formatting design and alleviate some confusion.

1. Abilities and qualities that have a strikethrough (oftentimes the Cumbersome quality) are there to show that some effect has already been integrated into the stat block and can largely be ignored.
2. Some abilities and qualities, such as those that add Boost to certain skills, are simply eliminated entirely off of the Stat Block with their effect built into the appropriate dice pools, etc. so that the Galaxy Master need never even think about them.
3. Often on starships, multiple embankments of the same weapon are indicated. Where possible, minion group rules have been used top upgrade the attacks of these weapons instead of requiring a Galaxy Master to make multiple attack rolls.
4. On rare occasions, all in the capital starships section, an exorbitant number of combat dice are indicated for large weapon batteries. In these cases, instead of upgrading the attack via minion group rules, the attack is instead given a +1 damage increase per gun emplacement beyond the first. Thanks go to FangGrip the Consummate Gamer for the idea.

Age of Rebellion Beta – Adversaries Stat Blocks

I originally began this post by writing out why I don’t like the “standard” FFG format of stat blocks, why I thought a well-designed stat block is important, and how I would choose to go about doing so. Then I remembered, oh yes that’s right, I had already done this many moths ago. You should read it, here, right now.

Now that the baseline stat blocks for Edge of the Empire are not only complete, but also accurate to the core rulebook, I have focused my attention on slowly piecing together the same treatment for the newly release Age of Rebellion beta. BEHOLD! They are done. In time, starships and vehicles will be presented in the same fashion, likely waiting for at least the first week of Beta Updates.

 

• Alliance (Word) (PDF)
• Core Worlders (Word) (PDF)
• Droids (Word) (PDF)
• Fringe Dwellers (Word) (PDF)
• Galactic Underworld (Word) (PDF)
• Imperial Bureaucracy (Word) (PDF)
• Imperial Military (Word) (PDF)