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garhkal
Sovereign Protector
Joined: 17 Jul 2005
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Location: Reynoldsburg, Columbus, Ohio.
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 Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2014 4:21 pm Post subject: |
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True, some game sessions it has seemed to me more akin to an episode of horders than heroes.
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cheshire
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Joined: 04 Jan 2004
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| Posted: Wed Jan 08, 2014 10:04 am Post subject: |
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| Ral_Brelt wrote: | | I've never thought star wars was about the gear, as the gear is just a tool for the character's story. |
Yeah, the gear is present in pretty much every SWRPG game, but if the game becomes about the gear it's taken on a particular flavor of campaign type. I've had players want to become gear monkeys (and I'm not saying that this is what the original poster is doing), and searching for the next stat bonus or next more powerful weapon seemed to become the driving purpose of the adventures. Though I understand the appeal, it wasn't much fun to GM.
I have had very tech-oriented campaigns. One was where a group of Jedi were lured into an isolated sector where the Empire had a massive secret weapons research facility and shipyard where a Moff was quietly biding his time until he was sure he could beat the new generation of Jedi Knights. The players had to react quickly to an always changing set of circumstances due to the level of tech that kept being used against them. Though in the end it was more about the human spirit vs. the technological might sort of game.
Now, I understand DB 2.0's concern about being on par with beginning characters until the Force abilities kick in. Short term supplemental gear isn't a terrible idea in that respect if done in moderation -- and especially if those pieces of gear are made part of story hooks. I've done something similar with playing a droid in an otherwise all Jedi group. I did make some modifications to the droid along the way to make him a valuable part of the team, but always moderate enough serve in selective functions without becoming a Swiss Army Droid.
| garhkal wrote: | | True, some game sessions it has seemed to me more akin to an episode of horders than heroes. |
I've had to work a few people out of the "shoot and loot" mentality. I think part of it is a D&D carry over, plus the general means of necessity in a lot of the 1st person shooter games. Not to mention the hording that KOtoR encouraged.
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DB 2.0
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: 03 Sep 2012
Posts: 208
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| Posted: Wed Jan 08, 2014 10:52 am Post subject: |
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| true I'm looking for a few choice pieces of gear to bridge the ability gap. I don't want to end up like a Bounty Hunter with a Gun or Gadget for every occasion. |
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Tinman
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: 26 Dec 2013
Posts: 110
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| Posted: Thu Jan 09, 2014 7:14 pm Post subject: |
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There's some responsibility from the GMs end as well, when it comes to players getting their hands on technology or items which are more powerful or useful than the GM would like. It's a good idea to recognize that throwing some particular thing at the players in the hands of an NPC enemy is essentially the same thing as giving it to their PCs if the NPC ends up defeated. There's only so many times you can have things like that mysteriously fall to pieces, because you don't want them in the hands of the players, before people start muttering "I smell cheese.."
The most amusing case of this I've ever seen actually had to do with a Slicer PC who, rather than hoarding things, made a habit of copying or stealing every datafile of conceivable interest in any system he broke into. (If you're going to let someone play a Slicer, probably it's best to actually decide in advance what NPC datapads and computers contain and expect this very much in-character sort of behavior.) The GM would occasionally forget that the PC had some file of hoarded data which turned out to be very relevant to a later story as well. (Letting the Slicer have six months worth of Imperial shipping records for an entire sector seemed harmless enough at the time..) |
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garhkal
Sovereign Protector
Joined: 17 Jul 2005
Posts: 14034
Location: Reynoldsburg, Columbus, Ohio.
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| Posted: Fri Jan 10, 2014 3:07 am Post subject: |
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| Tinman wrote: | There's some responsibility from the GMs end as well, when it comes to players getting their hands on technology or items which are more powerful or useful than the GM would like. It's a good idea to recognize that throwing some particular thing at the players in the hands of an NPC enemy is essentially the same thing as giving it to their PCs if the NPC ends up defeated. There's only so many times you can have things like that mysteriously fall to pieces, because you don't want them in the hands of the players, before people start muttering "I smell cheese.."
