Genesys (FFG RPG) work in progress

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Originally Posted by sevrick

Yeah I am not a fan of that approach. I would much rather have each minon have his own token. It makes things clear on where everyone is. Done your way you would have to cluster them all together. You couldn't split them up but all be part of the same minion group.

That's why it would be nice if there was a way to tell FG that when you add a minion group to an encounter it adds a number of tokens equal to the group number. Then I can spread the minion group around if I want. People who like doing just one token can still do that. All they have to do is add one to the map from the encounter. The best of both worlds.:)

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What about the combat tracker? would it be ok to have one line for the minion group there?

I think maybe what i need is examples on how people work with their minions in their tables... do you guys represent minions individually (if you use maps) or one token? Do you describe the minion group in a certain way when they move?
Do you let them move individually, like one minion moves to a person, another to another person... i imagine that could get complicated in a table real fast... if people are using maps

On the topic of improvements, while looking at the code for the combat tracker, and map tokens, I saw some potential for some cool things

I think I will try to add Effects soon, some implementation similar to what DND5 has

If you look at that ruleset, the Effects window has that part that is similar to Core, where you can create your own effects, but it also has some default ones.
Using the default ones on an actor (pc/npc) in the combat tracker or in the map, will add the effect to that actor, and already add the duration etca.

In dnd5 of course they already have code that automates stuff like giving penalties to rolls, or bonuses to rolls, resistances....

I will eventually code that into genesys/sw, but I think it would be pretty quick for me to at least create the initial part: having all default effects someone can have.

That could speed up gameplay, where the GM can add an effect, without having to worry about creating it manually, and adding duration.

That would also pave the way for me to allow players and GMs to customize actions: not only adding dice (for example lets say you want to add 2 difficulty dice, 1 boost dice to a particular weapon because of talent bonuses etca), but also add effects that would automatically go to a target


So here is how developing would look like.
- Step 1: develop the default effects: GMs will be able to just drag those into an actor.
- Step 2: allow players/GMs to customize actions, so that effects would either automatically do into their targets, or they could simply click the effect from their action, and it would apply to the target
- Step 3: code automation (this will take time, I need to rework the dice system to allow targetting, and also code the automation part for rolls..)

Step 1 is quick to do... and I think I will work on this soon after I work on spec trees


There is also the matter of the map

So in DND5, when someone has an effect, there is a small icon that displays at the bottom. This I would code in Step 1 too...
But I am thinking I can also make an icon show up to represent a pc/npc is inside a vehicle.

I will initially only do that, but eventually I also want to allow for the vehicle itself to have its own token.

So imagine we will not only have pcs/npcs but also vehicles.

After that first version of the code that will show up the small icon representing that actor is in a vehicle, I want to improve the code.
Later instead of just that icon, I want to actually display the vehicle token there. So imagine for example a PC will have a small token attached, showing the vehicle itself.

Also the vehicle on the map will have a small icon representing the actor that is on it (and in the case of multiple players on the same vehicle, multiple icons)

That will open up another cool improvement:

Since we would have a vehicle token on the map, dropping a critical damage on that vehicle, if it is that kind of critical that damages all crew, the ruleset could automatically apply damage to all people inside the vehicle.


Sure all of this above will require multiple versions of the code, but at this point I feel confident I can pull this off, with the stuff I learned to do in FG :)

I want to hear from you guys what you think/suggest about this... since this is still in the idea phase, not yet something I am working on

OK I probably didn't explain myself very well.

Maps in Genesys and Star Wars
I use maps to help my players visualize the combat area, while yes this system is abstract and is much easier to run without a map than most games, having a map saves me time explaining where everything is and presents them with possible tactical options I didn't think of. PCs can say I want to move here and I say "That's about short range." and they move. With that conformation of distance they can easily determine range bands at the scale of the current map.
Minions with individual tokens
In Star Wars and Genesys minions do act as 1 entity for purposes of effecting its stats. Now if minions were just one token it would mean the minion group is forced to be in the same location as if they were all bound together by rope or something. To me that isn't very realistic or helps with being able to visualize the combat. However rules kept the same and there were a token for each minion they could set up ambushes and get a better representation of what actually should the PCs be seeing.

• If PC made an attack and killed 2 minions in one attack he would narrative it thus "I Shoot the minion in the head then turn and blast the one to my right and he falls off the cliff." Minions were in separate locations but still no rules were changed. Everything can be explained narratively if the PC manages to kill more than one minion, even if they aren't sandwiched together.
• This has come up before but I have had a PC disarm a minion rather than disarm all 4 minions I simply downgraded the minion attack next round as if there was 1 less minion than there really was. While this case isn't RAW per-say it seems more thematic and realistic.
• As far as having them move, If they move I have the minion group spend a maneuver. Then I move each token separately. If I want to move even just one of the minions the group still collectively uses a maneuver.

Combat Tracker
As far as the combat tracker representing 1 group and having the separate tokens show on the map, that is fine. The tokens would be purely visual reference. You could put all the stats on the combat tracker minion if reference was needed. It just could be me but I don't think it's a stretch to think that new players would understand the concept minion groups and how it works vs visually.
Encounter Creation
Not sure if people know this but built into FG is the Encounters tab. This lets you store encounters ahead of time, and save there position on the map. It does this by allowing you to drag an npc onto a newly created encounter, which then generates a token for that npc. You then drag the token it made onto the map to where this npc should be when the PCs come across it. Then you can link that encounter to your story entry where this encounter happens. All you have to do is click the down arrow and the map is populated. (The NPCs show up invisible by default just incase they were hiding.
The thing is when you do this for Rivals and Nemeses it works just fine. When you add a minion it only generates 1 token. I suppose I could go to assets folder and make copies of the token, which I have been doing, but that really removes the purpose of having encounters setup ahead of time if you are still having to drag tokens on the map your self whenever a combat happens with a minion group.
Closing
I understand if it is too much work or not possible. It is a feature that would be awesome to have if it isn't too much work needed to make it happen.:)

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Originally Posted by johniba

I think I will try to add Effects soon, some implementation similar to what DND5 has

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This would be an amazing addition. I have long been hoping that effects would make their way to the top of the to do list. I am forever forgetting to add black dice to attacks for defense, blue die for aiming, accurate 1, etc. I completely endorse this plan. I love everything about this plan and if there is any way I can assist in making this plan happen please let me know. You do amazing work Johniba! With this automation added it would be a huge quality of life update for people in the DM seat.

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Originally Posted by johniba

Also the vehicle on the map will have a small icon representing the actor that is on it (and in the case of multiple players on the same vehicle, multiple icons)

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This is a super cool idea. Again I fully endorse and offer whatever non-coding aid I can provide.

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Originally Posted by johniba

Since we would have a vehicle token on the map, dropping a critical damage on that vehicle, if it is that kind of critical that damages all crew, the ruleset could automatically apply damage to all people inside the vehicle.

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I will never say no to automation. NEVER! DO YOU HEAR ME! NEVER!!! Outbursts aside this is a really awesome plan Johniba. Really looking forward to what comes next after automation! Personally hoping for a better system to do spells as the current action tab is a giant text wall for my poor casters!

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Originally Posted by sevrick

OK I probably didn't explain myself very well.

Maps in Genesys and Star Wars
I use maps to help my players visualize the combat area, while yes this system is abstract and is much easier to run without a map than most games, having a map saves me time explaining where everything is and presents them with possible tactical options I didn't think of. PCs can say I want to move here and I say "That's about short range." and they move. With that conformation of distance they can easily determine range bands at the scale of the current map.
Minions with individual tokens
In Star Wars and Genesys minions do act as 1 entity for purposes of effecting its stats. Now if minions were just one token it would mean the minion group is forced to be in the same location as if they were all bound together by rope or something. To me that isn't very realistic or helps with being able to visualize the combat. However rules kept the same and there were a token for each minion they could set up ambushes and get a better representation of what actually should the PCs be seeing.

• If PC made an attack and killed 2 minions in one attack he would narrative it thus "I Shoot the minion in the head then turn and blast the one to my right and he falls off the cliff." Minions were in separate locations but still no rules were changed. Everything can be explained narratively if the PC manages to kill more than one minion, even if they aren't sandwiched together.
• This has come up before but I have had a PC disarm a minion rather than disarm all 4 minions I simply downgraded the minion attack next round as if there was 1 less minion than there really was. While this case isn't RAW per-say it seems more thematic and realistic.
• As far as having them move, If they move I have the minion group spend a maneuver. Then I move each token separately. If I want to move even just one of the minions the group still collectively uses a maneuver.

Combat Tracker
As far as the combat tracker representing 1 group and having the separate tokens show on the map, that is fine. The tokens would be purely visual reference. You could put all the stats on the combat tracker minion if reference was needed. It just could be me but I don't think it's a stretch to think that new players would understand the concept minion groups and how it works vs visually.
Encounter Creation
Not sure if people know this but built into FG is the Encounters tab. This lets you store encounters ahead of time, and save there position on the map. It does this by allowing you to drag an npc onto a newly created encounter, which then generates a token for that npc. You then drag the token it made onto the map to where this npc should be when the PCs come across it. Then you can link that encounter to your story entry where this encounter happens. All you have to do is click the down arrow and the map is populated. (The NPCs show up invisible by default just incase they were hiding.
The thing is when you do this for Rivals and Nemeses it works just fine. When you add a minion it only generates 1 token. I suppose I could go to assets folder and make copies of the token, which I have been doing, but that really removes the purpose of having encounters setup ahead of time if you are still having to drag tokens on the map your self whenever a combat happens with a minion group.
Closing
I understand if it is too much work or not possible. It is a feature that would be awesome to have if it isn't too much work needed to make it happen.:)

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Hey sevrick, thanks a lot for this detailed explanation and sharing of your playthrough.
Actually I believe adding the ability to have multiple tokens for the same actor representation in the combat tracker could be fairly easy to pull off... I will check how much effor it envolves, but i think it might not be much, and i could add this soon!