The most amusing case of this I've ever seen actually had to do with a Slicer PC who, rather than hoarding things, made a habit of copying or stealing every datafile of conceivable interest in any system he broke into. (If you're going to let someone play a Slicer, probably it's best to actually decide in advance what NPC datapads and computers contain and expect this very much in-character sort of behavior.) The GM would occasionally forget that the PC had some file of hoarded data which turned out to be very relevant to a later story as well. (Letting the Slicer have six months worth of Imperial shipping records for an entire sector seemed harmless enough at the time..) |
Easy way to limit that. How much data storage does he have?
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cheshire
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| Posted: Fri Jan 10, 2014 8:31 am Post subject: |
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Oh, there is so much nasty stuff you can do with data security as well. I wonder what would happen if one of those Imperial computers had managed to pick up a piece of rebel-designed malicious software. I wonder what the Star Wars equivalent of Stuxnet would be? A slicer can't run wild copying data with impunity. Certainly you shouldn't punish someone for copying data, but if they're playing the data security game, they should have what comes along with it.
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Tinman
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: 26 Dec 2013
Posts: 110
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| Posted: Fri Jan 10, 2014 11:28 am Post subject: |
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| cheshire wrote: | | Oh, there is so much nasty stuff you can do with data security as well. I wonder what would happen if one of those Imperial computers had managed to pick up a piece of rebel-designed malicious software. I wonder what the Star Wars equivalent of Stuxnet would be? A slicer can't run wild copying data with impunity. Certainly you shouldn't punish someone for copying data, but if they're playing the data security game, they should have what comes along with it. |
Well yeah, punishing a Slicer for breaking systems and swiping the data they contain would be about the same as punishing a Smuggler for smuggling. Doubly so if you happen to be running a game based on a Rebel Intelligence task group who actually decides to gather intelligence (even if it doesn't seem relevant to the ongoing story at the time.) A stolen datafile was one of the key plot props of A New Hope, after all, and things like swiping Imperial Codes to allow covert landings near Imperial installations is presumably just the sort of thing which the Rebellion DOES.
Things like viruses, and one particularly interesting datafile with a malevolent integrated HDT AI, did occasionally come into play.. but again that can be a double edged sword. (In the sense that, if you might have a problem with characters potentially picking up and using something you throw at them, it's cause to consider carefully what you actually DO throw at them.) Putting a nasty computer virus within reach of a paranoid Slicer not only sets the precedent that such things exist, one ought not be too surprised if they attempt to capture a copy and make use of it themselves.
| garhkal wrote: | | Easy way to limit that. How much data storage does he have? |
It depends on what kind of computer data you're talking about. Datacards are extremely cheap and hold a very great deal of non-holistic information (lists, spreadsheets, logs, etc.) The cost of storage space really only becomes a serious concern when you're talking about full blown HDT datafiles, and throwing large HDTs at characters has its own drawbacks considering that their credit value can be enormous to the right people (Cracken's Rebel Field Guide, pg. 5-6.) and you're essentially giving them some Knowledge specialization at a very high level without having them pay character points for it. The precedent of being able to temporarily keep very large HDTs in the memory of a droid also got set when R2-D2 spent most of Episode IV with 10D worth of Scholar: Death Star in his droid brain (presumably this made it much easier than it should have been for him to play around with the Death Star's computer systems, even though a droid can only make use of 5D worth of any given database in its memory.)
This all got sorted out with the GM eventually, who mostly just had to get used to the idea that having a group of Tom Clancy fans playing Rebellion intelligence agents was going to shift the tone of the game a bit away from what he originally had in mind.
Last edited by Tinman on Fri Jan 10, 2014 12:01 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Ral_Brelt
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Joined: 05 May 2013
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| Posted: Fri Jan 10, 2014 11:36 am Post subject: |
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On that thought...maybe the Imps find out about slicer boy's MO and decide to make use of it.
Say they drop a trogan program in that is a tattle tale. It pops up when attached to a device with comms ability and informs the ISB of its location along with terminals its been in recent contact with. The team might get a bit twitchy when the Empire keeps showing up, and high command might think they have a mole in the unit, which could mean curtailed freedom on base, etc. |
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Tinman
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: 26 Dec 2013
Posts: 110
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| Posted: Fri Jan 10, 2014 1:23 pm Post subject: |
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| Ral_Brelt wrote: | On that thought...maybe the Imps find out about slicer boy's MO and decide to make use of it.