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Originally Posted by Xarax

This would be an amazing addition. I have long been hoping that effects would make their way to the top of the to do list. I am forever forgetting to add black dice to attacks for defense, blue die for aiming, accurate 1, etc. I completely endorse this plan. I love everything about this plan and if there is any way I can assist in making this plan happen please let me know. You do amazing work Johniba! With this automation added it would be a huge quality of life update for people in the DM seat.



This is a super cool idea. Again I fully endorse and offer whatever non-coding aid I can provide.



I will never say no to automation. NEVER! DO YOU HEAR ME! NEVER!!! Outbursts aside this is a really awesome plan Johniba. Really looking forward to what comes next after automation! Personally hoping for a better system to do spells as the current action tab is a giant text wall for my poor casters!

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I am going to revisit the actions tab, I think it is a part of the sheet i do need to improve more and more.

Any suggestions are welcome

Now about the other stuff, yeah i can do that soon!

If you’ve looked at the Savage World ruleset they have the combat tracker with the ability to group enemies together in the same initiative.

They use a card system so this “minion group” has one designated as the lead and they hold the initiative card of the 8 of diamonds for example, then all the other minions in that group are listed right under the lead for ease of reference but they can all move independently on the map.
If you could do something like that while tying together their pool of HP or something that could work. They would all have the same stats so it wouldn’t matter where the attack originates from on the combat tracker.
We build our dice pools semi manually anyway so you would just add your difficulty dice based on range from which one you designate as the “lead” attacker that turn.

When it comes to maps and scaling my group prefers the more tactical aspect of actual movement and range instead of range bands so for my group I’m just going to be converting the ranges into a hard measurement and give them about 5-6 squares of movement. So I don’t have to worry about rangelands relative to different characters and they have a more specific measurement for distances for powers and guns.

Plus I have a ton of gridded maps and it’s so much easier for us to just do standard grid combat. My players are dumb and don’t like learning multiple systems and they’re most familiar with D&D/Pathfinder so that’s what I try to base combat movement and measurement off of. But I’m slowly opening them up to try new systems

I am sorry to harp on this, but the only thing I really care about is the character specialization trees for star wars. Why? It's a basic thing needed to create a character, which should take priority over super cool features that we would all love to have. I love all the things discussed and fully support it, but I just can't use this yet.

Effects and modifiers would be a great thing. Keeping track of that in the old star wars system was a real pain, I dealt with using custom small tokens, next to the character / npc tokens on my maps. If nothing else, if I could just have the descriptions of effects on tokens, even that would be a major upgrade.

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Originally Posted by viresanimi

I am sorry to harp on this, but the only thing I really care about is the character specialization trees for star wars. Why? It's a basic thing needed to create a character, which should take priority over super cool features that we would all love to have. I love all the things discussed and fully support it, but I just can't use this yet.

Effects and modifiers would be a great thing. Keeping track of that in the old star wars system was a real pain, I dealt with using custom small tokens, next to the character / npc tokens on my maps. If nothing else, if I could just have the descriptions of effects on tokens, even that would be a major upgrade.

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While this may be true but ultimately it's up to Johniba. Sometimes other things have to take priority because it effects the code in a certain way. Not saying it does in this case, but sometimes it matters what comes 1st.

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Originally Posted by viresanimi

I am sorry to harp on this, but the only thing I really care about is the character specialization trees for star wars. Why? It's a basic thing needed to create a character, which should take priority over super cool features that we would all love to have. I love all the things discussed and fully support it, but I just can't use this yet.

Effects and modifiers would be a great thing. Keeping track of that in the old star wars system was a real pain, I dealt with using custom small tokens, next to the character / npc tokens on my maps. If nothing else, if I could just have the descriptions of effects on tokens, even that would be a major upgrade.

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Yes just to confirm, I am working first on specialization and talent trees....

Adding description to effects to the tokens is a small fix, and i will do quickly before trees, but i will not work on the other effects stuff (custom effects etca) not until i finish trees

So here is the plan:

- small update to add effects icons and description of effects when you hover the mouse over them in the token
- specialization/talent trees


After that, i will work on improving the map and effects