Say they drop a trogan program in that is a tattle tale. It pops up when attached to a device with comms ability and informs the ISB of its location along with terminals its been in recent contact with. The team might get a bit twitchy when the Empire keeps showing up, and high command might think they have a mole in the unit, which could mean curtailed freedom on base, etc. |
Depending on how paranoid the group is, it's an interesting idea.. so long as the GM is willing to accept the fact that every attempt at covert intelligence gathering gives those you're spying on the potential opportunity to feed you BAD intelligence if it's found out. The more specifically directed your surveillance is, the greater the risk of this happening. Especially when dealing in the spies theme, one needs to be one of those GMs who's capable of having a sense of humor and not being vindictive (or at least not unrealistically so) when outsmarted by ones players on occasion. (Sighing in exasperation is always allowed.) The Wild Mynock Chase incident, wherein a player found an S-Thread tracker while obsessively scanning his own ship, and we decided to use it to leg tag and release a mynock instead of just destroying it, comes to mind.. though in retrospect there were much nastier things we could have done with it. (The S-Thread tracker, not the mynock..) |
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garhkal
Sovereign Protector
Joined: 17 Jul 2005
Posts: 14034
Location: Reynoldsburg, Columbus, Ohio.
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| Posted: Fri Jan 10, 2014 5:17 pm Post subject: |
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| Tinman wrote: |
Well yeah, punishing a Slicer for breaking systems and swiping the data they contain would be about the same as punishing a Smuggler for smuggling. Doubly so if you happen to be running a game based on a Rebel Intelligence task group who actually decides to gather intelligence (even if it doesn't seem relevant to the ongoing story at the time.) A stolen datafile was one of the key plot props of A New Hope, after all, and things like swiping Imperial Codes to allow covert landings near Imperial installations is presumably just the sort of thing which the Rebellion DOES.
Things like viruses, and one particularly interesting datafile with a malevolent integrated HDT AI, did occasionally come into play.. but again that can be a double edged sword. (In the sense that, if you might have a problem with characters potentially picking up and using something you throw at them, it's cause to consider carefully what you actually DO throw at them.) Putting a nasty computer virus within reach of a paranoid Slicer not only sets the precedent that such things exist, one ought not be too surprised if they attempt to capture a copy and make use of it themselves. |
True. Putting in any sort of counter to what the PC's do is a double edged sword as eventually they may get ahold of it and use it against the enemy. BUT unless he has some super skills and advanced tech, he is going to be behind the curve of what the empire can make.
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Tinman
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: 26 Dec 2013
Posts: 110
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| Posted: Fri Jan 10, 2014 11:24 pm Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | | True. Putting in any sort of counter to what the PC's do is a double edged sword as eventually they may get ahold of it and use it against the enemy. BUT unless he has some super skills and advanced tech, he is going to be behind the curve of what the empire can make. |
A very humorous (and oddly non-tech) example of this sort of thing involved something called "drabik," a peculiar variety of alien jerky made with a combination of spices which reacted violently with alcohol and produced a large cloud of noxious vapor (which affected most species like potent tear gas) when exposed to it. After a scene involving an NPC native of the planet where it was produced making a getaway by doing exactly that, one of the characters made a point of obtaining an amount of it and keeping some on his person. Quite a few game sessions later, when the GM had forgotten all about it, that same character drastically and hilariously altered a planned bar fight sequence by chucking a couple pieces into a pitcher of lum. The bar's weapons scanner did not detect it as any sort of weapon at the door. |
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garhkal
Sovereign Protector
Joined: 17 Jul 2005
Posts: 14034
Location: Reynoldsburg, Columbus, Ohio.
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| Posted: Sat Jan 11, 2014 3:49 pm Post subject: |
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I;d have given him bonus CP for that!
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DougRed4
Rear Admiral
Joined: 18 Jan 2013
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Location: Seattle, WA
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| Posted: Sun Jan 12, 2014 8:07 pm Post subject: |
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Loving both of your stories (both the mynock chase and the drabik), Tinman! 8)
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